Page:The Southern Literary Messenger - Minor.djvu/196

174 interesting son, whom they were disciplining too restrictively. He asked their permission to obtain a goat that he might play with it, train it to draw, etc. They refused it. I sympathized with the little fellow and addressed to his parents in Hudibrastic style a petition to gratify their disappointed only child. I put in it as much fun as I could and also as much persuasion. It tickled the parents and they handed it around among the boarders, one of whom was the widow of a Governor of Georgia.

I would like to see how I rhymed it at that time. Anyhow, it brought out Capricorn and the boy was made happy. He got outdoor exercise and had something to manage and guide. Then, too, goat wagons are often very useful.

I would also very much like to see now the leader I wrote the day on which Mr. John Hampden Pleasants made me edit, in his place, the Richmond Whig.

In a Northern "School Reader" (fifth or sixth), I once saw quite a good poem ascribed to me as the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger; but I knew nothing about it.

At another time, Mr. Thompson describes a sermon of Henry Ward Beecher's which he went from New York to Brooklyn to hear.

In Savannah, Ga., he saw Mr. I. K. Teft's unusually large and unique collection of