specimen of copperplate engraving.  The initial ‘R’ is always plain enough, but the ‘Menzies’ is sometimes read Moses, and sometimes Muggins, and is always liable to be translated Meazles.

Mr. MENZIES is a Scotchman, brimful of Caledonian lore and enthusiasm.  His penmanship is not always so sublimely obscure as his performances on bank-paper would indicate; but in its best estate it is capable of sometimes more than one reading.  Witness the following instance:  In the winter of 1858 and ’9, Mr. MENZIES delivered a very interesting lecture, before a literary society, in Prairie du Chien; subject, THE SONG-WRITERS OF SCOTLAND.  Mr. M. not residing at Prairie du Chien, the lecture was, of course, the subject of a preliminary correspondence.  At the meeting of the society next previous to the one when the lecture was delivered, Elder BRUNSON, the president, announced that he had received a letter from Mr. MENZIES, accepting the invitation to lecture before the society, and naming as the subject of his lecture ’THE LONG WINTERS or SCOTLAND.’

* * * * *

Readers who are afflicted with the isothermal doctrine may experience some benefit from the perusal of a letter for which we are indebted to a friend not very far ’out West:’—­

    SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

    DEAR CONTINENTAL: 

I have a friend who would be sound on the goose, as I verily believe, and a patriotic anti-Jeff Davis platform Emancipator, if he hadn’t unfortunately picked up a fine learned word.  That word is

    ISOTHERMAL.

    And that word he carries about as a hen carries a boiled
    potato—­something too big to swallow but nice to peck at.  And he
    pecks at it continually.

‘I could admit that the slaves should be free,’ he says, ’but then nature, you know, has fixed an isothermal line.  She has isothermally deemed that south of that line the black is isothermally fitted to isothermalize or labor according to the climate as a slave.’

    ‘Good,’ I replied.  ’So you admit that all anthropological
    characteristics as developed by climate are quite right?’

    [He liked that word ‘anthropological,’ and assented.]

’Good again.  Well, then, you must admit that to judge by statistics there is an isothermal line of unchastity, or “what gods call gallantry,” and further north, one of drunkenness?  How much morality is there in a tropical climate?  How many temperate men to the dozen in Scandinavia or Russia?’

    My isothermalist attempted a weak parry, but failed.  When he
    recovers I will inform you.

    YOURS TRULY.

    P.S.  I am preparing a series of tables by which I hope to prove
    the existence of the following isothermalities: 

  A Lager-beer line. 
  A Tobacco-chewing line. 
  A reading of TUPPER and COVENTRY PATMORE line. 
  A CREAM CHEESE line. 
  A Doughface line. 
  And a Clothes line.