another, she perceived that the many
reptiles enclosed with her in this narrow tomb, were nestling to her
side, their eyes fixed upon her in mute expressions of love and
admiration. Her eclipsed orbs were each, for a moment, suffused with a
bright and heavenly tear, and from the suffusion threw out a more
brilliant light upon the feeling reptiles who paid this tribute to her
undeserved sufferings. She put forth her beauteous hand, whose 'faint
tracery,'--(I stole that from Cooper,)--whose faint tracery had so often
given to others the idea that it was ethereal, and not corporeal, and
lifting with all the soft and tender handling of first love a venerable
toad, which smiled upon her, she placed the interesting animal so that
it could crawl up and nestle in her bosom. 'Poor child of dank, of
darkness, and of dripping,' exclaimed she, in her flute-like notes, 'who
sheltereth thyself under the wet and mouldering wall, so neglected in
thy form by thy mother Nature, repose awhile in peace where princes and
nobles would envy thee, if they knew thy present lot. But that shall
never be; these lips shall never breathe a tale which might endanger thy
existence; fear not, therefore, their enmity, and as thou slowly
creepest away thy little round of circumscribed existence, forget me
not, but shed an occasional pearly tear to the memory of the persecuted,
the innocent Angelicanarinella!'" What d'ye think of that?

_B._ Umph! a very warm picture certainly; however, it is natural. You
know, a person of her consequence could never exist without a little
_toadyism_.

_A._ I have a good many subterraneous soliloquies, which would have been
lost forever, if I did not bring them up.

_B._ That one you have just read is enough to make everybody else bring
up.

_A._ I rather plume myself upon it.

_B._ Yes, it is a feather in your cap, and will act as a feather in the
throat of your readers.

_A._ Now I'll turn over the second volume, and read you another
_morceau_, in which I assume the more playful vein. I have imitated one
of our modern writers, who must be correct in her language, as she knows
all about heroes and heroines. I must confess that I've cribbed a
little.

_B._ Let's hear.

_A._ The lovely Angelicanarinella _pottered_ for some time about this
fairy chamber, then 'wrote journal.' At last, she _threw herself down on
the floor_, pulled out the miniature, _gulped_ when she looked at it,
and then _cried herself to sleep_