will at once curl up her pretty lips (I think | square-footed, her head set squarely on her body, pretty lips may always be assumed), and ask me impertinently whether I am making my thirtieth or fortieth declaration, to which I must needs reply—though I have kept no tally -that it is at least my twentieth. Imagine the face she will make up! and her heart squarely and securely in its place; a prim, prudish person, adhering to all known laws; eating, drinking, dressing, dancing, talking by rule; keeping a diary of all her acts, and a tally of all her expenses; owing no man, eying no man; reading no books not recommended by her preceptors, and playing the whole game of life according to Hoyle. But it is not of Miss Maunder I wish to speak, but Miss Vernon, who, by-the-way, strangely enough, insists that her friend is the very counterpart of myself, and wonders I don't fall in love with her at once. Sally Maunder my counterpart! Not bad, that. But it is time to say a word about Clara's personnel, or, in plain English, about her looks. (Thus far I have not even stated her age, which may as well be put down at once at seventeen, the old bachelor's ideal.) I confess that, to the ordinary eye, she might seem a very ordinary girl, and she is not an angel even to mine. In fact, I don't believe in angels; the few creat But if I don't look out some young gallant will get the start of me, and be at her feet with his first declaration, which will be as agreeable to her as the first rose of summer. Well, whoever he is, I hope that she will accept him, for if he doesn't sicken her of first love in less than a fortnight, she is not the dear flirt I take her for. He is sure to be some man who has met her at a ball, and who has danced with her all the evening without once losing step or treading on her dress. As for me, I never danced with her but once, and then I lost not only my step but my footing, and brought her with me to the floor. But a man may be a very good partner for a dance, and yet a very sorry one for life, which is a trifle more serious than a cotillion or even a polka, as I shall take the lib-ures of that sort I have met with in novels and erty, in some disinterested moment, of telling her. And yet what does she care about that now? "The world," said she to me the other evening, "is too serious by half. Nature is not so terribly glum. She is on the broad grin half the time, and laughs even through her tears. Look at the stars up yonder, winking at each other for very fun all the night long, and laughing at the sober-faced moon." tate. plays (they are never met with elsewhere) were not at all to my taste. I may be foolish enough to call Clara by some celestial title, and to attribute to her sundry celestial qualities when the time comes for filing my declaration, but meanwhile I find her a vain, restless, fickle, capricious, sinful mortal (as sin goes), having a pair of very wicked gray eyes, set in a low, though decidedly unclassical forehead, which retreats Still, Clara is more serious than she chooses behind a tangled mass of straw-colored hair, to appear. It is not always, nor generally, the straggling over her cranium like a species of persons of the most solemn exterior who are the wild vine. She is too short and slight for her most serious; solemnity is often a mask for stu- form to be called elegant, and, but for a smallpidity. Clara's jubilant face is honest enough, ish hand and foot, a haughty little mouth, and but it reflects only the surface of her nature. I a perfect gem of a neck, I am not sure that her don't know that she can be called thoughtful, person would excite the least attention. But I for thoughtfulness implies deliberate and sus-confess that, until this moment, I never attempttained mental action, whereas the movement of ed to analyze her charms, and I have a feeling her mind, like that of her body, is unpremedi- that the work is an indelicate one, something She never reasons, and it would seem, like dissection. Think, for example, of examtherefore, never thinks; but she has that kind ining her teeth like a dentist, especially as, now of instinct which may be called spontaneous I think of it, they happen, like a certain improper reason, and which dives straight into the heart kind of verb, to be both irregular and defective, of things at once. Moreover, she has such a and to be as unlike pearls as her pale lips are lively imagination that her mind appears to be unlike rubies, and her freckled bulb of a foreall of a blaze, except in certain emergencies, head unlike alabaster. How should I like to when the fire suddenly goes out, leaving her be taken to pieces in this