apply strychnine with one hand and the stomach-pump with the other.  SPIFFKINS used to report fires, murders, and police doings generally in a quiet and genteel manner, and by the Superintendent of Police he was as much beloved for the goodness of his heart as he was by the city editor for the goodness of his grammar.  Once upon a time SPIFFKINS had the opportunity of trying his hand at dramatic criticism, and adopted a startlingly new system, which consisted simply in telling the truth.  The consequence was that his newspaper obtained a great reputation for high moral tone, and lost all its theatrical advertisements.  Even when SPIFFKINS wrote an original American comedy of “contemporaneous human interest” (and which had had a previous run in Paris of five thousand nights), and that comedy was brilliantly rejected by a manager, SPIFFKINS never went back on his system of telling the truth.  Weaker critics would have let up on that manager lest it should be thought that they abused him because he refused their plays.  But not so with SPIFFKINS. His moral courage was too heroic to resort to so mean a subterfuge as that, and to this day that manager believes that the reason SPIFFKINS abused him is because he refused his play!  Sometimes SPIFFKINS threw a little light on subjects that were generally misunderstood.  For instance, he said that NILSSON was a “charming mezzo-soprano,” and declared that “RIP VAN WINKLE” was a more delightful translation from the French than had been seen for many a day.  Occasionally SPIFFKINS eked out his salary by writing letters to the provincial press.  In this respect he was invaluable, because his letters contained, about things in New York, information which never appeared in the New York papers; so that when a Philadelphia family takes the newspaper which SPIFFKINS corresponds with, that family is fully posted upon everything which might just as well have happened here as not.  SPIFFKINS is too real a gentleman at heart to be much of one in appearance.  If his boots and manners are equally unpolished, I know that his heart is in the right place—­just where his pocket-book is; and if his linen is dirty and his face unshorn, I feel certain that his soul is clad in immaculate spiritual lawn, and that his better nature is shaved close.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE MODERN “OLD KING COLE.”

    He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl,
    And he called for his Fiddlers three,
    Von BISMARK, Von MOLKIE and Von ROON,
    For a merry old monarch was he.
]

* * * * *

HIRAM GREEN TO H. WARD BEECHER.

The “Lait Gustice’s” Advice to the Brooklyn Divine.

SKEENSBORO, Nye onto Varmont.

MY KLERGICAL FRIEND—­Feelin it my duty to encourage a man when he strikes the rite gait, I seize the goose-quil to set down and scratch off a letter to you.  I’ve heard you preach, and, to do the square thing, I am constrained to say you’ve got talents into you, on which to bild a first-class Dominy.  My advice is, to let your talents sintilate; don’t undertake to hide ’em under a bushel of peanuts.  Let ’em blaze, friend B.—­let ’em blaze.