OLLAPODIAN A.

NUMBER XXVII,

How do you bear yourself, my friend and reader, on the subject of winter generally? What are your views?' If you are young and sanguine, with no revulsions or tempests of the heart to remember, I will warrant that you like old Hyem, and patronize that most windy individual, Boreas, of that ilk. Well, you have a free right to your opinion, and if you held it two years or less ago, you had the honor to agree with me. But I confess on that point a kind of a warped idiosyncracy; an unaccountable change of opinion. The truth is, reader, between you and me, there is not much dignity in winter, in a city. When, in the country, you can look out upon the far-off landscapes, the cold blue hills rising afar, and where a snow-bank is really what it is cracked up to be; where the blast comes sounding to your dwelling over a sweep of woods, and lakes, and snowy fields, for miles of dim extension, there is some grandeur in the thing. But what is it to hear a blast, half choked with the smoke and soot of the city, wheezing down a contemptible chimney-pot, or round a corner, where the wind, that glorious emblem of freedom, has no charter at all to 'blow out' as he pleases, but is confined by the statute of brick-andmortar restrictions?

I BEGIN to affect the softer seasons; and I look with more than usual earnestness for the coming-on of Spring. I am not universal chronologist enough to know whether the creation began in the spring, but I should suppose it did. If, when the morning stars sang together,' there was one out of tune; one whose rôle was imperfect; that belonged rather to the stock company of stars; that took no part in the concert; I apprehend it must have been one of those cold winter stars, that glister, and go through you, with their cold and unimpassioned blinking. I do not affect the dog star;' but I must admit that the stars of spring, summer, and of autumn, are my favorites. Those of spring seem to throb with love, and light, and joy, that multitudes of flowers are springing, and that unnumbered sighs are breathing, in the world beneath; as if indeed they knew and relished the fact, that the roses and violets had again appeared on the earth; that the time of the singing of the birds had come, and the voice of the turtle was heard in the land.' True, the summer stars have rather too fervent a glitter; they look down with a tropical kind of aspect, and induce one to go on the shady side of a street, even at evening, in order to avoid the intense heat of the moonshine. At such hours, one seems to have reached that point, mentioned in nautical phrase, which I translate for ears polite, where the first settlement beyond purgatory is to be remunerated, and there is no tar to cancel the obligation. As for the autumn stars, they are to be praised in numbers; not in a series, but in verse, as dazzling and pure as the light they dispense, and the thoughts they awaken. Whoever gazed at them, in their homes of blue infinity, without rapture and gratitude?

TALKING of gratitude, reminds me of one of the most extraordinary developments of that quality, which I ever remember to have heard of any where. It occurred in a southern city; where there did live a person, otherwise called an individual, who was considered one of the most parsimonious of all the tribe of Adam. He had gone for nearly fifteen years without the imbuing of his personal top, or apex, with a new hat. He was singularly irrascible, owing to the fact that he peculiarly answered to the comprehensive definition of man in general; he was an irregularly-digestive tube, with the principle of immortality at his top, and pedal grain upon his understanding. Having worn his eternal ram-beaver into greasy desuetude, he came to the conclusion to get a new one; which he did - price twelve dollars. It was placed, in glossy youth, upon his hall table; the 'old hat,' as he called it only after he had got its successor, was removed, and he sat down to his dinner with all the certainty that the next day he would strike the town with a fresh sensation. He was not often 'on the street;' for be it known,

He was a man retired in wealth,

An ancient man, of feeble health.

But the fatal sisters, with their intolerable shears, clipt his hope in the bud. A varlet who had watched him all the way from the hatter's to his home-a sort of crazy lounger of the place, more knave than fool, though enough of either determined to 'regain his felt, and feel what he regained.' And as the citizen sat at meat, and thinking of the novelty of hat which he should sport on the morrow, it came to pass that the varlet entered, and stole the unhackneyed chapeau from the hall. He left in the place of it, his own miserable headgear, open at top, and smothered in grease, with the following words on a slip of whitey-brown paper, in pencil :

'MY SUFFERING SIR:

I have taken your new hat, but I leave you my eternal gratitude.
'Your anonymous friend,

'B. BARLOW. 'P. S. I leave you an open apology for what I have taken, which I wish you to show to a candid world.'

'B. B.'

