Wellington, or Napoleon Bonaparte, uncle or nephew; have no particular _penchant_ for red chalk, beads, belts, bits of looking-glass, scrap-tin, or feathers; never adorn ourselves with wreaths of straw, and are caught _sans culotte_, only when having been out late over night, our privacy, to our unspeakable confusion, is suddenly invaded by the unconscious chamber-maid, as we are leisurely dressing for a late breakfast, and sadly ruminating on the folly of protracted festivities and the mutability of the temper of landladies—our friends don’t expect us to whoop at the table, and if, perchance, we handle the carving-knife, they exhibit no more of nervous agitation and alarm, than is the natural result, under the circumstances, of a well-grounded opinion that gravy shows better on platters than on plaits. Indeed, we have never had any provocation to go crazy—we never inherited any thing, not even an eccentric tendency. We have never lost a fortune for the best of all reasons. We have never been concerned in land or city lot speculations. We have never drawn a prize in a lottery; have never had an attack of the _delirium tremens_, nor have we been crossed in hopeless love. We have neither much learning or great care; have never had a _coup de soleil_, or a blow on the head, or a brain fever. Our caput is sound as a nut, thank God; and thick withal, as becomes a respectable citizen and burgess. In fine, we are not mad, most gentle reader, in any sense of the term; on the contrary, with all modesty, we fully believe ourself to be a very sane, very good-natured, very staid, very commonplace, most inveterate old bachelor, sleeping nightly on the third floor, and dining daily at the public table of a very quiet inn, as we before hinted. But, that the moon exercises an influence over our imagination, we cannot deny; and this, saith that learned lexicographer, Dr. John Walker, it is to be lunatic. There are some people in and of the world, so stolid, so matter-of-fact, so very commonplace, so unimaginative, so void of all sense of the beautiful, so much of the earth, earthy, as to look upon the moon—nay, though—as never to look upon the moon, except by accident, or to judge of the prospect of the weather—as to consider the moon then, to amend our phrase, only as the earth’s satellite, a lesser light, a mere useful appendage to our mundane sphere, made only to regulate the time of high water at Greenwich, to save the corporation too great expense for gas, and to obviate a larger consumption of oil in lanterns and carriage-lamps; in fine, a thing of mere Paine-ful necessity. Such people value the heavenly bodies as children do pennies, according to their relative brightness; and so, in comparison with the sun, estimate the moon lightly, and the stars as of small account. They are more unsusceptible to gentle influences than the brutes. We’d rather be a dog, and bay the moon, Than such a _rum’un_.