ctions for the husbands, actual or to be, of others. No lady can be
considered truly Corinthian unless she has figured as the defendant in
an action for goods supplied by a milliner. It is thus that the Public
learns the Corinthian value of silks, and satins, and laces, and
decorative butterflies.

Finally, however, in spite of her gallant and protracted struggles, the
years overtake her. She begins to be talked of with a pitying contempt
as "OLD SO-AND-SO"; art ceases to outwit Nature, and she herself can no
longer deceive men. For some time she clings to the fringe of the
society she once adorned; but sinking gradually from the Corinthian to
the Continental, from the Continental to the Cavour, from the Cavour to
a supper-less Music-hall existence, and hence, after many misfortunes,
to the cold comfort of the pavement, she ends her days decrepit,
obscure, and unfriended, in the back bed-room of a Soho lodging.

* * * * *

GHOSTLESS BOSTON.

[It is said that the Psychical Society could find no authentic stories
of ghosts in Boston, U.S.A.]

Not a ghost in bumptious Boston! Do the souls of men whose books,
So they tell us, outshine DICKENS, rise superior to "spooks"?
Do the phantoms, having read them, fly in terror and in pain
At the cult of vivisection of _La belle Americaine_?
HOWELLS puffs up DUDLEY WARNER, who declares his HOWELLS fine.
Do the spectres hate "log-rolling," and to haunt the place decline?

Are there no ghosts in New England? Really, this is something new.
Where did famous _Rip van Winkle_ see old HUDSON'S phantom crew?
Are the Katskills now unhaunted, where those silent elders bowled,
And _Rip_ brought the keg of liquor, and the awful thunder rolled?
Or do those immortal spectres very wisely count as nought
All the tricks of spirit-rappers and sham readers of our thought?

Did the Pilgrims of the _Mayflower_, as we must perforce surmise,
Leave ancestral ghosts behind them when they sailed 'neath alien skies?
There is something in the notion, for it was a risky trip,
And a spectre is a nuisance when he gibbers on board ship.
So, no doubt, those sturdy people, when they crossed Atlantic foam,
From an economic motive, left their phantoms all at home.

Or it may be disembodied spirits, when abroad they walk,
Cannot stand the stucco culture and the egotistic talk;
WARNER may have "lovely manners," HOWELLS swears he has, but th