At length a friend of Howard asked him to wait on him as a groomsman, and who should be his partner but Blanche! Now, of all places for kissing, commend me to a wedding. The groom kisses the bride—and the groomsmen kiss the bridemaids—and each one of the company kisses his partner, or if any one is destitute of the article he makes a dumb show of kissing somebody behind the door. But the groomsmen have the cream of the business, for it’s one of the perquisites of their office that they should kiss their partners, as a sort of recompense for shawling them, and chaperoning them, and paying them those thousand little attentions which are so exquisite to a lady, and which a gentleman can only pay, especially if the lady is grateful, at some peril to his peace of mind. Ah! sir, a bridemaid is a bachelor’s worst foe—one plays with edge tools when he waits at a wedding—and though you may dance with an angel or flirt with a Houri, I’d never—heaven bless you—recommend you to wait on a girl unless you were ready to marry. Seeing other folks married is infectious, and, before you know it, you’ll find yourself engaged. It was a lucky chance for Howard when he was asked to wait on Blanche, for I would stake my life that nothing else could have cured him of his bashfulness. Nor even then would he have succeeded but for an accident. One lovely afternoon—it was a country wedding—he happened to pass by a little sort of summer-house in a secluded spot in the grounds attached to the mansion, and who should he see within but Blanche, asleep on a garden sofa. I wish I could paint her to you as she then appeared. One arm was thrown negligently back over her head, while the other fell towards the floor, holding the book she had been reading. Her long, soft eye-lashes were drooped on her cheek. Her golden curls fell, like a shower of sunbeams scattered through the forest leaves on a secluded stream, around her brow and down her neck; and one fair tress, stealing across her face and nestling in her bosom, waved in her breath, and rose and fell with the gentle heaving of that spotless bust. A slight color was on her cheek, and her lips were parted in a smile, the smallest space imaginable disclosing the pure teeth beneath, seeming like a line of pearl set betwixt rubies, or a speck of snow within a budding rose. Howard would have retreated, but he could not, and so he stood gazing on her entranced, until, forgetting everything in that sight, he stole towards her, and falling on his knees, hung a moment enraptured over her. As he thus knelt, his eyes glanced an instant on the book. It was the poems of Campbell, and open at a passage which he had the evening before commended. Blanche had pencilled one verse which he had declared especially beautiful. His heart leapt into his mouth. His eyes stole again to that lovely countenance, and instinctively he bent down and pressed his lips softly to those of Blanche. Slight,