In the more important parishes of politics,
war, and diplomacy, I entirely lose even
the bare tradition of the whity-brown
man. All politicians, warriors, and diplomatists,
I am told, are absolutely black,
or absolutely white; benefactors, or curses to
their country, patriots in exile, or dangerous
despots in power; bloated place-holders, or
disinterested guardians of the public weal;
warriors who have neither courage, prudence,
nor the faculty of combination; warriors who
have the faculty of combination in the highest
degree, who overflow with courage, and
whose prudence is unequalled; diplomatists
who are decorated moths who cut into
the national finances, or subtle strategists
who preserve the interests of their beloved
country from the insidious attacks
of rivals and wily monarchs. Nothing between
these two extremes—nothing in the
shape of a whity-brown man.

I go into a law-court and look upon nothing
but black and white: the plaintiff pure
and spotless; the defendant a villain of the
deepest dye. If the jury, in their ignorance
and with their defective vision, fancy they
see before them a whity-brown defendant,
and a whity-brown plaintiff, I hear them
reproved at once by the clear-sighted judge,
who requests them to declare that they look
upon nothing but perfect black and perfect
white.

Over the convivial dinner-table I hear that
all men are of the purest white, and have
been so from their cradles upwards. Here is
the furnace which purifies the blackest man
amongst us, at least as long as the bottle
circulates and the chairman is proposing the
regulation health. The whity-brown man
is never seen at these gatherings of the good
and pure; the stewards have not invited him;
the oldest waiter does not know him. What
am I to conclude, but that there is no such a
moderate, mediocre, happy medium, rare,
priceless creature as the whity-brown man
in any parish?

          A BACKWOODS-PREACHER.

IN the spring of eighteen hundred and
one, John Page, one of the powerful orders
of Backwoods-Preachers, held a camp-meeting
in the Kentucky district. To this
meeting repaired a lad of sixteen, by name
Peter Cartwright. He was breaking down
under the weight of unpardoned sins;
which sins were, that he went into young
company, rode races, played at cards, and
danced. He found his consolation in that
excited Methodist meeting. Suddenly, after
much weeping and struggling with the
Enemy of Souls, a divine light flashed all
around him, unspeakable joy sprung up in his
soul. The leaves on the trees, and the grass
blades on the turf, and indeed everything
about him, seemed eloquent and vocal, as if
they were in very deed singing Hallelujahs
and heavenly choruses. His mother "raised
the shout," his friends shouted, he shouted;
for shouting is a Backwoods Methodist
exercise and sign; and Peter Cartwright,
aged sixteen, was pronounced soundly converted,
and dedicated for ever to Episcopalian
Methodism.

Peter took to preaching immediately; and,
in the following year, at the ripe age of seventeen,
received from the Methodist Church,
his formal appointment as exhorter of the
people. There were only fifteen travelling
preachers in the whole sect. The first two
who had been appointed were James Haw
and Benjamin Ogden; but Haw had gone
off to O'Kelly's Republican Methodist Church,
and "Ogden backslid, quitted preaching,
kept a groggery, and became wicked, and
raised his family to hate the Methodists."
Yet, during a glorious revival of religion in
a certain camp-meeting presided over by
our Peter, Ogden got under strong conviction,
and professed to be reclaimed; so was
relicensed to preach, and went out as an itinerant
again, "saved by mercy, as all seceders
from the Methodist Episcopal Church will
be, if saved at all."

They were an uncouth set these preachers;
and even Cartwright, no exquisite himself,
was sometimes almost ashamed of his colleagues.
One Brother Axley came over
to him, in Chillicothe, to preach, and they
both went to Governor Tiffin's house to
sup and sleep. Sister Tiffin had a lap-dog,
and the lap-dog came in to sup with
the rest. Brother Axley was helped to the
leg of a chicken. Disdaining knife and
fork, he took the leg in his fingers, gnawed it
quite clean, then whistled for the lap-dog,
and flung the bone to him on the
carpet. The Governor laughed; so did Peter;
but Sister Tiffin frowned and shook her
head; which helped Peter very much.
Worse than this though, Brother Axley
talked about his stomach; and then it took
all Sister Tiffin's forced frowns to keep
governor and preacher in order. When they
went to bed—

"Brother Axley," said Peter, "you surely
are the most uncultivated creature I ever
saw. Will you never learn manners?"

Said he: "What have I done?"

"Done!" said Peter; "you gnawed the
meat off of your chicken, holding it in your
fingers; then whistled up the dog, and threw
your bone down on the carpet. More
than this, you talked, right at the governor's
table, and in the presence of Sister Tiffin,
about scalding your stomach with tea and
coffee."

Axley burst into tears, and said:

"Why did you not tell me better? I did
not know any better."

Next morning when we awoke, continues
Peter, he looked up and saw the plastering
of the room all around.

"Well," said he, "when I go home I will