NEBULÆ.
— We are willing to concede to "Campaign Lives" of Presidential candidates any degree of latitude in panegyric which stops short of lunacy. We can hardly forgive Oliver Optic, however—though there is doubtless "method in his madness"—for declaring in his book called "Our Standard Bearer," that Grant is "Washington, Napoleon, Andrew Jackson, Cæsar, Wellington, Marlborough, and Scott united into one." Nor do we hold his deliberate exaggeration the more venial because it is in a "book for boys," since they can credit the existence of demigods more easily than men. In the same way, Mr. Optic, in referring to the story of the phrenologist who is said to have predicted (the same story has been told, we believe, of all Presidential candidates) of the child Ulysses that "it would not be strange if he became President"—declares that he is "provoked that he did not state the case stronger; for if there is anything at all in phrenology, the gentleman ought to have been confident of this result." "At West Point," says Mr. Optic, "Young Grant was the idol of his class," but he was "sent to the infantry, as if to place in his path more obstacles to be overcome." And so the "biography" goes on. Bah! what twaddle! It is only surpassed by the ridiculous stories told in the same book about the boyhood of Grant. In what is this sort of sycophancy less disgusting than that vile scurrility which goes to the other extreme, and proclaims that Grant is a Caligula or a Commodus? We use this little volume only by way of illustrating a general vice. Both the Seymour and the Grant literature of the campaign contain their samples of this nauseating biographical extravagance. Let us condemn as sternly as it deserves the spirit of malignant detraction and the calumny of the unscrupulous opponent; but let us not spare, also, the beslobbering flattery of friends.
— During a former "heated term" in Boston, a gentleman calling to make some purchases at a hardware store, found there a tableau vivant, which more expressively represented the state of the mercury than could any words. At the end of the store there were three pairs of large blacksmiths' bellows, which, when opened, will slowly collapse by their own weight. Three clerks had posted themselves before these bellows, and each, with a bellows' nose stuck up the leg of his trowsers, was allowing the breeze from the enormous wind-machine to gently blow up his leg, the while he was engaged in dipping from a common bowl of iced lager. The customer thought it was too bad to disturb so ingenious an arrangement for "raising the wind," and left the young philosophers undisturbed with their Æolian attachments.
— At one of the summer college exhibition exercises, we were struck by a phrase in the prayer with which the chaplain opened the ceremonies. He begged that all that was done might be done "decently and in order." On looking afterward at the programme, we observed it to be announced that the performers would speak "in the order of their names," so that that part of the invocation seemed unnecessary. As to the "decently," we trust that no slur was intended. At all events, a very decent performance followed.
— There is such a dearth of good political campaign songs in both parties, that a bard of genius has a chance of making his fame, if not his fortune, by a happy
