A wag of the first water closed an amusing and spirited article in the last Knickerbocker with the following "brace" of clever items. I have been sick of poetry since I saw the Vermont editor's quotation from Shakspeare. Speaking of the free negroes in New York, and their depredation on society, he says, that during the fervors of a summer's solstice, they come,
| ————"from the sweet South, Stealing and giving odor." |
But more especially, since a friend of mine travestied a noble line of Byron's by applying it—while riding along a road which commanded a view of Weathersfield, Connecticut—to that place of onions, tears and pretty maidens:
"Niobe of nations—there she stands!"
The following epigram from the North American Magazine, is a "Bonne bouche."
| I'm sorry dear M——, there is a damp to your joy, Nor think my old strain of mythology stupid, When I say that your wife had a right to a boy, For Venus is nothing without a young Cupid. But since Fate the boon that you wished for refuses, By granting three girls to your happy embraces, She meant, while you wandered abroad with the Muses, Your wife should be circled at home by the Graces. |
EDITORIAL REMARKS.
We have placed the whole of the letter of our correspondent in Shepherdstown, before our readers, and we do it the more readily, as it contains some gentle thrusts at ourselves, which we receive in very good part.