--SOMEBODY HAS SAID THAT TO BE A SUCCESSFUL AUTHOR, IT IS ONLY NECESSARY TO FEEL WHAT YOU WRITE. This I deny, for many reasons which I might but will not cite, contenting myself with saying that to write what one feels, though much more gratifying and in a moral sense far more commendable than to conceal or falsify sentiments, is dangerous, and has been known to cause a writer to feel not only more than he wrote or could write, but more than he had any expectation or desire of feeling in such connection. Thus, whenever under an assumed but transparent title, I introduce my friend Scroggs into a little sketch of my production, I never express in that performance my actual estimate of Scroggs, physically or mentally. Nor in my glowing description of the incidents of a trip to Catskill Mountain House, do I confine myself to the expression of what I felt in viewing the many and varied scenes of rural beauty that presented themselves during the progress of that undertaking. Do you suppose that I would run the risk of conveying to Claribella, who was my only companion in that expedition, that I never was more bored in my life, and that my conversation was the result of operating with a constantly working though invisible pump at the well of common-places and platitudes, which a gentleman accumulates for such emergencies in the course of his social experience? Heaven preserve my hair, should I venture on such a step. 'But you digress,' some impatient reader suggests. Digress! That is an impossibility in an article without a topic. But even if I plead guilty, my impatient critic; did you ever take a walk in the country, and if so, did you choose those broad roads that lead to churches and the village stores and the 'Academy,' or did you plunge, by some little modest path, into the recesses of a grove, careless whither your steps carried you, so content you were to yield to the enchanting guidance of accident? And what though, in following your bent, you were compelled to climb an occasional fence or cross a chance puddle, the satisfaction of coming suddenly upon some pleasant view, or unexpectedly entering an apparently previously unexplored nook, more than atoned for such trifling annoyances. Without digression in some degree, neither spoken nor written language can be made entertaining to the person addressed. Who is more discursive than the Autocrat, the Czar of table-talkers; and whose productions are more charming or wiser? We do not do our everyday thinking in strictly logical or consistent forms. It is sufficient to introduce hypotheses, premises, or syllogisms, when there are ends to be attained by such a course. Impulse is far more attractive than prim consistency in the character of those we love; and if this be true as to pet persons, why not in our favorite writings? So the most charming women I have met would be styled in Spanish _las inconsecuentes_. Therefore, when amusement is the aim of writing, let digression have full swing.