For my part, I hope that the next statue set up in the park will be that of William Cullen Bryant. What is the reason that we should wait till a man is dead before we give back something for the genius with which he has honored his country? The readers that may come up three hundred years from now owe him no more than we do. What are we waiting for, then? When Mr. Bryant sat down, there was another earthquake of applause, which had but just time to stop, when it burst out again for Edwin Booth. The best actor, and one of the handsomest men you ever saw, came forward and read a long piece of poetry, which just made the blood stir like wine in your veins. There was a double gust of genius in this poem; because the poet Stoddard wrote it, and then Booth gave it the fire of his soul and the music of his voice, which seemed to float and whisper around the statue long after the crowd had scattered itself over the park. LXVI. RACING DRESSES. Dear sisters:--Don't be startled; don't hold up your hands in holy astonishment when I tell you that I--Phœmie Frost--your moral and--I say it meekly--religious missionary, have been to a horse-race. I am shocked myself now, in the cool of the morning, not exactly because I went, but from what happened after I got there. Have I done wrong? Can a missionary, without knowledge, do her duty? If she knows nothing of sin, how can she warn against sin? Then, again, is the running of swift horses sinful? Sisters, I am troubled. The more one knows, the more one is perplexed and put about. It is so easy to condemn things by the wholesale that you know nothing about. One can speak so positive about them, for total ignorance admits of no argument, and is entirely above all evidence. That is why ignorant stubbornness is so self-satisfied and comfortable. After all, I begin to think that "ignorance is bliss." Is there anything on this earth more snoozily comfortable than a litter of white pigs revelling with their mother in a mud-puddle--say in August? What do these contented animals care for the mud that soils their whiteness, with the pink skin shining through--rosy pigs, as one may call the kind I am speaking of. Think of them muzzling about in the rily water, free as air; then turn to your learned pig, chained to a master by the forced action of its own intellect--poor thing! obliged to play cards with its fore-foot, teach geography, and cipher out numbers like a schoolmaster--and then say if ignorance isn't bliss! Look in the little black eyes of the animal, and see the sad and hungry look that knowledge has brought to him! To know is to want--to want is to suffer. Where was I? Speaking about horses, naturally I wandered off down to other grades of animals--the laziest, largest, best-natured creatures of all--but, as you may observe with propriety, not suggestive of horse-races, which I admit and apologize for.