The XVth. amendment was the first release from this bar, as I judged.  Since that, I have never voted but once.  Absence from the city &c prevented my doing so. I should have taken special care to be at home if living in a ward where my vote would have availed anything, or if candidates were such as I could trust.

     Truly,

     WENDELL PHILLIPS.

* * * * *

EASY CHAIR.

BY ELBRIDGE H. GOSS.

This is an age of magazines.  Every guild, every issue, has its monthly or quarterly.  If a new athletic exercise should be evolved to-morrow, a new magazine, in its interest, would follow; and there seems to be a field for every new venture.

Among our older magazines, Harper’s “New Monthly” still pursues its popular course.  In June, 1850, I bought the first number, and from that day to this it has been one of my household treasures.  A complete set, sixty nine (69) volumes, forms a most excellent library in itself; a fair compendium of the world’s history for the last thirty odd years.  Story, essay, and event, has filled these sixty thousand pages.  In October, 1851, the department called the “Editor’s Easy Chair,” was established by Donald G. Mitchell, the genial “Ik:  Marvel.”  Here are his first words: 

“After our more severe Editorial work is done—­the scissors laid in our drawer, and the monthly record, made as full as our pages will bear, of history—­we have a way of throwing ourselves back into an old red-back Easy Chair, that has long been an ornament of our dingy office, and indulging in an easy, and careless overlook of the gossiping papers of the day, and in such chit chat with chance visitors, as keeps us informed of the drift of the towntalk, while it relieves greatly the monotony of our office hours.”  Here is the well remembered flavor of the “Reveries of a Bachelor” and “Dream-Life”!

A year or so afterward, George William Curtis became a co-writer of a part of the articles for this department, and soon after he became the sole occupant of the now famous “Easy Chair;” and each month, as regularly as the appearance of the magazine itself, these very interesting, most readable, and instructive notelets upon the current topics of the time have appeared.  Their pure style, graceful and delicate humor, and the vast range of culture and observation, give them a distinctively personal characteristic.  He would have made one of our first novelists; but he has chosen to give the strength of his powers to journalism, and the study of political affairs.