can meet this figure in the street, and live, and even smile at the
recollection. But conceive of her in a ball-room, with the bare, brawny
arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other corresponding
development, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle
to howl at in such an over-blown cabbage-rose as this.

Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest,
slender, violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien mass of earthliness has
unkindly overgrown; for an English maiden in her teens, though very
seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a
certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender
womanhood, shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other,
our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable
moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an
outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder
whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married
to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride,
since he led her to the altar, and which make her so much more than he
ever bargained for! Is it not a sounder view of the case, that the
matrimonial bond can not be held to include the three-fourths of the
wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? And as a
matter of conscience and good morals, ought not an English married pair
to insist upon the celebration of a silver wedding at the end of
twenty-five years in order to legalize and mutually appropriate that
corporeal growth of which both parties have individually come into
possession since they were pronounced one flesh?

THE TRAGEDY OF IT

BY ALDEN CHARLES NOBLE

Alas for him, alas for it,
Alas for you and I!
When this I think I raise my mitt
To dry my weeping eye.

STAGE WHISPERS

BY CAROLYN WELLS

Deadheads tell no tales.
Stars are stubborn things.
All's not bold that titters.
Contracts make cowards of us all.
One good turn deserves an encore.
A little actress is a dangerous thing.
It's a long skirt that has no turning.
Stars rush in where angels fear to tread.
Managers never hear any good of themselves.
A manager is known by the company he keeps.
A plot is not without honor save in comic opera.
Take care of the dance and the songs will take care of th