way, as if I were a brain, as it were, in a white heat. Such na- manikin, and held up before the public? A tures are always extremely sensitive, and, gay lady of enormous proboscis asked me, a few as they appear, feel and suffer very keenly. evenings since, if I didn't think Clara Vernon had a pug nose. I was rude enough to reply, "No more, madam, than you have a trunk." The idea of a large nose smelling out a small one, and pouncing upon it because of its size! It was like a big boy picking upon a little one. And then Clara's nose, though diminutive, and coming to rather an abrupt conclusion, is by no means a pug, as any man of reasonable nasal proportions would perceive in a moment; besides, its delicate flexile little nostrils are beautiful enough to atone for any kind of a nose except a Roman one, which is bad enough Clara is not a very complete type of this character, for she inherits a certain amount of common sense from her father (a shrewd business man, with a profound knowledge of the surface of things), which tempers her character and, to my seeming, derogates not a little from its beauty; for, if there is a person less interesting to me than any other, it is what is called a practical, common-sense woman-a woman "with no nonsense about her." Of this sort is Clara's friend, Sally Maunder; a very square and proper person, square-headed, square-faced, on a man, but on a woman is worse than a wen. Let me add, in the way of description, that Clara has that rarest of charms, a small and well-formed ear-two of them, in fact-which I would as soon kiss (rather, sometimes, on account of whispering privileges) as her defiant lips. she is!), says I ought to ask you to explain your intentions.' Now the idea of your having any intentions struck me as so absurd that I laughed in her face. But finally, after a long talk, and especially after the visit of that little bird-which must have been a mocking-bird, for it repeated all that mamma and Sally had said, and a great deal more-I concluded to drop you a line, and tell you just what people said about us. The fact is, they call me a co One word now about her movement, and I have done. It can not be called dignified, for it is too spontaneous, too impetuous; but itquette, and you a flirt, and say that the way we must be graceful, for as I see her flitting about -lighting, in the course of ten minutes, upon every chair, sofa, lounge, divan, brioche, footstool, in the room she always reminds me of a bird-a bird just escaped from a cage and in no hurry to go back to it, though having half a mind to (a whole mind to, if dared), were it only for the deviltry of the thing. Now if the reader can't understand, after this, why I am in love with Clara Vernon, and why the one rash aim of my life is to possess her, the fault is not mine. But I can seem to hear some veteran spinster exclaim, "Well, Sir, though I don't think much of your belle, after all, and fancy she would run you a pretty rig (and serve you right) if you should happen to get her, still I should like to know by what right you, a confirmed old bachelor of forty, lay siege to a young heart of seventeen. I wonder how many other women you have been after, how many mittens there are in your wardrobe," etc., etc. Now, my dear critic, listen! go on together is ridiculous. In reply, I tell them that ever since that funny love affair of yours with Miss Condor (Anna, I think, her name was), you had been a kind of a womanhater, and that you took notice of me only because I was a mere bit of a girl, who never had a serious thought in her life. Now, my dear O. B. [short for Old Bachelor], they tell me this is all nonsense, and that hereafter we mustn't be so intimate together. "I couldn't bear to tell you this to your face, so I thought I would write you a little note about it, that you might not misconstrue any change in my demeanor. In my heart there is no change, for I still think you the best friend I have in the world, and can never thank you enough for all your kindness to me. "I am half ashamed to think I have paid any attention to the gossip of old maids and busybodies; but mamma says that as long as we live in the world we must conform to its ways, and I suppose she is right-though what a stupid world it is after all! "Yours as ever, "CLARA. "N.B.