I first heard of _Josh Billings_ several years ago when crossing the Isthmus of Panama by that remarkable railway which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. When Nuñez de Balboa in the olden time had his first peep of the Pacific, and beheld the ocean which no European had before seen, from an eminence which is now a station of the railway, he little thought that in a few centuries hence the steam engine would haul thousands upon thousands of Christians up to the same summit, and allow them to enjoy the same sight at so many American dollars each. Terribly prosaic is this earth becoming! And, despite Schiller and Coleridge, it is scarcely Jupiter who “brings whate’er is good,” or Venus “who brings everything that’s fair.” A locomotive or a steamboat will bring or take you to both; and a railway it was which brought me to know of _Josh Billings_. The incident was simply this: Midway on the Panama railway there is a station at which travellers alight while the engineer looks after his supply of wood and water. A beautifully picturesque station it is, looking from it along the road which you have come, or adown that portion of the railway track which you have to go--a luxuriance of tropical vegetation meets the eye, overpowering the mind with the wild profusion of its beauty. Nature seems to revel in a wealth of verdure. Palms, bananas, and trees innumerable of every graceful form tower upwards to the unclouded sky, or arch over the flower-garnished earth. The trunk of each is invisible; for creeping plants of the most delicate growth entwine around the wood, hang in loops from the boughs, connect tree to tree with a lace-work of exquisite elegance and sun-dyed brilliancy, and sway in wreaths of natural arabesque to and fro in the fragrant, moist, and enervating air. The station lies back from the road, and, if I remember rightly, is thatched with palm leaves. As I alighted at it, groups of native New-Grenadians clustered around me, the younger ones being almost in a state of nudity. Some offered me oranges, some bananas, some milk in a green-glass bottle, and one of them wished me to buy a monkey. Pushing through them, I made my way for the station, the sultry atmosphere having rendered me languid and a gentle stimulus being desirable. I expected to find the refreshment department in the care of a native, or, at any rate, of a Spaniard; but the ubiquitous Yankee was master of the premises, and a forlorn ague-stricken, quinine-and-calomel-looking master he seemed to be. His whiskey was something not to be forgotten; nor were his dogs, half a dozen of which were running about the place, the greatest burlesques of the race canine I had hitherto seen. They were all lean, hungry, and wolfish-eyed. Their tails drooped mournfully, as if the seething heat had melted the sinews and softened the bones; they whined peevishly, but bark there was none--their owner required it all to keep the ague away. I had drunk my whiskey, become Christian in