t which artists so love to dwell
upon;--this is the Hon. MICHAEL LADLE, brother of the late TIMOTHY, a
Western Member of Congress, and a grass widower.

This girl of the period, whose saucy black eyes bear down on you like a
twenty-four gun frigate; looking as it were through you, and counting
the hairs on the back of your neck, is Miss BELINDA LADLE, daughter of
the deceased TIMOTHY, and step-daughter to the hostess who was TIM'S
second matrimonial venture, you understand.

This young woman mounts a lager-beer cask, and stops the buzz of
conversation by bringing her mallet down with a smart rap upon the head
of the nearest bald-headed gentleman.

"Attention, company," said she--"Stand up straight, and look as well as
you can.--_Take_--mallets."

While the guests are boisterously laughing, with that rare appreciation
of refined humor peculiar to the West, Mrs. LADLE, the proper, attempts
an indignant remonstrance, but is interrupted by the Hon. MICHAEL.

"Oh, let the little gal have her tantrums, sister-in-law," said he.
"Mebbe _you_ was young once, though nobody now living could swear to
it."

"Come," interrupted BELINDA, "we've had gassin' enough. Choose your
partners. Mildewed age, before infantile beauty. Mother-in-law, go in."

The extremely respectable and highly dignified female last alluded to
shook her fist at BELINDA on the sly, and said:

"I'll take ANN BRUMMET."

The lady who stepped forward at this summons was greeted with a wide
stare, and every eye-glass was focussed.

She was a remarkable-looking female. She wasn't exactly handsome, but
there was a sort of a something about her, you understand,
that--ah--riveted the gaze of folks generally, you see, and a
fellow--ah--caught himself looking the second time, as you may say--and
ah--it wasn't style either, for one shoulder was higher than the other,
and her hair was done up in a bob, and she took awful long steps, and
swung her arms as far as they would go each way; and her collar looked
as though she'd slept in it, and she wore rubbers like a school-ma'am.

And you couldn't say 'twas regularity of features exactly, either, for
her eyes were too limited in circumference, and her nose too numerous in
diameter; and her mouth monopolized too much latitude, and she had a
hair-mole on one cheek, and faint dawnings of a moustache on her upper
lip. But in spite of these trivial eccentricities, you felt when you
looked at her, as I said before--ah--a s