-Don't fail to come in this evening as usual; Miss Maunder and Mr. Linton will be here, and we'll have a good game of whist. If you don't come I shall have to play 'dummy.'" Now what could be said to such a note as this? I wrote no less than six different an A venerable aunt of mine, now haply defunct, and, it is to be hoped, in Paradise, used to say, in the decline of her life, that "nobody was old but the devil;" and I hold (and have held for some years) to the same opinion. Genius, good-nature, wit, worth, etc., are always young like the stars; with these no one is old, and without them youth is not worth having. Now, what a girl like Clara wants in the way of a hus-swers: one pathetic, another remonstrative, a band and of course she wants something in that way is a man possessing these qualities, and whose mind and heart are fresh enough to understand and appreciate hers; and since I am about the only man of her acquaintance who, in her estimation (and she is the only competent judge in the matter), does possess them, why should I not labor to convince her-as I have already, without labor, convinced myself — that they are the qualities which should decide her choice? A regular old bachelor's question, I admit, but how are you going to answer it? II. The above was written more than a year ago. The last line of it was hardly dry when I received the following note, which speaks for itself: "MY DEAR FRIEND,-A little bird flew in my window last night, and whispered to me that you and I had frolicked together long enough. Mamma says 'it's a shame;' and Sally Maunder, the cold-hearted thing (and yet how good third humorous, a fourth argumentative-and finally tore them all up in disgust. Jealousy took possession of me, and made me believe a rumor that Clara was engaged to Mr. Harry Linton (a briefless young lawyer imported from Wall Street by her father), and that that was the secret of the whole affair. As for Miss Maunder, I wished she would mind her own business, and was half disposed to tell her so. What business was it to her whether I had any "intentions" or not? But what was I to do in the matter-give up the ship? "Never!” said I. "Suppose I send her a formal declaration, and try to reason her into accepting me!" I did so, though not for any number of dollars per column would I consent to have that stupidest of documents printed. It was a chefd'œuvre of inanity; and I received in return the most affectionate of notes, in which Clara took all the blame of my delusion and disappointment upon herself, assured me of her sisterly regard, begged of me to continue my visits as before, hinted that I could do much better than marry such a volatile young minx as herself, | Bracegirdle's lodger and tenant for a year and recommended me to her sex generally as the best and most considerate of men, and in fact sent me exactly the kind of instrument for such cases made and provided. III. three months, and never "had a word" with her save in the kindliest manner and tone. As I never was in arrears, and always cheerfully prescribed for her rheumatics without charge, I was a favorite. "Well, Mrs. Bracegirdle, have you any thing to say ?" Her eyes surveyed deliberately and admiringly my handsomely-furnished room, with its handsome curtains, elegant bookcases, rich sofa and chairs, and showy carpet, before she replied, and then, with a pleasant smile and a knowing nod, she said, "I do wonder, Doctor, you don't get married! Such a nice room, and you could have the one above it for a sleeping-room, and I could, you know, if you liked, let you have your How nicely that "old, common arbitrator, Time," settles the most difficult of questions! Within six months after the date of the above note I found a portentous piece of pasteboard on my table, announcing to me in the most of ficial and unquestionable manner Clara's intended marriage with a young Methodist clergyman, from Damariscotta, Lincoln County, Maine, and inviting me to the wedding. Clara Vernon to be married to a down-east parson! "Good for the cloth!" said I; "three cheers for the Yankees!" and the fun of the thing had such an effect upon me that I, too, became pre-meals private like, letting your office-boy, Tim, posterous, and in less than six weeks (forgetting my horror of practical, common-sense women) was married in the squarest sort of manner to my square-built, square-minded, square-rigged friend, Miss Sally Maunder, who is at this moment at my elbow, asking me how it is that I can't or won't learn to dot my i's and cross my t's. THE BRONZE GAITERS; OR, "ALL'S MRS. the lazy rogue, with nothing to do but play Mrs. Bracegirdle was handsome, not over forty-one, a widow, and (so said Rumor) had laid up not less than nine hundred dollars in the savings-bank, with the "good-will" of a popular boarding-house. These facts forced themselves upon my mind, and I looked now at my hostess to see if she was trying to lay a snare for me. It is true she had on a shade smarter cap than usual, and looked