None else seem half so "jolly!"

One misses your dear kindly store
Of fancies quaint and funny;
One misses, too, your kind _bon-mot_;--
The Mayfair wit I mostly know
Has more of gall than honey!

How tired one grows of "calls and balls!"
This "_toujours perdrix_" wearies;
I'm longing, quite, for "Notes on Knox";
(_Apropos_, I've the loveliest box
For holding _Notes and Queries_!)

A change of place would suit my case.
You'll take me?--on probation?
As "Lady-help," then, let it be;
I feel (as Lavender shall see),
That Jams are _my_ vocation!

How's Lavender? My love to her.
Does Briggs still flirt with Flowers?--
Has Hawthorn stubbed the common clear?--
You'll let me give _some_ picnics, Dear,
And ask the Vanes and Towers?

I met Belle Vane. "HE'S" still in Spain!
Sir John won't let them marry.
Aunt drove the boys to Brompton Rink;
And Charley,--changing Charley,--think,
Is now _au mieux_ with Carry!

And NO. You know what "_No_" I mean--
There's no one yet at present:
The Benedick I have in view
Must be a something wholly new,--
One's father's _far_ too pleasant.

So hey, I say, for home and you!
Good-by to Piccadilly;
Balls, beaux, and Bolton-row, adieu!
Expect me, Dear, at half-past two;
Till then,--your Own Fond--MILLY.

"PREMIERS AMOURS."

_Old Loves and old dreams,--_
_"Requiescant in pace."_
_How strange now it seems,--_
_"Old" Loves and "old" dreams!_
_Yet we once wrote you reams
_Maude, Alice, and Gracie!_
_Old Loves and old dreams,--_
_"Requiescant in pace."_

When I called at the "Hollies" to-day,
In the room with the cedar-wood presses,
Aunt Deb. was just folding away
What she calls her "memorial dresses."

She'd the frock that she wore at fifteen,--
Short-waisted, of course--my abhorrence;
She'd "the loveliest"--something in "een"
That she wears in her portrait by Lawrence;

She'd the "jelick" she used--"as a Greek," (!)
She'd the habit she got her bad fall in;
She had e'en the blue _moire antique_
That she opened Squire Grasshopper's ball in:--

New and old they were all of them there:--
Sleek velvet and bombazine stately,--
She had hung them each over