distinctly is that the concussion was so tremendous, that it brought my two remaining teeth so violently together, that they were both knocked out; they were the last of the Capulets, and I would not have taken a thousand dollars a piece for them; it is a wonder I did not die of fright—my hair, if I had had any, must have turned grey; but thanks to the barber, I had none. I was taken up more dead than alive, and nothing could induce me to hazard my life again. I consigned to the devil all cars, steamboats, rail-roads, their projectors and inventors, solemnly vowing never to be in a hurry again as long as I lived, but to remember the old maxim, festina lente—make haste slowly. My business I abandoned in despair,—bought the dullest horse I could procure,—sold my trunk and got a pair of saddle-bags, and resolved to jog slowly and safely homeward. After a fatiguing journey, I reached my own house, where nobody knew me. When I told my wife who I was and what had occurred to me, she said it was a judgment upon me for being such a fool as to cut my hair in _that_ fashion. She will never listen to me now when I attempt to repeat the particulars of my excursion, and that is the reason that I have concluded to trouble you with my history. If it should entertain you, and serve as a warning to my countrymen not to be in such a confounded hurry in doing every thing, I shall be repaid for my trouble. The whole world seems to me to be in a sort of neck-or-nothing state; all the sobriety, frugality and simplicity of our forefathers seems to be forgotten, and the only object is, to grow rich suddenly, and time and space must be annihilated in the pursuit. I am, sir, very respectfully, your most obedient, humble servant, SOLOMON SOBERSIDES. FRIENDSHIP,[1] AN ESSAY. Solem e mundo tollere videntur, qui amicitiam a vitâ tollunt; quâ a Diis immortalibus, nihil melius, nihil jucundius, habemus. _Cicero de Amicitia_. [Footnote 1: When New York was in possession of the English during the war of the revolution, the officers, to relieve the monotony of a garrison life, established a society in which some subject of a literary character was discussed at every meeting. Before this society was read this essay, by Mr. Gilchrist—which we print from his original MS. Of their author, personally, we know little, except that he was not an officer in either the army or navy, nor a member of either of the learned professions, although a gentleman of literary taste and extensive acquirements. Henry K. White, in a letter to his brother Neville, mentions a Mr. Gilchrist as one of the contributors to the “Monthly Mirror,” with Capel Lofft, Robert Bloomfield and others. If Mr. G. returned to England he was probably the author of most of the articles in the Monthly Mirror over the signature of _Octavius_. Judge Hoffman and Mr. Dunlap of New York, may be able to give some account of him, as well as of the “_Literary Society_.”