Old croakers, deacons of the mire, That led the deep batrachiain choir, _Uk! Uk! Caronk!_ with bass that might Have left Lablache's out of sight, Shook knobby heads, and said, "No go! You'd better let 'em try to grow: Old Doctor Time is slow, but still He does know how to make a pill." But vain was all their hoarsest bass, Their old experience out of place, And, spite of croaking and entreating, The vote was carried in marsh-meeting. "Lord knows," protest the polliwogs, "We're anxious to be grown-up frogs; But do not undertake the work Of Nature till she prove a shirk; 'T is not by jumps that she advances, But wins her way by circumstances: Pray, wait awhile, until you know We're so contrived as not to grow; Let Nature take her own direction, And she'll absorb our imperfection; _You_ mightn't like 'em to appear with, But we must have the things to steer with." "No," piped the party of reform, "All great results are ta'en by storm; Fate holds her best gifts till we show We've strength to make her let them go: No more reject the Age's chrism, Your cues are an anachronism; No more the Future's promise mock, But lay your tails upon the block, Thankful that we the means have voted To have you thus to frogs promoted." The thing was done, the tails were cropped, And home each philotadpole hopped, In faith rewarded to exult, And wait the beautiful result. Too soon it came; our pool, so long The theme of patriot bull-frogs' song, Next day was reeking, fit to smother, With heads and tails that missed each other,-- Here snoutless tails, there tailless snouts: The only gainers were the pouts. MORAL. From lower to the higher next, Not to the top, is Nature's text; And embryo Good, to reach full stature, Absorbs the Evil in its nature. I think that nothing will ever give permanent peace and security to this continent but the extirpation of Slavery therefrom, and that the occasion is nigh; but I would do nothing hastily or vindictively, nor presume to jog the elbow of Providence. No desperate measures for me till we are sure that all others are hopeless,--_flectere si nequeo SUPEROS, Acheronta movebo_. To make Emancipation a reform instead of a revolution is worth a little patience, that we may have the Border States first, and then the non-slaveholders of the Cotton States with us in principle,--a consummation that seems to me nearer than many imagine. _Fiat justitia, ruat coelum,_ is not to be taken in a literal sense by statesmen, whose problem is to get justice done with as little jar as possible to existing order, which has at least so much of heaven in it that it is not chaos. I rejoice in the President's late Message, which at last proclaims the Government on the side of freedom, justice, and sound policy.