You well recollect, my dear Mr. Editor, the arguments that I used, to induce you to make a short journey to the South with me last summer; and your answer, “I can’t leave the paper.” You well recollect that I urged that we were not born to work alone; that life was short; that sixteen or sixty, its term was but a flash; that we were rushing on with increased velocity to that bourne, whose sands are marked, by no returning foot-print—that bourne where the sceptre and diadem of the monarch lie contemptuously hurled with the goad and chain of the slave—where, their service ended, the broken wain of the yeoman, and the grim cannon of the soldier, interlock their shattered wheels; the bayonet and pruning-hook—the sword and the ploughshare rest without a name. You well recollect that I reproached you, the rather, with too great love for the green fields and giant elms around your cottage at Elizabethtown; that I swore by my faith! and I believed in the doctrine of Pythagoras, that I should look to see thy immortal part, transferred on its exit, from its present habitation to one of those huge trees towering into the blue ether; that there, in the sunny mornings of summer, for sonnets which do enliven thy columns, I should hear the joyous call of the robin—the shrill whistle of the scarlet oriole; for sparkling wit,—the dew of night glittering on thy leaves in the early sunbeams; for wise old saws, and dreamy legends, venerable moss gathering upon thy trunk and branches, while, alike in the evening wind or howling blast, thou shouldest stand firm against casuistry or dictation. “Wilt go? Wilt join me?”—with soft persuasion murmured I. “The paper—the paper—the pa—per,” quoth thou. “Presto,” quoth _I_—and without more ado started in my usual heels-over-head fashion, alone on my journey.