was in the occasion, the manner, the words, if you please; and yet it was no where, if he chose to disclaim it! He had a proposition to make, but he would not write it down! Mark the man; he could not be prevailed on to put it upon paper. He gave his friend the words, and the emphasis, and made him repeat both, until they told right to his own ear. These were the exact terms:

"Colonel BURR presents his compliments to General HAMILTON: Will General H. seize the present opportunity to give a stable government to his country, and provide for his friends?'

'General HAMILTON did not hesitate a moment: this was his answer:

"General HAMILTON presents, in return, his compliments to Colonel BURR: Colonel B. thinks General H. ambitious: he is right; General H. is one of the most ambitious of men; but his whole ambition is to deserve well of his country.'

6

"There is an answer,' continued the narrator, which would have deified a Roman; there is the first of the offences which he expiated at Weehawken.''

THE PAYMENT OF THE INTEREST.. Base is the slave who pays,' was the sentiment of ancient PISTOL. But this PISTOL was an immoral man. He was not respectable; he knew nothing of good society: and it was most surprising that so respectable a State as Pennsylvania should have adopted his axiom. But she has repented; she finds it will not do she begins to pay, and she may be forgiven. It is held, however, a special requirement of the penitent that he should feel his error; or, as the Italian adage has it:

'CHE non conosce haver' errato

Non merita che gli sia perdonato.'

The mention of PISTOL naturally introduces the subject of artillery, and reminds us of another passage in the history of this payment; we mean the gun-firing. Mr. DICKENS, speaking in the words of MARK TAPLEY, uttered not long ago the following ratiocination, displeasing to many, with regard to the repudiating portion of this republic:

TAKE notice of my words, Sir. If ever the defaulting part of this here country pays its debts, along of finding that not paying 'em won't do, in a commercial p'int of view, you see, and is inconvenient in its consequences, they'll take such a shine out of it, and make such bragging speeches, that a man might suppose no borrowed money had ever been paid afore, since the world was first begun. That's the way they gammon each other, Sir. Bless you, I know 'em: take notice of my words, now!''

We have taken notice of Mr. DICKENS's prophecy, and must admit his claim, however unwillingly, to the appellation (so much affected by affected writers) of seer or soothsayer. Whatever witchcraft he may have used, whether by maggot-pies or choughs or rooks, he has practised his divinations; he has certainly proved himself an augur. All over the country, the newspapers have been congratulating themselves and the community that Pennsylvania, pious Pennsylvania! honest Pennsylvania! has at last concluded to begin to pay 'the interest.'

On this glorious occasion the Philadelphia journals tell us that a grand national salute of one hundred guns was fired. As on that morn when Independence was declared, hearts thrilled, cheeks glowed, legs strutted, and the eyes of men in Chestnut-street flashed and sparkled, as they met in unison with the flashing of those eloquent guns! Oh! that SYDNEY SMITH could have heard, over the echoless waters, those rejoicing cannons! Oh that their dread clamors might have shook Saint Paul's!

'Oh for a blast of that great gun

Which Captain STOCKTON made in fun!'

that it might have out-bellowed Boreas on the stormy deep, and told the saucy British,

"We shall pay you! Henceforth, take note, ye cockneys! Islanders all, from Guernsey to John o' Groat's! hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest this great fact - Pennsylvania pays!'

But yet, great as are the virtues of gunpowder upon fit occasion, perhaps in this case it had better been let to lie quietly in the modest concealment of its canister. Country wives find it sometimes of great service in overpowering a mephitis; say from a dead rat in the wainscot, or the rank miasmata of drains; its wholesome stench too may clear your chamber of mosquitos, and stop their hateful serenade. But will any most lavish expenditure of the costlier sorts of 'Eagle!' 'Dupont's,' Kentucky-Rifle,' or BROUGH's matchless 'Diamond Grain,' do away the foul odor of an ill name, or relieve roguery from that perpetual singing in the ears, arising from a dyspepsia of the conscience? Pennsylvania does well in paying. It is an act of common right; but it is nothing to fire guns for. This noisy virtue is not of the best kind. Fools may be deceived by it, and may echo back the voice of self-applause; but to the sensible fraction of humanity, a rascal never appears more rascally than when he tries to look honest. When OTHELLO says of the scoundrel IAGO:

