orthy to wear a tall hat.

The omnibus portal, low-browed,
Had ne'er grazed my humble cap,
But it knocked off my beaver so proud,
Which into a puddle fell slap.
Alas for my dignified hat,
My proud hat!
Woe to my lofty-crowned hat!

It survived, but it had a weak side,
And so had its wearer, perchance,
Since I left it on stairs to abide,
At a house where I went to a dance.
A lady ran into my hat,
My poor hat!
She demolished my invalid hat!

INNOCENT SURPRISES.

I am somewhat inclined to the opinion, that, if positive legislation
could be brought to bear upon this subject, making it a criminal
offence for one person deliberately to concoct and designedly to
spring a surprise upon another, society would derive incalculable
benefit from the act. For the ordinary and inevitable surprises of
every-day life are sufficiently frequent and startling to content even
the most romantic disposition; entirely dispensing with the necessity
of those artfully contrived, embarrassing little plots which one's
friends occasionally set in motion, greatly to their own diversion and
the extreme discomfort of the surprised unfortunate. For he who has
ever broken his skull on a treacherous sidewalk, or received from the
post a dunning missive when he expected a love-letter, or arrived one
minute late at the car-station, or taken a desperately bad bill in
exchange for good silver, or been caught in a thunderstorm with white
pantaloons and no umbrella, knows that the unavoidable surprises of
life are in themselves staggerers of quite frequent occurrence, and
require not the aid of human invention. But the surprises which we
most dread are not those which _naturally_ fall to us as part of the
misfortune we are born to inherit; not those which result from
unforeseen accidental circumstances, from carelessness on our own part
or from the folly of others, from revolutions in the elements or in
the affairs of nations; these we _can_ bear, by using against them the
best remedies we possess, or by viewing and enduring them as wisdom
and philosophy teach us to do. No; our only prayer, in this
connection, is that we may be saved from our friends; not from their
carelessness, but from their deliberate schemes against our security.

In order to reconcile this apparent contradiction in terms, take the
following instance of a friendly propensity. You walk into