A celebrated Russian Princess has just dashed off a “pot boiler.” It appears in the last number of _Bloxam’s_. This fact in itself is of no importance. What impresses one is the frigid accuracy in description. The intelligent reader is introduced to a locomotive engine (whose name, by the way, is Zenobia and furnishes the title of the soup procurer) having eight-foot driving wheels. The headlight shines upon and irradiates the steam thrown off when in motion, to accomplish which feat the engine must advance backward. The stomach of this unique colossus is innocently ignorant of coal, being fed with logs and having a preference for chestnut timber; and its grinding genius, the hero, is engineer and fireman combined. It is only just to remark that had the engine been fed with coal there would have been no romance to chronicle. Verily fiction is stranger than truth. * * * * * Dr. MacDonald, the Nordau of America, has favored me with a copy of his book, _Abnormal Woman_. The learned doctor cites a hundred cases of “females” whose acquaintanceship he made through “personals.” In pursuing his subject he pursued many women and some of the women pursued him; and his argument is, that the fact of these women having had anything to do with him proves their abnormality. Motion granted without prejudice or costs. * * * * * Who is it should quit writing things to print? I once asked Clangingharp. “Oh the others, the others, the others,” was the answer. * * * * * When literary men are invited to dine they are expected to exhale wisdom at every pore. Thackeray said of a certain lion-hunter: “Should she invite Blondin to lunch, a wire would be stretched across the street and the great man would be expected to sip his tea in midair: did he not do this all the guests would consider themselves victimized.” * * * * * I belong to no party, to no school, to no sect. And yet I belong to each; and all belongs to me, for I accept the good in all things. When anything that seems to savor of spite escapes from my ink bottle I am as innocent of vengeful intent as were the simple, swaying reeds that bending before the breeze sighed, “Midas, the king has asses ears.” Now the reeds really never voiced any such sentiment, but Midas mindful that he had asses ears thought they did; for any man having asses ears continually considers himself assailed. * * * * * There is a man in East Aurora who strictly “observes” the Seventh Day; and being very pious, and there existing considerable doubt as to which is the Seventh Day, he also rests all the week. * * * * * “Ah, he must be a queer man!” I said to the woman in the railroad carriage who insisted on complaining to me of her husband. “Queer! he’s worse nor that—he’s a wolf in a medicated Jaeger combination suit.”