ree wound around with Ivy, beneath which, is
the inscription in Spanish: '_Se no la vida porque la muerte._'
(RADOWITZ, _Gesammelte Schriften_.) A not uncommon seal gives us the Ivy
with the motto; 'I die where I attach myself;' while yet another of the
ivied fallen trees declares that 'Even ruin cannot separate us.'

Ivy is the badge of the clan Gordon, and of all who bear that name. In
conclusion, lest my readers should object that the subject, though
eminently suggestive, has been treated entirely without a jest, I will
cite a quaint repartee, shockingly destructive of the sentiment just
cited:

'Woman,' said a lovelorn youth, 'is like Ivy--the more you are ruined,
the closer she clings to you.'

'And the closer she clings to you, the sooner you are ruined,' replied
an old cynic of a bachelor.

Poor man! He had never realized the truth of the French saying, that to
enjoy life, there is nothing like being ruined a little.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _New Curiosities of Literature, and Book of the Months._ BY GEORGE
SOANE, B.A. London, 1849, Vol. i., p. 57.

[2] _The Poetical History._ By P. GALTRUCHIUS. London 1678.

[3] Galtruchuis, c. 7.

[4] 'Hedera quo que vel laurus et hujusmodi, quae semper servant virorem,
in sarcophago corpori substernantur, ad significandum, quod qui
moriuntur in Christo, vivere non desinant; nam licet mundo moriantur
secundum corpus, tamen secundum animam vivunt et reviviscunt in
Deo.'--DURANDUS, _Ration. Div. Offic._, lib. vii., cap 35.

[5] BERTY, _Dictionnaire de l'Architecture du Moyen Age_. Paris, 1845.

[6] 'Ye myrtles brown, and ivy never sere.' MILTON'S _Lycidas_.

[7] 'Poculum ex hedera, cissybium dictum, ratione duplici conviviis
summe est accomodum: imprimis, quod hedera vini temulantiam, arcere
fertur: deinde quod cauponum fraudes, qui vinum aqua miscent, eo poculo
deprehenduntur.'--_Memorabilium, Utilium ac Jucundorum Centuriae Novem,
&c._ Paris, 1566.

THE MISHAPS OF MISS HOBBS.

'New beauties push her from the stage;
She trembles at the approach of age;
And starts, to view the altered face
That wrinkles at her in her glass.'

TRUMBULL'S _Progress of Dulness_.

CHAPTER I.

Ann Harriet Hobbs was getting cured of her youth. 'She was going
backward,' as the French say of people when Time is running forward, and
they themselves are being forwarded a little too rapidly by his Express.
All the ladies said so of her; all the gentlemen said so; and, w