There would be no point gained in calling the girl a New Yorker, or even a Philadelphian, though the latter city is usually fair game for the paragraphist. She should certainly hail from Boston. The girls of that city are identified in the popular mind with eye-glasses, long words, angularity and other outward and visible signs of severe mental discipline and parsimony in diet. The ideal Boston girl is not rotund. On the contrary, she is endowed with a sharply defined outline, and a profile which suggests self-abnegation in the matter of food. A little dialect will help the story along amazingly; therefore let the scene be laid in rural New England, and let the point be made with the usual rustic prefix of “Wa-al!” This will afford an opportunity to utilize a few minor ideas relative to New England rural customs, the maintenance of city boarders, the food provided, the economy practised, and other salient features of country life. So, by judicious expansion--not padding--the humorist will stretch his little paragraph into a very respectable story, something like this: _Sample of Short Story Erected on Paragraph._ A summer evening of exquisite calm and sweetness. The golden haze of sunset sheds its soft tints on hill and plain, and pours a flood of mellow light over the roofs and trees of the quaint old village street. The last rays of the sun, falling through the waving boughs of elm and maple, form a checkered, ever-moving pattern on the wall of the meeting-house; they kindle beacon-fires on the distant heights of Baldhead Mountain, and linger in tender caress on the dainty auburn tresses of Priscilla Whitney, who is displaying her flounces, furbelows, and other “citified fixin’s” on the front piazza of Deacon Pogram’s residence. (It will be seen that the beginning of this paragraph is written in a serious vein; but the last two lines prepare the reader for a comic story. He now makes up his mouth for the laugh which awaits him a little farther along.) From the kitchen comes a pleasant aroma of burnt bread-crusts, as dear old Samanthy Pogram, her kindly face covered with its snow-white glory, prepares the coffee for supper. Meanwhile the worthy deacon, in stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves, sits by the open door and enjoys the cool evening breeze that sweeps in refreshing gusts down the fertile valley of the Pockohomock. “There ye be again, Sarah,” says Aunt Samanthy to the hired help, a shade of annoyance crossing her fine old face. “Hain’t I told ye time ’n’ again not to put fresh eggs in the boarders’ omelet? I suppose ye think there hain’t such a thing as a stale egg in the haouse, but ye must be wastin’ good ones on the city folks! Sakes alive! but I’ll be glad when they’ve cleaned aout, bag ’n’ baggage. I’m nigh tuckered aout a-waitin’ on ’em ’n’ puttin’ up with their frills ’n’ fancy doin’s.”