Just try to think of some abstract idea, say greenness, and tell me if paint and shades of paint, and some painter of your acquaintance, and leaves and forms of leaves, and fools and classes of fools, and twenty other ideas do not rush at once and claim connection with it! Or take a concrete idea, say for instance, woman; and according to your habit of feeling so come your ideas. One man sees before him an angel in purity, beauty, and grace; another sees a fury in all her deformity and power: one has his brain in a turmoil with the hoops, chignons, laces, silks, flounces, and fal-lals of full dress; while another becomes fired with other ideas. And so we go, we ordinary folk. As for great minds and mathematical minds, I know nothing about them ; but I doubt if they differ from us except in their power or skill of catching their ideas for brief instants by the tails as they go past, recognising their exact relationship, and instantaneously using them or letting them go accordingly.

This has nothing to do with our old Postmaster, but it has much to do with me, his biographer. The poor old man died a few months ago. His spirit has been absorbed in the ocean of spirit, as a drop of water in the sea whence its particles exhaled, say some whose own ideas seem to be of very loose habits; exists there (where?) as an integral individuality, say others whose ideas are more logically crazy; has gone to God who gave it and is now at rest and peace, say others. Remark, I beg of you, how skilfully I steer clear of giving an opinion about materialism, spiritualism, annihilism, and fifty other differing learned contentions. I neither affirm nor deny anything. I merely suggest to the learnedly-ignorant curious (which means every one) that if after death we rest from the labor and vain and anxious confusion of thinking, what a blessed thing death is; or, if after death we have peace and order, relieved from doubts, desires, and fears in our thinking, what a blessed thing death is: so that it matters not what may be your philosophy of the unknown, you are bound to with me agree what a blessed thing death is to him who in dying goes to rest or peace. The old man has found out all about it, and so is wiser than we; or he has found out nothing about it and is unconscious of the difficulty, and so is better off than we. What difference does it make to us? Here we go to sleep, and fancy takes the throne of reason to cut queer antics there; we wake, and reason resumes her throne, beset by calls from restless desires, groans from silly doubts, and cries from crazy fears, by the wailings and hootings of memory, the suggestions of a thousand cross-purposes, the successive vibrations of ten thousand succeeding feelings; and this is our mental and moral condition of being—and it is very, very wearisome! If we only knew! If we only knew the present exactly, we should have little suspense for the future; if we only knew the future, we should have but little care for the present. It is best as it is.

Perhaps, however, I had better say a few words about our Postmaster, as he is the subject I intended for this paper. I cannot recollect when he, Mr. Johnstone, came to Yatton; but I have been told that he came from Virginia, with a wife whose health was delicate, and their daughter about ten years old, and that he began business as a dry-goods merchant. In a few years the wife died, and the business

failed so that he gradually lost his capital and then his credit; numerous judgments were obtained against him in the court, and his remaining stock was sold by the sheriff; whereupon he became the book-keeper of Jones & Griffin, who used to keep store in the corner building where Clark, Smith & Co. now keep, next door to Simon Isaacs on one side, and to Isaiah Cohen on the other, with Strauss, Meyer & Knopf, and a whole row of the children of Israel right opposite. Moses, Levy & Co. have been recently trying to get the stand, and I rather think they will succeed before long.

If by any chance, my dear reader, some critical Englishman should hear me talk in this style, he would term "dry goods," "store," "keeping store," and "stand," all country slang. But, begging his pardon, we Southerners speak English, and adapt our words to express what we mean. "Dry goods" is purer English than "haberdashery," and a dry-goods merchant with us is a draper, and a haberdasher, and a dealer in every kind and quality of goods, wares, and merchandise for ordinary use which are not wet; and very often he sells molasses, sugar, tea, coffee, wines, and all sorts of wet goods, as well as cloths, needles, and pins. His principal wares, however, we call by the broad and significant term "dry goods." "Store," also, is more simple than warehouse, and more sensible and precise than shop, counting-rooms, or establishment, or any other word he can select; while "stand" is certainly more expressive and more elegant than "site," "location," or" situation."

We are getting tired of supercilious criticism, and I, John Capelsay of Georgia, do not intend for one to put up with it. If you object that this is not a very amiable tone, understand that little boys cannot be always amiable in a school where there are so many bullies among the big boys. I am only a poor wretch of a Rebel now; but in a couple of hundred years we will perhaps be the big boys; and where will you be then?

