The 'Intermediate Sorrow Department,' however, derives
no patronage from the 'hard customer;' and we next find her in the
'Coiffure Department,' looking at caps, and interrogating a show-woman in
deep mourning, who is in attendance, and enlarging upon the beauty of her
fabrics: 'This is the newest style, Ma'am. Affliction is very much
modernized, and admits of more _gout_ than formerly. Some ladies indeed
for their morning grief wear rather a plainer cap; but for evening sorrow,
this is not at all too _ornee_. French taste has introduced very
considerable alleviations.' Failing however, in 'setting her _caps_' for
the new customer, the show-woman 'tries the handkerchief' enticement;
exhibiting one with a fringe of artificial tears worked on the border--'the
'_Larmoyante_,' a sweet-pretty idea.' The Squire intimates that as a
handkerchief _to be used_, it would most likely be found 'rather scrubby
for the eyes.' But the show-woman removes _this_ objection: 'O dear, no,
Sir--if you mean wiping. The wet style of grief is quite gone out--quite!
The dry cry is decidedly the genteel thing.' No wonder that the Squire, as
he left the establishment with his 'better half,' was fain to exclaim:
'Humph! And so that's a Mason de Dool! Well! if it's all the same to you,
Ma'am, I'd rather die in the country, and be universally lamented after
the old fashion; for, as to London, what with the new French modes of
mourning, and the 'Try Warren' style of blacking the premises, it do seem
to me that before long all sorrow will be sham Abram, and the House of
Mourning a regular Farce!' . . . A _Canadian Correspondent_, in a few
'free and easy' couplets, advises us how much we have lost by declining a
MS. drama of his, which he is hammering out on the anvil of his brain. We
subjoin a few lines of 'The Angry Poet:'

'THE _damper_, the _draft_ of my drama you've checked;
You've stunted my laurels--my rich cargo wrecked!
That cargo! O! never was galleon of Spain
Thus freighted, by winds wafted over the Main!
There were stuffs, and brocades, and rich laces and blonde;
There were Damascene blades, and thy silks Trebisond;
There was armor from Milan, both cuirass and helm,
Abelards, Eloisas, and Father Anselm:
There were jewels, and gold, and the amulet's power,
A hero to spout, and to rant by the hour;
A lady to love, and be loved, and to faint,
As a matter of course, turning pale through her paint!
There were clowns w