her hand. The other was actively engaged with the teaspoon. "This hand,” and he gave it another squeeze, "this hand is to me as good as gold!" and Muffin looked as though he had spoken a truth. "Yes, Penelope, future peace and present joy are written in the lines of this little palm!" saying which the major - our pen trembles as we record the fact-ravished a kiss! Penelope was no doubt thinking of something else, or she would have snatched it away; but her mind dwelt on the spoon, which moved in mystic circles over the tea-board, and doubtless drowned the noise of the kiss, though Molly affirms to this day that she heard it outside the door! A skilful general watches with a hawk's eye for a fortunate chance. The major ought to have been promoted to field marshal; for never did man take better advantage of "the weak invention of the enemy." And, as for a fortunate chance, Penelope, with her wreath of red roses, was to him fortune itself. With one arm gently roving round her waist, he pressed the yielding damsel to his breast, and whispered soft persuasions in her willing ear, "Would she?-would she?-oh! would she?" "Would I what?" and Penelope looked bashful. "But, "I dare not ask," cried the major like a hero of romance. if-," her white dress crushed like tissue-paper as he drew her to his side, "if I might venture to propose-" Penelope held the spoon quite quiet, while Muffin looked as much like a Romeo as any man of forty in a blue surtout and brass buttons could, as he added, "dare I venture ?-dare I?-may I?" Penelope looked in his face as much as to say, "he might," dropped her eyes upon the ground, and remained silent. Silence we all know gives consent. Muffin evidently thought so; and, sinking upon one knee, insinuated in his softest tones, "Oh, Penelope, will you be mine? Say yes! only yes!—only — only "Ye" The "s" was only wanting to complete the happy word as Penelope was turning to embrace him; when the major's parrot, in a long, loud chuckle, shouted out, evidently in imitation of his master's voice, "I wish that damn'd old woman next door was dead!" which Miss Crab's Jeremiah seconded by saying, "we beseech thee to hear us, good Lord!" Penelope started up as if cut out of wood. Her own parrot, the sainted Jeremiah, to pray for such a wish! And the major's parrot, who had no doubt repeated what he had often heard, he to wish her not only dead, but the other thing! and just as he had "popped the question," and she was going to say yes." Wood !-she was stone! 66 Major Muffin-yes, Major Muffin knelt, and seemed as he could never rise; but his fault did; he looked upon his error, and saw it written, "Never speak before parrots!" The end of this tale may easily be conceived. The parrots once started, vied with each other which could speak the fastest. Bob made over the old-we omit the word-next door, not only over to death, but to the dominions of a gentleman who shall be nameless, with an accompaniment of all oaths that are pronounceable. While Penelope's Jeremiah, her sweet Poll, swore at the other, only in a different style-his were orthodox condemnations! And thus a volley of screams and chuckling abuse was kept up between the two birds, who clapped their wings, and shouted as if taking part with their master and mistress. Penelope-not to be outdone by her Poll-bestowed upon Major Muffin the fruits of her displeasure; and, after calling him "base wretch!" "villain" "monster!" "brute!" and sundry other epithets which females pronounce so glibly, left the room with a bounce, and the house with a bang, leaving the major still on his knee in a cloud of wonder, rage, and disappointment. The tea-things flew about the room; and his old favourite Poll, the innocent cause of so much mischief, had a narrow escape; for the poker, aimed with a deadly aim, whirled across the room to the damage of sundry wires of the cage, but not of Poll; who to this day repeats the daily lessons set by his bachelor master, and chuckles out, "I wish that d-d old woman next door was dead!" Miss Penelope Crab, with twenty thousand pounds, died as she had lived, a virgin. "Why did Major Muffin keep a parrot?" VOL. III. EPISTLE EXPOSTULATORY TO A DEAR FRIEND, Who has been often kicked, and repeatedly horsewhipped. DEAR MATT,-It is with deep concern A new horsewhipping! Indeed, I hear now every week The list of shipping, The price of tallows and tobaccos, Are hardly more Posted, and