Vinegar cruets and vestry meetings! here come a group of Bostonians! Mark their puckered, spick-and-span self-complaisance! Mark that scornful gathering up of their skirts as they sidle away from that gorgeous Magdalen who, God pity and help her, _may_ repent in her robes of unwomanly shame, but they in their “mint and anise,” whitewashed garments--_never_! I close with a little quotation, not that it has any thing to do with my subject, but that it is merely a poetical finish to my article. Some people have a weakness for poetry; I have; it is from the pen of the cant-hating HOOD. “A pride there is of rank--a pride of birth, A pride of learning, and a pride of purse, A London pride--in short, there be on earth A host of prides, some better, and some worse; But of all prides, since Lucifer’s attaint, The proudest swells a _self-elected saint_. To picture that cold pride, so harsh and hard, Fancy a peacock, in a poultry-yard; Behold him in conceited circles sail, Strutting and dancing, and planted stiff In all his pomp and pageantry, as if _He felt “the eyes of Europe” on his tail_!” THE CONFESSION BOX. I confess to being nervous. I don’t admire the individual who places a foot upon the rounds of the chair on which I am sitting; or beats a prolonged tattoo with his fingers on the table; or stands with his hands on a creaking door, moving it backward and forward, while he performs an interminable leave-taking; or spins napkin-rings, while he waits for the dessert; or tips his chair back on its hind legs, in the warmth of debate; or tells jokes as old as Noah’s ark; or levels volleys of puns at me when I am not in the laughing mood. Yes, I’m nervous. I would rather not hear a dog bark more than half the night. The scissors-grinder’s eternal bell-tinkle, and the soap-fat man’s long-drawn whoop, send me out of my chair like a pop-gun. I break down under the best minister, after “forty-ninthly;” and am prepared to scream at any minute after every seat in a street car is filled, and every body is holding somebody in their laps; and somebody is treading on every body’s toes in the aisle; and every door and window is shut; and onions and musk, and tobacco and jockey-club, and whisky, and patchouli are mingling their sweets; and the unconscionable conductor continues to beckon to misguided females upon the sidewalk, with whole families of babies (every one of whom is sucking oranges or sugar-candy), to crowd in, and add the last drop of agony to my brimming cup.