unusually attractive; but when I reflected that she had regarded me always more with a motherly feeling than a "young widowish” one, I dismissed the unwor-thy suspicion from my thoughts and said, smil RS. BRACEGIRDLE lingered a moment with her left hand upon the door-knob, and with the thumb and forefinger of the other twisted and untwisted her apron-string in a little, hesitating way she had when she wished to say something. She had just come in at my summons, to receive the quarterly rent for my room. I am a young "medicin," as the French very appropriately and significantly term physicians, and being then a single man I hired a front parlor of good Mrs. Bracegirdle, the remainder of whose very genteel house was occu-ingly, pied by her "bread and meat boarders," as she termed her boarders who took their usual meals at her table, by way of distinguishing them from mere room occupants like myself. I had taken this parlor for my office, because it was pleasantly situated and just suited me and my profession-being on Bleecker Street, and on that precise portion thereof east of Broadway where physicians seem most to congregate. In New York certain streets seem to be relinquished to certain professions, as tragic Bond Street to dental gentlemen and Bleecker (East) to medical men. Whether so many doctors have got together there because "misery loves company," or because in the "multitude of counselors there is safety," I know not. The fact only is clear. In old times a young physician would have set up his "shingle" in a vicinage far from any other; but an opposite policy seems now pursued, perhaps on the principle that one in a flock of birds is more likely to be hit than one flying alone. But leaving this matter for the discussion of others, I merely state that I had been Mrs. "And where shall I get a wife, dear madam?" "Bless me! a handsome young man, with such white teeth (Mrs. Bracegirdle had splendid teeth!), a horse and buggy, a good practice, and some money of his own, to ask where he shall find a wife! There's fifty ladies would jump to get such a chance!" "You flatter me, my dear friend," I answered, secretly rejoicing in the flattery, as all we vain bipeds do, albeit we profess not to be taken with it. "A wife is a dangerous risk! One must change one's habits if one marries! I should lose my independence! I can now do as I please-smoke, lounge, wear my slippers, go in and out as I wish, sit on three chairs, and a table too, if I take a notion to spread myself; and if I lay any thing down I know where to find it! Why, if it makes me nervous to see your Betsey, the chambermaid, come in my room with that duster of an old, torn silk handkerchief, lest she should do mischief, what would become of me with a wife who would put ery thing in order," not understanding that ev there exists a certain systematic arrangement perceptible to my own eye in all this chaos? If my pipe lies on an open book, it is to mark a reference; if my shoe is on my bed, there is probably under it, for safe keeping, a specimen of a newly-discovered beetle-bug; if a half brick is on my writing-desk, I put it there to keep the papers from being blown away. But you know my habits, Mrs. Bracegirdle!" "Yes, Doctor, and that is the reason you ought to be married; for your words show you are selfish, and there is no cure for it but a wife," she said, with emphasis. "Yes, I have no doubt a wife would quite put me out of conceit of myself," I answered, with a half-sneer. "But to tell you the truth, Mrs. Bracegirdle, I have a great desire to be married, but I am the most difficult person to suit. My wife must be perfection. I can't bear ugliness, and a bad feature in a woman I can never forgive." paper, had been poured, as draw from them met by chance at a party, at church, or in the street! If it is my destiny to be married, the right pair of pretty feet will by-and-by catch my eye tripping along, and challenge me!" Thus soliloquizing, I took my seat by my window in a huge leathern-back arm-chair, and drawing a match across the sole of my boot, I lighted a cigar, and gave myself up to reflection and inspection of the passers-by. "Mrs. Bracegirdle is right," I ejaculated, at the end of ten minutes; "she is, undoubtedly, quite right-I ought to take a wife. But whose wife shall I take?—as young Sheridan asked his father." As the clouds of azure smoke curled above my head I conjured up, peeping out of each curl, the face of some dozen fair girls I had known or still knew. As their features blended with the wreaths, and passed in review before the eyes of my retrospection, I deliberately rejected "As if, poor woman, it was her fault!" an- each-passing judgment upon them as they asswered Mrs. Bracegirdle. "That is not the point. A woman, to fix my attention, must be without fault," I said, firmly. "She must be as beautiful as Eve doubtless was in the beginning, as intelligent as-as-let me see!