e slightest consequence!" That unlucky peach!
How many blunders, how many pauses, how many absent-minded remarks it
occasions! She makes the most frenzied attempts to regain her former
gayety, but in vain. Her gloves are stained and sticky with the
flowing juice, and she is oppressed by the conviction that all her
partners for the rest of the evening will hate her most heartily. An
expression of real vexation steals over her pretty face, and she gives
up her plate to one of the attendant beaux, with not so much as a wish
that he will return to her. Where are the arch smiles, the lively
tones, the quick and ready responses now? Her spirit is quenched. Her
manner has become subdued, depressed,--shall I say it?--yes, even
sulky.

Ah! I see your courage will not brave laughter. You steal to the
table, half ashamed of yourself as you set down your untasted peach.
Your sudden zeal to relieve those ladies of their plates serves as a
very good excuse for the relinquishment of your own. You have rescued
yourself very well from your dilemma this time. Remember my advice for
the future. Never accept a peach in company.

MISERIES.

No. 2.

A DARK NIGHT.

There are some people who seem to have the faculty which horses and
dogs are said to possess,--of seeing in the dark. But I, alas! am
blind and blundering as a beetle; I never can find my way about house
in the evening, without a lamp to illumine my path. Many smarting
remembrances have I of bruised nose and black eyes, the consequences
of attempting to run through a partition, under the full conviction
that I have arrived at an open door. My most prominent feature has
been rudely assailed, also, by doors standing ajar, unexpectedly,
which I have embraced with both outstretched arms. Crickets, tables,
chairs (especially chairs with very sharp rockers), and other movable
articles of furniture, have stationed themselves, as it would seem,
with malicious intent to trip me up. Some murderous contusion makes me
suddenly conscious of their presence. Then a feeling of complete
bewilderment and helplessness and timidity comes over me. I have not
the least idea in what part of the room I am. I am oppressed with a
sense of chairs, scattered about in improbable places. I long most
ardently for a lamp, or only for one gleam from a neighbor's
window. It is no rare thing for me to discover, by a thrilling touch
upon the cold glass, that I have been feeling my way exactly in the
o