dies, and though we would not exactly recommend the cramming
system to the fairer sex, we think that beef and mutton would furnish
quite as valuable food for their minds, as a great deal of that that is
now put into them.

LADIES' ARITHMETIC

BY A CONFIRMED BACHELOR.

Ladies have quite a different system of calculation to what men have.
Look at the peculiar way in which they calculate ages. Why! they are
quite an age behind the present generation--at least, the generation of
men--for a man is, figuratively, said, as he grows older, to approach
into his second childhood, but a woman does so literally, inasmuch as
she becomes every year one year younger--a rejuvenating process, by
which, if she lived long enough, she would ultimately reach the happy
period when she was carried about in long clothes, and took a tenacious
delight, peculiar to babies, in pulling gentlemen's whiskers. In fact, I
wonder that, carrying out this retrograde movement, a married lady, as
she advances in years, does not re-appear on the stage of life as the
ball-room girl, and throw off the matronly title of MRS., to put on the
more flowery salutation of MISS. It would be more consistent with the
representation of figures--we mean, arithmetical figures--though it
might be a little at variance with the appearance of personal ones.

My belief is that the female mind has no correct sense of numbers. It
belabors and rolls out figures as cooks do paste, making them as thick
or as thin as it pleases to fit the object required. I have noticed a
largeness or liberality of measurement in most of their calculations,
which redounds greatly, in this calculating age, to the generosity of
the sex. It is quite opposite to the self-measurement which they apply
to themselves. Whereas the latter is distinguished by a narrowness of
result which almost makes us suspect that Subtraction has been largely
at work; the former is crowned with a roundness of figure which leads us
strongly to accuse the sum total of having been gained by the corrupt
agency of Addition. In fact my suspicions are so violent on this head,
that I always adopt the following plan when I am at a loss to know:

HOW TO CORRECTLY ASCERTAIN THE AGE OF A LADY. I first ask the Lady
accused her own age. I then inquire of her "dearest friends." I next
ascertain the difference between the two accounts (which frequently
varies from five years to forty), and, dividing that difference by 2, I
add that qu