When the laughter had a little subsided, Colonel B. recommenced by giving his guests a sketch of a certain Miss B., a young lady between forty and fifty years of age, who was a well-known character in the cantonment. He gave them to understand that this young lady still _hoped_. She could not, indeed, bring herself to believe that she would always remain Miss B., and, in consequence of this settled conviction, she not unfrequently afforded amusement to her acquaintances. Remarks to this effect, whenever she indulged in them, appeared to yield the ladies considerable enjoyment: 'You know, my dear, when I get married, or when I have a house of my own,' etc. These unintentional exhibitions of her hopes and wishes on the part of Miss B. led to a good deal of harmless quizzing, and to numerous inquiries, such as, 'On whom were her smiles chiefly bestowed?' 'Who was to be the happy man?' or 'Whether this lucky individual had been fixed on?' 'When would the ceremony take place?' and many more such seductive and insidious questions, which led the dear innocent into sundry admissions and confessions, tending to show that she had anything but a dislike to the holy state of matrimony, though she had not yet made her election. 'The state of affairs having thus been made sufficiently evident, several of the young scamps you see around you, who, as well as Miss B., are frequent visitors at my house, took it into their wise heads, for the sake of the fun, to declare themselves Miss B.'s admirers, partly with the sanction, at all events, with the tacit permission, of Mrs. B., who could not find it in her heart to object to anything in the shape of fun and frolic. So it has come to pass that a frequent amusement there is the violent love-making on the part of these young lads to this sweet young creature, who, to do her but justice, distributes her sweetness to A., B., or C. with an impartiality that really is quite charming. I sometimes fear that the young fellows are carrying matters too far with their protestations, their vows of devotion, their hopes of future bliss, their dread that she prefers another, their appeals to a cornelian heart she wears, which more than one of these describe as their mutual property, and a great deal more of like quality, which, with their kneeling and impassioned acting, is comical enough. Yet one thing to be remarked is, to my mind, more comical still--the more fervid the performance, the more the lady is pleased; but the crowning fun is that, under the continuance of the excitement, the dear old girl gets so dreadfully affectionate, that more than one of the performers has declared his conviction that ere long she will throw herself into the arms of one or other of them.'