The challenge was instantly accepted, and on inquiring of the clerk of the hotel, it was found that the owner of the protruding boots was a young English nobleman.

66

Well," said the discomfited better, with ready wit, “it is surprising how readily our people, when they come over here, acquire your habits!"

How to Treat
Satirists.

WHAT is the best way to treat a satirist, one who has made you the butt of his ridicule, and the laughing-stock of the public? There are some persons of nervous temperament who feel as uneasy in the presence of such a jester as if they were shut up in a room with a fulminating shell, or an insecurely caged cobra capello. Henry I. of England, when ridiculed in a clever lampoon, could think of no more telling reply than to have the author's eyes put out. Ages before Henry, the noble Roman family of the Metelli fancied that the most pertinent answer to the well-known stinging line of Nævius was to cast him into prison. On the other hand, Nero, with all his cruelty, never punished his own libellers; and Julius Cæsar, when he was lampooned by Catullus, invited him to supper, and treated him with such magnanimous civility that he converted the poet-enemy into a life-long friend. One of the old kings of France was wont, when urged to avenge a satirical assault, to observe that "the ass which beareth the burden must be allowed to bray." Cardinal Mazarin replied to an attack by the learned Guillet by sending for and expostulating with him, assuring him of his esteem, and shortly afterward conferring upon him a good abbey. This treatment had so happy an effect upon the libeller that he dedicated the second edition of his book to the Cardinal, after having expunged the offensive passages.

An Error CAN a great poet be a moral iceberg? We regarding think not. One might as well talk of a coldJohn Milton. blooded race-horse, a sedentary will-o'-thewisp, or a lazy lightning.

Apropos to this subject, we have just read a new critical biography of John Milton, by Richard Garnett, which invests a threadbare theme with really fresh interest. The author combats the popular idea of the poet, which regards him as a great, good, reverend, austere, not very amiable, and not very sensitive man. The author and his books are thus set at variance, and the attempt to conceive the character as a whole results in confusion and inconsistency. Milton, with all his strength of will and regularity of life, is shown by Mr. Garnett to be as perfect a representative as any of his compeers of the sensitiveness and impulsive passion of the poetical temperament. In proof of this, his new biographer appeals to certain characteristics of the poet which we have never seen set in so vivid a light before, namely, his remarkable dependence upon external prompting for his compositions; the rapidity of his work under excitement, and his long periods of unproductiveness; the heat and fury of his polemics, and the simplicity with which, fortunately for us, he describes small particulars of his own life side by side with the weightiest utterances on Church and State. Further proofs of his impressible and fervid temperament are the precipitancy of his first marriage and its rupture; his sudden pliability upon appeal to his generosity; his romantic self-sacrifice, when his country demanded his eyes from him; above all, his splendid ideals of regenerated human life, such as poets alone either conceive or realize. To overlook all this, is to affirm that Milton wrote great poetry without being truly a poet.

We thank Mr. Garnett for thus humanizing the great Puritan poet. Henceforth, he will cease to be merely a cold, statuesque idol of the intellect, and will have a shrine in our heart.

"No Chance to Make

It is a common complaint in these days that there are no good opportunities now, such as Money Now."there once were, to make money. Competition, men tell you, is so keen that the profits of business are small, while the risks of loss are many and large. To do a profitable business requires now not only more brains, but a larger capital and intenser activity than ever before. Trade tends to concentration in fewer and fewer hands; the great houses are continually absorbing the small ones, or, by underselling them, driving them into bankruptcy. For every clerkship there are hundreds of applicants, which reduces wages so low that a young man who wishes to go into business by and by for himself can barely live, without laying up a dollar. Now, while there is a certain

believe it to be enormously

amount of truth in this, we exaggerated. We think we could show, had we space, that for a man who is abreast with the age, and has mastered the latest and best modes of doing business, the present is in many respects the best time in the world's history to win an independence or a fortune. Instead, however, of showing the truth of this opinion, we will tell an anecdote.

About fifty years ago, we were chatting in a hotel in Maine with a shrewd old retired merchant, over eighty years of age, who, beginning life a poor boy in a village in Kennebec County, Maine, had accumulated from eight hundred thousand to a million of dollars, a sum equivalent to more than twice as much to-day. "People," said

66

the old man, are always complaining that there are no chances now to make money. Thirty years ago, they tell you, there were plenty of such chances; and, had you lived at that time, you would have heard the same croakings. I remember well that people then said the days for acquiring fortunes had gone by, that the time for making money was just after the Revolution; and I have no doubt that during this last period there were plenty of unsuccessful men who asserted that there was no profit in business, that the lucky men were those who lived a generation earlier. And so you might go back a hundred years, or more, and always you would hear from many persons the same despairing cry. Now, the fact is, Mr. Mathews," continued he, after pausing a moment to take a pinch of snuff, "that all times are good for making money, if you only know how; and if you don't know how, all times are bad." "But, Mr. G.," said we, suppose that a young man is a clerk in a store in Boston, with a salary of only two hundred dollars a year, and he has to pay five dollars a week for his clothes and board: how is he to lay up any money? How is he to get a start in life, or find capital to go into any business for himself?"

66

"I don't undertake," replied the old man, in his shrill, low voice," to say how it can be done; I only say that if he has the will to do it, it will be done. But, instead of arguing the matter, I will tell you a story. About fifty years ago there was a poor boy in Maine, whose father, once independent, had lost most of his property by indorsing notes for friends, and who lived in a log-house. The boy used to pick strawberries and other fruits, and carry them two miles to a country village, where he sold them at three cents a quart. One day a firm of traders, thinking

he had a turn for business, asked him how he would like to be one of their clerks. His eyes sparkled at the proposal; and on his saying that he would like the place, he was taken into the store. His salary for the first seven years was forty dollars a year and board. For the next two years he received one hundred dollars a year and his board. At the end of the nine years' clerkship, his employers took him into copartnership. How much money do you suppose he had at that time laid up?"

"Why," we replied, "if he had resembled some clerks that are employed to-day, he probably, if he could have got credit for such a sum, would have been about fifteen hundred dollars in debt."

“Well,” said the old merchant in a tone of triumph, "that is precisely the sum which he had laid up in clean cash. And now, if you don't believe the story, I will tell you who the boy was. He was your own father, and I was one of the firm that employed him as clerk and finally took him. into copartnership."

Surprised at this revelation, and conscious that we had been floored by an argumentum ad hominem, we were silent for a few minutes, and then added: "But the whole of your clerk's salary, Mr. G., for the nine years, put at compound interest, would n't have amounted to the fifteen hundred dollars which you say he had hoarded."

"Oh," was the reply, "he kept his money turning over, of course. He fished at night in the Kennebec, caught and sold salmon, and dickered with the farmers, etc. But he never neglected his employers' business. He dressed well, and always had a handsome extra suit of clothes to go a-courting in. He was my partner for thirty years, and the only one I did not lose money by."