Great was the proprietor of that hat's consternation, (this is rather an obscure, but a very common, mode of transposition,) when he came out after dinner to seek what was lost. Confound him! curse him!' was his vehement ejaculation. Curse his 'gratitude!' What good does that do me? Where is my new hat?'

I HAVE read, with a great deal of interest, the extraordinary and quite original proposition, by the favorite writer and pulpit orator of the Messiah' congregation, concerning the progress of music. There are few who do not love the concord of sweet sounds; if there are, we have assurance, on the highest literary authority, that they are fit for stratagems, and the spoils of victory' won thereby. But I launch forth at once upon a strong expression, which I seldom use, when I

say, that I rather think that the subsequent theory of my favorite aforesaid, is likely to make an immense fevolution in the progress of musical science; namely, music by steam. When we look back to what was done in the musical days of 'Salmagundi,' when a fall of snow, parliamentary deliberations, and other soft and sleepy transactions, were expressed by appropriate music, we find that the science, like the witness in his box, stared into the face of the public with rapid strides.' There was no evading the current melody.

But this was in the infancy of the science, in our happy land. And I have been thinking it most surprising that this matter has not before been discovered. I have supposed that it must have been owing to the alarming want of taste which has been ascertained to exist, by those who are only enabled to remark on this most abstruse and interesting subject, that there are 'two beats in a bar; two down, and two up.' Indeed, it is a curious thing, this same music. My old friend, Sir Thomas Browne, with all the inquiry of his mind, tells us that he considers the question, 'what song the syrens sang,' as a decided enigma; and I believe it has never been accurately ascertained what tune was 'pitched upon,' when the morning stars sang together. But we may venture to indulge the idea, that they were all perfect in their parts, from the glittering basso, to the effulgent tenore; the Bear, the Pleiades, and all. Under the circumstances, and with no opportunity for rehearsal, I am persuaded that the whole concert was as well'got up' as could have been expected in the case, and at so short a notice.

I HAVE turned this subject of steam-music extensively over in my mind, of late; and I have married myself to the idea, after a very short courtship, that it is a kind of thing that must go on. At the first blush, indeed, it might appear chimerical; but I ask the sceptic why the steam-whistle of a locomotive should not discourse in tones more soft and winning? Why cannot a locomotive ask a cow to leave a rail-road track in a politer manner than in that discordant shriek, which excites the animal's indignation, and awakens her every sentiment of quadrupedal independence? I protest against such conduct. We presume a locomotive to buzz, and vapor, and deport itself pragmatically; but its conversation by the way ought to be chastened into something like propriety; and please Apollo, I think it will. I once saw an animal of this stamp killed instantly by the crushing transit of a train; and I thought I saw in the singular turn of her upper lip, as her torn-out heart lay yet palpitating on the rails, a peculiar curl of disdain, in her dying moments, at the treatment she had won. I put this down, because I hope 't will be remembered as a warning to whistlers in especial, and the great generation of calves unborn.

ON one of those warm April-like afternoons, with which, in our Philadelphia meridian, the fierce February chose to delight us, as if by contrast, I sat by my open window, which commands, through and over pleasant trees, fine glimpses of the country: and

'As the red round sun descended,

Mid clouds of crimson light,'

I began to feel coming upon me the influence of a reverie. For a long time, my good friend whom I'occupy' at present with this matter, I have had my day-dreams sadly broken in upon; in the few roses I have gathered, I have found the cypress mingling among their faded leaves; and a voice, as from the lowly leafiness of an autumnal wilderness, has spoken of the lost and of the past. Why is it, that though the mind may wander, the heart can never forget? Well could I say with him who sings so well:

And there they rest, in dust and cold obstruction! Oh, that those who walk about in the beauty of the morning, with the greenness of earth around them, and the mysterious vitality which makes the elements in their nostrils, would think of this; considering truly their coming end!

BUT I digress entirely; being about to say, that this reverie was superinduced by looking at some observations that had been made upon the charming theory of my friend. I thought of the time when such a thing as steam-music should at least equal the common museum-music, if not surpass it, and distance conclusively the airs wherewith the godly puritans of yore were wont to chant the immortal metre of Sternhold and Hopkins. Imagination took a wide range and presently I was in a dream.