--as Lady Jane Grey, as songful as Jenny Lind, as beautiful as Cleopatra, as pious as the three Marys, as benevolent as Florence Nightingale, as-as-" "Rich as Kreesus!" ventured Mrs. Bracegirdle. "No," said I, laughing, "I don't care a fig for money. I want beauty and goodness, loveliness of face and symmetry of figure; but" -and here I spoke with positiveness and decision-"but above all, she must have a little foot." Mrs. Bracegirdle slyly withdrew her plump foot (No. 5's) out of sight within the mysterious periphery of her black silk. "A pretty foot!" "Two of them, Mrs. Bracegirdle. "A pair of pretty feet! I could not love Venus herself if she had a big foot! It is impossible but that a perfectly beautiful woman will have small and pretty feet. I am willing to choose a wife by her foot, for I accept in this case the aphorism that All's well that ends well.'" Mrs. Bracegirdle, after taking half a minute to think upon it, was vastly pleased with this quotation used in such a relation, and laughed heartily. "Well, well, Doctor, you are a droll gentleman, to be sure! You have such a pleasant temper, you'd make any woman happy. But there's the bell! Good-morning, Doctor!" "Good-morning, Mrs. Bracegirdle," I said; and as she closed the door, I added, sub voce, "If I thought I could make any woman happy, I would try and find some one among the sex to make me happy! But this marrying-it is a lottery! A man might as safely draw from a wheel into which all the pretty and virtuous women's names in New York, written on slips of cended and melted into thin air beneath the ceiling of my room. One had a nose too blunt, another a nose retroussé so far as to turn up; a third was too tall; a fourth had too large a foot; a fifth had bad teeth; a sixth laughed too much; a seventh talked too loud; an eighth had big knuckles; a ninth had hair on her lip; a tenth-a sweet girl-couldn't bear the smell of asafoetida, and of course was out of the question for a doctor's wife; an eleventh had a bad breath; and the twelfth wore spectacles — my abomination in a young girl! These feminine faces all ascended above my head, and disappeared slowly into thin air-evaporated with the smoke which had reproduced them. Yet somehow a sweet face seemed to linger in the blue cloud that curled from the fiery end of my cigar. Her blue eyes, her pleasant smile, her graceful head and shoulders, her exquisite hands and incomparable feet -all were once more visible to me as I had before seen them, and almost fallen in love with their possessor. But alas! she was my cousin, and I had been informed by Fanny's Puritan mother that it was a mortal sin to marry cousins, for the Bible said so. So I let this sweet face also melt away toward the ceiling (an ascending angel!), and sighed, half resolving to turn Roman Catholic, that I might get a "dispensation" from the Pope "to marry cousins." But her mother and the Bible, how could I go against both? So I saw the features of my fair and merry cousin fade away with sorrow. "Not one of these will do," I said, shaking my head, and also shaking the ashes off my cigar. I then carelessly glanced out of my window, preparatory to reviewing another dozen of my marrying acquaintances. At the instant a lovely girl was going by on the opposite side of the street. I recognized her at once as a mysterious and graceful girl who had often passed my window. I had never seen her face, as it was concealed. How, then, did I know she is lovely? you ask. Because her feet were the most captivating little members my critical eyes ever rested upon. Such feet could belong only to a lovely body, and a lovely body, to match in symmetry the faultless feet, must be crowned by a superb and lovely head and face. From such cogent argumentation there can clearly be no appeal. I had often pointed her out to some of my friends, and more than once said I would be willing to marry her without seeing her face. The fair promenader now made use of her little feet with exquisite daintiness. Their sweet movements realized fully old Sir John Suckling's admirable lines: "Her feet beneath her petticoat, Like little mice, peeped in and out." The first day, two months before that I saw them, I was at once taken captive. "I at length," said I to Harry Hamilton my friend, "behold the beau-ideal of my imagination. The perfect foot which I have in vain looked for in the Medician Venus, in