Two Marginal Notes From Cæsar's Commentaries

— The other day, turning the leaves of a still militant copy of Cæsar’s Commentaries, I came upon two unique specimens of Latin prose composition, written in the frank round hand of the book’s youthful owner. These were so happy in their way that they caused me to sigh that my young friend was not permitted to write for antiquity. To have laid before the elegant Kikero or the doughty Kæsar these terse, if post-classical, sentences from the memorabilia of Young America’s wit and wisdom would have been indeed a compensation to them for the toil they must have endured in getting their redoubtable works ready for parsing.

Frigida dies est quum relinquimur.

Nullæ muscæ super nos.

While I was stealthily jotting down these pleasant trifles, the voice of their author reached me from the playground, where he was giving joyous direction to some exercise of the modern palæstra, —“ Ignis via! ” and his comrades accordingly “fired away.”