uld be
A novelty. No friend or foe shall say
I'm close, or haven't as much variety
As other folks. There! I think I see my way
Quite clear. The onions are to peel. Let's see:
Turnips, potatoes, apples there to stew,
This squash to bake, and lick John Henry!
And after that--I really think I'm through.

CHAPTER VII.

PROSE, BUT NOT PROSY.

Mrs. Alice Wellington Rollins, in those interesting articles in the
_Critic_ which induced me to look further, says:

"We claim high rank for the humor of women because it is almost
exclusively of this higher, imaginative type. A woman rarely tells an
anecdote, or hoards up a good story, or comes in and describes to you
something funny that she has seen. Her humor is like a flash of
lightning from a clear sky, coming when you least expect it, when it
could not have been premeditated, and when, to the average
consciousness, there is not the slightest provocation to humor,
possessing thus in the very highest degree that element of surprise
which is not only a factor in all humor, but to our mind the most
important factor. You tell her that you cannot spend the winter with her
because you have promised to spend it with some one else, and she
exclaims: 'Oh, Ellen! why were you not born twins!' She has, perhaps,
recently built for herself a most charming home, and coming to see
yours, which happens to be just a trifle more luxurious and charming,
she remarks as she turns away: 'All I can say is, when you want to see
_squalor_, come and visit me in Oxford Street!' She puts down her heavy
coffee-cup of stone-china with its untasted coffee at a little country
inn, saying, with a sigh: 'It's no use; I can't get at it; it's like
trying to drink over a stone wall.' She writes in a letter: 'We parted
this morning with mutual satisfaction; that is, I suppose we did; I know
my satisfaction was mutual enough for two.' She asks her little restless
daughter in the most insinuating tones if she would not like to sit in
papa's lap and have him tell her a story; and when the little daughter
responds with a most uncompromising 'no!' turns her inducement into a
threat, and remarks with severity: 'Well, be a good girl, or you will
have to!' She complains, when you have kept her waiting while you were
buying undersleeves, that you must have bought 'undersleeves enough for
a centipede.' You ask how poor Mr. X---- is--the disconsolate widower
who a fortnight ago w