MARIA has passed a night of unhappiness. Hopes and fears are knelling¹ in the morning, which brings nothing to relieve her anxiety for the absent one; and Mr. Snivel has taken the precaution to have the news of the lost ship find its way into the papers.

 

And while our city seems in a state of very general excitement; while great placards on every street corner inform the wondering stranger that a mighty² Convention (presided over by the Hon. S. Snivel) for dissolving the Union, is shortly to be holden; while our political world has got the Union on its shoulders, and threatens to throw it into the nearest ditch; while our streets swarm³ with long, lean, and very hairy-faced delegates (all lusty of war and secession), who have dragged themselves into the city to drink no end of whiskey, and say all sorts of foolish things their savage⁴ and half-civilized constituents⁵ are expected to applaud; while our more material and conservative citizens are thinking what asses⁶ we make of ourselves; while the ship-of-war we built to fight the rest of the Union, lies an ugly lump in the harbor, and "won't go over the bar;" while the "shoe-factory" we established to supply niggerdom with soles, is snuffed out for want of energy and capacity to manage it; while some of our non-slaveholding, but most active secession merchants, are moving seriously in the great project of establishing a "SOUTHERN CANDLE-FACTORY"--a thing much needed in the "up-country;" while our graver statesmen (who don't get the State out of the Union fast enough for the ignorant rabble⁷, who have nothing but their folly⁸ at stake) are pondering over the policy of spending five hundred thousand dollars for the building of another war-ship-one that "will go over the bar;" and while curiously-written letters from Generals Commander and Quattlebum, offering to bring their

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