than disgust.
He wanted a duty upon foreign oysters. The oyster of Long Island and the
oyster of New-Jersey ought not to be trodden down by the pauper oysters
of Europe.

* * * * *

OUR PORTFOLIO.

Personal advertisements having reference to the matrimonial exigencies
of divers widows, old maids, and bachelors, are not without their
influence upon the sympathies of the age. Particular attention has been
recently directed toward an announcement made in a Cleveland paper to
the effect that "Two widow ladies, strangers in Cleveland, wish to form
the acquaintance of a limited number of gentlemen with a view to happy
results. Please address in confidence,--."

One involuntarily regrets that a prospect thus bounded by an horizon of
"happy results" should have been confined to a "limited number of
gentlemen".

There is nothing so calculated to impair the usefulness of what purports
to be a purely benevolent enterprise, as its selfishness. If a widow, or
any number of widows, really possess the means of realizing "happy
results" with a "limited number of gentlemen," they should either remove
the limitation themselves, or make known the secret to those who would
be less sparing of the joys which it is capable of communicating. A
quack who peddles a valuable remedy upon which he may have stumbled, and
yet refuses to disclose its ingredients for the benefit of the whole
medical fraternity, violates the _esprit du corps_ of the profession,
and is by general consent deemed a fit person to be kicked out of it.
Therefore, if any widows or single ladies in Cleveland have knowledge of
any "happy results" which they advertise to share with a limited number
of gentlemen, we shall deem them unworthy of their sex, unless they
explain the process by which these results are attained, for the benefit
of those who are fast verging toward the autumnal stage of maidenhood.

* * * * *

It may well be doubted whether the thought ever occurred to ADAM that
one day or other a hen would be charged with the care and custody of a
brood of goslings. The pastimes of Eden were perhaps not favorable to
vaticinations in the line of Natural History, but in the progress of the
world since those most primitive times, men have come to contemplate the
spectacle of that familiar barn-yard fowl made wretched by the aquatic
propensities of her supposed offspring, without a particle of
astonishmen