This fellow 's of exceeding honesty,'

our contempt and disgust at the villain increase in proportion as his victim is deceived. So when a notorious churl buys the name of a munificent benefactor, by giving a round sum toward a church-organ, or the building of an asylum, the more the papers harp on his generosity; the more they talk of our liberal townsman,' 'our generous fellow-citizen,' the more odious does his true character appear, to those who truly know him. Nevertheless, the church gets its organ, or the little orphans their breeches; the charity is fulfilled; and in God's name let us continue to give the man his paragraph. He has paid for it right handsomely. Men who know the depth of his beneficence, know also the value of a good name in a newspaper. Let us not grudge him that. We would even throw him in an epitaph, and reckon society had got the better bargain. But such returns of encomium ought always to be reserved for the more extraordinary and Herculean efforts of virtue. Men should not congratulate themselves upon every trifling instance of common, everyday just-dealing. If people are to fire guns and write articles upon the mere payment of a debt, we shall be choked to death with sulphurous fumes. As well go into a lazzaretto at once, as be subjected to such a perpetual process of quarantine. Salutes would then be proportioned to the magnitude of the debt discharged. If forty-two pounders serve well enough to express the joy of a nation at satisfying her creditors, small musketry might suffice for the settling of a tailor's bill. For a tavern-reckoning, pocket-pistols would furnish a sufficient demonstration of triumph; and still minor explosions would answer for the little demands of the waiter and maid. It is devoutly to be prayed for, that things may not be brought to so ludicrous a pass. And yet we can imagine it: we can fancy some future lexicographer, some harmless drudge' of a JOHNSON, thus defining the word discharge: DISCHARGE, v. a.; to discharge a bill; to pay it; derived from a custom of the ancient Pennsylvanians of discharging a cannon upon the settlement of a debt.'

There are sage heads among us who look upon this gunnery business with unfeigned sorrow. They think it shows a dishonest spirit to brag of one's honesty; that those whose fair name is once tainted, cannot easily sweeten it with cunning preparations of saltpetre. Perhaps however these old Nestors take too serious a view of the matter. It may be that it is all according to the 'genius of our institutions.' Perhaps by using noise enough, wrong may be talked into right. Perhaps it would be wholly un-American to cry Peccavimus!' and to confess our faults. And what is most likely, perhaps this cannonading is only another mode of expressing that System of Mutual Admiration, which is overspreading the land. According to this charitable system, which is exerting so benign an influence upon our morals as well as our taste, whatever is cast in our teeth as a failing, may by general vote be pronounced a merit. Its fundamental law is this; that nothing shall shake our confidence in our own deserts; that when the world is loudest in our blame, then shall

we be loudest in our own praise; and that when, according to the old school, we should fall on our knees with a penitent' Let us pray!' on our lips, we shall now simper cheerfully on one another, and say, 'Let us admire!'

6

Very pat to the purport of our homily, comes, from a friend in the East, a slight sketch of this Mutual Admiration Society;' of its foundation and extension, and of some of its proceedings, up to the present time:

'SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF MUTUAL ADMIRATION.

'No association exists in America equal in talent, respectability, and infallibility, to the various branches of the Mutual Admiration Club. There is none likely to produce so favorable an effect upon the country, and none whose principles are so highly satisfactory to its individual members. The Odd Fellows,' the 'Rechabites,' the Come-Outers,' and the 'Transcendentalists,' lay claim only to a few of its advantages. It has multiplied the genius of the land tenfold. Wherever a lodge has been established, great men have increased in a most remarkable degree; and many highly immortal reputations have been rapidly acquired. Notwithstanding all this, as yet it is little known beyond the sphere of those who enrol themselves on its catalogue. The Boston Morning Post,' it is true, has occasionally had a malignant sneer at it, but its transactions have hitherto been unrevealed. It had its origin among the Bostonians, a race naturally given to admire themselves; and in a soil so congenial with its character, such was the rapidity of its growth that it seemed possessed of the genius of GUANO. The club hunted HORACE for a motto; and finding nothing appropriate enough, in its literal form, altered the 'Nil admirari' into ' Nos admirari.' The eagerness with which the principles of the society were adopted, and their speedy extension, may be gathered from the fact, that on the third meeting, in compliance with the suggestion of a member, who wished to retain as much of HORACE as possible, the motto was unanimously altered into its present more expressive variation, ‘Nil nisi nos admirari!' which happy change has been generally accepted by all the branch-lodges all over the country.

