Greatness of mind, my boy, like greatness of body, consists no less in a capacity for making good use of small things than in an ability to master vast ones; and the intellect sublime enough to grasp the whole system of the universe, may not disdain to draw a useful lesson in human nature even from so minute an object as the Secretary of the Interior. The elephant, in the full amplitude of his physical greatness, has been briefly and comprehensively characterized as an animal able to knock down a giant and pick up a pin; and how shall the glorious human mind boast its superiority over matter, if it be not also endowed with the power of stooping as well as soaring? I believe, my boy, in the mind that picks up pins intellectual; especially in these days, when there are so few intellectual giants to knock down. Indeed, so important to the general system of intellect is the system of taking no less note of small things than of great ones, that a multitude of writers who deal only in the smallest kind of matters all their lives may themselves be denominated intellectual pins. I hold Mr. Tupper to be an intellectual pin, and Mr. Willis has also become somewhat of a pin in these his later years. To the youthful soul, still steeped in those romantic dreams, of which a supper of pig's feet is the best artificial provocative I know, this war is a vast phantasmagoria of almighty giants struggling together in the clouds. There was a time when I, too, was able to see it to that extent; but time, and some experience in Virginia, have reduced my giants in the clouds to brigadiers in the mud; and from seeing our national banner in the character of a rainbow dipped in stars, I have come to regard it as an ambitious attempt to represent sunrise in muslin, the unexpected scantiness of the material compelling the ingenious artist to use a section of midnight to fill up. Down in Accomac, the other day, I overheard a sentimental Mackerel chap, to whom I had imparted this flagging idea, inflicting it upon another Mackerel as original; but he was anxious to improve upon the comparison, and says he: "Our National Standard is so much like a beautiful sunrise, that I could almost wish the full idea of an eternal morning could be further expressed in it by something to represent the dew." The inferior Mackerel scratched his head, and says he: "Why, my pay has been due for some time, and I myself am eternally mourning for it." If we cast pearls before swine, my boy, we must not be surprised to find them taken for the seeds of cabbage-heads. I once told a Wall-street broker that I considered the break of day one of Nature's most glorious sights; and he said that he didn't mind it himself, if he didn't happen to have any of Day's notes on hand at the time.