knowing how to draw up such an advertisement, I came to beg that favor at your hands." "So, so," said I to myself, "here's a little modesty tumbled into decay--'Coelebs in search of a wife.'" He was a good-looking young fellow, and had a quick eye, which led me very much to doubt his reserved, retired and abashed condition before the ladies. "Have you, sir, considered the risk in taking a wife in this strange way? How very liable you may be to gross imposition? What lady of delicacy or reputation would venture to contract an alliance so very solemn and obligatory, through the channel of a newspaper advertisement?" "Very probably, sir; but a poor honest girl might be struck with it; a clever, well-educated daughter, ill-treated by a fiery step-mother, might, in despair, change her condition for a better one; nay, a spirited girl might admire the novelty, and boldly make the experiment." "Well, sir, and how are you to conduct the negotiation with your native bashfulness? You have no superannuated grandmother or old maiden aunt to arrange preliminaries." "That's very true; but, sir, necessity will give me confidence, and despair afford me courage." I wrote the advertisement for him, which he thankfully and carefully placed in his pocket-book, and bade us good morning. "Poor devil," said I, "here's a condition--here's a novelty--here's a _rara avis!_ a fellow of twenty-three, with a good character and income, and not sufficient impudence to ask for a wife. I know lots of young ladies who would have sufficient charity to break him of his bashfulness in a few lessons." However, his case is not a novel one. It shows the necessity of parents accustoming their sons in early life to cultivate the society of respectable females. They should be encouraged in any disposition they may manifest for good female society, although they may incur the charge of being either a beau or a dandy. Boys should go to dancing-school, not only because it teaches them grace, but it accustoms them in early life to the society of women. They dance with those girls, whom, in later periods, they may admire and respect as ladies. The lives of children should be checkered with innocent amusements--study and labor require such relief; and they should not be brought up in close confinement, in a doggerel way which unfits them for society when they are men; nor be driven to the dire necessity of advertising for a wife, and taking the risk of such a desperate adventure. From the Knickerbocker. A SCENE IN REAL LIFE. 'The facts not otherwise than here set down.' _Wife of Mantua_.