"She is pretty to walk with, And witty to talk with, And pleasant, too, to think on." First let us understand each other. By the witty girl is not here meant the girl--if such a girl exists--whose conversation has the high brilliancy which characterises the conversation of certain men and women. No. The thing here meant is nothing more than the common domestic wit-snapper, generally, say her enemies, more of a snapper than a wit, concerning which statement it is perhaps not unpermissible to say that he who makes it shows himself to be less a wit than a snapper. While all but invariably of a character that loses much by the process of retailing, the wit of the girl here in view will sometimes bear being brought to book. The samples of it given in this paper are all authentic and heretofore unpublished. They do not, perhaps, reach a high standard of excellence, but they who know girls will concede that they are good girl-wit of the middle order. Take a case like this: "My name is May. I feel I am reaching the age when I should be called Hawthorn." Or take this: "Your mother will miss you when you marry." "No--then she'll 'Mrs.' me." Such jests are the _bric-à-brac_ of home conversation, and make it pretty. He who listens to the talk between girls and their brothers will sometimes hear a thing worth noting, in compensation for the many things not worth noting which--if the truth is to be told--he will also hear. The following does not show young Ethel at her best, but it also does not show her at her worst. "D'you know, Jim," she said, "that two-year-old babies can marry on Jupiter?" "Don't talk bosh, Ethel!" "But they can. It's this way. A year on Jupiter is eleven years and ten months of our time, so the two-year-old babies are grown up. Ee--you didn't know that!" [Illustration: A runaway match on Jupiter the bride being under age] Jim said nothing. But when young Ethel exploited her astronomy with Bob, she found her overmatch. This is precisely what was said by them-- _Bob:_ "One can hear your voice ten miles off, Ethel." _Y. E.:_ "Make it nine, Bob?" _Bob:_ "Why?" _Y. E.:_ "Nine miles is the greatest distance at which thunder can be heard." _Bob:_ "TIT-BITS." The fact is that young Ethel is less an astronomer than a student of current periodical literature. What matters it, after all, however, whence she gleans her general information, if her reading enables her to say--as I once heard her say--with veritable wit, to a girl who was wearing a primrose brooch-- "Blossom and leaves of the primrose are ---- Radical." There are funny men in Parliament who have never said anything much more funny than that. In her captious mood the witty girl is very terrible. A North Briton has been thus described by her: "A big, lumpy, pale-faced, red-haired, freckled Scotchman," and it was a witty, but captious, girl who said of a certain pianist, a concert given by whom she had attended, "His feet obscured the platform."