The guests finally departed--Mr. and Mrs. Peplum to the uncertainties of the sleeping car; sweet Fitz-Herbert leaving a Night-Blooming Cereus odor of sanctity behind him; the dear young friends; the old dandelion tops; the old maid still weeping; the disgraced child; Boosey on his winding way; and Mrs. Flamingo, who was found asleep near the ruins of the supper table, when Biddy was putting out the lights. And I went to my den and lit my pipe and looked out of the window. The moon was still shining. The stars winked at me. A romantic young man was practising "Oft in the Stilly Night" on a cracked trumpet. Terrence and Bridget were sitting up at the next gate. The wind blew. The leaves rustled. My pipe glowed. The world revolved. I existed. And yet Aurelia had been married that very night. If I have said little about Mr. Peplum, it is because Mr. Peplum seemed to have very little to do with it. July 6, 1867. _MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY._ Are you a base-ballist? If not, take my word and retire from the world. You are a nullity, a nothing, a 0. The cholera of 1866 is among us, but it has assumed the base-ball type. It is malignant, zymotic and infectious. Its results are not so fatal as last year, and manifest themselves in the shape of disjointed fingers, lame legs, discolored noses, and walking sticks. The disease is prevalent among all classes. Editors, actors, aldermen, clerks, lumbermen, commission men, butchers, book-sellers, doctors and undertakers have it, and many of them have it bad. Even the tailors tried to make up a club, but as they found it took eighty-one men to make up a nine they gave it up. The only class not yet represented is the clerical. More's the pity. They would derive many advantages from the game. You see they would learn the value of the short stop. That is an important point on warm Sundays. They would also learn to hit hard. There are lots of old sinners who need to be hit that way. This continual pelting away with little theological pop-guns at old sinners whose epidermis is as thick as an elephant's, is of no consequence whatever. The shot rattle off like hailstones from a roof. They must learn to hit hard--hit so it will hurt--hit right between the eyes--fetch their man down, and rather than take such another theological bombshell, he will reconstruct. There isn't a minister in this city who wouldn't preach better next Sunday for a square game of base-ball. This Christianity of the soft, flaccid, womanish, alabaster, die-away muscle kind, is pretty, but it isn't worth a cent in a stand-up fight with the Devil.