eerful as she can;
Her waist is ampler than her life,
For life is but a span.

My aunt, my poor deluded aunt!
Her hair is almost gray;
Why will she train that winter curl
In such a spring-like way?
How can she lay her glasses down,
And say she reads as well,
When, through a double convex lens,
She just makes out to spell?

Her father--grandpapa! forgive
This erring lip its smiles--
Vowed she would make the finest girl
Within a hundred miles.
He sent her to a stylish school;
'Twas in her thirteenth June;
And with her, as the rules required,
"Two towels and a spoon."

They braced my aunt against a board,
To make her straight and tall;
They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light and small;
They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
They screwed it up with pins--
O never mortal suffered more
In penance for her sins.

So, when my precious aunt was done,
My grandsire brought her back
(By daylight, lest some rabid youth
Might follow on the track);
"Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook
Some powder in his pan,
"What could this lovely creature do
Against a desperate man!"

Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,
Nor bandit cavalcade
Tore from the trembling father's arms
His all-accomplished maid.
For her how happy had it been!
And Heaven had spared to me
To see one sad, ungathered rose
On my ancestral tree.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

N. P. WILLIS

MISS ALBINA McLUSH

I have a passion for fat women. If there is anything I hate in life, it
is what dainty people call a _spirituelle_. Motion--rapid motion--a
smart, quick, squirrel-like step, a pert, voluble tone--in short, a
lively girl--is my exquisite horror! I would as lief have a _diable
petit_ dancing his infernal hornpipe on my cerebellum as to be in the
room with one. I have tried before now to school myself into liking
these parched peas of humanity. I have followed them with my eyes, and
attended to their rattle till I was as crazy as a fly in a drum. I have
danced with them, and romped with them in the country, and periled the
salvation of my "white tights" by sitting near them at supper. I swear
off from this moment. I do. I won't--no--hang me if ever I show another
small, lively, _spry_ woman a civility.

Albina McLush is divine. She is like the description of the Persian
beauty by Hafiz: "Her heart