Borrow some of my old college themes and water my remarks to suit yourselves, as the Homeric heroes did with their melas oinos,--that black sweet, syrupy wine ( ?) which they used to alloy with three parts or more of the flowing stream.

[Could it have been melasses, as Webster and his provincials spell it,--or Molossa's, as dear old smattering, chattering, would-be-College-President, Cotton Mather, has it in the "Magnalia"?
Ponder thereon, ye small antiquaries who make barn-door-fowl flights of learning in "Notes and Queries!"-- ye Historical Societies, in one of whose venerable triremes I, too, ascend the stream of time, while other hands tug at the oars!--ye Amines of parasitical literature, who pick up your grains of native-grown food with a bodkin, having gorged upon less honest fare, until, like the great minds Goethe speaks of, you have "made a Golgotha" of your pages!--ponder thereon!] -- Before you go, this morning, I want to read you a copy of verses.
You will understand by the title that they are written in an imaginary character.

I don't doubt they will fit some family-man well enough.

I send it forth as "Oak Hall" projects a coat, on a priori grounds of conviction that it will suit somebody.

There is no loftier illustration of faith than this.