the excessive earnings of public lecturers? Might he not, too, have said a
word or two of the tricks and contrivances that are being now resorted to
by men and women--highly respectable men and women too--for evading,
on both sides of the Atlantic, the spirit of the copyright laws while
complying with their letter? Would, however, such a course of proceeding
have answered his present purpose? Perhaps not! His business was to pass
around the hat, accompanying it with a strong appeal to the charity of the
defendants, and this, so far as we can see, is all that thus far has been
done.

Might not, however, a similar, and yet stronger, appeal now be made in
behalf of other of the public servants? At the close of long lives devoted
to the public service, Washington, Hamilton, Clay, Clayton, and many other
of our most eminent men have found themselves largely losers, not gainers,
by public service. The late Governor Andrew's services were surely worth
as much, per hour, as those of the authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," yet
did he give five years of his life, and perhaps his life itself, for far
less than half of what she had received for the labors of a single one.
Deducting the expenses incident to his official life, Mr. Lincoln would
have been required to labor for five and twenty years before he could have
received as much as was paid to the author of the "Sketch Book." The
labors of the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella have been, to himself
and his family, ten times more productive than have been those of Mr.
Stanton, the great war minister of the age.--Turning now, from civil to
military life, we see among ourselves officers who have but recently
rendered the largest service, but who are now quite coolly whistled down
the wind, to find where they can the means of support for wives and
children. Studying the lists of honored dead, we find therein the names of
men of high renown whose widows and children are now starving on pensions
whose annual amount is less than the monthly receipt of any one of the