And methought in my dream, that I was in the second story parlor of the Atlantic and Pacific Hotel, and United States' Half-way House,' on the very top of the Rocky Mountains. This hotel was built of marble, with splendid Corinthian pillars, gracing a portico nearly three hundred feet long. Meseemed I had just arrived there by rail-road, in four hours and a half from Philadelphia, which I remembered, as I left, was on each side of the Schuylkill, that being central, as the Thames is in London. We did not stop at Pittsburgh, or any of those immense metropoles, but whizzed at the rate I have mentioned. My destination was to the city of Memphis, on the shore of the Pacific, where I expected to arrive at two o'clock the next day.

A considerable village stretched along the mountain, although the place was not in existence three weeks before. After a sumptuous repast, and a beautiful view of the country, east and west, which I may hereafter describe, I took up the village newspaper. It was entitled the New-Babylon Observer, and Register of the World.' The copy I held in my hand bore the date of May the seventeenth, nineteen hundred and forty. It was sent round the place by a rail-car, and was thrown into the dwellings by machinery, conducted by

steam.

The first paragraphs that struck my eye, were these, amply emblazoned, suddenly to catch the general eye:

'REPORTED FOR THE

NEW-BABYLON

OBSERVER.

TERRIFIC CIRCUMSTANCE!

'It becomes our painful but imperative and extraordinary duty, to promulgate the facts of a disaster which reached us to-day, by the mail from Thebes, via the perpendi cular rail-road. As a party were ascending, with the locomotive playing a lively tune, assisted on the piano-forte by another locomotive, that had been hired by Signor GOITINI, preparatory to his first concert in New-Babylon, some religious persons of the United States' Established Mormon Church,' insisted that the tune, being irreverent, should be changed. This offensive tune was no less than the well known and popular song, (supposed to have been written in England, previous to the subjugation of that place by the Russians,) entitled 'Proceed it, ye Crippled Ones, Babylon's Nigh.' This compli mentary course on the part of the locomotive, and the gentlemanly engineer with whom it associates, was hissed by the Mormons, until they were overcome by the encores of the majority. The locomotive was of course embarrassed, but we understand, continued to play. One of the Mormons, enraged beyond measure at this circumstance, rushed forward through the door-ways of the train, and wantonly turned the stop-cock of What's Become of Good Old Daniel?' one of the slowest tunes of the day. The consequence was, that the train proceeded with the greatest discord, because the latter tune was for the back-track, in descending the mountain. The result was, the cars were thrown off the rails, down a precipice of nearly three hundred feet; but owing to the exertions of Mr. INCLINATION PLAIN, first engineer, they were got back by his Upward Impulse Screw, which has thus far answered admirably, stopping cars in mid-air, if they run off a precipice, and returning them safely, by means of the patent steam wind-bags, which extend beneath the trains, and destroy their gravity.

'We are authorized to state, that no blame attaches to the quick-tune party; whereas the slow-tune faction were entirely in the wrong. Thus has a science, invented by a monk of the Unitarian order, in the city of Alleghania, (then called New-York,) and which worked its way into so much respect and favor, been the cause of danger, by the pertinacity of a few. We trust it will not occur again; if it do, we shall proclaim it to the tune of the Rogue's March, through the whole of New-Babylon, in our Steam-car Extra. No doubt our dastardly contemporary, of the 'War-horse of Freedom and America's Champion,' whose prospectus and types arrived last night, and whose first number appears to-morrow, will endeavor to contradict this statement. We dare him to his teeth to do so. He knows, while the snaky blood writhes at his caitiff heart, and the malignity of twenty-three demons, (we think we should be justified in mentioning more,) glares from his diabolic eye, that what we state is fact; and that each member of the quick-tune party, in asserting his inalienable musical rights, was as innocent as an unbegotten merino.'

READER, the record of my reverie is not ended, but my sheet is full. If I live and prosper, we will meet again. Heaven bless you, and all the children! Ever thine,

OLLAPOD

HYMN OF

NATURE.

THEE praise, Almighty One, the choral starry throng!
Thee praises, thou All-good, the cherubim's loud song!
In everlasting harmonies thy whole creations turn,
As far as worlds revolve, or hosts of suns may burn.

Thy temple Nature shows thy glorious lordliness,
And gentleness as well! The spring-time's flowery dress,
The summer's sea of corn, the harvests' vine-clad height,
The winter's silver peaks, are mirrors of thy might.

What am I, LORD, to thee? But yesterday a man!
I'm parted from the tomb but by one little span !
Yet well is me! who sleeps within his Father's arms!
The word - Compassion-wakes; he feeleth no alarme !