place to
the accomplishments.... As for the exercise--we do, two or three
times a week, file down the street, then file back again--are thus
exhibited to the admiring gaze of the Esquires, Reverends, and
Honorables, (see circular.) The 'quiet saddle-horse' (see circular)
is a 'poetic fiction,' a 'pious fraud'--as much a myth as Pegasus
himself. Though there is a tradition in the school that, a short
time after the founding of the establishment, the late lamented
husband of Mrs. Smith, who was fond of equestrian exercise, kept a
horse--which a parlor-boarder, niece of Mrs. Smith, was allowed to
ride--hence the provision in the circular. One part of it is
correct--he doubtless is now a _very_ quiet saddle-horse--that is,
if he had not the tenacity of life of the _lamb_ that, judging from
the savory odor, we are to have for dinner, ('what's in a name?')
Perhaps the 'late lamented' was as fond of his nag as was the man
who entertained his guests with his horse in the form of soup.
Jenny Dean says that is what she calls true _horse-pitality_.

'There goes the bell. Don't forget the box. Mrs. Smith--unlike many
principals--approves of them--the reason you can guess--the _fact_
please mention to mother. In haste,

BESSIE.'

It seems hardly consistent with my regard for the 'dear reader,' to add
any thing by way of remark on this true school-girl letter. But it is so
suggestive. How many circulars do tally with facts? Even in those of the
best schools, that need none of this clap-trap, there is a little
humbug. But this is rather the fault of the patrons; like Bessie's
mother, they will hardly look at a plain advertisement. The truth is, we
love to be humbugged. Among the 'wants of the age' may be classed
_humbug_.

I have read of a painter with disproportionately short legs, who, in all
his pictures of human figures--from Moses down to the Mayor, done in
heroic style--substituted his own legs. Your thorough utilitarian,
deficient in imagination, his idea of mental symmetry being his own
mental proportions, thinks no mind well balanced that has not a similar
deficiency. He is a believer in nothing but the real and the useful--all
else is stuff and nonsense; to him a mountain is a high elevation of
land; a plain, a level tract; a forest, so much timber in a green
state; a cloud, a collection of vapor. He sees in every thing