tenderly, "how beautiful you are, especially when fixed up. The more I see of yon, the less sorry I am that I have concluded to be yours. All the time that my dear boy was trying to induce you to relase him from his engagement, I was thinking how much better you might do; yet, beyond an occasional encouraging wink, I never gave the least sign of reciprocating your attachment. I did not think it would be right"

The assertion, though superficially true, is so imperfect in its delineation of habitual conduct liable to another construction, that the agitated Flowerpot returns, with quick indignation, "your arm was always reaching out whenever you sat in a chair anywhere near me, and whenever I sang you always kept looking straight into my mouth until it tickled me. You know you did, you hateful thing! Besides, it wasn't you that I preferred, at all; it was—oh, it's too ridiculous to tell!"

In her bashful confusion she is about to arise and trip shyly away from him into the house, when he speaks again.

"Miss POTTS, is your friendship for Miss PENDRAGON and her brother such, that their execution upon some Friday of next month would be a spectacle to which you could give no pleased attention?"

"What do you mean, you absurd creature?"

"I mean," continues Mr. BUMSTEAD, "simply this: you know my double loss. You know that, upon the person of the male PENDRAGON was found an apple looking and tasting like one which my nephew once had. You know, that when Miss PENDRAGON went from here she wore an alpaca waist which looked as though it had been exposed more than once to the rain.—See the point?"

FLORA gives a startled look, and says: "I don't see it."

"Suppose," he goes on—"suppose that I go to a magistrate, and say: 'Judge, I voted for you, and can influence a large foreign vote for you again. I have lost a nephew who was very fond of apples, and a black alpaca umbrella of great value. A young Southerner, who has not lived in this State long enough to vote, has been found in possession of an apple singularly like the kind generally eaten by my missing relative, and his sister has come out in a waist made of second-hand alpaca?'—See the point now?"

"Mr. BUMSTEAD," exclaims FLORA, affrighted by the terrible menace of his manner, "I don't any more believe that Mr. PENDRAGON is guilty than I, myself, am; and as for your old umbrella—"

"Stop, woman!" interrupted the bereaved organist, imperiously. "Not even your lips shall speak disrespectfully of my lost bone-handled friend. By a chain of unanswerable argument, I have shown you that I hold the fate of your southern acquaintances in my hands, and shall be particularly sorry if you force me to hang Mr. PENDRAGON as a rival."

FLORA puts her hands to her temples, to soothe her throbbing head and display a bracelet.

"Oh, what shall I do! I don't want anybody to be hung! It must be so perfectly awful!"

Her touching display of generous feeling does not soften him. On the contrary, he stands more erect, and smiles rather triumphantly under his straw hat.

"Beloved one," he murmurs, in a rich voice, "I find that I cannot induce you to make the first advance toward the mutual avowal we are both longing for, and must therefore precipitate our happiness myself. My poor boy would not have given you perfect satisfaction, and your momentary liking for the male PENDRAGON was but the effect of a temporary despair undoubtedly produced by my seeming coldness. That coldness had nothing to do with my heart, but resulted partially from my habit of wearing a wet towel on my head. I now propose to you—"

"Propose to me?" ejaculates Miss POTTS, with heightened color.

"—That you pick out a worthy man belonging to your own section of the Union," he continues hastily. "Here's my Heart," he adds, going through the motions of taking something from a pocket and placing it in his outstretched palm, "and here's my Hand,"—placing therein an equally imaginary object from another pocket.—"Try the H. and H. of J. BUMSTEAD."

His manner is as though he were commending some patent article of unquestionable utility.

"But I can't bear the sight of you!" she cries, pushing away the brown linen arm coming after her again.

Taking away her fan, he pats her on the head with it, and seems momentarily surprised at the hollow sound.

"Future Mrs. BUMSTEAD," he cheerfully replies, at last, "my observation and knowledge of the women of America teach me that there never was a wife going to Indiana for a divorce, who had not at first sworn to love, as well as honor and obey, her husband. Such is woman that if she had felt and said at the altar that she couldn't bear the sight of him, it wouldn't have been in the power of masculine brutality and dissipated habits to drive her from his side through all their lives. There can be no better sign of our future happiness, than for you to say, beforehand, that you utterly detest the man of your choice."

