The next time those boots are flung down in the reverberating hotel corridor there will be no harm in remarking to the clerk the next morning in the crowded office that it is not necessary for you to look upon the register to know that one of the Hog family arrived during the night. THE ENLIGHTENED OBSERVER. The Enlightened Observer from Europe who is studying American institutions asked the Easy Chair the other day what was meant by the statement that a candidate for a high elective office had opened headquarters in the neighborhood of a nominating convention. The Enlightened Observer said that he had always supposed that such conventions were assemblies which nominated persons whose public services and personal ability and character had distinguished them among their fellow-citizens, and shown them to be especially fitted for the offices which were to be filled. "Am I mistaken," he asked, "in supposing that to be the theory of your institutions?" The Easy Chair could not say that he was, and conceded that such was the theory. "In other words," continued the Enlightened Observer, "a republic secures good government because it intrusts the government not to the chance of birth, which may give to Oliver Cromwell a son Richard, and make the heir of Alexander the Great an Alexander the Little, but because it calls to its great offices of every degree those citizens who have demonstrated their peculiar fitness." "That is certainly the theory of our republican institutions," returned the Easy Chair. "Well?" said the Enlightened Observer. "Well?" echoed the Easy Chair. "Yes, but why, then, does a candidate open headquarters?" "Yes, certainly. Why--that is--it is to make himself known." "But the theory seems to assume that he is known already. Is it that he performs public services at the headquarters, or exhibits there his character and abilities? Is not the time a little limited and the space somewhat inconvenient for such demonstrations? I am at a little loss. I can see that the personal appearance and manners of a candidate might be displayed favorably at a headquarters, and that, in a charming phrase of your country, he might dispense a generous hospitality in a hotel parlor, but how can he display his fitness for a high office in such narrow quarters as headquarters must be? Am I to understand that when Mr. John Jay was selected as a candidate for the Governorship of New York he had repaired previously to the place of nomination and had opened headquarters? Did General Washington pursue a similar course? If the services and character of a candidate have commended him to public favor and designated him as a suitable officer, why is not that enough?"