Hyberbolism is a fault too much cultivated and practised among the "young ladies" of our schools and homes. They think it an elegant mode of speaking, and seem to rival each other as to which shall best succeed. An ordinary painting of one of their friends is "an exquisitely fine piece of workmanship, and really Reynolds himself could scarcely exceed it." And that bouquet of wax flowers on the side-board "are not surpassed by the products of nature herself." That young man lately seen in company at the house of Mrs. Hood "is one of the handsomest young gentlemen that I ever beheld; indeed, Miss Spencer, I never saw any one to equal him in reality or in picture." To tell the truth, courteous reader, this said "young gentleman" was scarcely up to an ordinary exhibition of that sex and age of humanity; but this young lady, for some reason or other, could not help speaking of him as the "_highest style_ of man." Our children are even found indulging in this exaggerated mode of speech, as the following may illustrate:-- "Oh, mother," said Annie, as she threw herself into a chair, on her return from a walk, "_I cannot stir another step._" "Why, Annie," answered her mother, "I thought your walk was pleasant, and not tiring at all." "It was such a long one," said Annie; "_I thought we should never have got home again._ I would not walk it again _for all the world_." "But did you not enjoy the walk in the fields, Annie?" "Oh, no; there were so many cows that _I was frightened to death_." "What a little angel our baby is," said Nancy, one day to her sister, "_I feel as though I could eat it up._" "O what a _monstrous brute_ our governess is!" said Marian to a school-fellow one afternoon, because she had corrected her rather sharply for some misdemeanour. "I say, Fred, we have strawberries in our garden _as big as my fist_," said David one day to him. Fred opened his eyes in wonder, and said, "I should like to see them." Fred went to see them, and David's garden strawberries were found to be no larger than one of his ordinary-sized marbles. "Come," says James to Harry, "let us go and get some blackberries; there are _oceans_ of them on yonder hedge." "Oceans!" said James in wonder. "Yes, oceans; only you must mind in getting them that you don't fall into the ditch, or you will be _over your head_ in mud." James went with Harry, and found that the blackberries were as sparse on the hedge as plums in his school pudding, and as for mud to cover him, he saw scarcely enough to come over his boots.