Who has not belonged in his time to a debating society? What youth ambitious of becoming 'a perfect _Hercules_ behind the bar?'--as a well meaning but unfortunate Philadelphian once said in a funeral eulogy over a deceased legal friend--has not 'debated' in a club 'formed for purposes of mutual _and_ literary improvement of the mind?' All who have will read with pleasure the following letter from one who has most certainly been there:-- DEAR CONTINENTAL: I am a man that rides around over the 'kedn'try.' In the little village where I am now tarrying, the school-house bell is ringing to call together the members of that ancient institution peculiar to villages, the debating society. A friend informs me that the time-honored questions--Should capital punishment be abolished?--Did Columbus deserve more praise than Washington?--Is art more pleasing to the eye than nature?--have each had their turn in their regular rotation, and that the question for to-night is--as you might suppose--Has the Indian suffered greater wrongs at the hands of the White man than the Negro? As I have a distinct recollection of having thoroughly investigated and zealously declaimed on each of the above topics in days lang syne, I shall excuse myself from attendance this evening, on the ground that I am already extensively informed on the subject in hand, and my mind is fully made up. But I hereby acknowledge my indebtedness to the good fellow who told me the object of the ringing of the bell--for he has unconsciously started up some of the most amusing recollections of my life. Sitting here alone in my room, I have just taken a hearty laugh over a circumstance that had well-nigh given me the slip. The question was the same Negro-Indian-White-man affair. One of the orators, having, a long time previously, seen a picture in an old 'jography' of some Indians making a hubbub on board certain vessels, and reading under it, _Destruction of Tea in Boston Harbor_, brought up the circumstance, and insisting with great earnestness that the white man had received burning wrongs at the hands of the Indian, and that the latter had _no reason at all to complain_, dwelt with great emphasis on the ruthless destruction of the white man's tea in Boston Harbor by the latter, in proof of his 'point.'