not regret the time spent
on his toilet.

Madame Bruce might be a lady of the most transcendent loveliness,
or she might possess a countenance after the style of Mokanna,
the Veiled Prophet; in either case, a clean shirt collar and a
little extra polish on the boots would be a touching tribute of
respect. He thought over the stories of the Oriental ladies, so
charmingly and complexly described in the "Arabian Nights'
Entertainments," and in some strange way he connected Madame
Bruce with Eastern associations; he remembered that in Asiatic
countries the arts of enchantment are the staple of fashionable
female education; that the women imbibe the elements of magic
from their wet nurses, and that their power of charming is
gradually and surely developed by years and competent instructors,
until they are able to go forth into the world, and raise the
devil on their own hook.

In this case the veil was of the East, Eastern; and what was more
probable than that the "Mysterious Veiled Lady" was that
fascinating Oriental young woman whose attainments in magic made
her the dire terror of her enemies, most of whom she changed into
pigs, and oxen, and monkeys, and other useful domestic animals;
who had transformed her unruly grandfather into a cat of the
species called Tom; had metamorphosed her vicious aunt into a
screech-owl, and had turned an ungentlemanly second-cousin into a
one-eyed donkey.

What a treasure, thought the "Individual," would such an
accomplished wife be in republican America,--how exceedingly
useful in the case of her husband's rivals for Custom-house
honors, and how invaluable when creditors become clamorous. What
a perfect treasure would a wife be who could turn a clamorous
butcher into spring lamb, and his brown apron and leather
breeches into the indispensable peas and mint-sauce to eat him
with; who could make the rascally baker instantly become a green
parrot with only power to say, "Pretty Polly wants a cracker;"
who could transform the dunning tailor into a greater goose than
any in his own shop; who could go to Stewart's, buy a couple of
thousands of dollars' worth of goods, and then turn the clerks
into cockroaches, and scrunch them with her little gaiter if they
interfered with her walking off with the plunder; or who, in the
event of a scarcity of money, could invite a select party of
fifty or sixty friends to a nice little dinner, and then change
the whole lot into lions, tigers, giraffes,