ave discerned a
Boy. Myself.

"Where," said Our Missis, glancing gloomily around, "is Sniff?"

"I thought it better," answered Mrs. Sniff, "that he should not be let
come in. He is such an Ass."

"No doubt," assented Our Missis. "But for that reason is it not
desirable to improve his mind?"

"Oh, nothing will ever improve _him_," said Mrs. Sniff.

"However," pursued Our Missis, "call him in, Ezekiel."

I called him in. The appearance of the low-minded cove was hailed with
disapprobation from all sides, on account of his having brought his
corkscrew with him. He pleaded "the force of habit."

"The force!" said Mrs. Sniff. "Don't let us have you talking about
force, for Gracious's sake. There! Do stand still where you are, with
your back against the wall."

He is a smiling piece of vacancy, and he smiled in the mean way in which
he will even smile at the public if he gets a chance (language can say
no meaner of him), and he stood upright near the door, with the back of
his head agin the wall, as if he was a waiting for somebody to come and
measure his heighth for the Army.

"I should not enter, ladies," says Our Missis, "on the revolting
disclosures I am about to make, if it was not in the hope that they will
cause you to be yet more implacable in the exercise of the power you
wield in a constitutional country, and yet more devoted to the
constitutional motto which I see before me,"--it was behind her, but the
words sounded better so,--"'May Albion never learn!'"

Here the pupils as had made the motto admired it, and cried, "Hear!
Hear! Hear!" Sniff, showing an inclination to join in chorus, got
himself frowned down by every brow.

"The baseness of the French," pursued Our Missis, "as displayed in the
fawning nature of their Refreshmenting, equals, if not surpasses,
anythink as was ever heard of the baseness of the celebrated Bonaparte."

Miss Whiff, Miss Piff, and me, we drored a heavy breath, equal to
saying, "We thought as much!" Miss Whiff and Miss Piff seeming to object
to my droring mine along with theirs, I drored another to aggravate 'em.

"Shall I be believed," says Our Missis, with flashing eyes, "when I tell
you that no sooner had I set my foot upon that treacherous shore--"

Here Sniff, either busting out mad, or thinking aloud, says, in a low
voice, "Feet. Plural, you know."

The cowering that come upon him when he was spurned by all eyes, added
to his being beneath contempt, was sufficient