odical which has been so fortunate as to engage my services since I have been in this country.

To come more directly to the point-I think it will be admitted that the NATIONAL, ably as it has been conducted, is deficient in one department. I mean that of facetiousness, or light literature, as it is generally called. There have been, indeed, two or three Olla Podridas, prepared, doubtless, by one of my countrymen ; at least so I judge from their wonderful originality and keenness of edge. They have appeared, however, at wide intervals, and cannot be said to be a feature of the Magazine. Now what I have to propose is, that hereafter there be assigned say ten or twelve pages every month to what may be called the dominion of Wit and Humor. For the name of the new department something original is desirable. At first I thought of proposing to call it THE EDITOR'S BOSTON ROCKER; but that bears too much similarity to a name I invented for a similar department in another THE SALT-CELLAR would answer, only your American readers are in general too stupid to understand the allusion, and it would be tedious to be per

I may best introduce my subject by a brief introduction of myself. I am, then, by birth an Englishman, of which I do not boast, as do some of my countrymen. In fact, I rather keep it out of sight in the present state of political parties, except when, as in the present case, I am making propositions of a literary character. I have ascertained that, in this country, however much the natives may prefer a countryman of their own for a political office, there is a great deference to every-periodical. thing John Bullish in the way of literature. My old friend Dickens has many more American readers than Washington Irving. Tennyson's poems are found on the cen-petually reminding them that you mean ter tables of American families who never heard of Bryant, save as the editor of a soft-shell newspaper; and a candidate for office, put up by the Know Nothing party, asked me the other day if Noah Webster was not by birth an Englishman. So, also, Thackeray lectures to crowded houses at high prices, forbids Yankee reporters to publish what he says, and goes from city to city repeating the same hash, which is swallowed and reswallowed all over the continent. Could any native American hope for such subserviency? Of course not; and I will not say how often my countryman and myself have laughed, almost to bursting, at the extreme gullibility of the free and independent citizens of this great republic.

Attic salt, and not the common article with which they pickle their pork.

After much cogitation, I have concluded to submit, as the best designation for the proposed department,

Hence I say I am an Englishman, born about the same time, and not far from the same spot, as our present illustrious poetlaureate. I expect, therefore, that my proposals will be the more readily listened to by the conductors of the NATIONAL, and that the emoluments I seek will be granted with less grumbling than if I were merely a native. This, indeed, I am happy to say, has been the case with every peri

[For the National Magazine.]

PROPOSALS FOR IMPROVING THE
NATIONAL.

I

HAVE a proposal to make for the mutual benefit of myself and the NATIONAL. I do not pretend that my object is entirely disinterested, but then I am satisfied that it is not altogether selfish. It is, in fact, of a mixed nature, like the actions of men in general; for I have my doubts whether there is in our world such a thing as disinterested benevolence.

*

THE EDITOR'S SEE-SAW;

and, as a new and striking feature, we might have a wood-cut at the head of the page every month with this design

Scene-The boundless continent, woods, forests, rivers, mountains, all on a scale of American grandeur; the stars and stripes floating in the breeze from the top of a gigantic oak, with the British lion chained to its trunk; a few darkies in the distance cultivating a cotton-field, just to show that we are not ashamed of our distinguishing American peculiarity. In the foreground an immense log of wood, with a plank of prodigious length crossing it at an angle of eighty degrees; on one end an old gentleman in a shad-bellied coat, with a pair of spectacles on a long nose, and a pen behind his ear, to represent the editor; on the other, that is, the end nearest the moon, let there be a multitude, which no man can number, of men, women, and children, of all ages and in every conceivable variety of laughter, to represent the readers of the NATIONAL, and to premonish your subscribers that, when they get to the EDITOR'S SEE-SAW, they are expected to laugh.

But I am digressing. I said I never attend funerals. I may add, too, that I seldom go to church. There is a man in Brooklyn whose large theatrical-looking building I visit sometimes, as he occasionally lets off a good thing from the pulpit, and I have known a titter run all through his congregation. But he is very uncertain. Perhaps half the time he goes entirely through the service without cracking a joke. I may be wrong in this estimate. I should be sorry to do him an injustice; but if he is funny in the pulpit, more than half the time I have been unfortunate in the selection of the Sundays for my visitation. There used to be also in this city a clergyman who enlivened his discourses with quips and oddities,—I have quite a number in one of my scrap-books that are really mirth-provoking, which I took down from his lips while preaching; but I know not where he is now. He has obtained, as I am told, church preferment, and is a presiding elder, or something of that sort. It would pay man of my profession to listen to such a preacher every Sunday, for he was like the Paddy's sprig of shillalah, that never missed fire. I never heard him without profit. And here I may remark by the way, (for I love to pay a compliment to your country when can,) that we did not, in England, reward the late Sydney Smith with any church preferment like that to which I have alluded, although he was perhaps quite as full of wit as the reverend American to whom I refer. The reason may be that Smith did not use it quite so profusely in the pulpit.

It will be seventeen years, come Michaelmas, since I entered upon the duties of my present position; and, of course, I may claim to be a man of experience in this department. A comic paper in London was indebted to me for its facetiousness for nine years and a half, when my engagement came to a close suddenly, and that paper has never held up its head in respectable society from that day to the present. You would like to know how I came to leave it? Well, in plain vernacular English, I was sacked, and in a pet emigrated to this land of republican simplicity. Do not, however, too hastily include me in the category with those of whom the poet says,

My

This new department I propose, for a reasonable remuneration, to take under my own individual supervision; for I am by profession a FUNSTER, a calling which, of course, will require some explanation for the benefit of the unsophisticated. business, then, is to provide funny things for magazines and other periodicals. attend to nothing else. I live by my witticisms; and though my best coat is rather seedy, and I cannot be said to fare sumptuously every day, yet I rejoice in the consciousness that, as the song says,

I

"There's a better day a-coming!"

