men in their lines, and I might ax about for their characters. Whereby, supposing I approved, they’d have her, right and tight, in their cart, afore she felt herself respectfully off her legs. Such were the arguments and the plan of the bull-headed pair. I attempted to reason with them, but my consent had clearly been only asked as a compliment. The lady herself hastened the catastrophe. Whether she had overheard the debate, or the amount of long pent-up emotion became too overwhelming for its barriers, I know not, but Pride gave way to Nature, and a short hysteric scream proceeded from the carriage. Miss Norman was in fits! We contrived to get her seated on the step of the vehicle, where the butchers supported her, fanning her with their hats, whilst I ran off to a little pool near at hand for some cold water. It was the errand only of some four or five minutes, but when I returned, the lady, only half conscious, had been caught up, and there she sate, in the cart, right and tight, between the two butchers, instead of the two Salvages, or Griffins, or whatever they were, her hereditary supporters. They were already on the move. I jumped into my own gig, and put my horse to his speed; but I had lost my start, and when I came up with them, they were already galloping into W----. Unfortunately her residence was at the further end of the town, and thither I saw her conveyed, struggling in the bright blue, and somewhat greasy, arms of Sam the Sticker, screaming in concert with the two swine, and answered by the shouts of the whole rabblement of the place, who knew Miss Norman quite as well, by sight, as “her own carriage!” [Illustration: “I’M AFRAID I’M IN LOW COMPANY!”] [Illustration: A MINOR CANON.] I CANNOT BEAR A GUN. “Timidity is generally reckoned an essential attribute of the fair sex, and this absurd notion gives rise to more false starts than a race for the Leger. Hence screams at mice, fits at spiders, faces at toads, jumps at lizards, flights from daddy longlegs, panics at wasps, _sauve qui peut_ at sight of a gun. Surely, when the military exercise is made a branch of education at so many ladies’ academies, the use of the musket would only be a judicious step further in the march of mind. I should not despair, in a month’s practice, of making the most timid British female fond of small-arms.”--HINTS BY A CORPORAL. IT can’t be minced, I’m quite convinced All girls are full of flam, Their feelings fine and feminine Are nothing else but sham. On all their tricks I need not fix, I’ll only mention one, How many a Miss will tell you this, “I cannot bear a gun!” There’s cousin Bell can’t ’bide the smell Of powder--horrid stuff! A single pop will make her drop, She shudders at a puff. My Manton near, with aspen fear Will make her scream and run: “It’s always so, you brute, you know I cannot bear a gun!”