"I-I cannot mix."

"What! not mix? not brew punch?" "No, sir; nor did I ever drink any." "Whew! but true, true; where the devil should you get punch! brought up at your mother's apron string, and treated with cider and sour beer, mush-and-milk, and molasses candy. Punch is a tipple fit for men; see me brew, and learn the art. First, never brew more than you can drink while it is hot, for, though punch improves by standing a short time, it is worth nothing cold. Rub half a dozen good-sized lumps of sugar on the outside of the lemon, then pare off the peel so rubbed, put it with the sugar into the pitcher, and pour over it about a wineglass full of hot water; incorporate them -dash in a tumbler full of whiskey-real Irish; nothing else—and fill up with the boiling water to within an inch of the brim. There, stir the ingredients well together, and then let the pitcher stand on the stove for a minute or two. Always observe, in whiskey punch, that the water must be boiling; in 'Rack Punch' it is vice versa, or it will not cream. Never put any of the juice or body of the lemon in whiskey punch, and the peel must be as free from the pith as possible. A spoonful of ice-cream gives a nice flavor to a pitcher of punch, and a few drops of oil of cloves or extract of bitter almonds impart a strange and spicy taste; but I prefer my punch as Falstaff did his sack, 'simple of itself.' There, taste that."

I was cold, cheerless and obedient. A large portion of the steaming fluid speedily vanished, and for the first time I was made acquainted with the glorious attributes of punch. The genial liquor diffused a grateful warmth throughout my frame, my senses quickened, my heart beat with an assured and strengthened pulse, my imagination seemed bursting with conceits, my tongue ran glibly, and for the first time I possessed sufficient confidence to look my dreaded uncle in the face.

and takes command of the prize craft next week, I'm told."

My brain, under the influence of the punch, instantly conceived a project of deliverance from the hated marriage. Suffering my uncle to run with his complaints, I had time to mature my plan, and a few more sips of punch gave me courage to execute it.

"Curse that ungrateful woman over the way!-a regular built fire-ship! I gave her a spaniel slut last week to match her favorite dog, and sent to Philadelphia for a couple of hen canaries for wives to that yellow little fellow in the cage there. Did I not marry her niece off her hands?— and though her rib did cut his cable in a month afterwards, that was no fault of mine. Did I not get her favorite housemaid a husband?-a sailor, too; none of your fresh-water swabs, or duckpond dandies, but a real blue-jacket, with a pair of whiskers as big as shoe-brushes. I should like to have spliced the widow, I must say; because her big Dutch coachman will not marry, do all I can; but if I had the command of him, he should wed

in a week or clear out."

"What a triumph for the major!" said I, with a sigh.

"Well, never mind; we have emptied the pitcher, so try your hand now at brewage. Punch is the real cordial balm of Gilead, the elixir vitæ my paregoric, my carminative, my soothing syrup, my panacea. Not too much sugar, Frank. When I lost my first ship, a pitcher or two of punch cured my tantrums. I have had three wives-enough acid there for a half a dozen, Frank-and when my first wife, who had bellows strong enough to hail the maintop in a white squall-when she began firing her heavy metal at me, I gave her a broadside of punch, steaming hot; then boarded her in the smoke, and always made her strike her flag. Plenty of spirit, Frank, for both of us. My second rib was fat and lazy, bluff built and round, like a Dutch skipper; nothing roused her but a sup of punch. Stir it up well, my boy. The third and last was young and spry, and followed me about like a tame goat; couldn't stand thatso, when I wanted a sly cruise, I used to bouse up her jib with a couple of horns, and then sailed where I pleased. I have seen three of them go down-how many more there may be, I can't say, but the

"The widow over the way seems something in a hurry for her second drink," said I, taking another sip. "It must be very galling to your feelings a veteran in the matrimonial service like you, to be beaten by a raw recruit."

"That's it a gun boat, a scow to outsail a liner! it's more than I can swallow," said my uncle, emptying his tumbler.

"Your laurels are stripped from your brow, certainly; and you must henceforth wear the willow. The laugh will be strong against you, I am afraid.”