In the meanwhile I will keep my temper; and giving my head a warning shake, will now return to my subject, promising not to leave it again to engage in any little scrimmage if I can help it.

So far as I can assert of my own knowledge, Mr. Johnstone was always a courtly old gentleman. I can hardly imagine how he looked or conducted himself as a young man. His old age, as I first remember him distinctly, was so firm and so complete that one might be imagined to be thus developed without the interposition of a time of youth. I do not know that I make myself thoroughly understood; but what I mean is, that his spare, upright form, always sprucely clad, his long lean face, with its prominent nose and other strongly-cut features, crowned with a high, narrow forehead, the scanty iron-gray hair combed carefully over his bald head, the gold spectacles which he invariably lifted to see at a distance, and the very ivory head upon his great walking-stick, were all in perfect keeping, and seemed so natural that one could easily imagine him to have always been an old man. There was no weakness of the back nor of the limbs nor voice, no feebleness nor uncertainty of will which could suggest natural growth and subsequent decay. And, besides all this, I never saw in his conduct or heard in his conversation any of those flashes which

betray the fire once bright, and still warm, though covered with its ashes. Grave, precise, polite, and deliberate in his talk and in every action, unless his temper were irritated, he always seemed to be actuated by a strong sense of what was becoming to himself, and to follow the rules of a very strict self-criticism. When he became angry, however, and his voice became strident and his enunciation rapid and broken, all rules were thrown to the winds, and there was news to tell and laughter to be indulged in at home by those who witnessed the outbreak.

He was appointed to office during General Jackson's first administration, I think; and in all the subsequent years up to the time that his appointment was renewed by the Postmaster-General of the Confederacy, there was never a word said about his removal. The position suited him, he suited his customers, and we had too few idle folk to make so profitless an office much sought for. The pleasant game now playing had not commenced, and an office produced only the salary attached to it. Now-a-days, all that is required is to belong to the great army of officers to be entitled to that share of the spoil which may be appropriated. It seems to be "a statute and an ordinance" that all shall have at least that part alike of the stuff; and though some positions give greater opportunities than others, the productiveness of an office depends chiefly upon the talent of the holder.

The post-office was behind the counter, in the northwest corner of Jones & Griffin's store. Part of the shelving against the wall was divided into pigeon-holes for the newspapers, and upon the counter was a case also divided into smaller pigeon-holes for the letters. The letter-box was at the window, just beneath which, on the outside, was the slit in which all mail matter had to be dropped in order to be posted. It was at this window that Mr. Johnstone presided; and here alone would he respond to any inquiries for his commodities. If one, being in the store and seeing him, should ask for letters, the invariable stiff answer was: "Go around to the window and I'll see."

Seated at this window, leaning back in his chair, and with a newspaper in his hand, the old man would contemplate his little autocracy, and indulge in the most pleasing reflections upon its completeness. "Why, Sir," I once heard him say, "did you ever go to the New York post-office? I went there once after 5 P. M. and found it closed. The next morning it was open; but I never saw greater confusion! I went to a clerk at one of the windows and asked for letters, giving my name. 'Next window!' he exclaimed. I went to the next window up the room and gave my name again. 'Is it advertised?' the clerk asked. I told him it was. 'Across the way!' he said, very shortly. So I went across the room to a window and asked the clerk there, who, when he heard my name, pointed upward, and went on with his work. I looked up and saw a sign 'A to D.' Of course I couldn't know the meaning of that; but I went to another window, asked, and that clerk did the same thing without saying a word, and I saw 'E to H' in large letters. So I went on up the room until I saw a goodnatured looking young fellow sitting at a window doing nothing, and I asked him, and he responded in an interrogative tone: 'Foreign?'

'No,' said I, 'not foreign unless you call Georgia foreign.' 'Passed it!' he rejoined. So I walked back at a venture, looking in to see the signs till at last I got to one with 'I to L' on it, where I got my letter. I never saw such delays in my life. It took me nearly a halfhour to get my letter; and a half-hour of a business man's time is a great deal. Now here, you see, I have things arranged as they should be. You give me your name. 'Here you are,' say I. 'Advertised,' say you. 'Here you are,' say I. Papers, here; change, here: all under my hand, and I know where everything is. I tell you, Sir, order is the soul of business; and I am certain that there is not as little trouble to get things at the General Post-Office itself, with the Postmaster-General and all his assistants to help, as I I have here, all by myself."

