science and experience dat it require to make de soup, de omelette

Col. The mischief take your omelette, sir. Do you mean seriously and gravely to ask me seven hundred pounds a year for your services?

Ris. Oui, vraiment, mon col-o-nel. (Taking a pinch of snuff from a gold snuff-box.)

Col. Why, then, sir, I can't stand this any longer. Seven hundred pounds! Double it, sir, and I'll be your cook for the rest of my life. Good morning, sir. (In an angry manner, advancing towards Rissolle, who retreats out of the door.) Seven hundred pounds! Seven hundred-mon col-o-nelrascal !

MY AUNT.-O. W. HOLMES.

My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!
Long years have o'er her flown;
Yet still she strains the aching clasp
That binds her virgin zone :

I know it hurts her, though she looks
As cheerful as she can :

Her waist is ampler than her life,

For life is but a span.

My aunt! my poor deluded aunt!
Her hair is almost gray:
Why will she train that winter curl
In such a spring-like way?
How can she lay her glasses down,
And say she reads as well,
When, through a double convex lens,
She just makes out to spell.

Her father-grandpapa! forgive

This erring lip its smiles

Vowed she would make the finest girl

Within a hundred miles.

He sent her to a stylish school

'T was in her thirteenth June; And with her, as the rules required, "Two towels and a spoon."

They braced my aunt against a board,
To make her straight and tall;

They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light and small;

They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
They screwed it up with pins;-

Oh, never mortal suffered more
In penance for her sins!

So, when my precious aunt was done,
My grandsire brought her back;
(By daylight, lest some rabid youth
Might follow on the track.)
"Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook!
Some powder in his pan,

"What could this lovely creature do

Against a desperate man ?"

Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,
Nor bandit cavalcade,

Tore from the father's trembling arms

His all-accomplished maid.

For her how happy had it been!
And heaven had spared to me
To see one sad, ungathered rose
On my ancestral tree.

THE DUEL-HOOD.

IN Brentford town, of old renown,
There lived a Mister Bray,

Who fell in love with Lucy Bell,

And so did Mister Clay.

To see her ride from Hammersmith,
By all it was allowed,

Such fair outside* was never seen,—

An angel on a cloud.

Said Mr. Bray to Mr. Clay,

"You choose to rival me

And court Miss Bell; but there your cour
No thoroughfare shall be.

Unless you now give up your suit,
You may repent your love;-

I, who have shot a pigeon match,
Can shoot a turtle-dove.

And so

unless

I say to you,
Your passion quiet keeps

I, who have shot, and hit bulls' eyes
May chance to hit a sheep's."

Now gold is oft for silver changed,
And that for copper red;
But these two went away to give

Each other change for lead

But first they found a friend apiece,

This pleasant thought to give

That when they both were dead, they'd have

Two seconds yet to live.

* In England, women frequently ride on the outside of stage-coucnes,

To measure out the ground, not long
The seconds next forbore;

And having taken one rash step,

They took a dozen more.

They next prepared cach pistol pan,
Against the deadly strife;
By putting in the prime of death,
Against the prime of life.

Now all was ready for the foes;

But when they took their stands, Fear made them tremble so, they found They both were shaking hands.

Said Mr. C. to Mr. B.,

"Here one of us may fall,

And, like St. Paul's Cathedral now,

Be doomed to have a ball.

I do confess I did attach

Misconduct to your name!

If I withdraw the charge, will then
Your ramrod do the same ?"

Said Mr. B., "I do agree ;—
But think of Honor's courts,—

If we be off without a shot,

There will be strange reports.

But look! the morning now is bright,

Though cloudy it begun ;

Why can't we aim above, as if
We had called out the sun ?"

PADDY'S METAMORPHOSIS.-THOMAS MOORE.

ABOUT fifty years since, in the days of our daddies
That plan was commenced which the wise now applaud,
Of shipping off Ireland's most turbulent Paddies
As good raw materials for settlers abroad.

Some West Indian island, whose name I forget,

Was the region then chosen for the scheme so romantie And such the success the first colony met,

That a second, soon after, set sail o'er the Atlantic.

Behold them now safe at the long-looked for shore,

Sailing in between banks that the Shannon might greet > And thinking of friends, whom but two years before, They had sorrowed to lose, but would soon again meet

And, hark! from the shore a glad welcome there came"Arrah, Paddy from Cork, is it you, my swate boy ?" While Pat stood astounded, to hear his own name,

Thus hailed by black creatures, who capered for joy

Can it possibly be ?-half amazement-half doubt,

Pat listens again-rubs his eyes and looks steady; Then heaves a deep sigh, and in horror yells out :-"Dear me !-only think-black and curly already!"

Deceived by that well-mimicked brogue in his ears,
Pat read his own doom in these wool-headed figures,
And thought, what a climate, in less than two years,
To turn a whole cargo of Pats into niggers!

MORAL.

'Tis thus, but alas !—by a marvel more true

Than is told in this rival of Ovid's best stories,
Your Whigs, when in office a short year or two,
By a lusus naturæ, all turn into Tories.