There is something terrible to the young girl in the original turn of thought of this fascinating man. Say what she may, he at once turns it into virtual devotion to himself. He appears to have a perfectly dreadful power to hang everybody; he considers her strongest avowal of present personal dislike the most promising indication she can give of eternal future infatuation with him, and his powerful mode of reasoning is more profound and composing than an article in a New York newspaper on a War in Europe. Rendered dizzy by his metaphysical conversation, she arises from the rustic seat, and is flying giddily into the house, when he leaps athletically after her, and catches her in the doorway.

"I merely wish to request," he says, quietly, "that you place sufficient restraint upon your naturally happy feelings to keep our engagement a secret from the public at present, as I can't bear to have boys calling out after me, 'There's the feller that's goin' to get married! There's the feller that's goin' to get married!' When a man is about to make a fool of himself, it is not for children to remind him of it."

The door being opened before she can answer, FLORA receives a parting bow of Grandisonian elegance from Mr. BUMSTEAD, and hastens up stairs to her room in a distraction of mind not uncommon to those having conversational relations with the Ritualistic organist.

(To be Continued.)

A GOOD FIGHT.

We presume that all the Boston people "lecture" at times; at any rate they could, if they wanted to. No one doubts their ability.

But, let the number of these imparters of information be ever so great, we have reason to doubt whether any other of these accomplished parties has grappled with so formidable, so tremendous a subject, as that which is now exciting the powerful mind of Miss LILLIAN EDGARTON.

She is going to do it, though! If her life is spared, and her constitution remains free from blight, (both of which felicities we trust will be hers,) that subject has got to come under.

That all may know how great is the task, and the confidence required to pitch into it, we announce, with a flourish, that Miss L. E. is about to attack that well-known Saurian Monster, termed GOSSIP! Considered as a Disease, she proposes to find the Cause and the Cure. Considered as a living and gigantic Nuisance (by far surpassing any Dragon described by SPENSER,) she designs to hunt him out and slay him incontinently.

Courage, fair Knight! Our eldest Son is kept in reserve for some such Heroine! If you would be famous, if you would make a perfect thing of this Crusade, if you would render the lives of your fellow mortals longer and happier, if you would win that noble and ingenuous youth, our son, go in vehemently!

And, while you are about it, LILLIAN, would you object to giving your attention to certain relations of the monster which you propose to slay? We name them, Detraction and Calumny. They are tough old Dragons, now, we tell you; perhaps it were best to fight shy of them.

We have it, LILLIAN! Leave 'em to us! Us, with a big U! You kill little Gossip, and see how quick his brothers and sisters will fall, before our mighty battle-axe!

(And so they will fall, sure enough, but it will be simply because when our dear young knight, L.E., has killed her Dragon, she will have wiped out the whole brood! They can't live without their sweet and attractive little sister. And so, like many a bigger humbug, we shall take great credit, that belongs to somebody else, and assume to have done big things, at enormous expense of blood and money. Trust us, for that!)

NAPOLEON III AT SEDAN.

September, 1870.

Unlimited Lie-Ability.

Veritas writes to say that as he was crossing the ferry from Wall Street to Brooklyn, yesterday afternoon, he counted 117 persons reading PUNCHINELLO. He did not observe a single copy of the Sun on board, until the boat neared Brooklyn, when a man of squalid appearance produced from a dirty newspaper some soiled articles, all of which seemed to have been steeped in Lye, from contact with the sheet, which proved to be the Sun.

A Con for the "Ninth."

What is there in common between Colonel FISK'S war-horse and a New York Ice Company?

Both are tremendous Chargers.

THE PLAYS AND SHOWS.

ere I am again, back from the seashore, to find the theatres opening, the war closing, and GREELEY burning to imitate the late French Emperor, by leading the Republican hosts to defeat in the Fall campaign, so as to be in a position to write to the Germanically named HOFFMAN—"As I cannot fall, ballot in hand, at the head of my repeaters, I surrender to your victorious Excellency."

