Transcendental wild oats were sown broadcast that year, and the fame thereof has not yet ceased in the land; for, futile as this crop seemed to outsiders, it bore an invisible harvest, worth much to those who planted in earnest. As none of the members of this particular community have ever recounted their experiences before, a few of them may not be amiss, since the interest in these attempts has never died out and Fruitlands was the most ideal of all these castles in Spain.--_Silver Pitchers, and Other Stories_. WILLIAM WIRT HOWE. (BORN, 1833.) * * * * * CONVERSATIONAL DEPRAVITY _To the Chief-Justice of Glenwood_, SUBLIME SIR: ... What can be more destructive of the higher forms of conversation than a pun? What right has any one to explode a petard in the midst of sweet sociality, and blow every thing like sequence and sentiment sky-high? And therefore, since you, as translator of the Pasha's Letters, have taken pains to publish his observations on many social subjects, I think it eminently proper that you should ventilate the ideas of his friend Tompkins upon a not less important theme. Happily, I have been saved the trouble of original composition, by a discovery made by my landlady while I was boarding a year ago on St. John's Park. Mr. Green, our attic boarder, went off suddenly one day to see a friend in the country, as he said. Of course our landlady searched his room, with a view of reading his letters; and in a brown hair-trunk, with a boot-jack, a razor-strop, a box of Seidlitz powders, and an odd volume of Young's Night Thoughts, she found the following manuscript. The females of the house were satisfied with reading such letters as were left by Mr. Green in his apartment, and so this paper was handed over to me. I may say that it was marked with pencil, "Declined with Thanks." "THE PUN FIEND. "BY C. GREEN. "I used to be corpulent, rosy-cheeked, and cheerful. I am gaunt, pale, and morose now. I used to sleep sweetly; but now I toss about upon my bed, terrified by hideous visions, and feelings as of a clammy hand or wet cloth laid on my face. I was wont to walk about our streets after business hours, and on Sundays, with a genuine smile of enjoyment lighting up my face; but now I hurry along with my eyes cast down, and I seek by-ways and dark lanes for my rambles. My friends think I am in love; persons who know me but slightly, suppose me a victim to remorse--imagine that I wear a hair shirt, and macerate my flesh. They are all wrong. An old bachelor like myself has long ago buried the light of love in a tomb, and set a seal upon the great stone at the door; and as for remorse, I owe no tailor any thing, and do not at present blame myself for any great fault, except having once subscribed for six months to the New York _Morning Cretan_. Nevertheless, my face grows haggard, my step weary, and even our Thursday's beef _a la mode_ fails to tempt my enfeebled appetite.