This is my 1st attempt at writin a Tail & it is far from bein perfeck, but if I have indoosed folks to see that in 9 cases out of 10 they can either make life as barren as the Desert of Sarah, or as joyyus as a flower garding, my object will have been accomplished, and more too. ____________________ MARION:  A ROMANCE OF THE FRENCH SCHOOL. I. --, Friday, --, 1860. On the sad sea shore!  Always to hear the moaning of these dismal waves! Listen.  I will tell you my story--my story of love, of misery, of black despair. I am a moral Frenchman. She whom I adore, whom I adore still, is the wife of a fat Marquis--a lop-eared, blear-eyed,greasy Marquis.  A man without soul.  A man without sentiment, who cares naught for moonlight and music.  A low, practical man, who pays his debts.  I hate him. II. She, my soul's delight, my empress, my angel, is superbly beautiful. I loved her at first sight--devotedly, madly. She dashed past me in her coupe.  I saw her but a moment--perhaps only an instant--but she took me captive then and there, forevermore. Forevermore! I followed her, after that, wherever she went.  At length she came to notice, to smile upon me.  My motto was en avant!  That is a French word.  I got it out of the back part of Worcester's Dictionary. III. She wrote me that I might come and see her at her own house.  Oh, joy, joy unutterable, to see her at her own house! I went to see her after nightfall, in the soft moonlight. She came down the graveled walk to meet me, on this beautiful midsummer night--came to me in pure white, her golden hair in splendid disorder--strangely beautiful, yet in tears! She told me her fresh grievances. The Marquis, always a despot, had latterly misused her most vilely. That very morning, at breakfast, he had cursed the fishballs and sneered at the pickled onions. She is a good cook.  The neighbors will tell you so.  And to be told by the base Marquis--a man who, previous to his marriage, had lived at the cheap eating-houses--to be told by him that her manner of frying fishballs was a failure--it was too much. Her tears fell fast.  I too wept.  I mixed my sobs with her'n.  "Fly with me!" I cried. Her lips met mine.  I held her in my arms.  I felt her breath upon my cheek!  It was Hunkey. "Fly with me.  To New York!  I will write romances for the Sunday papers--real French romances, with morals to them.  My style will be appreciated.  Shop girls and young mercantile persons will adore it, and I will amass wealth with my ready pen." Ere she could reply--ere she could articulate her ecstasy, her husband, the Marquis, crept snake-like upon me. Shall I write it?  He kicked me out of the garden--he kicked me into the street. I did not return.  How could I?  I, so ethereal, so full of soul, of sentiment, of sparkling originality!  He, so gross, so practical, so lop-eared! Had I returned, the creature would have kicked me again.