Within the memories of men who are not yet old, the sailor was always looked upon and talked about as "a jolly dog." There was a glamour of romance about him when he was at sea, and "JACK ashore" was for ages held up as the presentment of all that was happy, and contented, and free from care. His hardest duty was supposed to be shinning up the ratlin to "reef," or "brail up," or "splice the mainbrace," or do some other of those mysterious things that caused him to look so mythical to the minds of land-lubbers and the simple-hearted kind of women that used to be, but now no longer are. His lighter hours (about eighteen out of the twenty-four) were passed in terpsichorean performances on the "fo'k'sl," and were so fascinating to the shorey mind that music was specially composed for them, and the "Sailor's Hornpipe" is one of the scourges inflicted upon mortals, for their sins, by barrel-organists at the present day. Grog was dealt out to him by the gallon, and, as for "backy," the light-hearted fellow was never allowed to suffer for want of _that_; so that his happiness may be said to have been complete. Things are sadly changed, now, with regard to poor JACK. Every day we read of outrageous assaults upon him with marline-spikes and other perverted marine stores, by brutal skippers and flagitious mates, whose proper end would be the yard-arm and the rope's end. All belaying-pin and no pay has made JACK a dull boy. His windpipe refuses to furnish the whilom exhilarating tooraloo for his hornpipe. Silent are the "yarns" with which he used to while away the time when off his watch and huddling under the lee of the capstan with his messmates. And then, when he comes ashore, it is only to be devoured by the sharks that lie in wait for him and drag him away bodily to their obscene "boarding-house" dens. Once on a time JACK, when in dock, used to make holiday of it on Sunday. He looked as gay as a tobacconist's sign when rigged out in his best blue for a lark ashore, where he was occasionally to be seen on horseback with a row of his jovial messmates, all of them sitting with their backs to the horse's head, and the sternmost of them steering the bewildered animal by his tail. Now there seems to be a movement to cut off from JACK even the holiday to which he is surely entitled. The captain of a bark, lying at San Francisco, has lately stopped wages, to the amount of sixty-five dollars, from a seaman, because the latter refused to assist in discharging cargo on Sunday. Blue has, in one sense, always been JACK's favorite color; but if this sort of thing goes on much further, he must become bluer than ever, and his cheerless condition will be such that he will not have a cheer left to shake the welkin with when he helps to man the yards. * * * * * Postal. Frankly speaking, can Senator REVEL's letters be called _Blackmail_? * * * * * Propagandism.