hat Ali
Baba is relating one of his improving tales.) How pretty she looks,
showing her excellent teeth and suffused with bright warm blushes,
[which, I beg leave to explain, proceed from drinking hot tea and
indulging in immoderate laughter, not from listening to A.B.'s
improving tales!] As I gaze upon her with fond amazement, I murmur
mechanically:--

Mine be a cot beside the hill;
A tea-pot's hum shall soothe my ear,
A widowy girl, that likes me still,
With many a smile shall linger near.

I have been asked to write a philosophical minute on the mental and
moral condition of delightful Mrs. Lollipop's husband, who lives down
in the plains. I have been requested by the Press Commissioner to
inquire in Government fashion, with pen and ink, as to whether the
complaisant proprietor of so many charms desires to have a recheat
winded in his forehead, and to hang his bugle in an invisible
baldrick; whether it is true in his case that Love's ear will hear the
lowest cuckoo note, and that Love's perception of gossip is more soft
and sensible than are the tender horns of cockled snails. Towards all
these points I have directed my researches. I have resolved myself
into a Special Commission, and I have sat upon grass-widowers _in
camera_. If I sit a little longer a Report will be hatched, which, of
course, I shall take to England, and when there I shall go to the
places of amusement with the Famine Commission, and have rather a good
time of it. Already I can see, with that bright internal eye which
requires no limelight, grim Famine stalking about the Aquarium after
dinner with a merry jest preening its wings on his lips.

But what has all this talk of country matters to do with little Mrs.
Lollipop? Absolutely nothing. She thinks no ill of herself. She is the
most charitable woman in the world. There is no veil of sin over her
eye; no cloud of suspicion darkens her forehead; no concealment feeds
upon her damask cheek. Like Eve she goes about hand in hand with her
friends, in native innocence, relying on what she has of virtue. Sweet
simplicity! sweet confidence! My eagle quill shall not flutter these
doves.

Have you ever watched her at a big dance? She takes possession of some
large warrior who has lately arrived from the battle-fields of Umballa
or Meerut, and she chaperones him about the rooms, staying him with
flagons and prattling low nothings. The weaker vessel jibs a little at
first; b