k, "s'pose it did! You'd only have to--_share all around
again!_"

Borrowed finery; or, Killed off by a Ballet Girl.

Shakspeare has written--"let him that's robbed--not wanting what is
stolen, not know it, _and he's not robbed at all!_" Now this fact often
becomes very apparent, especially so in the case of Mrs. Pompaliner,--a
lady of whom we have had occasion to speak before, the same who sent
Mrs. Brown, the washerwomen, sundry boxes of perfume to mix in her
_suds_, while washing the pyramids of dimity and things of Mrs. P. There
never was a lady--no member of the sex, that ever suffered more, from
dread of contagion, fear of dirt, and the contamination of other people,
than Mrs. Pompaliner.

"Olivia," said she, one morning, to one of her waiting maids, for Mrs.
Pompaliner kept three, alternating them upon the principle of varying
her handkerchiefs, gloves and linen, as they--in her double-distilled
refined idea of things, became soiled by use, from time to time.
"Olivia, come here--Jessamine, you can leave:" she was so intent upon
odor and nature's purest loveliness, that she either sought
sweet-scented cognomened waiting-maids, or nick-named them up to the
fanciful standard of her own.

"Olivia, here, take this handkerchief away, take the horrid thing away.
I believe my soul somebody has touched it after it was ironed. Do take
it away," and the poor victim of concentrated, double extract of human
extravagance, almost fainted and fell back upon her lounge, in a fit of
abhorrence at the idea of her _mouchoir_ being touched, tossed, or
opened, after it entered her camphorated drawers in her highly-perfumed
_boudoir_.

"Olivia!"

"Yes'm," was the response of the fine, ruddy, and wholesome looking
maid.

"Olivia, put on your gloves."

"Yes'm."

"Go down to Mrs. Brown's," she faintly says--"tell her to come here this
very day."

"Yes'm."

"Olivia!"

"Yes'm," replied the fine-eyed, real woman.

"Got your gloves on?"

"Yes'm."

"Well, take this key, go to my boudoir, in the fifth drawer of my
_papier mache_ black bureau, you will find a case of handkerchiefs."

"Yes'm."

"Take out three, yes, four, close the case, lock the drawer, close the
boudoir door, and bring down the handkerchiefs upon my rosewood tray. Do
you comprehend, Olivia?"

"Yes'm," said the girl.

"But come here; let me see your hands. O, horror! such gloves! touch my
handkerchiefs or bureau drawers with those horrid glov