nature of things. Cotton can't be forced; it will
always grow best in our rich loamy lowlands
and alluvial flats; no one can't change it. Our
commerce is organised; we are punctual, sir.
The cotton is of first quality—always alike—
and we have a great river running through the
centre of our best cotton-fields. Why, every
other country compared to it is what sand is
to sugar; you can't gainsay it, for Providence
does things straightforward, and no squinting
round corners."

"The Times, the other day, said that in India
carriage is either impracticable, or so tedious
and costly as to absorb an enormous proportion
of the whole value of the crop. I give up
India," I continued, "except as one of the many
sources of supply which I wish to see opened
to prevent these panics and these accidental
scarcities."

"Why, how can you compare Niagara to a
sausage-machine? How can India compete with
our three million five hundred thousand slaves
and our forty million pounds' worth of cotton
annually? About four millions of your people,
one way or the other, depend on the cotton
trade. You export every year some forty-eight
million two hundred thousand pounds' worth of
cotton goods and yarns; of this we Americans
take four million six hundred and thirty-five
thousand pounds' worth, against seven million
one hundred and forty thousand bales of our
cotton that you take. Now, do you think it's in
natur if you drop taking our cotton that we shall
take so much of your prints and yarns? No;
even a mosquito has got some sense in him, and
don't like any one touching the pupil of his
eye; and if we drop off a million one way or
the other, it is much the same in the tottle, I
think."

"A long war will certainly lead to our opening
other sources of supply. There is no danger
of getting cotton. What we shall not get is
your fine long staple. But inferior sorts will
come fast enough, and keep our mills partially
going for inferior yarns and cloths. Let peace
soon come, and we probably shall quietly come
back again to the old fields and full work."

"You will come back to the nine great Cotton
States," said Quackenboss, triumphantly; "to
the three hundred and fifty million rich acres,
watered by etarnal rivers, and," looking up
laughing, "to Arkansas, Texas, Alabama, and
the magnificent Louisiana, where the sile is rich,
the men brave, and the women beautiful; where
the sugar is excellent, and the steamers are
rather risky; where the whisky is pisen, but the
cotton heavenly."

Laughing at this thorough American fit of
rhetoric, I here seized my Panama hat, and rose
to wish my eloquent friend, Mr. Quackeuboss,
good night.

"Lookee hyar," he said; " New Orleans is a
great city—barring occasional yellow fever, and
the rowdies, who are rather dangerous at night
with their knives, especially with strangers.
Here, Brutus, light a lantern and go home
with this gentleman to the St. Charles's
Hotel; and look here, you rascal! don't you
stop, coming home, at any liquor-shop. Good
night, mister!"

A VOICE FROM A PEW.

IT is a good sign of the times just now, that
we do not hear quite so much about the "thin
end of the wedge" as we used to do a few years
ago. Time was when, at every suggestion of
change or improvement in our social state, you
were met at once with that terrible thin end of
the wedge, and were incontinently knocked on
the head by it. Did one propose some reform
in a matter connected with government, "Sir,"
was the answer, "you are for opening the way
to the thin end of the revolutionary wedge; let
it once get an opening, and the hammer of
anarchy will soon drive it home." Some
election atrocity would be dwelt on, perhaps, and a
remedy suggested; the thin end of the wedge of
Chartism was at once brought into the discussion
So with regard to social reforms, new
lights in science, improvements in the working
of the law—let any of these be so much as
hinted at, and the thin edges of every sort of
inconceivable wedge were set up bristling in the
face of the daring reformer almost before his
dangerous sentiments were out of his mouth.
But perhaps, of all subjects that could be named,
the most certain to bring this terrible wedge
into play was the subject of Church reform.
Let any one suggest the slightest alteration or
improvement—not in any theological dogma,
but even in a matter of Church discipline, or
the external working of the Church system—
and the wedge of Infidelity, with an edge as
fine as that of a razor, rose up in front of him,
and the proposal, however much needed,
however just and wise and reverent, must perforce
be abandoned. Touch but so much as the lace
on a beadle's hat , and the wedge is in upon you,
crushing all before it, as though it were
impelled by a parochial steam-hammer.

The temper of the times now, however, is
more reasonable and tolerant than it was a few
years ago. We have got the length of admitting
that it is possible for a clergyman to have a bad
delivery, that a congregation is not to be
expected to take anything it can get in the way of
elocution and be thankful, while there have even
been found some, and these happily among the
ranks of the clergy themselves, who have been
ready to give voice to that longing for a new
arrangement of our Church services, which is
felt by hundreds of persons who have suiiered
long and silently under the present system. Has
the time come when they shall suffer so no
longer? It is devoutly to be hoped that it
has.

Surely there are many who read this page, to
whom that word "suffer" will not appear too
strong. It is true that individuals of what is
called the mercurial temperament, or, perhaps,
by physiologists the nervous-sanguine, are not
the largest class in this country. It is true
that in our community there is an immense