If we take a fancy to a woman we shall wed her, but we’re not to be coerced into matrimony by any ridiculous school-girl who may chance to fall into a horse-pond. We know their tricks and their manners—waking to consciousness in a fellow’s arms and throwing their own wet ones about his neck, saying, “The life you have preserved, noble youth, is yours; whither thou goest I will go; thy horses and carriages shall be my horses and carriages!” We are too old a sturgeon to be caught with a spoon-hook. Ladies in the vicinity of our person need not hesitate to fling themselves madly into the first goose-puddle that obstructs their way; their liberty of action will be scrupulously respected. .... There is a bladdery old nasality ranging about the country upon free passes, vexing the public ear with “hallowed songs,” and making of himself a spectacle to the eye. This bleating lamb calls himself the “Sacred Singer,” and has managed to get that pleasing title into the newspapers until it is become as offensive as himself. Now, therefore, we do trustfully petition that this wearisome psalm-sharp, this miauling meter-monger, this howling dervish of hymns devotional, may strain his trachea, unsettle the braces of his lungs, crack his ridiculous gizzard and perish of pneumonia starvation. And may the good Satan seize upon the catgut strings of his tuneful soul, and smite therefrom a wicked, wicked waltz! .... We hold a most unflattering opinion of the man who will thieve a dog, but between him and the man who will keep one, the moral difference is not so great as to be irreconcilable. Our own dog is a standing example of canine inutility. The scurvy cur is not only totally depraved in his morals, but his hair stands the wrong way, and his tail is of that nameless type intermediate between the pendulously pitiful and the spirally exasperating—a tail which gives rise to conflicting emotions in the mind of the beholder, and causes the involuntarily uplifted hand to hesitate if it shall knuckle away the springing tear, or fall in thunderous vengeance upon the head of the dog’s master.