In fine, he had been caught and caged, manacled, cuffed, and then _kicked_, (that's the word,) by our good little, sweet little Molly, to his heart's content. Alas! this truly is one of the miseries of human life. Had Tim received a kick from a man fashioned like himself, he might at least have returned the blow. Had it been bestowed by one fashioned after the manner of the Houyhnims, with hock and hoof, or had it been driven full in his face by an ass, shod with a double set of irons, he might have consoled himself with the reflection that some skilful surgeon would replace the mangled elements, or kind nature reproduce a healthy action. But the impress of a damsel's foot upon a generous heart was far more difficult to efface. The wound it inflicted, had baffled through all ages the skill of anatomists, phrenologists, and philosophers. Tim then, could only bewail the hopelessness of his situation in the mournful strains of the gentle Corydon: "She is faithless, and I am undone. Ye that witness the woes I endure, Let reason instruct you to shun What it cannot instruct you to cure." These were the first sensations of his softened soul, but as time moved on with his unslackened wing, other thoughts unbidden sprung upon his mind. Memory indeed, for awhile continued to brood over "the ills that flesh is heir to," but the good Tim, at last, came to the same conclusion with the wise McPherson, that "To cut his throat, a brave man scorns, So, instead of his throat, he cut--his corns." Tim, like all honest bachelors, swore most roundly, that he would never more be caught by woman's wiles; that she was heartless, faithless, deceitful, "and desperately wicked." Alas! poor Tim knew not the susceptibility of his own heart; and Cupid but smiled to think how easily he could hold our hero in magic thraldom. Tim indeed could cry out in the agony of woe, "Have I not had my brain sear'd, heart riven, Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, life's life lied away?" but still, blindfold and unconscious, he would find himself worse than ever entangled and ensnared. A ringlet tastefully displayed, a soft melting eye, it might be a keen piercing one, it mattered not to him, a dimpled cheek, a laughter making mouth, were to him more attractive, than a diamond to a miser, a ship with her canvass swelling to the breeze to the jolly tar, or a well fed steed to a Dutchman's fancy. The very hopes he once cherished, now nipped and blighted; his former fondness for society which he now shunned and despised, served by the contrast to make him doubly gloomy and alone, "Lone--as the corse within its shroud, Lone--as a solitary cloud, A single cloud on a sunny day, While all the rest of heaven is clear, A frown upon the atmosphere, That hath no business to appear When skies are blue, and earth is gay."