P.S.

Ez we’re a sort o’ privateerin’,
  O’ course, you know, it’s sheer an’ sheer,
An’ there is sutthin’ wuth your hearin’
  I’ll mention in your privit ear;
Ef you git me inside the White House,
  Your head with ile I’ll kin’ o’ ’nint
By gittin’ you inside the Lighthouse
  Down to the eend o’ Jaalam Pint. 
An’ ez the North hez took to brustlin’
  At bein’ scrouged frum off the roost, 90
I’ll tell ye wut’ll save all tusslin’
  An’ give our side a harnsome boost,—­
Tell ’em thet on the Slavery question
  I’m RIGHT, although to speak I’m lawth;
This gives you a safe pint to rest on,
  An’ leaves me frontin’ South by North.

[And now of epistles candidatial, which are of two kinds,—­namely, letters of acceptance, and letters definitive of position.  Our republic, on the eve of an election, may safely enough be called a republic of letters.  Epistolary composition becomes then an epidemic, which seizes one candidate after another, not seldom cutting short the thread of political life.  It has come to such a pass, that a party dreads less the attacks of its opponents than a letter from its candidate. Litera scripta manet, and it will go hard if something bad cannot be made of it.  General Harrison, it is well understood, was surrounded, during his candidacy, with the cordon sanitaire of a vigilance committee.  No prisoner in Spielberg was ever more cautiously deprived of writing materials.  The soot was scraped carefully from the chimney-places; outposts of expert rifle-shooters rendered it sure death for any goose (who came clad in feathers) to approach within a certain limited distance of North Bend; and all domestic fowls about the premises were reduced to the condition of Plato’s original man.  By these precautions the General was saved. Parva componere magnis, I remember, that, when party-spirit once ran high among my people, upon occasion of the choice of a new deacon, I, having my preferences, yet not caring too openly to express them, made use of an innocent fraud to bring about that result which I deemed most desirable.  My stratagem was no other than the throwing a copy of the Complete Letter-Writer in the way of the candidate whom I wished to defeat.  He caught the infection, and addressed a short note to his constituents, in which the opposite party detected so many and so grave improprieties (he had modelled it upon the letter of a young lady accepting a proposal of marriage), that he not only lost his election, but, falling under a suspicion of Sabellianism and I know not what (the widow Endive assured me that he was a Paralipomenon, to her certain knowledge), was forced to leave the town.  Thus it is that the letter killeth.