ANSWEHS TO CORRESPONDENTS. 73 



with it ? What use can you put it to ? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul. 

 All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this 

 life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use 

 of accumulating cash? It won't do for you to say that you can use it to 

 better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting 

 tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty 

 vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves 

 so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you 

 never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you 

 in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you ; and in church you are 

 always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in the cushion, when the coiv- 

 tribution-box comes around ; and you never give the revenue officers a full state- 

 ment of your income. Now you know all these things yourself, don't you ? Very 

 well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and 

 withered old age .' What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worth- 

 less to you.? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be 

 always trying to seduce people- ihto becoming as " ornery " and unloveable as you 

 are yourselves, by your villainous " moral statistics.'" Now, I don't approve of 

 dissipation, and I don't indulge in it either ; but I haven't a particle of confidence 

 in a man who has no redeeming petty vices, and so I don't want to hear from 

 you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture 

 last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars, and then came back, in my 

 absence, with your reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful 

 parlor stove. 



"Young Author." — Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because 

 the phosphorus in it makes brains. So far you are correct. But I cannot help you 

 to a decision about the amount you need to eat— at least, not with certainty. If 

 the specimen composition you send is about your fair usual average, I should judge 

 that perhaps a couple of whales would be all you would want for the present. Not 

 the largest kind, but simply good, middling-sized whales. 



" Simon Wheeler," Sonora. — The following simple and touching remarks and 



