FLIGHT. O Memory! that which I gave thee To guard in thy garner yestreenLittle deeming thou e'er couldst behave thee Thus basely-hath gone from thee clean! Gone, fled, as ere autumn is ended The yellow leaves flee from the oak- What was it? I know I was brushing I know that I felt myself blushing As I thought, "How supremely absurd! I had thought to lead up conversation Of the moment, that masterly pun,- In the midst of a dazzled conclave, I had fancied young Titterton's chuckles, Have all been about? I know 'twas the happiest, quaintest I think it was somehow connected With something I'd recently read Or heard-or perhaps recollected Did it hinge upon "parting asunder?" It was something a deal more recondite : Of that I am certain enough; And of nothing beyond it. Hair-locks! There are probably many But that wasn't it. No mine was a joke for the ages: How it would have rejoiced Sydney Smith! But what was the word? Ah me! 'tis a bootless endeavor. C. S. CALVERLEY. CABBY'S REPLY TO MACKINTOSH. Perhaps the best specimen of open wit now in circulation is that of the London cabby's retort to the head of the Highland clan, Mackintosh. "Do you know who I am?" asked the haughty Highlander of a cabman attempting, as Mackintosh thought, to overcharge him, "I'm the Mackintosh." "I don't care," said the cabby, "if you were the umbrella, I mean to have my fare." The only thing that has been taught 303 Don Quixote is, after all, the defender of the oppressed, the champion of lost causes, and the man of noble aberrations. Woe to the centuries without Don Quixote ! Nothing remains to them but Sancho Panzas. -A. de Gasparin. God took his softest clay and his purest colors, and made a fragile jewel, mysterious and caressing-the finger of a woman; then he fell asleep. The devil awoke, and at the end of that rosy finger puta nail. -Victor Hugo. God created the coquette as soon as he had made the fool. -Victor Hugo. At eighteen, one adores at once; at twenty-one, one loves; at thirty, one desires; at forty, one reflects. -P. de Kock. Nature, when she amused herself by giving stiff manners to old maids, put virtue in a very bad light. A woman must have been a mother to preserve under the chilling influences of time that grace of manner and sweetness of temper which prompt us to say, "One sees that love has dwelt there." -Lemontey. Gravity is a stratagem invented to conceal the poverty of the mind. -La Rochefoucauld. Since Cupid is represented with a torch in his hand, why did they place virtue on a barrel of gunpowder? -Lévis. A jest that makes a virtuous woman only smile often frightens away a prude; but, when real danger forces the former to flee, the latter does not hesitate to advance. -Latena. -Mme. de Lambert. We like to know the weakness of successfully to women is to wear becom-eminent persons: it consoles us for our ingly the fig-leaf they received from their inferiority. first mother. Everything that is said and repeated for the first eighteen or twenty years of a woman's life is reduced to this: My daughter take care of your fig-leaf;" "your fig-leaf becomes you;" "your figleaf does not become you." -Diderot. The world is a masked ball. It is easier for a woman to defend her virtue against men, than her reputation against women. -Rochebrune. Society is divided into two classes: the fleecers and the fleeced. -Talleyrand. Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts. -Talleyrand. Fools never understand people of wit. In love, as in war, a fortress that parleys is half taken. -Marguerite de Valois. He who knows his incapacity, knows something. -Marguerite de Valois. We shall all be perfectly virtuous when there is no longer any flesh on our bones. -Marguerite de Valois, Jest with life, for that only is it good. -Voltaire. If as much care were taken to perpetuate a race of fine men as is done to prevent the mixture of ignoble blood in horses and dogs, the genealogy of every one would be written on his face and disPleasures are like liqueurs: they must played in his manners. be drunk but in small glasses. -Romainville. At the age of sixty, to marry a beautiful girl of sixteen is to imitate those ignorant people who buy books to be read by their friends. -A. Ricard. The stomach is a slave that must accept everything that is given to it, but which avenges wrongs as slyly as the slave does. A HORSE LAUGH. -Voltaire. A coachman, extolling the sagacity of one of his horses, observed, that "if anybody was to go for to use him ill, he would bear malice like a Christian.” FOR THE HEATHEN. A the correspondent of Boston Traveller records the following: A bright little boy about four years of age, son of a clergyman, was at your correspondent's house one evening with his parents, and I gave him a couple of five cent pieces. He laid them on the