Being back, I went to see Julius Cæsar at NIBLO'S Garden. It was the day when the French CAESER fell, and the impertinent soothsayer, ROCHEFORT, who had so often advised him to beware, not of the Ides of March, but of the Idées Napoléoniennes, (there is a feeble attempt at a pun here) obtained his liberty, and the right to assail in his newspaper, the virtue of every female relative of the Imperial family. Of course I know that JULIUS CÆSAR was not a Frenchman—for the modesty of his "Commentaries" is proverbial—and that SHAKESPEARE never so much as heard of the Man of December. Nevertheless the two CÆSARS were inextricably mixed up in my mind. I know that two or three editorial persons who sat close by me, were continually talking of NAPOLEON, and I may possibly have confounded their remarks with those of the actors. Still I could not divest myself of the impression that I was sometimes in Paris and sometimes in Rome, and that the sepulchral voice of Mr. THEODORE HAMILTON, was more often that of NAPOLEON than that of JULIUS. The play presents itself to my recollection in the following shape. As I said before, it was represented at the very moment that the French republicans, being satisfied with the bees in their respective bonnets, were obliterating the imperial bees from the doors of the Tuileries, and being anxious to take arms against a sea of Prussians, were taking down the imperial arms wherever they could find them. Remembering this, the reader will be able to account for any slight difference in text between my Julius Cæsar, and that of the respectable and able Mr. SHAKESPEARE.

1ST. CITIZEN. "Here's a row. Great CÆSAR is going to march to Berlin. Hooray for the Hemperor."

1ST EDITORIAL PERSON. "I grant you he was popular when the war began, but to-day the people despise him."

CASSIUS. "I hate this CÆSAR. Once he tried to swim across the British Channel with a tame eagle on his shoulder, and couldn't do it. When he is sick he takes anti-bilious pills, like any other man. Obviously he don't deserve to live."

CASCA. (Who is fat enough to know better, and not pretend to be discontented.) "Let's kill him and break all the glass in the windows of Paris."

BRUTUS. "My friend, those who live in stone houses should never throw glass about. I don't mean anything by this, but it sounds oracular, and will make people think I am a profound philosopher."

EDITORIAL PERSON. "What I say is this. He, CÆSAR, governed the Roman rabble vastly better than they deserved. His only mistakes were, in not sending CASSIUS, who was a sort of ROCHEFORT, without ROCHEFORT'S cowardice, to the galleys, and in not sending BRUTUS as Minister to some capital so dreary that he would have shot himself as soon as he reached his destination."

BRUTUS. "I have no complaint against CÆSAR, and I therefore gladly join your noble band of assassins. We will kill him and establish a provisional government with myself at its head. CÆSAR is ambitious, and I hate ambition. All I want is to be the ruler of Rome."

CASSIUS. "Come, my brave fellows. Haste to the stabbing. Away! Away!"

EDITORIAL PERSON. "What a farce is history. Here are PUMBLECHOOK, BRUTUS and JOHN WILKES CASSIUS held up as models of excellence and integrity. What did they and their fellow scoundrels do after they had killed CÆSAR, but desolate their country with civil war?"

CASSIUS. "Here is CÆSAR with his back toward us, fighting the German's hordes. Let us steal up and stab him before he can help himself." (They stab him.)

CASSIUS. "Now we will kick his wife out of Paris and smash his furniture. We will all become a Provisional Government, and fix everything to suit ourselves. I will revive my newspaper, and hire a staff from the New York Sun, who will make it more scurrilous than ever."

Enter the Parisian populace crying, "Hooray for CÆSAR."

CASSIUS. "Hush. CÆSAR is dead, and we are going to proclaim a republic. Begin and abuse him with all your might. We'll let you smash some windows presently."

POPULACE. "Hooray. The tyrant has fallen. Let's go and insult his wife and smash everything generally."

1ST EDITORIAL PERSON. "Yesterday these precious rascals voted for him. To-day they insult him—it being safe to do so—and to-morrow they will want him back again."

2ND EDITORIAL PERSON, "There lies the ruins of the noblest nephew of his uncle that ever lived in France or elsewhere. He was unscrupulous, I admit, but he knew how to rule. Shall we stay and hear MARK ANTONY praise him, and set the fickle rabble at the throats of ROCHEFORT and BRUTUS, and their gang?"

1ST EDITORIAL PERSON. "That will take place very shortly, but I can't wait for it. I must go home to write an editorial welcoming the new republic, and prophesying all manner of success for it. The American people like that sort of trash, though they have already twice seen the French try republican institutions only to make a muddle of them."

2ND EDITORIAL PERSON. "What do you think of the actors here at NIBLO'S."

1ST EDITORIAL PERSON. "DAVENPORT is good but heavy, BARRETT rants like a raving French radical. MONTGOMERY is excellent, and the rest are so so."

And the undersigned having seen the French revolution played on the Roman stage at NIBLO'S, also went home without waiting to see the prophetic fourth and fifth