I am in possession of a copy of the original edition of Joe Miller's Jest-book, a mine of inexhaustible fertility. I have seventeen large scrap books, filled with good things clipped from newspapers; and sixty manuscript volumes, written by my own hand, containing jests, bons mots, repartees, jeux d'esprit, conundrums, acrostics, riddles, enigmas, charades, rebuses, and everything bearing the remotest resemblance to wit and humor. Many of these were copied from books that I have glanced at when occasionally calling upon celebrated publishers in this country and in Europe, and many were taken down from the lips of living speakers. Keeping the object of my profession always in view, II attend all horse-races; political meetings, especially when Prince John is expected; public dinners, to which I gain access in the guise of a reporter; and occasionally, when nothing better presents itself, I spend an hour or two in the court-rooms of the city, where the lawyers occasionally say a funny thing, and sometimes the judge perpetrates the similitude of a joke. Funerals, of course, I never attend. They don't pay; and yet I made half-a-crown once out of the word funeral. I sent it to the editor of a London paper, who pronounced it the best anagram of the season. It was simply this. What is a funeral? Answer, Real Fun. This was, as I remember, at the time they buried Lord Castlereagh, who cut his own throat; and the editor who tipped me the half-crown was rather radically inclined. By the way, that anagram which makes of Presbyterian BEST IN PRAYER is one of mine; but I never got anything for it, the dissenters at home not being remarkable for their liberality or their appreciation of true genius.

"True patriots they, for, be it understood, They left their country for their country's good."

adding one dollar for each additional line. If you do not choose to go into this line, and it is expensive, I admit, you will oblige me by informing any family by the name of Smith, and there are several in the states, I am told, that any of them may have a manuscript copy of this entire quintuple acrostic for fifty cents, provided they promise not to allow it to appear in print. Would it not be a beautiful ornament to be worked on a sampler by the young misses of the Smith tribe?

swer the same purpose as new ones with many of your readers, for twelve and a half cents a dozen, provided that not less than a quarter of a dozen be ordered at any one time. A mixture of old and new, the selection to be made by me, will be twenty cents a dozen with the abovenamed proviso. For warranted originals I must have six and a quarter cents each. In giving your orders please to specify which quality you want, and also state if you prefer them historical, mathematisub-cal, or quizzical. I will give you a specimen of each that you may understand my system of classification. Take first a quizzical conundrum.

Then again, to recur to the general ject, would it not be a very grateful compliment to the gentlemen whose portraits you have recently published, to add to their eulogies an acrostic on each name? Think of it. Such a contribution, unlike their pictures, will be appropriate for each one of their male descendants to the latest

generation. While he points to the portrait and says of it, "That is my father, or my grandfather," as the case may be, he may say of the poetry, "This is an acrostic on my name!"

II. ANAGRAMS.-These I have already alluded to. It is about time they were coming into fashion again. New ones are, of course, out of the question; but I will furnish any quantity, warranted not to have been published during the last ten years, for five cents each.

III. CONUNDRUMS.-I am great on conundrums, original and selected. Permit

me to say that I regard it as one of the evidences of your prospective high literary eminence in this New World that the American people appear more highly to appreciate this species of wit than they do in any other part of the globe, except France, and I am not sure that France is an exception. What entertainment more rational, more conducive to the exercise of the mental powers, more promotive of social good humor, and more redolent of fun in the family circle than the conundrum? Does it not tax the thinking powers quite as much as a game of blindman's buff? Is it not as innocent as chequers? Above all, does it not enlarge that most American of all phrenological bumps-the inquisitorial? The hilarious "D'ye give it up?" how full of excitement of a purely calculating character; and, if you will not suspect me of pandering to the national vanity, I will add, how truly cis-Atlantic! I can furnish them in any quantity that may be desired. Old ones that will an

Why do clergymen generally wear white cravats ?

Answer-To keep their necks warm.

For a specimen of the historical variety I will give you one that I sent home by the last steamer, to be used at the fireside of a dear friend at Christmas.

Why is Miss Nightingale like a Roman shoe?

Answer-Because she is all soul (sole.)

Here is a mathematical conundrum, of which I will not give the answer unless you choose to order it on the terms above specified.

When are the three angles of a triangle less than half a right angle?

variety. It is, of course, too highly intel-
I will add here a specimen of a poetic
lectual for American readers; but perhaps
some of my own countrymen, sojourning
inser-
tion, and think proper to introduce it at
among you, may be gratified by
the next annual festival of the Saint
George's Society. If they do I hope
they will give credit to THE NATIONAL.

A shining wit pronounced of late
That every sitting magistrate
Was water in a frozen state.

The answer is just-ice. It is, in fact, the same as if you asked, Why is a magistrate like water at the freezing point? In this form perhaps it might be safe to propound it to American readers.

IV. Nearly allied to the last-named species of wit is one that is becoming, I am extremely happy to know, exceedingly popular. It goes, in this country, by the name of PUZZLES, and is generally followed by the editorial announcement, "To be answered in our next." I can supply them in any