Editor's Table. COME! that's right, friends! draw up close to our table, not a round one, but square, with the corners rounded off to favor your approach. We've nothing very inviting, perhaps, to offer you, but here are books, papers, (to wit, communications,) sundry medicines, for we are sick, but alas! no apples! Those apples, where are they? Like those of that friend who discourses to us in our columns of the pleas ures and duties of College life, the editorial "apples," ignis fatuus like, Swiftly elude our grasp. "We five," have gathered once and again, and yet again, and each time our brows in particular have gathered-blackness, at the dire necessity of giving of our private pennies, to satisfy our editorial appetites. How think you are we to bear up against such a dreadful missive as this, which has lighted on our table, after coming all the way from Pennsylvania, not from Mont-Rose, we should think, but from some bitterer Mont, than that? The "affair has itself" as follows:One of us five, writing in haste to E. Pluribus, happened to forget, not looking at our subscription book, that E. P. had already subscribed and paid for the current volume of our magazine, and politely asked "if he wouldn't subscribe." Here you have a key to the following terrific epistle. GRIM VALLEY, 11th month, 11th day. To you, The guilty Editors of the Yale Literary Magazine, Sirrahs, I am enraged-You have instigated my wrath, and 1 am determined to pour it out, even to the last phial. Prepare yourselves then for your introit into that bourne from whence no traveler returns." Hear me for my cause, and be silent that you may hear. PHIAL No. 1. Republics are proverbially ungrateful. Your ingratitude is of a deeper dye, and will be familiar as a household word through all coming time With viperine baseness, you hurl your envenomed shafts at the heart of a benefactor, and receive unmerited favors, as ungratefully as you would a kick. I repeat it, republics are ungrateful, and you, who profess to control the “ Republic of Letters,” and hold the monopoly of its advantages, have fairly earned the name of ingrates, while your literary character is completely eclipsed. 66 PHIAL NO. 2. For the reputation of Alma Mater, I regret to say it, but it is too true, that the character of the Ed's of the Yale Lit. Mag. is degenerating. I have been abused, and for what? You know too well the story of my wrongs. A friend, I have been treated with-what? Kindness? No-Justice? No-Common decency? No-but base, heartless, apathetic neglect. I had rather be abused as to my character, burned out as to my eyes, and cut off as to my head, than to receive the cold cut of ingratitude as to my disinterested kindness. PHIAL No. 3. And now, Messrs. Ed's, are you so hebetated in feeling, so arid of thought, so abandoned to every trace of human sympathy, as to persist in a course of treachery, dishonesty and inhumanity? Posteri negabitis! PHIAL NO. 4. Is this your fixed modus operandi? I pause for a reply. Have you VOL. XVII, 15 no hearts or are they cast into the shade by the splendor of your intellects? The latter is impossible, the former you cannot deny. Do you feast like gourmands on the substance of innocent subscribers, and leave them to console themselves with sweet thoughts of your immaculate honesty? PHIAL NO. 5. To each of you might I well say, in the language of Seneca, "Quo, tipsy Senior, obvium morti ingeris ? Quo, pergis amens ?"-Hercules Furens. 66 So base has been your conduct, so inconsistent with the sanctity of your venerable magazine, that I blush to mention the name of " Yale" in the same breath with the editorial corps. I am an injured man. Too long have I suffered, and now in the majestic language of Cicero, when rebuking a reprobate not unlike yourselves, I can triumphantly exclaim, Quousque tandem abuteris editores patientia mea? quandiu etiam cunctatio ista vestra me eludet?" Frumentum confiteretis ? Obtuse as you are by nature, I can already see the crimson deepening on your cheeks, as you apprehend my meaning, and you curse the day that gave you birth. Still are you unrelenting? And as in fond memory you linger over the time when the twin-dollars first chinked in your starveling purse, do you "grin a ghastly smile" and write above the unhappy victim's name “collared," because perchance you are out of his clutches ! "Man's inhumanity to man," finds not a more severe comment than this your conduct towards an humble, inoffensive, modest man. I parted with the coin in sadness, your ten-eyed monster seized it with delight. From the beginning to the end, your course has been the same-stern, cruel, unscrupulous. In attempting to inveigle and defraud an unsuspecting alumnus, your impious course is arrested. Indignant justice frowns, and swears eternal vengeance. Still are you unrelenting? And as though you could revel in adding the Ossa of injury to the Pelion of insult, one of your