Powers's Greek Slave, in every work of art illustrating feminine beauty, is now found!" It was gaitered in a close-fitting golden bronze boot with neat heels like little walnuts, and as she walked I heard their nut-like "tap-tap" upon the pave. As she now came opposite my window she slightly (the least perceptible motion in the world) elevated her skirts to escape possible contact with a patch of coal-dust which Dr. Bung, my vis-a-vis friend and rival, had carelessly permitted to remain after getting down his coal! Such an ankle of grace and beauty was never beheld! They were fit mates to the twinkling feet. As I gazed enchanted, the fair promenader, whose form was slight, symmetrical, and graceful as became such lovely feet, turned a corner and vanished! My I am not usually an impulsive man. uncle, who was a physician, had told me that impulse and excitability were fatal to the success of a doctor of medicine; that I ought to cultivate calmness, imperturbability, and cool self-possession. "Gravity and dignity, slowness of gait and deliberation in opinion, are the highest qualifications in a medical man," he used often to say. I therefore, at my present age, eight-andtwenty, was quite a Galen for gravity and decorum of visage and manner. But I must confess that upon losing sight of the fair possessor of the beautiful feet I sprung from my armchair, tossed my cigar into the grate, seized my hat and stick (a goid-headed, doctor-like cane, with my name, "Doctor J. V. S. Dodwell, Jr., M.D.," in full length thereon), and rushed into the hall and made for the street door, resolved I would this time follow her to the world's end but that I discovered who she was! Mrs. Bracegirdle was standing in it, chaffering with a woman for fruit of some sort. As I crowded past her she looked at me with amazement, and cried out in alarm, "Who is hurt? what is it, Doctor? Is any body run over?" "No, I am after my wife!" I answered; and leaving her mystified, I pursued at a rapid step the course taken by the twinkling golden bronzes. Upon turning the corner I met her full in the face, returning, as if she had taken the wrong street. I was so taken aback—to use a sea term that I stopped perfectly still, confounded at the rencontre, and she glided past me without even glancing at me, slightly deviating to pass by me as she would have done by a barrel that stood in her path. Her face was concealed by a brown vail, worn, as the fashion of young girls is, double over the face, though for the life of me how they can see to walk so blindfolded is a mystery! After she had passed me I recovered my self-possession which this unprepared-for encounter had in a measure deprived me of, and turned to follow her, resolved that I would never lose sight of her until I knew where she abode, which ascertaining, I determined to take steps to become acquainted with her. Instead of continuing along Bleecker Street she crossed it, and seemed to be looking for some number. She slowly read the signs on the doctors' window-shutters (if read she could, through her thick barège mask), and, passing on, I saw her linger an instant to glance at the name on my window-blind, and then lightly trip up the steps and ring the bell-not Mrs. Bracegirdle's, but mine! I do not know whether surprise or delight the most predominated in my emotions at this. My boy Tim, a red-headed little mulatto, opened the door, and was about to say I was out, when, catching a glimpse of me, he said, loud enough for me to hear, "He's coming, ma'am! walk in!" The golden gaiters disappeared lightly in the hall, and I followed with a palpitating heart! It is not often I receive patients in my room, and never ladies; and the condition of my apartment with all its confusion, cigar-boxes, old hats, empty vials, and chaos generally, rushed upon my thoughts, and I hesitated whether I should go boldly in and "take the responsibility of all," or quietly withdraw and keep out of my visitor's way. But curiosity to know why I was thus honored overcame this hesitancy, and I entered the hall. Mrs. Bracegirdle was just ending a peep through the ajar door into my office at the lady. I saw her look a little rosy as she said, in a sort of apologetic way, "I thought you'd gone out, Doctor! There is a young lady in your room!" "I saw some one come in, and returned," I said, with dignity; as if it were nothing to me were the lady old or young. Upon entering my office the visitor arose, for Tim had invited her to take a chair, and said, in a charmingly-modulated voice, interrogatively, "Doctor Dodwell?" "Yes, Miss. Please keep your seat," I said, with my Sunday bow, and my softest, fee-re |