us, in a case of delicate distress; say, "The Honourable Mr
Augustus Bouverie was struck in a heap with horror. He rushed with a
frantic grace, a deliberate haste, and a graceful awkwardness, and
whispered in her ear these dread and awful words, `IT IS TOO LATE!'"
Follow up with a -- and Finis.

_A_. I see; the fair and agitated reader will pass a sleepless night in
endeavouring to decipher the mutilated sentence. She will fail, and
consequently call the book delightful. But should there not have been a
marriage previously to this happy awful climax?

_B_. Yes; everything is arranged for the nuptials--carriages are sent
home, jewellery received but not paid for, dresses all tried on, the
party invited--nay, assembled in the blue-and-white drawing-room. The
right reverend my lord bishop is standing behind the temporary altar--he
has wiped his spectacles and thumbed his prayer-book--all eyes are
turned towards the door, which opens not--the bride faints, for the
bridegroom cometh not--he's not "i' the vein"--a something, as like
nothing as possible, has given him a disgust that is surmountable--he
flings his happiness to the winds, though he never loved with more
outrageous intensity than at the moment he discards his mistress; so he
fights three duels with the two brothers and father. He wounds one of
the young men dangerously, the other slightly; fires his pistol in the
air when he meets her father--for how could he take the life of him who
gave life to his adored one? Your hero can always hit a man just where
he pleases--vide every novel in Mr C's collection. The hero becomes
misanthropical, the heroine maniacal. The former marries an antiquated
and toothless dowager, as an escape from the imaginary disgust he took
at a sight of a matchless woman; and the latter marries an old brute,
who threatens her life every night, and puts her in bodily fear every
morning, as an indemnity in full for the loss of the man of her
affections. They are both romantically miserable; and then comes on
your tantalising scenes of delicate distress, and so the end of your
third volume, and then finish without any end at all. _Verb. sap. sat_.
Or, if you like it better, kill the old dowager of a surfeit, and make
the old brute who marries the heroine commit suicide; and, after all
these unheard-of trials, marry them as fresh and beautiful as ever.

_A_. A thousand thanks. Your _verba_ are not thrown to a _sap_. Can I
possibly