degenerate fraternity, in reply to my epistle inquiring for the last issue of your paper to which I AM a subscriber, remarked with a coolness that would chill an Esquimaux, as follows: "Your Yale Lit. I am sorry to confess, I forgot. I will attend to it to day. Would you like to subscribe this gear ?" ! ! ! ! ! ! I should like to inquire on what system your financial affairs are managed? Two dollars a year for the magazine, and two dollars as FEES for sending it? Only explain your platform, and I am satisfied, but such malfeasance is unpardonable. You may have good reasons for withholding your issue from your subscribers, but they should be informed of the fact. You may be ashamed to own its paternity, or perhaps you like to practice upon an alumnus. If the former is true, you may reimburse those funds without any particular delay; if the latter, you will find yourselves provided with rooms free of rent! Still, I will be satisfied with the receipt of the regular numbers, though I am convinced of your utter want of principle, as a body. I flatter myself that like Job I can "wait all the days of my appointed time until my CHANGE comes," but I am not to be trifled with. You are guilty of a griev ous crime, and naught but the most ample amends, will shield you from public and private ignominy. Act, then, like men, and send me your magazine, else I will cast my influence into the opposing scale, and crush you forever. With regard to any further subscription" this year," from me, I would simply state that it will be forwarded "ad græcas calendas." You were once my friends. You are now my debt E. PLURIBUS UNUM. P. S. If you publish this letter, I will prosecute you to the extent of the law. If you do not, you will be liable to an "action" for obtaining money under false pretenses. E. P. U." We have seen three good 'uns, in the papers lately: first, under the market reports, which we always read with great interest, we found this tribute to the obstinacy of swine-nature,—“ Pork is firm,”—a good instance, we think, of " the ruling passion strong in death." Another was an original argument, which we recommend to Juniors who have chosen for disputation the Capital Punishment question, "that the debt of nature ought never to be paid if it cannot be collected without an execution." The third, we notice because it is connected with education, a subject of such interest to us all:-it is this Wellerism," you've a pupil under the lash, as the man said when looking into the pedagogue's eye." . . . That was a capital story Prof. Goodrich told us Seniors in a Lecture t'other day, about Horne Tooke. We must tell it here. Tooke being on trial for treason, Lord Erskine had charge of his defence. Tooke being determined to plead in his own defence, Erskine tried to dissuade him, and said, "You'll be hanged if you do;" to which Horne retorted, "I'll be hanged if I don't!"... Reader, did you ever see the "Lift for the Lazy," published by G. P. Putnam, New York, in 1849? We have, and we advise you to. We think it pretty well worth "thumbing." If every reader of it is necessarily lazy, then we are, that's all; but we are not lazy, ergo, it sometimes "lifts" other than the lazy. The odd name of it does not convey any idea of the contents of the book; they are the "jottings down" of a devourer of books, who, as he says on his title-page, has "been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps." There are philological curiosities, origins of quaint customs, and short histories of remarkable men and things, and so much interesting information is mingled in with such rare bits of humor, that the book is valuable as well as entertaining. Here follow a few quotations from it, taken at random or as being short ones. 66 66 Sincere―sine cerâ―applied to honey freed or cleansed from the wax." · Rocks—slang term for money-from rupees, the East India word, and so rupis, a rock, plural, rupes." "Helter-skelter, fancifully derived from the Latin, hilariter celeriter." "Q.-We get the name of this letter from the French queue, its shape being that of an O with a tail." 66 " Topsy-turvy, a corruption of top side t'other way." Examination, from Latin examen, the beam of the balance." Wig, from French peruque, then perwick, periwig, and finally wig, without a single letter of the original word." Scamp, from ex campo, a deserter." "Hoax, contracted and corrupted from hocus, the first member of the expression hocus pocus, which is jugglers' Latin for hoc est corpus, the beginning of the Romish form in the ceremony of Transubstantiation." ... These are a few of the things which fill the pages of this excellent book. Get it and find yourself well paid in looking over its half thousand of such and better. . . . What a blessing it is to be able to write, even when we cannot talk! A severe attack of influenza has made us so near speechless, that our best sayings are "like counterfeit bills, uttered but not aloud (allowed.)" But we can still talk to your eye, if not to your ear. . . . Pondering examinations, especially Biennials, we have just thought that the Biennial Chamber is the true division room, for there unlucky wights are most effectually divided, i. e., separated from one another. What say you, Reader, to our remark? TO CONTRIBUTORS. We deeply regret being compelled to say to the author of "The Memory of the Dead," as old "Knick." did to a misguided young correspondent, "Seriously, You're not a poet, And you'd better know it; 6 and this advice we give in all friendliness." At any rate you need considerable practice to become one. 