Reprehensible but real sentiment of your humble servant, O dearly beloved reader! Your lips reprove me, but your heart forgives and sympathizes! And that heart rebels with mine against that adverse Past which has given to us so little of 'real amusement' from 'bad company,' and demands, like mine, reparation from the Future for the sufferings we have endured from unexceptionable and perfectly good company! The representative men and women of that small and select bad company, (who have made the desert of our lives to blossom with roses, violets, strawberries and cream,) how distinctly they stand out on the horizon of memory! I see them--I count them, as easily as those few stately pines on yonder hill-top--one, two, three, four, five, six, _seven_. No more? What! not a delightful eight? Who has translated the murmur of the summer wind among the pines as 'No more?' '_No more?_' Alas! to-day they give that answer to me, as I seek for one other in that bad and beloved company! 'But he cometh'--_adveniat_--he cometh in the future. O eighth! your morning will yet dawn. Welcome, O Friend of the Future I whatever thy sex. Welcome! whether in cashmere and graceful crinolineaments, or in gray-suit and _grecio_!--only be 'more of the same sort.' Heaven is _not_ so cruel! to give us five hundred dear twin-friends, on whom one has to tie five hundred different colored bows (I assure you, Monsieur, the ribbon-florists have this season produced _five hundred colors_) in order to distinguish one from another! Heaven would not do this cruel wrong without offering some apology--some mitigation. Ah! you sigh. Your heart, then, _does_ forgive me--I knew it would. Give me your hand, (such a soft, white hand!) I confess the proverb did _sound_ a little naughty, but it's not _really_ so. At all events, it is the _truth_--and, you know, we 'Can not tell a lie!' G. W. Ah! this hand, though soft and white, is no longer plump and unconscious; it has _suffered_! You, too, have been bored--ah! I _must_ kiss it. 'I, too, am human.' I also have been bored! Come, now, you mistrust me no longer-and I--I love you! I _love_ you, and, therefore, I want to amuse you; perhaps, by Heaven's blessing, I may prove 'bad company' myself!