"Ay, curse them! How they will chuckle and grin on the wedding-day!" "It would turn the laugh on your side, and show how little you feel the loss of the widow, if you could but get married first," said I, plumping in my long shot.

"So it would, Frank. Right, right; but where the d- am I to get a wife? I have spliced everybody together that I could get at. There are but three single women in the neighborhood-the widow, Epsy, and the yellow girl at the doctor's." "A very nice girl she is, too," said I, in all the pertness of punch.

"Mix me another pitcher, you amalgamating swab, and don't be impudent. As you say, though, if I could but sail into the port of wedlock before her, it would be a great victory."

"The only thing to save your reputation, uncle-if you could but get some one to have you. I would give you up any body but Epsy; but, really, I have taken so strong an interest in her

Epsy? ay, true-you like her, eh?" "How could I help it? I listened with delight to her sweet-toned voice, as she prattled in praise of my dear uncle.”

"Eh! what? praise me?"

"I never heard a woman so eloquent. Indeed, she spoke more tenderly about you than I approved; and when she is my wife, I shall have to take care of my insinuating uncle."

"Ah, uncle, you have proved your love in giving me so great a prize-not a giddy girl, but a steady, experienced woman, with a sufficiency of this world's wealth to justify the match. A prize that all the young fellows of her day have been unable to obtain. Then, too, how delightful the neighborhood!-so close to my dear uncle's house. Epsy tells me that her peach orchard joins your seven-acre lot. If you could but find another woman as desirable as Epsy, and be married upon the same day with your too happy nephew, what a glorious quadrangular batch of beatitude we should form!"

My uncle gave the burning logs a kick with his sound leg, and remained for some minutes in quiet cogitation. I knew that my interests were thriving, but I resolved to give them the coup de grâce.

"Epsy tells me that the major is a conceited coxcomb, and offered to back his chance against you with the widow at two to one. The honor of the family is positively at stake. What a pity that there is no single lady of your acquaintance in the neighborhood!-and the time is so short,

too."

My uncle rose, and commenced halting up and down the room.

"Epsy tells me that the widow means to have a splendid day of it. She says that this is the first wedding, about here, for six years, in which you have not been concerned."

This was a clincher, and brought him up all standing, as he would have said. He stopped right opposite to me, and filling up my tumbler, said, in a low, gentle tone of voice: "I had no idea you were so smart a lad; I never heard you talk so well before. I have a little commission for you to execute in New York-some private business, requiring peculiar address. I shall get your despatches ready to-night, and you must heave and away by daybreak. Finish your punch; go down and see your pony fed, and then turn into your hammock."

"Go to-morrow, sir? But Epsy, my dear Epsy-"

"I will see her in the morning, and make your excuses. You will have to stop at New York for a couple of weeks; here's an L for your expenses. Do not

bells."

My trip to New York was to take a letter to an old friend of my uncle; it could as well have gone by post, but I knew his meaning, and was but too glad to see him fall so readily into my trap. In a few days I received the following letter:

"DEAR NEPHEW :-I have just turned your wife that was to have been into your aunt that is-I beg your pardon for marrying your intended without letting you know; but, as you said, the honor of the family was concerned. We were spliced together more than ten minutes before the widow and her chum, so the major did not take precedence of the captain. Old Joe fired the pattereroes and gave the bunting a fly. I had ship's allowance on the lawn for all who liked to stop in; and Black Sam came down with his bugle, and kept tootlelooing all day. We drove the enemy away before dinner. I never shall forget their looks as they galloped off. I will bet drinks they quarrelled before bed-time. I should have liked you to have been there, but it would not have been decent. Do not be dull; I will pick you a rib before long. Cruise about till my honeymoon is over; and then let me see you again. I have enclosed something for a new outfit, and your aunt sends her love, and thinks you had better go and see your mother.

"Your affectionate uncle, "JABEZ SPRIGGS." Have I not reason to bless the operant powers of MY FIRST PUNCH?

BY WILLIAM E. BURTON. 1839.

IRISH DIAMONDS.