'Coffin' and 'mocking,' parting' and 'heart-strings' don't rhyme at all, at all;' 'desire' has but two syllables, any way you can fix it. Now such faults as these, together with various unpoetical thoughts and sundry untasteful and inartistic expressions, force us to say, a little or rather much of the "labor lima," friend, before you come again. The subject is hallowed, and should have only the most skillful expression. . . . The article on "Taking out a Half Sunday," we cannot insert; its morals, or rather immorals, are too bad; and we do hope O. M. has not told us in this the story of his own wrong, for we must be permitted to say that the hero-Senior, whoever he is, is an inexcusable scamp. . "Fashionable Follies" might have been written by a boarding school Miss, though such a writer would have had too much delicacy to say "when the East Indies disgorged its bowels of tropical luxuries on them,” i. e., on Greece and Rome. We agree with the writer's principles, in the main, but we do think they could have been far more forcibly and accurately expressed. . . . Those "Hudibrastic verses" entitled, "The Senior Rash," were "not dignified enough for the Magazine," and so far from amusing some of the Editors," they didn't elicit a smile even from one of them. It was quite too much trouble to find their "apex." . . . Of two poems, containing nearly four hundred and fifty lines each, one, "The Islet Grave," we cannot insert in this number because we haven't room, the other, the " Temple of Poetry," because we haven't the desire to. One like it might be manufactured on this wise: let a man take a dose of Pope once a day for a week or so; then a list of poets without arrangement, chronological or otherwise, Theocritus, Virgil, Spencer, Lu-somebody, (we might say Lucifer, but believe he is not a poet,) Horace, Boileau, Dryden, Butler, Johnson, Young, Pope, Churchill, Thomson, Cowper, Anacreon, Sappho, Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides, Corneille, Racine, Shakspeare, Homer, Milton; half of whose works he never read and likely never saw; some critiques, such as the world abounds with, on poets and poetry in general; a set of high-sounding epithets; the idea very indistinct and therefore very sublime and magnificent of a most unimaginable temple; and to season the whole, the firm belief that he is himself a poet; and you have a man prepared to write a jingle of four hundred and thirty-four lines, 66 according to his own numbering, in sound suspiciously resembling Pope, in sense resembling nothing under heaven, beginning, In Fancy's airy realm, I care not where;" rather indifferent, on the whole, rather wanting in unity of place! "Whether in earth or sea or liquid air.” Isn't the sea liquid too? and what air isn't liquid? "Or on the surface of the silver moon Stands a bright dome to every poet known, For thither oft on pinions light he soars." A poet's pinions! Made of goose quills, doubtless! Poor Pegasus will have to stand idle in the stable,-poets after this will fly for themselves! "Circles the coast, and all the fields explores." What coast? what fields? why of the temple, of course! "And yet the onward wight, who asks the way." "Onward wight;" we should need some good authority for calling this poetry! "Scarce fails to find his eager feet astray; For they whom Sportive Fancy loves, alone Guess Fancy has given our temple builder the mitten. But we cannot pursue again, as we have done, the labyrinth of this wonderful temple. Reading the piece is enough, without printing it. The same writer tries his hand at prose; and gives us several pages on the affirmative of the very novel, interesting, and exciting question, "Was the religion of Mohammed," &c. We have forced ourselves through it, and to save you the trouble of doing so, Reader, we have kept it from the printer's hands. . . . Here is a jeu d'esprit on the model of “ Audacia,” an effervescence as we personally know of a chemical lecture on the same subject. It is from the same hand which penned the "Recipe for a Chemical Lecture," in this No. We welcome the writer and all kindred spirits always to our pages. AMMONIA. (A PARODY ON A PARODY.) Ammonia, this is the title Of that good smell we love the best; Ammo-mo-mo-monía, Ammonia! |