things such as young Perkins had never dreamed possible except in the exaggerated and wearisome pages of long-winded novels and unreadable poems in cantos. He immediately exalted himself into a hero of romance, nor was the sensation diminished when he felt the folds of a bit of note-paper slipped between his fingers as he shook hands with the lady at parting. When he returned home he made himself acquainted with the contents of the mysterious billetdoux, and the sentiment of adventure was heightened when he read therein a request which the lady must have written previously to coming to the lecture-hall, since it was in ink. She desired, she said, to bid him adieu before parting _for ever_, and as it was impossible for her to do that at her own home, on account of _something_, she had asked a friend of hers to let her see him at _her_ house. The call must be made at rather an _unusual_ hour--half-past six in the morning. She was going to see a departing friend to the _boat_, and she would stop in Hudson street on her way back. Now, what was more natural, continued Mr. Perkins, for a foolish young fellow to do than to go to the place on the day appointed? The hour _was_ rather unusual, and the morning being bitterly cold the experience was anything but pleasant. The friend's house proved to be in a very disagreeable neighborhood, and the parlor into which he was ushered was a small, musty room, with a dirty carpet on the floor, and otherwise furnished with a few cane-seat chairs and a rickety marble-topped centre-table, the place being rendered still more uninviting by a sheet-iron stove which belched forth volumes of smoke from the unwilling beginnings of a rebellious fire that had just been kindled in it. Mr. Perkins sat down in the cheerless apartment, and waited long, half numbed with cold. Having left his home so early, he was breakfast-less, and that fact did not render his condition any the more comfortable. The romance of the adventure oozed out of him from every pore in an almost perceptible stream. The absurdity of the situation became every moment more painfully apparent, when at length in walked the lady. But could this indeed be she? Why, she was completely changed. Instead of the gay, bright, trim, rosy, laughing, sparkling-eyed lady of the evenings, he beheld a stout, untidy, sallow-complexioned, faded-out woman of forty. She was old enough to be his mother--old enough to be ashamed of herself. Never was a youth's foolish illusion more quickly dispelled. He took her proffered hand listlessly, and declined the invitation to reseat himself, pleading the necessity for getting to the store at once. His exit must have been farcical in its abruptness. The most jealous husband in the world could have found no occasion for complaint in such conduct, unless indeed he had changed his views and objected to his wife being treated so cavalierly. The lady's billetdoux had indeed possessed the essential