rs,
Your silly pretence--why, what a mere guess it is!
Pray, what do you know of a woman's necessities?
I have told you and shown you I've nothing to wear,
And it's perfectly plain you not only don't care,
But you do not believe me" (here the nose went still higher):
"I suppose if you dared you would call me a liar.
Our engagement is ended, sir--yes, on the spot;
You're a brute, and a monster, and--I don't know what."
I mildly suggested the words Hottentot,
Pickpocket, and cannibal, Tartar, and thief,
As gentle expletives which might give relief:
But this only proved as a spark to the powder,
And the storm I had raised came faster and louder;
It blew, and it rained, thundered, lightened, and hailed
Interjections, verbs, pronouns, till language quite failed
To express the abusive, and then its arrears
Were brought up all at once by a torrent of tears;
And my last faint, despairing attempt at an obs-
Ervation was lost in a tempest of sobs.

Well, I felt for the lady, and felt for my hat too,
Improvised on the crown of the latter a tattoo,
In lieu of expressing the feelings which lay
Quite too deep for words, as Wordsworth would say:
Then, without going through the form of a bow,
Found myself in the entry,--I hardly knew how,--
On doorstep and sidewalk, past lamp-post and square,
At home and up-stairs, in my own easy-chair;
Poked my feet into slippers, my fire into blaze,
And said to myself, as I lit my cigar,--
Supposing a man had the wealth of the Czar
Of the Russias to boot, for the rest of his days,
On the whole do you think he would have much time to spare
If he married a woman with nothing to wear?

_William Allen Butler._

MY MISTRESS'S BOOTS

They nearly strike me dumb,
And I tremble when they come
Pit-a-pat:
This palpitation means
These boots are Geraldine's--
Think of that!

Oh, where did hunter win
So delectable a skin
For her feet?
You lucky little kid,
You perished, so you did,
For my sweet!

The faery stitching gleams
On the sides, and in the seams,
And it shows
The Pixies were the wags
Who tipt those funny tags
And these toes.

What soles to charm an elf!
Had Crusoe, sick of self,
Chanced to view
_One_ printed near the tide,
Oh, how hard he would have tried
For the two!

For Gerry's debonair
And innocent, and fair
As a rose;
She's an angel in a frock,
With a fascinating cock
To her nose.

The simpleto