The effect of this happy illustration was very pleasing, my boy; especially with those who prefer morality to grammar; and after that, the physician had the run of all the pious families--our own included. It was a handsome compliment this worthy man paid me when I was about six months old. Having just received from my father the amount of his last bill, he was complacent to the last degree, and felt inclined to do the handsome thing. He patted my head as I sat upon my mother's lap, and says he: "How beautiful is babes! So small, and yet so much like human beings, only not so large. This boy," says he, fatly, looking down at me, "will make a noise in the world yet. He has a long head, a very long head." "Do you think so?" says my father. "Indeed I do," says the doctor. "The little fellow," says he, in a sudden fit of abstraction, "has a long head, a very long head--and it's as thick as it is long." There was some coolness between the doctor and my father after that, my boy: and, on the following Sunday, my mother refused to look at his wife's new bonnet in church. I might cover many pages with further account of childhood's sunny hours; but enough has been given already to establish the respectability of my birth, despite my present location; and there I let the matter rest, my boy, for the time being. Yours, retrospectively, ORPHEUS C. KERR. LETTER II. SHOWING HOW THE WRITER INCREASED IN YEARS AND INDISCRETION, AND HOW HE WAS SAVED FROM MATRIMONY BY THE LAMENTABLE EXAMPLE OF JED SMITH. WASHINGTON, D.C., March 25th, 1861. To continue from where I left off, my boy: between the interesting ages of ten and eighteen I went to school at the village academy, working through the English branches and the Accidence, with a lively sense of a preponderance of birch in the former, and occasional class-sickness in the latter. Those were my happiest days, my boy; and as I look back to them now, for a moment all my flippancy leaves me, and I forget that I am an American and a politician. Those dear old days! those short, unreal days! Only long in being long past. It was just after the eternal _"Bonus--Bona--Bonum"_ of the master had ceased to ring in my ears, that I commenced to be a young man. I knew that I was becoming a young man, my boy; for it was then that I began to regard the unmarried women of America with sheepish bashfulness, and stumbled awkwardly as I entered my father's pew in church. Then it was that the sound of a young female giggle threw me into a cold perspiration, and a looking-glass deluded me into gesticulating in solitude before it, and extemporizing the speeches I was to make when called upon to justify the report of fame by admiring populaces. Do you remember the asinine time in your own life, my boy,--do you remember it? I know that you do, my boy, for I can feel your blush on my own cheeks.