ou can
judge what my feelings amounted to, when I have lived one whole month in
a boarding-house and couldn't get up an appetite--no, not even for the
whitest meat of the breast! Old as the hills, indeed!

XX.

ABOUT LIONS.

Dear sisters:--Cousin E. E. had invited a lot of her friends to a
stupendous dinner-party on Christmas Day, and she wanted me there for a
lion, she said, though what on earth a great roaring lion had to do at a
dinner-table I couldn't begin to think. The idea made me fidgety; but I
didn't think it consistent with the dignity of our Society to ask
questions, or let any one know that I didn't understand everything just
as well as folks that have lived in York all their lives. Still I
couldn't help trying to circumvent Cousin E. E. into telling me what I
wanted to know in a way that some people might call femininely
surreptitious.

"A lion!" says I. "Are such animals invited to a city dinner as a
general thing?"

"Oh! not at all," says she; "the most difficult thing in the world to
get hold of is a real, genuine lion; that is, one the whole world knows
about, and wants to see."

"Why," says I, "if folks are so anxious about it, why don't they go up
to the Rink and see Mr. Barnum's great monster animal. It don't cost
much; besides, there are camels and monkeys, and lots and lots of
things, thrown in."

Cousin Emily Elizabeth laughed till tears come into her eyes.

"Oh! Cousin Phoemie," says she, "you are so delightfully satirical."

"Do you think so?" says I, awfully puzzled.

"Yes," says she, "I do; but to me the eccentricities of genius are
always interesting. To be an attractive lion one must say bright things,
no matter how hard they cut."

"I wasn't aware," says I, "that lions were given to much talking."

"Oh!" says she, "that depends. There is your talkative lion, your
learned lion, your silent lion--"

"That is the sort that I've always seen," says I; "now and then a growl,
but nothing beyond that."

Cousin E. E. began to laugh again, till she had to hold one hand to her
side.

"Oh! cousin, paws, paws," says she; "you just kill me with laughing."

"Yes," says I, "I don't deny that lions have paws, but it was speech we
were talking about, and that I do deny."

Cousin E. E. just shrieked out laughing, though for the life of me I
couldn't tell what it was all about.

"Now, don't you understand me--honest now--don't you?" says she.

"Why, of course I do; only nothin