Bother! I exclaim, I can’t find it. I dare say you have them all right; so I commence taking them out, and counting the pieces with an eye to her pay. What’s that? A dickey, two shirts, and a vest! I hold them up to the light with the tips of my fingers. Woman alive! what need has a female of such garments? She had made a mistake. She had brought me Mr. ----’s clothes--I will not expose him by telling his name, for they were wretchedly ragged; but as I turned the key again on them and her, I squeezed this drop of comfort out of my misery--Thank heaven, I have not to mend those clothes! Rat, tat, tat! Merciful man! what now? A bundle of proofs, big as my head, to read and return by the bearer immediately, and quick at that. I sat down. So did the devil. I began to read, pen in hand. I could not remember, with my bewildered brain, whether “_stet_” stood for “let it be,” or “take it out;” or what “_d_” signified in a typesetter’s alphabet. I read on. Could it be possible that _I_ ever wrote such a disconnected sentence as this? No, they have left out an entire line; and forgot to send the MS. copy, too! Devil take it! I exclaim; and so he does (the literal infernal!) and is out of sight before I can explain that the unorthodox exclamation was wrung out of me by the last drop in my brimming cup on that unlucky day. A HOT DAY. Sissing fry-pans, and collapsed flapjacks--what a hot day! Not a breath of air stirring, and mine almost gone. Fans enough, but no nerve to wield ’em. Food enough, but no strength to chew it. Chairs hot; sofa hotter; beds hottest. Sun on the back stoop; sun on the front stoop; and hot neighbors on both sides. Kittens mewing; red-nosed babies crying; poor little Hot-ten-tots! dogs dragging about with protruding tongues and inquiring tails; cockerels feebly essaying to crow. Every thing sticky, and flabby, and limpsy. Can’t read; can’t sew; can’t write; can’t talk; can’t walk; can’t even sleep; hate every body who passes through the room to make it hotter. Now, just see that fly. If I have knocked her off my nose once, I have done it forty times; nothing will serve her but the bridge of my nose. I say _her_, because I am sure it is a female, on account of its extraordinary and spiteful persistence.