known, and regular, Than the accounts of where you are, And what cool Colonel flogg'd you there, Whilst you kept score! Why, d-n it, man! od's zooks! od's zounds! It puzzles me-confutes-confounds! You pocket blows as they were pounds, One back again upon demand, Though Thompson has your note of hand 21 But some men have scarcely sensibility enough to know when they are kicked; and others do not understand clearly what a kicking means when they see it afforded. A very polite Frenchman, over here, witnessing, for the first time, "an affair of honour" of this sort, was mightily puzzled as to its import. "Vat is dat you Anglish play wid," he asked the author, "vere one gentilhomme take anoder no gentilhomme by de collar of his coat, and he von't let him; and den de one gentilhomme hit de oder no gentilhomme very hard behind vid his foots till he say 'D-n it!' and ron away; and den de gentilhomme puts down his foots, and call after de oder gentilhomme dat run away to stop a bit and have some more, and he von't ?" "That is a kicking, Monsieur," was the author's reply; but Monsieur, my friend, did not understand it then. PORTRAIT GALLERY.-No. VI. THE CANNONS' ADVENTURES IN BOULOGNE. WHEN formerly vegetating at Wick Hall, Mrs. Cannon and the Misses Cannon would have been agonised to their fingers' ends had the old gentleman or one of their brothers suffered from a mere whitlow; yet, now their natural guardians and protectors were in peril of their lives; the ladies were-Do not compel me to relate it-let it remain in silence. The Misses Cannon are spinsters, and I might mar their prospects in the matrimonial horizon; yet, as a faithful historian, the truth must out. The ladies were grouped before their looking-glasses, preparing to take a stroll upon the Port with a French cavalier they had met with in the hotel,—a Monsieur de la Blague,—an amiable, interesting young man, with long lanky black hair, short curly mustachios, a fascinating impériale or chinlock, in fact, a type of the middle ages, although he was but a youth; his neck bared, to display the whiteness of his skin, contrasting with his whiskers like dots on a domino, was not encumbered with a bolstering cravat or a stiff stock, but might have given a lesson of prudence to the young ladies, by displaying that eminence in the throat of man commonly called Adam's apple, -no doubt from the very probable tradition that Eve's temptation stuck in our first parent's gullet. But whether Monsieur le Chevalier de la Blague did or did not display his thyroid gland for this moral purpose, or to do the Apollo or the Antinous, I do not pretend to affirm. He looked interesting-he was interesting as interesting as any novel in three volumes post octavo. His language and his conversation were also suited to his appearance. He had interested the ladies with a tale of misery, and excited both their compassion and their generosity in the behalf of a sad child of woe, for whose relief he was collecting all the mites he could. The tale of sorrow was as follows: unfortunately it was a fiction! A poor foreign woman, without friends or money, had imprudently taken passage on a steamer at Dover to visit France; but, alas! she had not taken out a passport! After having been tossed about in all the horrors of sea-sickness for six mortal hours, the only clothes she had on her back drenched through, she arrived at Boulogne. Her passport was demanded, she had none! she was too veracious to say she had lost what she never had possessed. The douaniers and the police were inflexible; they would not allow her to land. In vain she supplicated and entreated-they were callous to her prayers, and she was obliged to remain on board, helpless and penniless, terms justly and truly synonymous. Thus she had no other resource than to return to England; but there, alas! fresh tribulations awaited her. Her outlandish dress, her unintelligible language, and her gipsy complexion gave her all the appearance of a Bohemian wanderer. In vain she endeavoured to prove that she had but recently left the shores of Britain. The custom-officers swore she was an alien, and, with the same merciless resolution to fulfil their duties, prevented her from landing. Thus had she been kept for six weeks rolling about between France and England,— tossed like a shuttlecock from Dover to Boulogne, and Boulogne to Dover, not allowed to set foot on shore, and dreaded and abhorred |