The civic honor of presiding at the old-time traditional public dinner, which crowned, at the principal tavern, the militia morning cantering and inexplicable twistings of crooked military lines,—lines that snarled up until they broke past all sewing by waxed ends, welding by cindered hands, or splicing by plane people,—has again and again pipped the egg, else ingloriously addling, which enclosed the rudimentary germ of a railroad president, it may be even, of a conductor with diamond pin, gold finger-ring, largely accumulating real estate, and all the other incidents. These glorious dinners have been, also, the nurseries of the legal profession, whose young members have thence sent up whizzing sky-rockets, which, mounting and mounting on the straining enthusiastic eye, have burst into such dissolving showers of golden glory, that, by the unexpected explosion, the national horizon and their own have been widened on all sides, and new stars been stuck into its astonished vault. We pity the American who has been born into our degenerating times, which neglect those primitive occasions of cheap yet great renown, when a little sulphur, administered to a rural population, went further to cure all the scarlet fever of the neighborhood than all the colic-producing iron pills of actual war. We commiserate the condition of the young American, grown so apoplectic ere he arrives of age, by the prodigal display of bunting, fire-works, and red-faced oratory at our frequent elections, that he disdains the frugal but satisfying cakes of gingerbread, then bought with a well-pressed sixpence from the calico-roofed booth on the side of the bars, through which those undulating militia lines managed to unwind without hanging on the fence or getting into puzzling knots. Gone now are those molasses-plated cards of cake, pleasant to the taste on the Fourth, and sticking to the teeth, stomach, and memory of the patriotic eater for at least one fifty-second part of a year. Gone now are the pranks of horses bestridden by the colonel or major of the regiment,—his first equestrian performance freely exhibited, and in which he showed feats, entirely his own, which could not, or at least would not, be displayed by first-class circuses or turf-bred racers, who, skimmed over in blue, yellow, or green, glide so stunningly through the admiring and opening air. Vanished now, alas! are the groups of innocent children waiting for the show of animals, not those on parade, but the lively monkeys, the pie-colored horses, and the wonderful clown, whose photographs, loading down the staggering fences, blacksmith-shop, horse-shed, and post-office for a whole long fortnight, were all so well known to them before the originals striped the village with their many-colored glories.