It is related of Sir Walter Scott, that, when in Ireland, he had occasion to give sixpence to a poor man for opening a gate, or some such passing service, and finding, after much search amongst his silver, that he had nothing less than a shilling, he handed it to the man, with the observation, "I only intended to give you half this sum, and therefore remember you owe me sixpence." Murphy's instant reply was, Oh! bless your honor! May you live till I pay you!

And it was a humorous association of ideas which was evinced by a beggar-woman on a very different occasion. She had pathetically implored alms from a

The Irish player gave a ready and humorous turn to the feeling with which he and his manager were involved, when the latter evinced some disappointment at the former declaring himself totally unable to play the part of Henry VIII. "Why you can play almost any thing and everything, and yet won't undertake the one part of King Henry VIII?”

"No, indeed," replied the actor, "I can't; but I'll tell you what I'll do for you-I'll play the two parts of Henry IV. and that will be aiqual."

When it was proposed to adopt the English measure of miles in Ireland, it was humorously objected that it would so increase the distance between the towns that travelers must rise earlier in the morning to perform their journeys.

Many an amusing adventure occurs at our fashionable watering-places, where so many people are congregated every season, that never gets "noised about ". at least, not outside of the narrow circle of the actors themselves and their immediate friends. But this one, somehow -just how you may be able to guess later on-did “leak out.”

One summer, not long ago, the most admired of all the beauties of the season, at the House, at was a dainty young bride, a leader of fashionable society in the city of whose husband had brought her to spend the last quarter of their honeymoon by the sea. She was daintiness itself-from the crown of her beautifully shaped and poised head down to the tips of the tiny slippers, which might almost have trodden upon rose leaves without so much as bending them, and which constantly reminded us 66 'old boys" of our favorite,

Sir John Suckling's, lines

66 'Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice, stole in and out,

As if they feared the light." Everything that she wore was of the daintiest of the dainty; hats, gloves (oh, how tiny they were!), parasols; the bewitching little breakfast-caps that she affected, without any seeming affectation; the bathing-dress that was a very delight to look upon, and that made her so entrancing that we wondered that the highly-favored sea didn't have sense, or sensibility, enough to devour her, not out of cruelty, but for her very sweetness; and those wonderful filmy, gauzy, airy robes that made her look like a veritable fairy-or even like a real angel, as many

of her bald-headed admirers thought-as she moved about through the ball-room at night, moving many hearts, young and old, to envy that big, hearty, handsome, happy lover-husband — himself hardly more than a boy in years-whom all the "dancing-men" praised for having "too much sense to be a bit jealous, you know!" Wherever she went and whatever she did, from her first appearance in the morning until her last merry "goodnight," she was surrounded by young fellows, ready to say and do any number of foolish things, in the hope of winning a smile from those merry, laughing, rosy, red-ripe lips, that it would have been worth a king's ransom to kiss once-even in a cousinly or paternal way, you know!

But though she had a smile for every one-for her life, just then, was all smiles, and the tears that we knew must come in after-years were not even dreamed of-every one saw that her whole heart belonged to that lucky, big, boyish lover-husband, who followed her everywhere, like a huge, faithful, petted Newfoundland dog-her "Ned," as she called him, in a voice that told whole volumes full of tenderness and trust. And when her eyes rested upon him-well, there wasn't one of us "old boys" who wouldn't have marched straight up to a loaded cannon's mouth with a light heart for a fair, fighting chance of winning one such look from such eyes.

One night after one of those balls, that brought so much of happiness to the young and so much of memory and regret to those of us whose dancing-days were over years and years ago; when dancers and musicians were silent and only the sea sang its low nightly serenade to the unsentimental stars; when the last footstep of the very last habitué of the bar-room had ceased to echo in the now silent and deserted corridors of the hotel, it so happened that "Ned" lay doubled up in his bed with a terrible attack of cramps, and suffering that mortal agony from which even a happy young bridegroom is not always exempt.

What was to be done? There were bells, of course, as there always are in first-class" seaside hotels; but with that habitual contrariness that is the marked characteristic of such bells just when they are most wanted, they refused to ring or to be rung. She tried them again and again, in the hope of summon