It is unfortunate that one half the world takes its notions of business, as it does its opinions, from the other half, and vainly supposes that the high road to success is a beaten track. Nothing can be more absurd; and the history of the leading penny commercial and weekly papers in large cities attests this. In magazines the world does not take unfledged genius and untried promises _at par_. The magazine world—by which we mean that part of the world that reads magazines—has grown cautious, cute, shrewd, or whatever may happen to be the choicest phrase to designate a careful squint into the “bag” before “buying the pig.” It will not do, therefore, to attempt to _gull_ the good folks, with a supposed rivalry between your buzzard and our hawk—they know the difference, and although “_Hail to the chief who in triumph advances_,” may charm the ear as Graham for January flutters its golden wings before the bright eyes of _all_ the cherry-cheeked damsels, in _all_ the post-towns, when on his annual visit—his New-Year’s call—to his fifty thousand friends—the tatterdemalion who, _under cover_, attempts to follow, will assuredly be greeted with the “Rogue’s March,” and achieve disgrace if not the whipping-post. It _will_ not do, this sort of living by wit—this throwing out of a magnificent prospectus like Graham’s, and then following it up with a specimen number in the way of “_inducement_,” as if the world were one vast fishpool, and people—who are not gudgeons—were to be jerked out, dollars and all, with an adroit fling of the fly, (going a _flyer_ with a prospectus.) The game has been played to every variety of tune—we _think_—and the gamut—we had like to have said _gammon_—is exhausted, and with it the public patience. G. * * * * * “GRAHAM” TO “JEREMY SHORT.” _My dear Jeremy_,—The coming of the year 1849 must present reflections of a mixed character to “THE TRIO.” _Our_ memories do not stretch back to “thirty years since,” but fifteen years ago at “BAMFORD’S,” how vividly fresh in memory, to “YOU AND JOE AND I!” Those years of fun, frolic, literature in the bud, (poetic,) _and_ extravagant expenditure of sixpences. Which of us troubled our brains about _current rates_, while we passed “_currant_” at “BAMFORD’S?” What cared we about the opinion of the world? _Our_ “_mead_ of praise” was in bottles. “_Imperial!_” did you say? You are right there. “Three bottles of it!” _Did_ we ever reach that sublime of extravagant dissipation in those _imperial days_? I think not. It would have been a sort of royal expenditure, that must have drained the treasury, and rendered us unfit for the grave studies of the afternoon.