MRS. LINER began to ask, 'Why don't the men come forrard?' and old Liner was heard to mutter: 'Quousque tandem _Caty Liner_ abutêre patientiâ nostrâ?' Another year, and the last faint _spark_ expired. 'Why is it Mrs. Liner,' quoth the father, as he was tying his night-cap strings, 'that our daughter cannot get a husband? I know very well that Erasmus says, in speaking of women, _Nulla bona, Nullus beau_; but we, thank God! are rich, and I am sure we all have tried hard enough. There was Shuffleshank, for instance. Did not we run after him at balls, plays, concerts, until I got the pleurisy, and you a bilious attack? And Catharine, poor soul! did she not dance after him until she wore herself down to a skeleton? and all for nothing? Something must be done, Mrs. Liner. Gad! I have a plan----' A rattling, reverberating snore completed Mr. Liner's paragraph; and soon the married noses, blended in harsh discord, pealed a lullaby through the bed-curtains. As to Miss Catharine, she looked upon the first part of the proverb, '_L'homme propose_,' as an absurd and cruel fiction, invented by a tantalizing wretch. And when her cousin, Miss Frizzle--who like the Scythian in Elian was all face, and poor and ill-natured to boot--when Frederica Frizzle, whose physiognomical and moral qualifications were forcibly described by one of her friends as 'Nose carnation, Temper darnation!' when Miss Frizzle, I say, engaged herself to her first offer, a nice musical young man, with the slightest possible moustache, then Catharine waxed gloomy, and her snowy _batiste_ was bedewed with tears. As the poet hath it: 'Through fingers tiny Streamed the briny.' We have now come to the beginning of our story. Miss Liner sits weeping upon the sofa, regretting Shuffleshank and her first offer from Tobolsk. It remains for us to see what was Mr. Liner's plan. NO'TH-EAST BY EAST. I. THE wind is East, what little there is, No'th-East by East, and the captain lays His ship all lady-like in stays, Stripped as far as it decent is. For three points off her weather-bow The curtain of mist that passed just now Has shut the light out suddenly; The big bright Eye that over the sea Is rolling round unceasingly: A dim white-darkness spreads about, And sun, and moon, and stars are out, Alow and aloft; from Holmes's Hole To a point in the east'ard not yet known; And where the White Bear, shook from the pole By an avalanche, sits perched alone, Or floating down to the southern sea Stalks round in sullen majesty, With a keen eye out for the wrecked that come With the breaking surge to his icy home; All over this waste of sea and land The light is out--as an unseen Hand Had drawn a curtain over at once, To cool it all for the summer months.