"Come," says I, taking up my satchel, "I'm ready to see that city lion, the Rockaways, and the bivalves fed. They have no terrors for me now. I've got over that. Where is their dens, or cages, and how often do they feed? Cousin Dempster set down his pewter mug, and just stared at me with all his eyes. "What is it? What do you mean?" says he. "What! the lion, to be sure! Didn't you say that I would see one of the city lions when I came to Fulton Market?" That man must have been possessed. He leaned back in his chair, he stooped forward, his face turned red, and, oh! my how he did laugh! "What possesses you, Cousin D.," says I, riling up. "Oh, nothing," says he, wiping the tears from his eyes, and trying to stop laughing, though he couldn't; "only--only this isn't a menagerie, but a market. Did you really think there were wild beasts on exhibition? It was the market we meant." Then I remembered that E. E. had called me a lion once. Now it was the market, and there wasn't a sign of the wild beast in either case. There _he_ sat laughing till he cried, because I couldn't understand that ladies and markets were not wild animals. Says I to myself, "I'll make you laugh out of the other side of your mouth,"--so I turned to him as cool as a cucumber: "What on earth are you te-he-ing about? I only want to walk around the market and see what's going on. Isn't that what we came for?" Cousin D. stopped laughing, and began to look sheepish enough. "Is that it?" says he. "What else?" says I. "You didn't think I expected this great, big, low-roofed market to have paws and growl, did you," says I. "I would growl if the city were to set me down in the mud of this pestiferous place. So you thought I really meant it. Well, the easy way in which some men are taken in is astonishing. They never can understand metaphor," says I. "But the bivalves and Rockaways. What of them?" says I. "Swallowed them," says he. Sisters, the dizziness in my stomach was awful. XXXIII. DEMPSTER PROPOSES A TRIP. Dear sisters:--I have been in Washington. The great city of a great nation. I have seen the Capitol in all its splendid magnificence, its pictures, its marbled floor, its fruit tables, and its underground eating-rooms. I have seen the White House, and have had a bird's-eye view of the President of these United States.