That poverty is at times very unhandy--yea, humiliating, we can bear witness; but that any persons should make their poverty an everlasting subject of shame and annoyance to themselves, is the most contemptible nonsense we know of. During our junior days, while officiating as "shop boy," behind a counter in a southern city, we used to derive some fun from the man[oe]uvres of a dandy-jack of a fellow in the same establishment. He was of the bullet-headed, pimpled and stubby-haired _genus_, but dressed up to the _nines_; and had as much pride as two half-Spanish counts or a peacock in a barnyard. Charley was mostly engaged in the ware rooms, laboratory, etc., up stairs. He would arrive about 7 A. M., arrayed in the costume of _the latest style_, as he flaunted down Chestnut Street--by the way, it was a long, idle tramp, out of his road to do so,--his hair all frizzled up, hat shining and bright as a May morn, his dickey so stiff he could hardly expectorate over his _goatee_, while his "stunnin'" scarf and dashing pin stuck out to the admiration of Charley's extensive eyes, and the astonishment of half the clerks and all the shop boys along the line of our Beau Brummell's promenade! It was very natural to conceive that Charley was impressed with the idea, that he was the envy of half the men, and the _beau_ ideal of all the women he met! But your real dandy is no particular lover of women; he very naturally so loves himself that he lavishes all his fond affection upon his own person. So it was with our _beau_--he wouldn't have risked dirtying his hands, soiling his "patent leathers," or disarranging his scarf the thirteenth of an inch, to save a lady from a mad bull, or being run down by a wheelbarrow! Charley, to be sure, would walk with them, talk with them, beau them to the theatre, concert or ball room, provided always--they were dressed all but to within half an inch of their lives! The man who introduced a new and _stunnin_' hat, scarf, or coat, Charley would swear friendship to, on sight! A shabby, genteel person was his abomination; a patch or darn, utterly horrifying! He lived, moved, breathed--ideally, his ideality based, of course, upon ridiculous superfluities of life--leather and prunella, entirely. Charley looked upon "a dirty day" as upon a villanously-dressed person, while a bright, shining morn--giving him amplitude to make a "grand dash," won from him the same encomiums to the producer that he would bestow on the getter-up of an elegant pair of cassimeres--commendable works of an artist! The _genus_ dandy, whether of savage or civilized life, is a felicitous subject for peculiar, speculative, comparative analogy or _analysis_; we shall pursue the shadow no farther, but come to the substance.