In the course of a concert given lately by Mr. Henry Russell at Washington, (D. C.,) the following affecting incident occurred. The vocalist had just finished singing the little song of our friend 'the General' Morris, 'Woodman! spare that Tree!' which was received with the customary applause; upon which Mr. Russell arose, and begged permission to 'relate a remarkable circumstance connected with that song.' He had but just executed it, he said, at a concert given by him at Boulogne sur Mer, when a gentleman, in a state of alarming excitement, arose from the midst of the assembled multitude, and in a voice trembling with emotion, exclaimed: 'Was the tree spared?' 'Never,' said Mr. Russell, 'can I forget the glow which bu'st out all over that man's face, when I answered: 'Yes, it was!!' If that 'inquiring mind' did not belong to a wicked wag, then the probability is, that we are rather mistaken than otherwise. * * * We have before us, in pamphlet-form, taken from the last number of the 'Southern Quarterly Review,' a 'Sketch of the Character of the Hon. Hugh S. Legare,' which we have perused with a satisfaction unmingled, save with a melancholy regret, that one so preëminently gifted as the subject of this article, should have been so early called away. The lamented deceased was a man 'affluent in learning, whether it regarded the useful or beautiful in life; delicate and exquisite in his tastes, elevated in character, and sensitive in his affections; true to his public trusts, and exemplary in his relative duties.' Our country may well lament his loss. The 'Sketch' is in the main well written: it irks us, however, to encounter in a description of Mr. Legare's dress the term 'pants' instead of pantaloons. The word is a vulgarism almost as gross as the substitution of 'gents' for gentlemen, after the manner of Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse; no model, certainly, for a grave reviewer. * * * Our readers will doubtless recollect a marriage between a Mr. Long and Miss Little, which went the rounds of the papers some years ago, and to which some wag had appended the well-known lines:
'Man wants but little here below,
But wants that Little Long.
A few weeks since in B——, a Mr. Jonathan Goodeal was married to Miss Honora Little. After the ceremony, one of the company rose and uttered the following, which he considered a decided improvement on the original couplet:
'Man wants but little here below,
But wants that Little a Good'eal!'
A 'VERY anonymous' correspondent, who signs himself 'J. B.' (none of our Knickerbocker 'J. B.'s, as we have with some trouble ascertained,) writes us the annexed notelet: 'In your 'Gossip' for December, why not, in relation to Weir's picture, commemorate the courtship of Miles Standish and Mr. Bradford? Bradford's wife, as the picture-pamphlet tells us, fell overboard the day after the arrival, and Mrs. Rose Standish deceased the same autumn. Miles (Query Latin?) it seems looked with complacency upon a Mrs. Alden, but being no hero on a carpet, desired his friend Bradford to act as his second, and carry his offer. Bradford complied, and pleaded warmly for his friend. The lady, however, listened to him with much impatience, and as soon as he had finished, said, very demurely: 'And now why do you not speak for yourself, Master Bradford?' And history informs us that Mr. Bradford did speak for himself, and Alden Bradfords still extant verify the chronicle. You would also do me a favor by anathematizing one Flagg, who publishes Victor Hugo's plays, prefaces and all, under the name of Flagg, without giving the great Romanticist any credit therefor.' Mr. Flagg, who, if 'these be truths,' ought to be ashamed of his reputation, may consider himself 'anathematized.' * * * Some afflicted gentleman, with whom we deeply sympathize, has lately shown up in one of the London magazines a specimen of the genus Pundit; one of those persons who, having acquired the reputation of a wit, lives in a constant agony of endeavor to keep up the character; who lends nothing of a rational kind to the general entertainment during a whole evening, but watchfully 'bides his time' for the infliction of his own especial annoyance. In the present instance, the 'pundit and stock-joker' was caught at dinner by his host, during a shower of 'original puns' which accompanied the various courses, in this wise:
'Happening to possess some fine old Madeira in pints, a bottle of it was produced with an appropriate puff of its age. Taking up the bottle, Mr. Pundit remarked, 'that it might be old, but it was very little of its age.' Frank was in raptures at the joke, and laughed till tears came to his eyes. On recovering himself, he was surprised to find that my countenance, instead of being spread out into an approving smile, was fixed in something not much short of a frown. I expressed my regret that Mr. Pundit's admirable memory should be so unprofitably employed, while he interposed an appeal in behalf of the originality of the joke; but I hoped he would forgive me, if I proved to the contrary. 'Be good enough,' I told my son, 'to fetch me the fourth volume of Erasmus. It is,' I continued, turning to Mr. Pundit, 'the Leyden edition, and I shall have the pleasure of showing you your joke in a collection of ancient aphorisms, which was originally published several centuries ago.' Frank having brought the book, I found the passage, which runs thus: 'Gnathena, when a very small bottle of wine was brought in, with the praise that it was very old, answered, it is very little of its age.' Mr. Pundit was confounded, and confessed to a glimmering remembrance of having seen the joke before. 'The wonder would have been,' I replied, 'had a gentleman of your erudition in witticisms not met with it, for it has, since Erasmus's time, found its way into nearly all the jest-books of various ages and countries. I must, however, give you credit for its apt application to my diminutive modicum of Madeira.'
