the amber honey sides with the royal purple of grape-jelly; and the creamy biscuit contrasts with the deep chrome of the sponge-cake beside it, etc., etc. Of various pastries and _entrees_--of which I alone hold the original recipes--I will not speak. Suffice to say, that it may be of interest to some housekeepers to send me a prepaid envelope! Should you go Minnehahaing this summer, I shall hope that you may fail to make connections with the St. Paul Packet Company, so that while waiting a boat you may find it convenient to immortalize 'The Hermitage' by breaking fast beneath its humble roof. Hermetically thine, MARIE. We would that we could. Alas! there is very little 'ha-ha-ing' of any kind this serious 'battle-summer'--least of all for us toward the rosy West. Well, a time _may_ come, and when it does, of a verity the Hermitage shall become well known to 'Esquire CONTINENTAL.' * * * * * A CORRESPONDENT, whose style, by the way, is quaint enough to be printed with black-letter, thus favors us with his protest against certain merely 'bread-and-butter' notions of Woman: I object to the current newspaper 'Advice for Girls.' A woman may know how to cook, sweep, sew, tend babies; but is _this_ what a young man--Spanish, _virgen_--most looks, or cares for, or thinks of, when he seeks life-companionship--a Somebody to get him dinner, tidy his room, fasten his shirt-buttons, and bear him children? 'Tis not for spread tables, kept house, mended clothes, nor pleasure, that the young man's soul thirsts. For sympathy, for love, for the object of his manliness, for its complement, for his wife--and not a servant, nor a mistress. He does indeed holily choose the mother of their little ones, but newspaper-notice hints nothing of that; it teaches bodily, not spiritually, and simply trains up a female able to bear offspring of healthy flesh. However, the husband requires a lover fit to join with him in spirit also, for the total benefit of posterity. The education which best suits a woman, then, is it carnal or soulful? to make a kitchen-drudge or a soft-eyed maiden? a prudent housewife or a thoughtful heartsweet? 'a special breeder' (POPE) or a trusted bosomer? Cattle and machinery are for this labor-saving. The true end of woman is feminity. Therefore, if she is any brighter and heartsomer for playing in the fields, any more pensive and sober for meditating there, who shall deny her God's free air and sunshine? If she is more delicate and softer to handle the light embroidery, or plan the curious patchwork, who shall restrict her busy ingenuity to garments of _wear_--coarse jackets, trowsers, shirts?