An Avalanche of Adjectives

letters appears in a Union collection,72 and David Ross Locke's "Petroleum V. Nasby's Letter Showing Why He Should Not Be Drafted" is reprinted in at least three different collections.73 The anecdotes of the Civil War, collected and otherwise, offer an opportunity for the study of a period's popular literary expression which can scarcely be exhausted here. A more comprehensive survey than this should be followed by reference to the contemporary periodicals, to trace the patterns indicated here as they unfolded in the context of historical events. This study will have served its purpose if it has indicated the general outlines which some of these patterns formed. 72Moore, p. 10. 73Devens, Anecdotes, p. 211; Devens, Reminiscences, p. 211; Gerrish and Hutchinson , p. 725. B. P. Shillaber's "Mrs. Partington" and Seba Smith's "Jack Downing" are also to be found in Devens, Reminiscences, pp. 461 and 355 respectively. AN AVALANCHE OF ADJECTIVES the DRIVELiNC but devilish spirit of New-England Abolitionism excites mingled feelings of pity, contempt, and scorn. The war which Lincoln is now waging upon the South is one of the most unrighteous, atrocious , and unjustifiable recorded in history. The guilt of its unnumbered and heaven-daring crimes rests heavily upon the head of the besotted tyrant by whom it is prosecuted for the gratification of his own unhallowed ambition and wicked revenge. The Ruler of the Universe certainly never designed that a mongrel race, composed of the débris of all the nations of Europe, swept upon its shores by the waves of the Atlantic — infidel and God-defying; presumptuous and Bible-ignoring; rife with every error and pernicious ism; cowardly, cruel, and treacherous — should exercise despotic authority over a Ciiristian people. Memphis Avalanche. 48 ...