But stop--I should have to cut my hair short--I should have to shave every morning, or at any rate call for hot water and go through the motions; men would jostle rudely past me, just as if they never had said such pretty things to me in flounces; I should be obliged, just as I had secured a nice seat in the cars, to get up, and give it to some imperious woman, who would not even say “thank you;” I should have to look on with hungry eyes till “the ladies” were all served at table; I should have to pick up their fans, and reticules, and handkerchiefs whenever they chose to drop them; I should have to give up the rocking-chairs, arm-chairs, and sofas for their use, and be called “a brute” at that; I should have to rush out of the cars, with five minutes’ grace, at some stopping place, to get a glass of milk, for some “crying baby,” with a contracted swallowing apparatus, and be pursued for life by the curses of its owner, because the whistle sounded while his two shilling tumbler was yet in the voracious baby’s tight grip. No--no--I’ll stay a woman, and what’s more, I’ll stay at home. A GENTLE HINT. In most of the New York shop windows, one reads: “Here we speak French;” “Here we speak Spanish;” “Here we speak German;” “Here we speak Italian.” I suggest an improvement--“Here we speak the _Truth_.” A STORY FOR OLD HUSBANDS WITH YOUNG WIVES. “I was an old fool! Yes--I was an old fool; that’s all there is about it. I ought to have known better; _she_ was not to blame, poor thing; she is but a child yet; and these baubles pleased her ambitious mother’s eye. It was not the old man, but his _money_--his _money_--I might have known it. May and December--May and December--pshaw! how could I ever have believed, that Mary Terry could _love_ an old fellow like me?” and Mark Ware surveyed himself in the large parlor mirror.