Bear always in mind that the game of a literary quack is to sound the trumpet of his own fame, since no one else will. There is potency in a free ticket, a beef steak, or a gin-sling! Either of these will at any time secure plenty of space in the columns of such an ephemeral, penny concern as the Mail. It is not surprising that the corporation which contains the ‘immortal part’ of Mr. Robert Hamilton should swell with the self-complacency of its tenant! Of a truth, Oh Fame, thy trumpet is of ‘sounding brass,’ and, though thou makest ‘the judicious grieve,’ yet, with thine every blast, thou givest fresh occasion for the open-mouthed wonder of ‘the groundlings!’ When is this self-puffing surfeit to have an end? [5] It is no unusual thing at the South to see the son of a slaveholder going to a slave-auction, for the purpose of buying a beautiful and accomplished female, (whom slavery condemns to the shambles of vice,) to be appropriated to his sensual gratification. Many of these young men are not more than sixteen years old when their parents allow them to begin these hellish practices. Nay, more than this: Young men often go into the cotton and rice fields, in the open day, and commit acts of the most revolting libertinism on the helpless girls, who are compelled to labor fifteen hours a day, under the rays of a Southern sun. One of the “noblest mothers of Virginia,” in 1844, purchased three attractive mulatto females, and placed them in a cottage near the family mansion, for the exclusive use of an only son--assigning as a reason why she did it, that it would “make Charley steady!” Is there a God in heaven? [6] Few are aware of the extent of prostitution carried on, on board the Eastern steamboats. Here the libertines of Boston flourish. State rooms are provided and free passages given to all young females who desire to visit their homes and return, or who, being in the country, are going to the city for employment. It is true they are poor. In the lime and basswood districts of Maine, perhaps they never had a dollar in their “born days.” And the people down there are such a simple and uninitiated race, that these daughters of chastity have never had the least knowledge of this steamboat deviltry, or of earning money by the sale of their virtue, until it is whispered to them when it is too late to make escape. It is supposed that not less than five thousand poor girls are entrapped and ruined every year by this licentious game. Under such circumstances, reaching Boston for the first time, it is not surprising that so large a part of them are prevailed upon to enter houses of ill-fame, impressed with the delusive idea that they will soon make a fortune and return. Thus they unconsciously sign their own death-warrants--aye, passports to a doom far less preferable!