and when she married Jones, and consequently she was not guilty of
bigamy. Now, according to this view of the case, Jones married a
spinster, who was a widow at the same time and another man's wife at the
same time, and yet who had no husband and never had one, and never had
any intention of getting married, and therefore, of course, never had
been married; and by the same reasoning you are a bachelor, because you
have never been any one's husband; and a married man, because you have a
wife living; and to all intents and purposes a widower, because you have
been deprived of that wife; and a consummate ass for going off to Benicia
in the first place, while things were so mixed. And by this time I have
got myself so tangled up in the intricacies of this extraordinary case
that I shall have to give up any further attempt to advise you--I might
get confused and fail to make myself understood. I think I could take up
the argument where I left off, and by following it closely awhile,
perhaps I could prove to your satisfaction, either that you never existed
at all, or that you are dead now, and consequently don't need the
faithless Edwitha--I think I could do that, if it would afford you any
comfort.

"ARTHUR AUGUSTUS."--No; you are wrong; that is the proper way to throw a
brickbat or a tomahawk; but it doesn't answer so well for a bouquet; you
will hurt somebody if you keep it up. Turn your nosegay upside down,
take it by the stems, and toss it with an upward sweep. Did you ever
pitch quoits? that is the idea. The practice of recklessly heaving
immense solid bouquets, of the general size and weight of prize cabbages,
from the dizzy altitude of the galleries, is dangerous and very
reprehensible. Now, night before last, at the Academy of Music, just
after Signorina had finished that exquisite melody, "The Last Rose of
Summer," one of these floral pile-drivers came cleaving down through the
atmosphere of applause, and if she hadn't deployed suddenly to the right,
it would have driven her into the floor like a shinglenail. Of course
that bouquet was well meant; but how would you like to have been the
target? A sincere compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long as
you don't try to knock her down with it.

"YOUNG MOTHER."--And so you think a baby is a thing of beauty and a joy
forever? Well, the idea is pleasing, but not original; every cow thinks
the same of its own calf. Perhaps the cow may not think it so ele