The Squire looked indignant, and broke out, 'I've carried that watch more'n thirty year; I have it cleaned regularly, and it is always right to a minute, always! It's _you_ that want regulating.' 'Can't help it,' spoke Jerry; 'I got ahead of time this morning.' 'Bet you a hat on it,' said the Squire. 'Done!' answered Jerry. And, putting his hand in his pocket, he deliberately produced the torn page of an old almanac, and, pointing to part of an engraving of the man with an hour-glass, said to the Squire,-- 'Hain't I got a Head of Time--this morning?' Jerry now wears a new hat! * * * * * 'What poor slaves are the American people!' says the Times' own RUSSELL. 'They may abjure kings and princes, but they are ruled by hotel-keepers and waiters.' The following translation from the Persian shows, however, that a man may be a king or a prince and a hotel-keeper at the same time. A ROYAL HOTEL-KEEPER. FROM THE PERSIAN. BY HENRY P. LELAND. IBRAM BEN ADHAM at his palace gate, Sits, while in line his pages round him wait; When a poor dervish, staff and sack in hand, Straight would have entered IBRAM'S palace grand. 'Old man,' the pages asked, 'where goest thou now?' 'In that hotel,' he answered, with a bow. The pages said,--'Ha! dare you call hotel A palace, where the King of Balkh doth dwell?' IBRAM the King next to the dervish spoke: 'My palace a hotel? Pray, where's the joke?' 'Who,' asked the dervish, 'owned this palace first?' 'My grandsire,' IBRAM said, while wrath he nursed. 'Who was the next proprietor?' please say. 'My father:' thus the king replied straightway. 'Who hired it then upon your father's death?' 'I did,' King IBRAM answered, out of breath. 'When you shall die, who shall within it dwell?' 'My son,' the King replied. 'Why ask'st thou? Tell!' 'IBRAM!' then spoke the dervish to him straight, 'I'll answer thee, nor longer make thee wait. The place where travelers come, and go as well, Is, really, not a palace, but--hotel!' Yea, friends; and, as another genial poet has discovered, life itself is but a hostelrie or tavern, where some get the highest rooms, while others, of greater social weight, gravitate downwards into the first story, sinking like gold to the bottom of the hotel pan,--that is O.W. HOLMES', his idea, reader, not ours. _Apropos_ of HOLMES and kings--his thousands of reader friends have ere this seen with pleasure that the Emperor of all the French was not unmindful of one of his brother-potentates,--in the world of song,--when he paid OLIVER WENDELL the courteous compliment which has of late gone the rounds, and which conferred as much honor on the giver as the taker thereof. * * * * * The Spring poems have begun. _Vide licet_. TO AN EARLY BIRD.