Villainy Wears Many Masks; None So Dangerous

Poetry Is Evidently A Contagious Complaint.

Honest Good Humor Is The Oil And Wine Of A Merry Meeting, And There Is No Jovial Companionship Equal To That Where The Jokes Are Rather Small And Laughter Abundant.

The Literary World Is Made Up Of Little Confederacies, Each Looking Upon Its Own Members As The Lights Of The Universe; And Considering All Others As Mere Transient Meteors, Doomed To Soon Fall And Be Forgotten, While Its Own Luminaries Are To Shine Steadily Into Immortality.

The Moan Of The Whip-poor-will From The Hillside; The Boding Cry Of The Tree-toad, That Harbinger Of Storm; The Dreary Hooting Of The Screechowl.

There Rise Authors Now And Then, Who Seem Proof Against The Mutability Of Language, Because They Have Rooted Themselves In The Unchanging Principles Of Human Nature. They Are Like Gigantic Trees That We Sometimes See On The Banks Of A Stream; Which, By Their Vast And Deep Roots, Penetrating Through The Mere Surface, And Laying Hold On The Very Foundations Of The Earth, Preserve The Soil Around Them From Being Swept Away By The Ever-flowing Current, And Hold Up Many A Neighboring Plant, And Perhaps Worthless Weed, To Perpetuity.