'Although Boston claims to have given birth to the first club, there are some members who date the rise of mutual-admiration principles from a remote antiquity. The heroes of the Iliad, it is contended, were in the habit of lauding each other. Even the stern PELIDES, in his fiercest anger, complimented AGAMEMNON, by confessing that he was like a god in fight;' and AGAMEMNON retorted, by informing ACHILLES, 'Thy valor comes from JOVE.' Occasional complimentary notices of each other are also found among the Augustan lads. TIBULLUS, VIRGIL, and others, are suspected of having established a club at the house of POLLIO. BAVIUS and MAVIUS especially, we cannot doubt, were ardent admirers of each other. There is a tradition among the scholiasts that CICERO's eloquent argument for Roscius was paid by the actor in kind. Roscius, it is believed, in an original melo-drama, written for his benefit by a gentleman of Rome, uttered a strong panegyric upon CICERO; advising all who wanted good law, to call at his office. But this anecdote rests upon questionable authority; and, on the whole, it must be conceded that although slight instances of mutual admiration occur in history, the first regularly organized society was that of Boston.

"The manner of its birth was this. SMITH, the celebrated writer, was chosen upon a certain fourth-of-July, to deliver the oration. It was but a dull production to the audience. The day was hot, the church crowded, and the orator sleepy. SMITH, upon his own capital, could not do himself justice. He felt this, and feared that the next day's papers would pronounce him an ass. In this emergency it happily occurred to him to introduce a high encomium upon the newspapers generally, and upon several editors, whom he called by name, and whom he happened to note among the congregation. The effect was perceptible immediately. Several reporters in the gallery gave audible kicks of commendation; and at the sound of their patronymics, and at the mention of their respective journals, the

aforesaid editors roused from their momentary nap and blushed. One or two gazed fiercely on the chandelier; some closed their eyes hard, as if to caulk up the passage of any stray tears; and others, with lips austerely compressed, looked frowningly at the speaker, as if to say, 'Pour on! we can endure! The final result of this manœuvre was, that all the newspapers, on the day after the oration, praised it beyond measure. They said it was 'a brilliant effort,' a 'masterly development;' set things in a new light;' contained sound philosophy;' ought to be read by every child in the country;' was an indispensable addition to literature,' etc. So much eulogy had its effect: the oration was bought, read, and talked of; SMITH was invited forthwith to sit for his bust, and a Sunday paper contained a parallel between SMITH and DEMOSTHENES, signed PLUTARCHUS JUVENIS.' Acting upon this experience, the ingenius SMITH, who was then pregnant with a volume of poems, inserted therein a sonnet upon Virtue,' which, among sundry great exemplars of virtue, such as CATO, HAMPDEN, TRAJAN and others, instanced, in a modest way, the name of JONES, a famous writer in the North American.' JONES, of course, gave SMITH a handsome 'puff' in the next number; and from an accidental conjunction between these two literary orbs, at the house of the celebrated BABCOCK, arose the first idea of the regular organization of this mighty engine of modern taste.'

We trust to be

Such will serve for a present sketch of this Society's commencement. enabled from time to time to note its proceedings, and those of its' branches.'

RANK TO THE DESERVING: STEAM-ENGINEERS. Have you never thought, reader, while voyaging in one of our princely Hudson steamers, and in a moment of abstraction, watching the engineer, who, silent and thoughtful, directed the complicated powers that swept you onward; have you never thought how much you owed to the man who, under Providence, held your life in his hand? We have, many and many a time; and it is for this reason that we welcome the ensuing passage from the communication of a correspondent, who is familiar with the subject on which he treats, and commend to our readers the plan which he sets forth, and which we hope may not altogether escape the notice of our government: The compensation allowed to engineers on board of steam-boats, and their responsibility, are greatly disproportioned to the rank awarded to them. Every man, on going on board a steamer, finds his attention drawn to the captain. Few, if any, inquire after or even notice the engineer. This important officer has no distinctive badge, nor is there any thing in his appearance to distinguish him from any working-hand about the deck. You are not permitted to see the man at table who has the safety of every one on board in his care; nor have you any evidence of his qualifications, until your passage is made: then you may adopt the old saw, 'It is a good bridge that carries us safe over.' To draw public attention to this useful but neglected class, it needs only that we look at the number of steamvessels employed in the naval, revenue, and merchant service, and in the various coastwise and transportation lines of the United States. The inquiry naturally arises, How are these engineers educated and qualified for their important duties?' and what guarantee have the public of their fitness? To satisfy the public mind; to insure safety, and the efficiency of engineers; to prevent the frequent and appaling accidents which take place, are surely matters worthy of grave consideration. I ventured to suggest, in the plan to which I have referred, that four great work-shops, or factories, should be established by government, to be located at Pittsburgh, New-York, Boston and Charleston, South Carolina. The Government has already in its employment competent persons to take charge of these establishments. The mode of admission to them of youths of a proper age, sufficiently educated in the elementary branches, might be the same as that adopted at West-Point. A longer time would be required to teach them practically the construction of steam-engines, and the science applicable to their profession. They

