Pole. One thing is certain, and satisfactory; he is the first person that ever crossed the Rocky Mountains on wheels; his transit shows that those mountains are traversable with carriages, and that it is perfectly easy to have a rail-road to the Pacific. If each road should ever be constructed, I hope, in honor of the great projector who led the way, it may be called the 'Doolittle Rail-road; unless that name should have been given as characteristic, to some of the many rail-roads already in progress.
'Your humble servant,
Hiram Crackenthorpe, of St. Louis.
Editorial 'Pot-Luck.'—Indulgent reader, will you sit down at our table, and 'take pot-luck' with us?—looking, with an eye of faith, to find something in the hash, from our own stores, or from those which have been 'sent in by the neighbors,' to stay your appetite withal! To drop similitude, we are about to resume the selections from our 'drawer,' among which we would crave permission to intersperse a few fragments from our note-book; the more that, being jotted down in half-indicated thoughts, they are not calculated to 'keep' for any great length of time; and there are a few pencillings scattered through the leaves, that we would not willingly let die. But first, let us do justice to a correspondent, whose early favor was inadvertently omitted from this department of our last number. Men, or the wonderful thinking principle,' which animates our mortality, are surveyed by him in a wide field of vision:
The simple flower which springs up in our path, charms us by its sweetness and fragility, and we learn to admire its wonderful mechanism. The rushing of the tornado, and the warring of the elements, we behold with thrilling emotions. Man, too, the lordly tenant of nature's heritage, is a miracle, aside from the ethereal spark which dwells within him. The curious structure of his frame; its wonderful combinations of levers and pulleys; the heart, that admirable forcing-pump, for driving the crimson life through every artery; and the chest, that secret laboratory, where nature, by her own. fires, compounds her simples, and distils her vital essences; all these are subjects fraught with deep interest, and open wide fields of inquiry. But after all, what are the wonders of physical nature, without A SOUL to scan and enjoy them? The thinking principle, that receives these pleasures, that appreciates their value, and dwells with rapture upon the infinite wisdom and benevolence traced in them by the finger of God? Subtle in its essence, intangible in its existence, it eludes our strictest analyses. We see its intelligence, and marvel at its controlling and grasping power. It is around us, and in us, the main-spring of our mortal horologe; and yet the question of its nature is more enigmatical than the riddle of the unshorn Nazarite to the Philistines. Philosophy has grasped it as a subject of the noblest investigation, and philosophers have traced its history, observed its habits, and scanned its operations. But wrapped in the solitude of its own mystery, the mind has deigned merely to give them demonstration of its action, while the inner chambers of its arcana have never been explored.
Wonderful alike in its nature, in its existence, and in its operation, it is at once the fountain of thought, and the receptacle of feeling. Voiceless as the solitude, it goes forth from its frail tabernacle, and gathers the rich fruits of science. It laves its ethereal pinions in Arethusa's silver stream, and kindles with the fires of the Castalian muse. It careers through the whole cycle of truth, and returning from the long journey, with its choicest pearls, garners up the rich treasures of knowledge. Soaring on the wing of thought, above the dull regions of sense, it visits other worlds, and other suns; and pausing midway in-its daring flight, sports like the lambent flame of the aurora borealis, on the broad play-ground of infinite space; and still rising, still expanding, it reaches the habitations of Jehovah, and in its wide embrace, takes the gauge and dimensions of the universe. But the mind is not more wonderful in its power than in its development. Feeble in its beginnings, as the twinkling star that heralds the approach of light, yet in its maturity it dazzles and burns with the vehemence of s mid-day sun. In its first outgoings, it is weak and fragile, as the tender vine, clasping its tendrils around every object for support; in its development, it towers with the majesty of the mountain oak, and defies the storm. Cast your eye upon that tender infant, nursed in the sweet Eden of maternal love; the impersonation of weakness, perhaps, and mental imbecility. How helpless!—how fragile! Yet who shall say, but that a gem of inestimable richness lies concealed in that feeble casket? Who shall say that the mind, which now beams faintly forth from those eyes, when expanded and matured, shall not prove a mind of magic power?—that the voice which now sobs in such ten-
