be _blessed_ if I do it again.'

MORAL.--When in country villages, don't talk about role-ing,
unless you mean to do it!

* * * * *

Since the _gilet de matin_ has superseded the _robe de chambre_, or
dressing-gown, it is marvelous to see with what wrath the fast men,
club-men, and other highly civilized forms of humanity, pursue the
ancient garment. One of the most vigorous assaults on the gabardine in
question, comes to us as

A FLING AT DRESSING-GOWNS.

My name is Albert Fling. I am an active, business, married man,
that is, wedded to Mrs. Fling, and married to business. I had the
misfortune, some time since, to break a leg; and before it was
mended Madame Fling, hoping to soothe my hours of convalescence,
caused to be made for me a dressing-gown, which, on due
reflection, I believe was modeled after the latest style of
strait-jacket. This belief is confirmed by the fact that when I
put it on, I am at once confined to the house, 'get mad,' and am
soberly convinced that if any of my friends were to see me
walking in the street, clad in this apparel, they would instantly
entertain ideas of my insanity.

In the hours of torture endured while wearing it, I have appealed
to my dear wife to truly tell me where she first conceived the
thought that there was a grain of comfort to be found in bearing
it on my back? She has candidly answered that she first read about
it in divers English novels and sundry American novels, the latter
invariably a rehash of the first. In both of these varieties of
the same species of books, the hero is represented as being very
comfortable the instant he dons this garment, puts his feet in
slippers, picks up a paper and--goes to sleep.

A friend of mine who has discovered that Shakspeare knew all about
steam-engines, electric telegraphs, cotton-gins, the present
rebellion, and gas-lights, assures me that dressing-gowns are
distinctly alluded to in _The Tempest_:

'TRINCULO: O King Stephano! look, what a wardrobe here is for
thee!

CALIBAN: Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash.

Having thus proved its age, let us next prove that it is in its
dotage, and is as much out of place in this nineteenth century as
a monkey in a bed of tulips.

We find in the Egyptian temples paintings of priests dressed in
these gowns: