It may not be unknown to you that the _Chronicle_ has a habit of
identifying itself with the people and subjects which it discusses. Does
it put forth an article on naval matters--straightway it becomes salter
than Turk's Island, and talks of bobstays and main-top-bowlines and
poop-down-hauls in a manner that, to put it mildly, is confusing, and
would, if you read it, make you jump as if all your strings were pulled
at once! Are financial matters under discussion--behold even JAMES FISK,
Jr., is not so keen and shrewd, nor Commodore VANDERBILT so full of
"corners." And only the other day, it discussed the Medical Convention
which lately met here, and lo! we are amazed by the amount of knowledge
displayed by the omniscient journal! In a long article, after mildly
remonstrating with the doctors for refusing to admit their colored
brethren of the District of Columbia to a share in their deliberations,
it closes with this obscurely terrible remark:

"Better die of nostalgia in exile abroad, than remain at home to suffer
from ossification of the pericardium--"

or words to that effect, as the lawyers say.

On reading this, with what strength I had left I secured a dictionary,
and found that "nostalgia" means homesickness;--a disease not known to
Washingtonian exiles--but what "ossification of the pericardium" means I
cannot discover. Not only have I searched every dictionary in the
Congressional Library, but I have pervaded all the bookstores, and made
myself a nuisance to every medical man of my acquaintance--in vain!
Nobody ever heard of such a disease, if disease it be. It may be
something more dreadful! And not only I, but those whom I have
persecuted with my inquiries, are on the verge of insanity; and for all
this the _Chronicle_ is responsible.