all, Agrippa’s going to Gaul would be away out of the Land Bill business, and I begin to think I went too far in the matter. Yes: he had better go. G. W. STEVENS. LIFE’S VOYAGE: A MOOD. Dark and tumultuous seas Have quenched the lurid sun. Vapors, flame riven, writhingly ascend, And night comes winging on ’Cross sullen waves, While Death upon the bowsprit waiting sits. Bereft of hope, Life’s running sands low spent, No rudder steers—nor beacon’s flame Tells us the course to sail. Alone, alone, breathed on by awful fears, Groping amidst life’s way for light, we drift. WILLIAM B. FAVILLE. OUR SYNDICATE LETTER. I have been greatly amused quite recently by two little items that were printed in one of those short-lived magazinelets. One article was by Neith Boyce and the other by Emma Eggleson, both of which ladies are subscribers to _The Homely Ladies Journal_. If I am not mistaken one of these ladies raised a club for the _Journal_ (not at it), and when Mr. Curtis and me offered to send her abroad to be educated, the amusing fact was discovered that she already had a lovely education. But the articles that amused me so much were about the penchant of editors to monkey with manuscript. Both articles were on the same theme, but the article by Neith Boyce was the longest. As Mr. Howells has not improperly spoken of one of Neith Boyce’s short stories as a crackerjack, and as this master of letters has also referred to a poem by Emma Eggleson as hotstuff, I feel that I am justified in saying that both of these ladies are arriving successward in the merry and dizzy field of literature very rapidly. I have sometimes thought in my thoughtful way that the reason an editor is called by that appellation is because he loves to edit. A young literary aspirant told me of a case in point the other day. He wrote a lovely triolet which was accepted on its seventeenth trip by a paper which shall be nameless. When he sent it out it ran thus: TRIOLET. A nosegay of roses white Stands on my loved one’s table. Would I were they tonight, A nosegay of roses white, Placed on her brow so bright, To deck her tresses sable. A nosegay of roses white, Stands on my loved one’s table. This is how it was printed: A nosegay of roses white Is quite a pretty sight, Upon my loved one’s table. (Far better than in a stable.) It would be pleasant quite To be those roses white And deck her tresses sable— That is if I were able. You see much of the poetic effluvia was lost when it had been edited.