table, and putting his finger on one said, “This one I am The hell for women who are only hand- other one I am going to keep myself." going to give to the heathen, and the some is old age. -E. Souvestre. -Saint Evremond. The virtue of widows is a laborious virtue they have to combat constantly with the remembrance of past bliss. -St. Jerome. He played with them awhile, till finally one of them rolled away and he could not find it. "Well," said I, "my lad, which one have you lost?" "Oh," said he, "I have lost the one I was going to give to the heathen." gave us. By-the-by, did you know that Mrs. Gnu has actually bought the blue OUR NEW LIVERY, AND OTHER velvet? It's too bad, because I wanted THINGS. A LETTER FROM MRS. POTIPHAR TO MISS CAROLINE PETTITOES. [GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, LL.D., was born in Rhode Island in 1824. In early life he was clerk with a merchant of New York. In 1842 he and a brother joined the Brook Farm Association, near Roxbury, Mass., and from there both went out as farmers. In 1846 he visited the old world, and, on returning, published "Nile Notes of a Howadji," comprising his observations in Egypt. Two years later came "The Howadji in Syria." About this period he undertook the editorship of a new monthly magazine (Putnam's), and was a frequent contributor to the New York Tribune. After the suspension of the magazine (in which Curtis was a heavy loser), he lectured, and wrote for the Harpers, particularly "The Editor's Easy Chair" in the New Monthly Magazine, a series of papers regularly continued to the present date to cover my prayer-book with blue, and she sits so near, the effect of my book will be quite spoiled. Dear me! there she is beckoning to me: good-by, do come and see us; Tuesdays, you know. Well, Lawson really does very well." I was so mad with the old thing, that I could not help catching her by her mantle and holding on while I whispered, loud enough for everybody to hear: "Mrs. Croesus, you see I have just got my bonnet from Paris. It's made after the Empress's. If you would like to have yours made over in the fashion, dear Mrs. Croesus, I shall be so glad to lend you mine." "No, thank you, dear," said she, "Law (1885). He has, for a long period, been the chief editor son won't do for me. By-by." of Harper's Weekly, a very widely circulated illustrated journal. Among his separate works, not already mentioned, are "Lotus Eating;" "Prue and I," "Trumps;" and the "Potiphar Papers." He is one of the Regents of the University of New York. He is popular as a lecturer, and eminent as a political orator, and is master of a clear and finished literary style. From his "Potiphar Papers," published by Messrs. Harper & Brothers, of New York, the following is an extract :] NEW YORK, April. MY DEAR CAROLINE,-Lent came so frightfully early this year, that I was very much afraid my new bonnet, à l'Impératrice, would not be out from Paris soon enough. But fortunately it arrived just in time, and I had the satisfaction of taking down the pride of Mrs. Croesus, who fancied hers would be the only stylish hat in church the first Sunday. She could not keep her eyes away from me, and I sat so unmoved, and so calmly looking at the Doctor, that she was quite vexed. But, whenever she turned away, I ran my eyes over the whole congregation, and would you believe that, almost without exception, people had their old things? However, I suppose they forgot how soon Lent was coming. As I was passing out of church, Mrs. Croesus brushed by me. And so she slipped out, and, I've no doubt, told Mrs. Gnu, that she had seen my bonnet at Lawson's. Isn't it too bad? Then she is so abominably cool. Somehow, when I am talking with Mrs. Croesus, who has all her own things made at home, I don't feel as if mine came from Paris at all. She has such a way of looking at you, that it's quite dreadful. She seems to be saying in her mind, "La! now, well done, little dear." And Í think, that kind of mental reservation (I think that's what they call it) is an insupportable impertinence. However, I don't care, do you? I've so many things to tell you that I hardly know where to begin. The great thing is the livery, but I want to come regularly up to that, and forget nothing by the way. I was uncertain for a long time how to have my prayer-book bound. Finally, after thinking about it a great deal, I concluded to have it done in pale blue velvet, with gold clasps, and a gold cross upon its side. To be sure, it's nothing very new. But what is new nowa-days? Sally Shrimp has had hers done in emerald, and I know Mrs. Croesus will have crimson for her's, and those people who sit next to us in church (I wonder who they are; it's very unpleasant to sit next to people you don't know; and, positively, that girl, the dark-haired one "Ah!" said she, "good morning. Why with large eyes, carries the same muff she bless me! you've got that pretty hat I did last year; it's big enough for a famsaw at Lawson's. Well, now, it's really ily) have a kind of brown morocco quite pretty; Lawson has some taste left binding. I must tell you one reason why yet; what a lovely sermon the Doctor I fixed upon the pale blue. You know VOL. IV-W. H. 20 that aristocratic-looking young man, in white cravat, and black pantaloons and waistcoat, whom we saw at Saratoga a year ago, and who always had such a beautiful, sanctimonious look, and such small white hands; well, he is a minister, as we supposed "an unworthy candidate, an unprofitable husbandman," as he calls himself in that delicious voice of his. He has been quite taken up among He has been asked a good deal to dinner, and there was hope of his being settled as colleague to the Doctor, only Mr. Potiphar (who can be stubborn, you know) insisted that the Rev. Cream Cheese, though a very good young man, he didn't doubt, was addicted to candlesticks. I suppose that's something awful. But, could you believe anything awful of him? I asked Mr. Potiphar what he meant by saying such things. us. "I mean,” said he, "that he is a Puseyite, and I've no idea of being tied to the apron-strings of the Scarlet Woman." Dear Caroline, who is the Scarlet Woman! Dearest, tell me, upon your honor, if you have ever heard of any scandal of Mr. Potiphar. "What is it about candlesticks?" said I to Mr. Potiphar. "Perhaps Mr. Cheese finds gas too bright for his eyes; and that's his misfortune, not his fault." "Polly," said Mr. Potiphar-who will call me Polly, although it sounds so very vulgar "please not to meddle with things you don't understand. You may have Cream Cheese to dinner as much as you choose, but I will not have him in the pulpit of my church." The same day, Mr. Cheese happened in about lunch-time, and I asked him if his eyes were really weak. "Not at all," said he; "why do you ask?" Then I told him that I had heard he was so fond of candlesticks. Ah! Caroline, you should have seen him then. He stopped in the midst of pouring out a glass of Mr. P.'s best old port, and holding the decanter in one hand, and the glass in the other, he looked so beautifully sad, and said in that sweet, low voice: "Dear Mrs. Potiphar, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." Then he filled up his glass, and drank the wine off with such a mournful, resigned air, and wiped his lips so gently with his cambric handkerchief (I saw that it was a hem-stitch), that I had no voice to ask him to take a bit of the cold chicken, which he did, however, without my asking him. But when he said in the same low voice, “A little more breast, dear Mrs. Potiphar," I was obliged to run into the drawing-room for a moment to recover myself. Well, after he had lunched, I told him that I wished to take his advice upon something connected with the church (for a prayer-book is you know, dear), and he looked so sweetly at me, that, would you believe it, I almost wished to be a Catholic, and to confess three or four times a week, and to have him for my confessor. But it's very wicked to wish to be a Catholic, and it wasn't real much, you know: but somehow I thought so. When I asked him in what velvet he would advise me to have my prayer-book bound, he talked beautifully for about twenty minutes. I wish you could have heard him. I'm not sure that I understood much of what he said-how should I?-but it was very beautiful. Don't laugh, Carrie, but there was one thing I did understand, and which, as it came pretty often, quite helped me through: it was, "Dear Mrs. Potiphar;" you can't tell how nicely he says it. He began by telling me that it was very important to consider all the details and little things about the church. He said they were all timbales or cymbals -or something of that kind; and then he talked very prettily about the stole, and the violet and scarlet capes of the cardinals, and purple chasubles, and the lace edge of the Pope's little short gown; and- do you know it was very funnybut it seemed to me, somehow, as if I was talking with Portier or Florine Lefevre, except that he used such beautiful words. Well, by and by, he said: "Therefore, dear Mrs. Potiphar, as your faith is so pure and childlike, and as I observe that the light from the yellow panes usually falls across your pew, I would advise that you cymbalize your faith (wouldn't that be noisy in church?) by binding your prayer-book in pale blue, the color of skim-milk, dear Mrs Potiphar, which is so full of pastoral associations." Why did he emphasize the word "pastoral?" Do you wonder that I like Cream Cheese, dear Caroline, when he is so gentle and religious-and such a pretty religion, too! For he is not only well |