in bad taste; if, on the contrary, the reader obtains the proper idea involved in it, and intended to be conveyed by it, it will not only appear justifiable but command his respect. In the popular phraseology of the day, this word has become familiar as the representative of the Government and the people of the United States. It involves also the idea of the native-born inhabitants of the land, in opposition to the foreign element which helps to make up the immense and heterogeneous aggregate of our existing population. In using this word “Sam," therefore, the author was justified, inasmuch as it is a term already familiar to most readers.
But the writer has somewhat enlarged and expanded the meaning which he attaches to this word. By it he intended to signify and embody the conception of “Young America," of the “Genius of American Liberty," of the “Onward Pathway of Destiny and Empire." All these grand and imposing conceptions the writer embodies, and wishes to express, by the use of this laconic epithet; and if the reader, in perusing these diversified and checkered pages, will bear this explanation in memory, he will in all .cas38 readily, penetrate the meaning of the writer, and never : be- iäcoritmöded: by any apparent obscurity.