perceive that, while JACK was tasting the sweets of a Christmas-pie, he
was also enjoying the sweets of self-contentment.

As we have seen, JACK HORNER is an historical personage; Christmas-pies
are historical; and dainties with plums are historical. JACK was an old
man, doubtless, when our great-grandmothers were very young--certainly
before the war. The world has had full opportunity to profit by his
virtuous example. Numberless little boys have been quieted to sleep by
the rhyme of JACK HORNER judiciously applied, and numberless little
ones, clamorous for more pudding and enlarged privileges at the
dinner-table, owe the success of their appeals to this same HORNER. The
moral, which runs all through the narrative, is one by which the world
may profit, and should. It la a good thing; but like a great many things
that are good, in the sense in which we use the word, not relished. We
much fear that the ancient, the historical JACK, is extinct. He was a
moderate JACK. He only put in his _thumb_, when he might as well have
put in his whole hand. The latter-day JACK is the representative of a
numerous class possessing larger capacity and a greater dynamic
capability. His pie is larger--has more and bigger plums. When we
contrast the present JACK with the past, we blush for the comparison.
When we encounter him in civic office or in the revenue service, we
tremble for the plums. He is grasping, remorseless, ambitious. The old
JACK was satisfied to sit in his corner and eat his pie; but this one
seeks a pie of dimensions so extravagant as to fill the remotest corners
of the globe; and, what is worse, he is--any thing but a Good Boy!

* * * * *

A Voice from "the Hub."