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THE DREGS IN LEATHERBACKS' TEA-CUP.

We have an earlier tea this evening than usual, for we have a literary friend who comes about this time of the week, and he must go home to retire about eight o'clock. His nervous system is so weak that he must get three or four hours sleep before midnight; otherwise he is next day so cross and censorious he scalps every author he can lay his hand on. As he put his hand on the table with an indelible blot of ink on his thumb and two fingers, which blot he had not been able to wash off, I said, "Well, my old friend Leatherbacks, what books have you been reading to-day?"

He replied, "I have been reading 'Men and Things.' Some books touch only the head and make us think; other books touch only the heart and make us feel; here and there one touches us under the fifth rib and makes us laugh; but the book on 'Men and Things,' by the Rev. Dr. C.S. Henry, touched me all over. I have felt better ever since. I have not seen the author but once since the old university days, when he lectured us and pruned us and advised us and did us more good than almost any other instructor we ever had. Oh, those were grand days! No better than the present, for life grows brighter to me all the time; but we shall not forget the quaint, strong, brusque professor who so unceremoniously smashed things which he did not like, and shook, the class with merriment or indignation. The widest awake professorial room in the land was Dr. Henry's, in the New York University. But the participators in those scenes are all scattered. I know the whereabouts of but three or four. So we meet for a little while on earth, and then we separate. There must be a better place somewhere ahead of us.

"I have also been looking over a book that overhauls the theology and moral character of Abraham Lincoln. This is the only kind of slander that is safe. I have read all the stuff for the last three years published about Abraham Lincoln's unfair courtships and blank infidelity. The protracted discussion has made only one impression upon me, and that is this: How safe it is to slander a dead man! You may say what you will in print about him, he brings no rebutting evidence. I have heard that ghosts do a great many things, but I never heard of one as printing a book or editing a newspaper to vindicate himself. Look out how you vilify a living man, for he may respond with pen, or tongue, or cowhide; but only get a man thoroughly dead (that is, so certified by the coroner) and have a good, heavy tombstone put on the top of him, and then you may say what you will with impunity.

"But I have read somewhere in an old book that there is a day coming when all wrongs will be righted; and I should not wonder if then the dead were vindicated, and all the swine who have uprooted graveyards should, like their ancestors of Gadara, run down a steep place into the sea and get choked. The fact that there are now alive men so debauched of mind and soul that they rejoice in mauling the reputation of those who spent their lives in illustrious achievement for God and their country, and then died as martyrs for their principles, makes me believe in eternal damnation."

With this last sentence my friend Leatherbacks gave a violent gesture that upset his cup and left the table-cloth sopping wet.

"By the way," said he, "have you heard that Odger is coming?"

"What!" said I. He continued without looking up, for he was at that moment running his knife, not over-sharp, through a lamb-chop made out of old sheep. (Wife, we will have to change our butcher!) He continued with a severity perhaps partly caused by the obstinacy of the meat: "I see in the 'Pall-Mall Budget' the startling intelligence that Mr. Odger is coming to the United States on a lecturing expedition. Our American newspapers do not seem, as yet, to have got hold of this news, but the tidings will soon fly, and great excitement may be expected to follow."

Some unwise person might ask the foolish question, "Who is Odger?" I hope, however, that such inquiry will not be made, for I would be compelled to say that I do not know. Whether he is a clergyman or a reformer, or an author, or all these in one, we cannot say. Suffice it he is a foreigner, and that is enough to make us all go wild. A foreigner does not need more than half as much brain or heart to do twice as well as an American, either at preaching or lecturing. There is for many Americans a bewitchment in a foreign brogue. I do not know but that he may have dined with the queen, or have a few drops of lordly blood distributed through his arteries.

I notice, however, that much of this charm has been broken. I used to think that all English lords were talented, till I heard one of them make the only poor speech that was made at the opening meeting of the Evangelical Alliance. Our lecturing committees would not pay very large prices next year for Mr. Bradlaugh and Edmund Yates. Indeed, we expect that the time will soon come when the same kind of balances will weigh Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Frenchmen and Americans.

If a man can do anything well, he will be acceptable without reference to whether he was born by the Clyde, the Thames, the Seine, or the Hudson. But until those scales be lifted it is sufficient to announce the joyful tidings that "Odger is coming."