----Do not think, because I talk to you of many subjects briefly,
that I should not find it much lazier work to take each one of them
and dilute it down to an essay. 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.
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