NUMBER FOUR.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER MAGAZINE.

Sir: I can only account for your conduct by this one supposition: you must be a drinking-man. Nothing but the repeated, though perhaps unconscious, inebriation arising from an excessive use of stimulating drinks, could produce that torpidity of the moral sentiments which is manifested by your editorial career. Your late allusion to the cordwainers of Xeres, or in vulgar tap-room slang, 'sherry cobblers,' is very strong against you. Your ill-timed merriment—the jocose levity of your 'Editor's Table'—all go to confirm my theory. You indulge—I know you do.

Now, Sir, as a strict Washingtonian, and the corresponding secretary of two temperance societies, I request you for the benefit of the community to make a statement of your case, with a phrenological chart of your developments, a brief account of your habit of body, your temperament, age, etcetera, together with the amount which you absorb daily, and a history of your propensity. In the anticipation of such a statement, I forego any offence at whatever may formerly have passed between us. You are to be pitied rather than detested. I know, from experience, that under the influence of stimulants we are not always accountable agents. We should be merciful one to another; and although I have heretofore found it difficult to repress my disgust at your folly, I assure you that I am far from entertaining unchristian feelings. May you yet live to become a respectable member of society, and an ornament of our ranks! You may find worthier employment in conducting some religious journal or temperance periodical. If you become sincerely anxious to reform, and to distinguish yourself as an ardent champion of virtue, the society will feel pleasure in lending you their powerful aid. Our funds are at present somewhat low, in consequence of the prodigious expense of a late fair and several temperance pic-nics in the country, at which we nobly burned many whole hogsheads of the most costly Jamaica and Cogniac spirits. The sight of the self-destroying monster wasting away in the blue intensity of his own suicidal flame, excelled any thing in the way of moral grandeur that I have witnessed since the Croton-aqueduct celebration. Still, in spite of our tremendous disbursements, I will venture to promise you, if you enlist under the banners of the cause, a handsome situation, either as a Reformed Inebriate, or a travelling County-Delegation Jubilee Pic-Nic Poet and Orator. Depend upon it, that under the cold-water system your profits will be increased, your morals improved, your appetite and intellectual faculties enlarged and well-balanced, and all the fibres of the frame restored to a firm, vigorous tone.

Touching the subject of these letters, I would observe that our English friend has done very wisely in permitting their publication. But surely you will not think of accepting his favors without giving him an adequate requital. I am told they are extensively read, and add much to the attractions of your Magazine. He certainly ought to be most handsomely paid. Having never thought it worth while to make any poetry myself, I cannot well judge of the labor of making it, or of its value; but I know that we have repeatedly paid clergymen in New-England thirty or forty dollars for a temperance ode, and hymn to match. For my own part, I am willing to sink my demand (albeit a prior one) in favor of his own claim. He will consider the propriety of either going on shares with me, or allowing me whatever premium he may think just upon each letter. Instrumental as I have been in preserving his epistles from the dangers of flood and fire, and procuring their secure transmission, through the pages of the Knickerbocker, to their destination, he will not neglect my hint. I am willing to look upon it as merely a commission business; my object being rather an amicable arrangement, and a mutual understanding of each other's interests, than any thing of a mercenary nature. Whatever profit may fall to my hands shall all be faithfully devoted to the Cause.

I send you herewith a splendid pictorial illustration, colored to the life, of the awful appearance of the interior of a drunkard's stomach. It has produced a powerful sensation in Boston, and may persuade you to reflect upon the possible condition of your own intestines.

I beg that you will by no means print this letter, as it may look like trumpeting my own goodness.

Yours, etc., in the Pledge,

Notwithstanding the foregoing injunction of the pacified financier not to print his letter, it is evident that he intended it for the public eye. It would moreover be most unjust not to let the world into a knowledge of his many virtues. As to our own vices, and especially the one here dwelt upon with so much fervor, we must be permitted to remark, in reply to the commiseration and advice of our moral friend, that during the whole course of a life 'now some years wasted,' we were never 'groggy,' 'intoxicated,' 'boozy,' 'swipsed,' 'cut,' 'how-came-you-so,' 'swizzled,' or 'tight,' but once; and assuredly that, as Dogberry says, 'shall be suffegance.' On a certain evening of one of the remote 'days that were' in our history, we remember ('ah! yes! too well remember!') trying to discover whether there was any foundation for the suspicion of a friend, that we had been over-'indulging' at a supper-party from which we both were returning. The fact truly was so. We ascertained, in endeavoring, for the satisfaction of our friend, to 'toe a mark' in the pavÉ, that the side-walk invariably followed the lifted foot; and that when we essayed to set its fellow down, the pavement receded in such a terrific manner that the sole encountered it with a good deal more of emphasis than discretion. We recollect, too, that the key-hole of our bachelor's-apartment was found to have been stolen on that memorable evening, rendering our key nugatory, adscititious, of no account, and so forth; and that when, by the aid of a fellow-lodger, we had achieved our room and bed, we found the latter emphatically a 'sick' one, and at times during the night in a very 'sinking condition;' so much so indeed, that at one period we began to 'despair of its recovery.' But that one abuse of Nature, (who always revenges herself, and at once, upon her assailants,) taught us a lesson which we have never forgotten, and never shall, 'unto thylke day i' the which we crepe into our sepulchre.' For the rest, we certainly do affect an occasional glass of good wine at a cheerful board, with congenial guests; such wine as we are informed, on the best authority, 'maketh glad the heart of man;' such as Saint Paul recommended to his brethren 'for their stomach's sake;' a wine, in short, which 'creates a spiritual vineyard in the heart,' and 'dispenses one's affections among his fellow men.'

Ed. Knickerbocker.