The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1870-01-27

SEALs.-Mrs. Calhoun, in recent letter
to the New York ITibune describing hel
first view of the Pacific ocean, thus elo'
quently gives the seal piece Of her mind
"a hundred yards out to sea rises boldly
and alone broad, jagged, and slippery
broken hump of dark rock, with O smaller
hump or two reaching out like prongs. II
looks rs high as sloop's mast, and thrice
us wide as that sloop's hull but [ am
proud of not knowing its cubic contents be-
cause I have been told 80 often. The sea
gives it no rest, but beats and beats against
it, and booms in its clefts with sound OF
terror. Lying on the lodges of this rock,
struggling up the broken sides, lifting
strange, hateful heads and fabby chests
above the water, to founder out on the shout
der of the rising wave, threatening each
other in horrible, short, inalticulate bark
ing speech, bask and complain the zeal s.
the sea-lions, as they are called. They are
like huge mud-turtles, in. the way their
short, wide, ugly, cartillaginous paddles of
legs are set on their big bodies. They are
like COWS in the numbering awkwardness of
their motion. They are like reptiles IN
their clinging and winding. They are like
human idiots in the matching of their little
slanting heads to their overgrown, under
organized bodies. They are like coarser
buffalo in their hairy hides when dry, and
like velvet otter in their shining fur when
wet. They fight without dignity, because
they are so ignoble in motion and attitude.
They play without gamesomeness, because
they are such. loutish blubber and bulk.
They laugh without mirth, and moan with
out pathos, and scream without energy
Even with their young their care and ten
derness seem dreadful travesty of arela-
ton permitted only to higher orders. Nc
living creature ever made, me, 80 wholly
miserable as they did. They seem to have
| tried in so many ways to be o success and
to have so utterly failed in all. 1t was
such dreadful exhibition Of arrested de-
yelopment. It was such q heartless cruelty
on the part of Nature to put them in those
bodies. She is pitiless enough to human
creatures often, but I never knew before
how sardonic her blacklist mood can be. Ii
she meant to teach us how repulsive, IT we
could but see it, is an arrested moral de-
velopment, what deformity is the soul
that fails to grow in all directions 1t was
not the less merciless to the wretohed ex-
ample. / suppose our failures are always
needed by the better man who is to profit
by them, whether he be our better self or
q later conner. But oh the bitterness OF
the failures! Moral: Mantalini's: Life
is demnition grind "-Es -. Ks rs.
"They say that these seals have beauti-
full eyes. I hope they have, poor things.
In the tales of enchantment it is always the
beautiful eyes that reveal the wronged
soul and in the seals they no doubt
phrophesy a bird Of paradise existence in
the next sphere-or, better still, o human
1t is said, too, that they are wonderfully in,
telligent and cunning but I hope they are
not, because they must oil then find out al
some time how ugly, they are, and bear
broken heart thenceforth till death heals it
The seal world is very fashionable circle
no doubt as they reckon these things, TO,
the creatures are so insane, and do the Same
thing over and over with such idiotic per
sistency,. They founder up their rock t
lie in the sun awhile and bark and quarrel
and when they are dry they lumber dow
again to pitch heavily into the seq. on thu
crest of some incoming wave, and there
they eat and swim and drift till they ar
minded to try the rock once more-and tha
is life day in and day out. ..ls.,a *