It is undoubtedly pleasant in the midst of the weakening influences of an August day, to sit, _sub tegmani fagi_, and read of the sports of the watering places—the wonders of Niagara, or the discoveries of those summer travelers who, turning aside from the beaten paths, or common haunts of fashion, explore the hidden, and develop the unknown. Most agreeable is it to mingle the mental sherbet of our summer’s retirement with such timely ingredients. Herein our brethren of the daily press seem to have an advantage over us of the monthly issues, as, day by day, they prepare their ever welcome table, and are never compelled to speak of an elevated thermometer, while Milk comes frozen in the pails, And Dick, the shepherd, blows his nails. Waiving this advantage, or to speak more correctly, yielding to this disadvantage, we purpose laying upon our table, and for our readers who dine later than the common class, a single dish, composed of gleanings from the flower-gardens and the stubble-fields, in a late visitation among the “wise men of the East.” We say nothing of a rest which we set up for a short time in New York, because the continual clatter in that Babel of this land would prevent ordinary ears (and ours are of no extraordinary length) from hearing any thing worth presenting here, and the dust, which seemed to be moving in solid masses from corner to corner, rendered quite necessary to comfort and to future speculation hermetically closed eyes. The next stage was Springfield, Mass., where we saw and conversed with GRACE GREENWOOD—a Grace for which we were appropriately grateful. She was cultivating ideas for future use, and gathering thoughts to sustain her fame and secure the admiration of others. She was successful, undoubtedly. But Springfield has _of_ itself, as well as _in_ itself, attractions of no ordinary character. The regular tourist will, of course, visit and describe the Armory, in which are stored about one hundred thousand stand of arms, all rendered nearly useless, by the introduction, since _they_ were manufactured, of percussion caps, instead of the old flint and steel process of igniting the charge. In these days every thing must be done quickly. A rail-road of a hundred miles in length, and five millions cost, was constructed between two cities, because it would carry passengers in one hour’s time less than one already in use. And here the ignition of the powder by the spark from the flint, which seemed to measure the shortest imaginable _space_, we had almost said _point_ of time, was deemed, and undoubtedly is, too slow a process for destroying human life; and so another agent is applied, whose operation is electric, and makes the intention and the act instantaneous. These guns thus put into coventry, must have cost nearly twelve hundred thousand dollars—a sum, the interest of which we wish we had to pay contributors, literary and artistic, to Graham’s Magazine.