It may not be unknown to you that the _Chronicle_ has a habit of identifying itself with the people and subjects which it discusses. Does it put forth an article on naval matters--straightway it becomes salter than Turk's Island, and talks of bobstays and main-top-bowlines and poop-down-hauls in a manner that, to put it mildly, is confusing, and would, if you read it, make you jump as if all your strings were pulled at once! Are financial matters under discussion--behold even JAMES FISK, Jr., is not so keen and shrewd, nor Commodore VANDERBILT so full of "corners." And only the other day, it discussed the Medical Convention which lately met here, and lo! we are amazed by the amount of knowledge displayed by the omniscient journal! In a long article, after mildly remonstrating with the doctors for refusing to admit their colored brethren of the District of Columbia to a share in their deliberations, it closes with this obscurely terrible remark: "Better die of nostalgia in exile abroad, than remain at home to suffer from ossification of the pericardium--" or words to that effect, as the lawyers say. On reading this, with what strength I had left I secured a dictionary, and found that "nostalgia" means homesickness;--a disease not known to Washingtonian exiles--but what "ossification of the pericardium" means I cannot discover. Not only have I searched every dictionary in the Congressional Library, but I have pervaded all the bookstores, and made myself a nuisance to every medical man of my acquaintance--in vain! Nobody ever heard of such a disease, if disease it be. It may be something more dreadful! And not only I, but those whom I have persecuted with my inquiries, are on the verge of insanity; and for all this the _Chronicle_ is responsible. Now, this can't be endured; and I have come to you for help. Either tell us what is the meaning of this terrible phrase, or else open your batteries on the malicious genius who pens those _Chronicle_ papers, and--squelch him! As yet, "I am _not_ mad--but soon shall be!" if you don't answer. Yours, in tribulation, ALONZO TARBOX. P. S.--Be sure and see that the printer spells my name rightly, and don't transmogrify it into "TREEBOX," as a beast of a Treasury Clerk did the other day. "There _are_ chords--" you know. A. T. * * * * * THE EASTERN QUESTION. Egypt and Turkey--the Nile and the Bosphorus--seem coming to blows. But if hostilities are happily averted, with what propriety can it be said that _Nihil fit_? * * * * * THE EARTHLY PARADISE.