THROUGH hazy clouds, scarce ruffled by the breeze, Methought, last night, I saw _the man i' th' moon_; As in the hollow bowl of silver spoon A broad reflected face the gazer sees; (Who trifling, dinner done, with bread and cheese, Abstractly lifts the spoon aforesaid up;) Or the same thing beholds in polished cup, Or concave snuff-box, whence the vocal sneeze! Sight of _the man_ suggested HOTSPUR'S boast; But the night froze; and to express such hope Sounded far softer than the softest soap To me, who rather chose my heels to toast In the warm vicinage of glowing stove, Than pluck the moon's-man's nose, beneath the frigid JOVE![5] [5] _Sub dio._--HOR. * * * * * IF there be not a fruitful lesson in the subjoined, which we venture to separate from its context in a recent letter from an esteemed friend and contributor, then we--are mistaken: 'APROPOS of 'American Ptyalism,' in your March number: a friend was telling me the other day of the agonies he had suffered from dispensing with the use of tobacco. He had used it in various ways for thirty years, but finding that he was breaking _down_ under it, he broke _off_ abruptly, about a year ago. 'Let a tobacco-chewer,' said he, 'who wishes to know what _nerves_ are, abstain for only one day, and if he has a wife who is delicate and nervous, he will forever after look upon her with a sympathy that he never felt before. Why, Sir, for months after I had forsworn tobacco, my mouth and jaws were any thing but flesh and bone. They were fire, ice, and prussic-acid, alternately. The roof of my mouth would at one moment have the feeling of blistering, and the next of freezing; and in addition to that, needles would occasionally pierce my face in every imaginable way. My head, for the most part, was a large hogshead with a bumble-bee in it, and the bung stopped up. You know that I am not imaginative; but my teeth, Sir, would suddenly grow to the length of a mastodon's, and perhaps five minutes after, (if at the table,) a narcotic deadness would take the place of the previous excitement, and I would seem to be mumbling my food like people whose teeth are gone. But in the street, I always seemed to be grinning at every body, like some horrible beast who couldn't get his mouth shut. If you have ever stayed _agape_ for an hour or so, while the doctor was on his way to reset your jaws, you can imagine how distressingly _public_ that feeling is. One bitter cold night I woke on the cellar-stairs, having got that far in search of tobacco, in my night-dress. Did you ever do so? You may think it trifling; but whenever from any cause you have become nervous, the first night that you wake on the cellar-stairs in the dark will be something to remember. At another time I dreamed of dying. I had been long sick and had wasted to a mere nothing; but having had abundant time to prepare for death, I flattered