This was pardonable vanity in an orderly old gentleman, subject at the same time to the conceit of office and to village myopia. He had a place for everything, and everything in its place, when not too bulky to occupy it; and any order differing from his own was to him disorder. To his official mind, official disorder touched both the honor and the life of the State, and was monstrous.

His home and household, over which Miss Hannah presided, were always a mystery to me. When I was a boy it was awful that any one should have a house and yard so prim and clean and still; and when I became a man I always wondered how the father and daughter passed their lonely leisure-time, what they had to live for, that is to hope for, and what skeleton, if any, they had in their closet: to me the whole house was a closet. Miss Hannah was about forty-five years old when I reached man's age, and already delicate crows'-feet began to show at the outer corners of her eyes. She was a tall and stately woman, with strongly-marked, well-cut features, light-gray eyes and very dark hair. Her face bore the hue of hardy health, her muscles seemed firm, and her movements were calm and decided. That she would have made a notable wife I do not doubt. The stiff precision of her garments and of her manners was, no doubt, the result of the time she had for reflection upon such things undisturbed by the turmoil and emergencies of married life. She never had to do anything in a hurry. No husband vexed her soul with his unreasonableness; no noisy children pestered her sense of order and neatness, and had at every moment and in every action to be set right.

I declare it makes me laugh with a sort of hysterical sympathy when I call to mind the annoyances which a really neat, sensible, and conscientious mother has to undergo. Scold, slap, and fret as she may, the little animals will not do as she does. She never rolls over the floor, nor plays in the gutter, nor wishes to go barefooted or leave off her bonnet out of doors, nor tears her dress romping, nor takes too large mouthfuls, nor eats with her knife, nor says "I didn't never do it!" nor clatters up the steps; and she never gets holes in the knees of her breeches. Yet these little wretches do all these things, and a. thousand others as bad. Why will they not do as she does? They must have inherited their vices from their father, who is always in the wrong about everything. Like begets like; and the law of natural selection has never yet developed a breed of "good" children: they

always die before they grow up, or cross on a turbulent breed and their progeny return to the original fallen type. It's a great pity that spots or a dark hue should invariably have to be developed for protection in this wicked world, where guileless men stand about as much chance as would black ptarmigans on a snow-field !

As Miss Hannah was never married, it is to be supposed that she had a perfect temper. Though it is sometimes the case that old maids have flawy tempers, it is to be remarked that those are cases in which the unmarried state is the result of blighting violence, and not of deliberate, fixed resolution. When a woman does not marry simply and entirely because she regards marriage as not likely to be conducive to her happiness, or as too uncertain in its good results, and not because the man who would please her has not come along, or has died, or has wedded some one else, or prefers to remain single, you may set it down as certain that her temper is of that philosophic cast which is perfected in its atomic arrangement by age: and that is the woman you should try to get for a wife. If she consent, it is a proof that she was not firm in her philosophy, and therefore of course the result may be bad. But if she will not have you, happy are you, for you have the luck to love one of the perfect of her sex, and should be fully contented with your worship at a distance. Be not rash, O mortal!.

Miss Hannah had as many admirers as there were men who were acquainted with her. In fact, in her younger days more than one good married woman detested her because of her neatness and quietness being held up as examples to be imitated; and any man who will do so foolish and unreasonable a thing as that, deserves that his model shall be despised. But I never heard that, in my time, any man carried his admiration beyond the friendly degree. There was a story that when she first grew up, one William Travers (he is alive yet, the old sinner!) was very marked in his attentions, and evidently desirous of getting her to preside over his disorderly self, and not much more orderly plantation some ten miles from Yatton, on Brown's Creek. And, the story goes, when Mr. Johnstone suspected it he became at first cool towards Bill, then very cold and dignified, then freezing, until at last, upon the occasion of a trifling difference of opinion about some irrelevant matter, he let loose an Arctic tornado, with plenty of lightning in it, upon the young man's head, which froze and destroyed all budding hopes, and left the young lady to go to church and to dance at parties with other less ardent and less presumptuous admirers.

The result of Mr. Travers' life shows the wisdom of our old Postmaster. When a gray-headed citizen goes by no other name than that of "Old Bill," as Mr. Travers does, you may know what his youth must have been. It must have been loose and stormy for the respectful affix "Mister" to have been shaken from his name, for his patronymic to be lost, and for his symmetrical prenomen William to be jammed and twisted into Bill. How would you like to be called only Old Bill, or Old Zeke, or Old Lije, when you get old? Would it not argue badly for the present condition of your wife and her government of the children?