I have not been able to resist the temptation of trying a prentice hand on the metaphors in Mr. Parsons’s lines. Perhaps with more spleen against the “well enough,” more enthusiasm for the intoxication not of the wine, and more sympathy for the luckless diver. FAILURE. Too long I’ve lingered inland fruitlessly, Strolling with moonlit loves through narrow vales, Where to rapt hearts rave love-tranced nightingales! I so said, thrilling to the far off sea, Whose deep voiced tides and storms were calling me: Leave dalliance, and breast my wholesome gales, The world is known not in thy timid dales; My winds ’twixt nations waft my lovers free. But when I came unto the thundrous shore, Long enervating habit balked intent; My ventured wealth returned less than before, I dove for pearls, found only empty shells: Yet learned I then what love and peace have meant, Though not why famed ambitions strike their knells. WILLIAM JAMES BAKER. HAPPINESS. The happiest thing The freest thing That man may hope to see Is a sun-bonnet-mite Of a country child In the top Of an apple tree. MARY DAWSON. A PLEA FOR INEBRIETY. Is that ancient and honorable institution, the New York Chamber of Commerce, becoming frisky and convivial in its old age? Will it in its ripe judgment recommend that the proper course for one to pursue is to tread the perfumed paths of Bacchus? Does the Chamber, as a body, indorse the able and thoughtful article in the October _Forum_, by Mr. Louis Windmuller, one of its honored members, in which that gentleman makes a strong plea for inebriety and drunkenness? Mr. Windmuller is certain that the policy of Mr. Roosevelt toward the liquor interests in New York will sap the lifeblood of our institutions, and he sends up a cry of alarm. It may be gathered from Mr. Windmuller’s well considered paper that there can be no true happiness in this life without strong drink, and plenty of it. Contentment and peace of mind will slink under the bed unless there be a flagon on the table. Domestic felicity will be a hollow mockery, a failure and a fraud if there be not a keg in the cellar and a case of Culmbacher on the ice. Our gifted author does not say it in so many words, but it is clearly his view that man’s faculties are at their best only when the gentle glow of intoxication steals over the brain and articulation thickens and halts by the way. He goes even further. He firmly believes that ours is a land to hastening ills a prey, unless we speedily go to Bavaria for our excise laws and fling Roosevelt over the Battery wall.