The dear creatures travelled up to the State-House steeple; they glanced around upon the situation; they rolled up their sleeves, metaphorically, and swooped down upon the city. They canvassed stores and factories from turret to foundation stone; they invaded dingy counting-houses, and sauntered like sunbeams into dusty offices, collecting subscriptions to centennial stock, peddling centennial medals, and doing irreparable damage to the peace of simpering clerks, blushing salesmen, and susceptible employers. A single case will serve for illustration. Listen to the story of A POOR YOUNG MAN. [Illustration] [“NOT WISELY BUT TOO WELL.”] He was an innocent youth, undergoing initiation into the mysteries of compounding and weighing out sugars, teas, and spices at a West-End grocery. A Spruce Street damsel did the cruel deed. She visited the establishment several times in reference to some shares of stock, and her passing glance sank into his soul. His deep, poetic nature demanded an outlet for the sacred fire. Ætna will burst; Vesuvius will explode. Ætna and Vesuvius were but parlor matches compared to him. The evening succeeding the lady’s third visit to the grocery, a package, neatly done up in brown paper, was left at her residence by a youth who vanished upon the instant. The lady untied the bundle, and discovered an A. No. 1 salted codfish. The following lines, on pink initial note (slightly greased), were fastened to its tail by a blue ribbon:-- “My love is boundless as the ocean, Deep as its waters my devotion. This cod, sweet maid, is salt-- Salt is the ocean too; By logical analogy, therefore, this fish will prove Type of my love for you.” Next evening, about the same time, another package arrived, with another poetic sentiment in the same handwriting:-- “I send a can of salmon soused, ’Tis sweetness in the sour; O, would your smile the salmon was, In my forlorn soused hour!” The lady was somewhat puzzled, though gratified. Her father was somewhat puzzled, though not gratified. Their quandary was not lessened upon receiving a third delicate present the next evening. “I offer my love two pounds of chipped beef, ’Twill be nice for her breakfast or sup; O the love in my heart’s not at all like the beef-- For, sweet maid, _that_ can never dry up!” “Can’t never dry up, eh?” said the old man the following evening, as he pulled on his thickest boots, and took up a commanding position on the front-door step. “Can’t never dry up, eh?--we’ll see.” But the mysterious messenger flanked him by ringing at the back gate. “Sweet maid, sweet maid, O pray accept This jar of pickled onions; They’ll tell thee of the tears I’ve wept, And sighs vent by the ton-ions. They’re round, too, like the planet Earth; Like earth, my love’s complete; May this to sweetest thoughts give birth, When of them you shall eat.”