How can I tell you if her face be fair, While the gay sunshine of her smile is there? How can I tell you of a brilliant mind, When every word she speaks is angel-kind? Need I describe her voice, so melting sweet? Or the small mouth, which is its passage meet! I only know, while for her voice I wait, I see fair pearls behind that rosy gate. But when she speaks, her diamond-wit's so bright, All other beauties vanish from our sight. No need for _her_ to fear 'the world's rebuff! Too much of Marie's always just enough I She is 'bad company,' yet e'en 'the good' Can find no flaw in her fair maidenhood. The saints don't doubt that she is in _their_ fold-- It makes me laugh to think how they are 'sold.' _Nice_, _naughty_ folks are _sure_, she's of _their_ creed, Yet she's no hypocrite, in word or deed. What _is_ she, then--this gem without a flaw? She is--she is--a maid-en made of 'straw'! * * * * * Reader, have you in your house a _vivarium_ or _aquarium_, or any other variety of animal curiosity-shop, under care of the younger members? If so, the subjoined sketch may awaken in your mind more than one vivid souvenir, We know, at all events, that some of its 'features' were founded on facts; that is, if a 'feature' can be 'founded.' However, we take the phrase from--but no, we are sufficiently abused by the Democratic editors, as it is. EDITOR OF THE CONTINENTAL: Among the lesser joys of maternity, that of having your children interested in a vivarium is one of the least--in fact, it is an elephantine sorrow. James, my eldest son, is a genius; before he was twelve years old, he invented a rat-trap, which not only caught rats, but cut off their tails and--let them go. At thirteen, he spoke Italian so fluently that he caused a hand-organ grinder to throw a brick at him. At fourteen, he came home one day with six large panes of glass, some tin and putty, and made a vivarium, a thing full of mud, water, leeches, dirty weeds, and other improvements. When James had finished his glass case, he placed it in the front drawing-room window, so that the public might behold that exquisite process of nature, tadpoles turning into spring water-chickens, as they call frogs on hotel bill of fares. Unfortunately, the gold fish he put in with them killed the tadpoles while they still wiggled, and a pickerel that he had bought of a fellow-school-boy for half-price, its tail being ragged, ate up the gold-fish. If at any time vegetables bought for the table were missing, we all knew where they went to; in fact, that vivarium, from the time green peas came until cabbages were ripe, resembled a _soupe a la Jardiniere_, and in summer-time a second course of boiled fish might easily have been found there.