to show
The darkness of my desolation!

"By me no more in masking guise
Shall thoughtless repartee be spoken;
My mind a hopeless ruin lies--
My soul is dark, my heart is broken!"

In recalling the witty women of the world, I must surely go back,
familiar as is the story, to the Grecian dame who, when given some
choice old wine in a tiny glass by her miserly host, who boasted of the
years since it had been bottled, inquired, "Isn't it very small of its
age?"

This ancient story is too much in the style of the male
story-monger--you all know him--who repeats with undiminished gusto for
the forty-ninth time a story that was tottering in senile imbecility
when Methuselah was teething, and is now in a sad condition of
anec_dotage_.

It is affirmed that "women seldom repeat an anecdote." That is well,
and no proof of their lack of wit. The discipline of life would be
largely increased if they did insist on being "reminded" constantly of
anecdotes as familiar as the hand-organ repertoire of "Captain Jinks"
and "Beautiful Spring." Their sense of humor is too keen to allow them
to aid these aged wanderers in their endless migrations. It is
sufficiently trying to their sense of the ludicrous to be obliged to
listen with an admiring, rapt expression to some anecdote heard in
childhood, and restrain the laugh until the oft-repeated crisis has been
duly reached. Still, I know several women who, as brilliant
_raconteurs_, have fully equalled the efforts of celebrated after-dinner
wits.

It is also affirmed that "women cannot make a pun," which, if true,
would be greatly to their honor. But, alas! their puns are almost as
frequent and quite as execrable as are ever perpetrated. It was Queen
Elizabeth who said: "Though ye be burly, my Lord Burleigh, ye make less
stir than my Lord Leicester."

Lady Morgan, the Irish novelist, witty and captivating, who wrote "Kate
Kearney" and the "Wild Irish Girl," made several good puns. Some one,
speaking of the laxity of a certain bishop in regard to Lenten fasting,
said: "I believe he would eat a horse on Ash Wednesday." "And very
proper diet," said her ladyship, "if it were a _fast_ horse."

Her special enemy, Croker, had declared that Wellington's success at
Waterloo was only a fortunate accident, and intimated that he could have
done better himself, under similar circumstances. "Oh, yes," exclaimed
her ladyship, "he had his secret for winning the battle.