Venus. Behold it!"

And Mellasys held up a highly colored caricature, covering one whole
side of my friend's sheet.

Saccharissa rose from the sofa where she had been sitting during the
whole of my trial.

She stood before me,--really I cannot deny it,--a little, ugly, vulgar
figure, overloaded with finery, and her laces and ribbons trembled with
rage.

She seemed not to be able to speak, and, by way of relieving herself of
her overcharge of wrath, smote me several times on either ear with that
pudgy hand I had so often pressed in mine or tenderly kissed.

At this exhibition of a resentment I can hardly deem feminine, the
Fire-Eaters roared with laughter and cheered her to continue. A circle
of negroes also, at the window, expressed their amusement at the scene
in the guttural manner of their race.

I could not refrain from tears at these unhappy exhibitions on the part
of my betrothed. They augured ill for the harmony of our married life.

"Hit him again, Rissy! he's got no friends," that vulgar Plickaman
urged.

She again advanced, seized me by the hair, and shook me with greater
muscular force than I should have expected of one of her indolent
habits. Delicacy for her sex of course forbade my offering resistance;
and besides, there were my two sentries, roaring with vulgar laughter,
but holding their pistols with a most unpleasant accuracy of aim at my
head.

"Saccharissa, my love," I ventured to say, in a pleading tone, "these
momentary ebullitions of a transitory rage will give the bystanders
unfavorable impressions of your temper."

"You horrid little wretch!" she screeched, "you sneak! you irreligious
infidel! you Black Republican! you Aminadab!"----

Here her unnecessary passion choked her, and she took advantage of
the pause to handle my hair with extreme violence. The sensation was
unpleasant, but I began to hope that no worse would befall me, and
I knew that with a few dulcet words in private I could remove from
Saccharissa's mind the asperity induced by my friend's caricature.

"I leave it to you, gentlemen," said she, "whether I am vulgar, as this
fellow's correspondence asserts."

"Certainly not," said Judge Pyke. "You are one of the most high-toned
beauties in the sunny South, the land of the magnolia and the papaw."

"Your dignity," said Major Licklickin, "is only surpassed by your grace,
and both by your queenly calmness."

The others also gave her the best compliments they could, poo