Well, right or wrong, I have been to the races at Jerome Park, which is a hollow among the hills, clear out of New York, and the other side of Harlem River. There, every spring and fall, the best horses owned about here are set a-going like wildfire, and the one that beats is thought the world of. The park isn't much of a piece of woods, after all; a good-sized maple camp in Vermont has got twice as many trees, but then a good deal of it is turned out to grass. Then, again, a level turnpike curls in a ring all round one of the hills, and on the top of that is a kind of hotel, or long tavern, with a tremendous stoop stretched around it, where the upper-crust of fast horsedom crowd in to see the creatures run. On the other hillside, right against the tavern, is a great long, open shed, with seats after seats sloping down from the inside, where the lower-crust of fast horsedom crowd in from the railroads, and so on. They have to pay for going in, but, for all that, haven't a right to go across to the upper side, which must be aggravating. All the men that go to the upper-crust tavern wear a huge round thing with a ribbon fastened to their coats, and strut awfully under them, as if they were the crowning glory of all creation. Maybe they are; I don't know, not being highly educated in horsiness. Well, Cousin Dempster has one of these medals, which he hitched to the lappel of his coat that morning. Cousin E. E. had been fidgeting awfully all the week about a dress she was bent on wearing, and when it didn't come home from the dress-maker's till late the night before, I really thought she would take a fit right before us all. But the dress came at last, and then she wheeled right round the other way with joy. "Such a dress!" says she. "There won't be anything to match it. All my own idea, too" Here she tumbled a cataract of silk from a great paper box, and shook it out till it fluttered like the leaves on a young maple-tree. "Isn't it superb?" says she; "peacock green and peacock blue intermingled like a poem, sloping folds up the front breadth two and two, bunching splendidly behind, frilled, flounced, corded, folded, trailing, and yet demi to a large extent. Cousin Frost, Cousin Frost! did you ever see anything so original, so--so--" "Scrumptious," says I, a-helping her out, "peacock green and peacock blue; if we only had the half-moons on the train now." She looked at me earnestly; her soul had taken in the thought, and it burned in her eyes. "Oh, why didn't I think of that?" says she. I smiled. It takes genius to understand the fine irony of genius. Cousin E. E. is bright, but the subtle originality of a new thought isn't in her. That usually does in a family what this Government is trying so hard for--centralizes itself in one person.