should be allowed a small compensation during their course, and their time should be divided between their work and studies, so as to permit them to graduate at the age of twenty-one. A suitable undress-uniform should be allowed to be worn during the hours of relaxation and study. Frequent inspections should be made, to insure cleanliness, good habits, and regard to character. Graduates should be commissioned as steam-engineers, or assistant steam-engineers, according to merit; assistant steam-engineers to be permitted a second examination, after a certain period; then to be promoted or not, as their qualifications might warrant. When employed by the government, a certain fixed pay should be allowed to each rank, and the uniform to be worn; when not employed by the government, an undress to be worn, and the commission to be retained, but no pay, except such as may be received from private employment. All persons holding the commission of steam-engineers. or assistant steam-engineers, to be subject to arrest for improper conduct; to be tried by a court-martial composed of steam engineers; and the decision of the court, when approved by the President of the United States, to be final. In case of accidents happening to the machinery of a steam-boat, by which a loss of life or property is sustained, a court of inquiry may be demanded by the steam-engineer or assistant steam-engineer, who had charge at the time of the accident. The court of inquiry may acquit, or recommend that the case be referred to a court-martial. Should no court be demanded by the steam-engineer or assistant steam engineer, so in charge, the United States' marshal, in whose district the accident happened, may cause him to be arrested, by application to the officer commanding the nearest naval station. It is believed that a lack of competency has been the source of most of the steam-boat accidents which have happened in our waters; and that they may be provided against by enhancing the pride and elevating the standing of engineers. It is not doubted that very many of those now in charge of steam-engines would be found amply competent to discharge their trusts: all such should be permitted to apply for an examination; and if it should prove satisfactory to the authorized examiners, belonging to either of the United States' steam-engine factories, they should be commissioned in like manner with those who may regularly graduate.

BOOK-KEEPING, OR THE RICH MAN IN SPITE OF HIMSELF. WE are indebted to a friend for the following authentic anecdote of an old New-York merchant, whose name, were we permitted to mention it, would sound familiarly in the ears of many of our metropolitan readers: In old times it was the custom of the merchants of the city of NewYork to keep their accounts in pounds shillings and pence currency. About fifty years ago, a frugal, industrious Scotch merchant, well known to the then small mercantile community of this city, had by dint of fortunate commercial adventure and economy been enabled to save something like four thousand pounds; a considerable sum of money, at that period, and one which secured to its possessor a degree of enviable independence. His places of business and residence were, as was customary at that time, under the same roof. He had a clerk in his employment whose reputation as an accountant inspired the utmost confidence of his master, whose frugal habits he emulated with the true spirit and feeling of a genuine Caledonian. It was usual for the accountant to make an annual balance-sheet, for the inspection of his master, in order that he might see what had been the profits of his business for the past year. On this occasion the balance-sheet showed to the credit of the business six thousand pounds, which somewhat astonished the incredulous merchant. 'It canna' be,' said he; 'ye had better count up agen. I dinna think I ha' had sae profitable a beesness as this represents.' The clerk with his usual patience reëxamined the statement, and declared that it was 'a' right,' and that he was willing to wager his salary upon its correctness. The somewhat puzzled merchant scratched his head with surprise, and commenced adding up both sides of the account for himself. It proved right. I did na' think,' said he, that I was worth over four thousand poonds; but ye ha' made me a much richer man. 34

VOL. XXV.