The old gentleman subsequently adds, by way of salvo: 'I know you err from innocence; you little thought that all the puns you were making were current when I was studying for the bar thirty years ago, and originated, I doubt not, amidst the al-fresco festivities of the Saxon heptarchy.' A capital 'recipe' is given for silencing the series of 'dinner-puns' proper: 'Should the Pundit begin at meal-times, attack his first effort; request the company's attention, and rattle off the whole string. Thus forestalled, he will allow the meal to pass off pleasantly, and the conversation to flow on.' * * * Surely 'C.,' if he has perused the 'Gossip' of our last number, will not think that it is from any lack of 'sympathy' with him, that we decline his 'Autumnal Thoughts.' What he felt, looking upon the 'glorious decay of Nature' from her sublime mountain pinnacles—over a scene which 'lay bathed in the smoky light of an October day and an Alleghany valley'—we ourselves felt, perhaps at the same moment, in gazing upon the frost-painted heights along the Hudson, and the calm beauty of the Long-Island shores. We, too, 'saddened by the solemn monitions of fading loveliness, went back to the past, and to the dear friends in whose light we saw all that the heart can see, of vanished days;' and with an unutterable longing to know the mystery of life, and the greater mystery of death and the grave, have asked, with a poet too gifted to be so little known:
'Where are ye now!—though Fancy's flight
To you my soul doth sometimes bear,
Departed Time's eternal night
Re-echoes back the question, 'Where!'
Nature, in simple beauty drest,
Still dances round the restless year,
And gazing on her yellow vest,
I sometimes think my change is near!
'Not that my hair with age is gray,
Not that my heart hath yet grown cold,
But that remembered friendships say,
'Death loves not best the infirm and old.'
As many a bosom knows and feels,
Left, in the flower of life, alone,
And many an epitaph reveals
On the cold monumental stone.'
But the lessons of autumn may partake of a sober gladness as well as of melancholy thoughts; and this is beautifully illustrated by a friend and correspondent, whose nom de plume in the 'New World' cannot divert attention from the characteristics of his style. He too has been looking at the 'glorious autumnal-forest display on the hills,' which were 'bedabbled like a painter's palette.' 'Ah!' he exclaims, 'the frost has done it! And now the outward life of the trees is killed. That beautiful spectacle is Death. Equally lovely does the soul appear when the frost has touched its outer covering. You see what a variety of colors has been produced by the same cause acting upon different natures, for the spiritual life in trees is as various as among men. So it is when our natures are touched by the chills of adversity, or death even; some of us, like the hemlock, will look sad and pale; some, like the wild cherry, will become red and fiery; and others, like those hardy cedars, the good and patient, will retain their primitive greenness and beauty.' * * * There is evidently a political or some other conspiracy hatching at this moment in the 'little people's' apartment adjoining our sanctum. Beside the good vrouw's, there are three other female heads together, and one of them belongs to a delegate from the High Priestess of Fashion; and through the two open doors, we can hear, in earnest but broken tones, such exciting words as these: 'White feather,' 'piece,' 'piping,' 'set in all round,' 'bias,' 'the skirt,' 'brought round to the front and fastened,' 'single bows,' 'busts,' 'bugles,' 'purple,' 'gore,' 'when it's made up,' etc. Now what can all this portend? Putting 'that and that together,' we are led to think that the ladies are about to follow certain sage advice from a very sage quarter, touching the 'rights of women!' These words are doubtless only 'parts of speech'-es to incite to action; fragments, very like, of what runs something in this connection: 'We have shown the 'white feather' long enough! Let us throw away our 'bias' for the gentler virtues, and 'set in all round' for Mr. John Neal's paradise of our down-trodden sex! We have been kept on 'the skirt' of society since the days of Eve; it is high time we were 'brought round to the front and fastened' there by public opinion! They think (the 'single beaux' as well as the married men) that we are only fit for 'piping' times of 'peace;' but we will let them know that we are not unfit for war; that we can stand by and see a shell 'bu'st' without winking; that we neither fear 'purple' nor any other 'gore;' and that the blast of an hundred 'bugles' would have no terrors for us. Our resolution, 'when it's made up,' cannot be shaken!' But we may do the ladies (God bless them!) injustice. It has just occurred to us, that perhaps after all it may be only the Eleusinian mysteries of millinery and mantuamaking that we are seeking to penetrate. 'Like as not!' * * * What a thoughtful, feeling, truthful poet James Russell Lowell has become! Not erroneously did we predict, from one of his early poems in the Knickerbocker, 'Threnodia on the Death of an Infant,' that 'to this complexion would he come at last.' Are not these stanzas from 'The Heritage,' one of Mr. Lowell's latest efforts, every way admirable?
'The rich man's son inherits lands,
And piles of brick, and stone, and gold,
And he inherits soft, white hands,
And tender flesh that fears the cold,
Nor dares to wear a garment old:
A heritage, it seems to me,
One would not care to hold in fee.
'The rich man's son inherits cares;
The bank may break, the factory burn,
Some breath may burst his bubble shares,
And soft, white hands would hardly earn
A living that would suit his turn;
A heritage, it seems to me,
One would not care to hold in fee.
'What does the poor man's son inherit?
Stout muscles and a sinewy heart,
A hardy frame, a hardier spirit;
King of two hands, he does his part
In every useful toil and art;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.
'What does the poor man's son inherit?
Wishes o'erjoyed with humble things,
A rank adjudged by toil-worn merit,
Content that from employment springs,
A heart that in his labor sings;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.
'What does the poor man's son inherit?
A patience learned by being poor,
Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it,
A fellow-feeling that is sure
To make the outcast bless his door:
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.
'O, rich man's son, there is a toil
That with all others level stands;
Large charity doth never soil;
But only whitens, soft, white hands;
This is the best crop from thy lands.
A heritage, it seems to me,
Worth being rich to hold in fee.
'O, poor man's son, scorn not thy state,
There is worse weariness than thine,
In merely being rich and great;
Work only makes the soul to shine,
And makes rest fragrant and benign:
A heritage, it seems to me,
Worth being poor to hold in fee.
'Both heirs to some six feet of sod,
Are equal in the earth at last;
Both children of the same dear God;
Prove title to your heirship vast
By record of a well-filled past:
A heritage, it seems to me,
Well worth a life to hold in fee.'