_Devil._ 'Why, I've been here twice before this morning, and I couldn't get in. The foreman's mad as h--ll, and says how as that the paper can't be got out in time.' _Frank._ 'Well, be off. I'll have some copy ready in an hour.' Devil goes off, with a sunken aspect, muttering, as he goes, 'I gets more kicks than coppers. The foreman kicks me for not getting copy, and the editor kicks me for coming for it. Deuce take 'em both! As to the paper, she may be late, for me; and as to the press, I wish she was blow'd to the mischief!' The 'devil' talks upon the common principle, when he speaks of the paper and the printing-press as belonging to the feminine gender. Your statesman, speaking of the country's prosperity, says, '_Her_ commerce, _her_ manufactures, and _her_ arts, are flourishing, and will soon advance _her_ high in the respect of nations.' The backwoods-men say of Cincinnati, '_She_ is the western _queen_.' A Kentuckian will pet his rifle, and say, '_She's_ leetle the slickest bore in these parts, and her voice is sweet as Nannie's, and that's saying a heap for _her_.' Some go so far as to sex learned bodies, and to say of congress, 'The constitution does not confer such powers on her, and beyond those delegated she cannot rightfully act;' thus flinging a petticoat over this venerable body of gray-haired bachelors, husbands, and orators. The fact is, it is quite difficult to understand the reason why the neuter gender is not applied to all things neither male nor female. Every vessel that skims the billow, in common nomenclature, belongs to the feminine gender. There is not a steam-boat that ploughs the river, however hoarsely it may bark, or however it may fling volumes of smoke above, like streamers, that belongs to the masculine gender. Every ricketty yawl or skiff that is battered to pieces by the tides, belongs to the lovely and ever-to-be-beloved sex. If a pleasure-boat, with its white sail kissing the wave which its prow proudly spurns, wins a compliment, it is sure to be uttered after this wise: 'See how finely she sails!--and '_She_ walks the water like a thing of life.'