Well, let either have one bonnet or one lover more than the other--or, if they are blue stockings, let either be one round the higher on Fame’s ladder--bodkins and darning needles! what a tempest! Caps and characters in such a case are of no account at all. Oh, there never should be but one woman alive at a time. Then the fighting would be all where it belongs--in the masculine camp. What a time there’d be, though! Wouldn’t she be a belle? Bless her little soul! how she would queen it. It makes me clap my hands to think of it. _The only woman in the world!_ If it were I, shouldn’t they all leave off smoking, and wearing those odious plaid continuations? Should they ever wear an outside coat, with the flaps cut off; or a Kossuth hat, or a yellow Marseilles vest?--or a mammoth bow on their neck-ties; or a turnover dickey; or a watch-chain; or a ring on the little finger?--or any other abomination or off-shoot of dandyism whatsoever? Shouldn’t I politely request them all to touch their hats, instead of jerking their heads, when they bowed? Wouldn’t I coax them to read me poetry till they had the bronchitis? Wouldn’t they play on the flute, and sing the soul out of me? And then if they were sick, wouldn’t I pet them, and tell them all sorts of comicalities, and make time fly like the mischief? Shouldn’t wonder! SOLILOQUY OF MR. BROADBRIM. “There’s another of Miss Fiddlestick’s articles! She’s getting too conceited, that young woman! Just like all newly-fledged writers--mistakes a few obscure newspaper puffs for the voice of the crowd, and considers herself on the top round of the literary ladder. It will take me to take the wind out of her sails. I’ll dissect her, before I’m a day older, as sure as my name is Ezekiel Broadbrim. I don’t approve her style; never did. It’s astonishing to me that the editor of The Green Twig dare countenance it, when he knows a man of my influence could annihilate her with one stroke of my pen. She has talent of a certain inferior order, but nothing to speak of. She’s an unsafe model to follow; will lead her tribe of imitators into tremendous mistakes. It’s a religious duty for a conspicuous sentinel, like myself, on Zion’s walls, to sound the blast of alarm;--can’t answer it to my conscience to be silent any longer. It might be misconstrued. The welfare of the world in general, and her soul in particular, requires a very decided expression of my disapprobation. I’m sorry to annihilate her, but when Ezekiel Broadbrim makes up his mind what is the path of duty, a bright seraph couldn’t stop him. Perhaps I may pour a drop of the balm of consolation afterwards, but it depends altogether upon whether I succeed in bringing her into a penitential frame of mind. It’s my private opinion she is an incorrigible sinner. Hand me my pen, John. Every stroke of it will tell.” WILLY GREY.