he plague are you laughing at,
Sarah? What have you got there?"

Without saying a word, mamma pushed over towards him a new French
caricature, just out, representing a man well wrapped up in a great coat
with large capes, and long boots, and carrying an umbrella over his own
head, from which is pouring a puddle of water down the back of a delicate
fashionable woman--his wife, anybody might know--wearing thin slippers and
a very thin muslin dress, and making her way through the gutters on
tip-toe, with the legend, "You are never satisfied!" "_Tu n'est jamais
contente!_"

Instead of gulping down the joke, and laughing heartily--or making believe
laugh, which is the next best thing, in all such cases--papa stood upon his
dignity, and, after an awful pause, went on talking to himself pretty much
as follows:--

"According to Shakspeare--and what higher authority can we
have?--reputation itself is but a _bubble_, blown by the cannon's mouth:
and therefore do I say, and stick to it--hurrah for bubbles!"

The young wife smiled; but her eyes were fixed upon a very small cap, with
a mournful and touching expression, and her delicate fingers were busy upon
its border with that regular, steady, incessant motion which, beginning
soon after marriage, ends only with sickness or death.

"_And_," continued papa--"_and_, if Moore is to be believed, the great
world itself, with all its wonders and its glories--the past, the present,
and the future, is but a '_fleeting show_.'"

The young wife nodded, and fell to dancing the baby's cap on the tips of
her fingers.

"And what are _bubbles_," continued papa, "what are _bubbles_ but a
'fleeting show?'"

The little cap canted over o' one side, and there was a sort of a giggle,
just the least bit in the world, it was _so_ cunning, as papa added, in
unspeakable solemnity--

"And so, too, everything we covet, everything we love, and everything we
revere on earth, are but emptiness and vanity."

Here a nod from the little cap, mounted on the mother's fingers, brought
papa to a full stop--a change of look followed--a downright smile--and then
a much pleasanter sort of speech--and then, as you live, a kiss!

"And what are _bubbles_, I should be glad to know, but emptiness and
vanity?" continues papa.

"By all this, I am to understand that a wife is a bubble--hey?"

"To be sure."

"And the baby?"

"Another."

"And what are husbands?"

"Bubbles of a large growth."

"Agreed!--I