_Mr. Pippy's Valentine._
This elegant production was painted on a sheet of paper with a lace
border, and presented a singular mixture of sentiment and improbability,
viz.—a little boy, in a species of undress which the police would
certainly prohibit from becoming the general fashion, riding in a car,
like an enormous periwinkle shell turned topsy-turvy, upon wheels, and
drawn by two pigeons—a proceeding of which every thinking mind must
admit the impracticability, since the atmospheric resistance of the
birds' wings could never afford sufficient fulcrum to draw so large a
vehicle with any momentum, especially with cowslip collars and rosebud
traces.—[See Proceed. of Chawturmut Lit. and Scien. Inst., p. 30.] A
church with a pointed spire and two windows was seen in the distance,
perfecting this tasteful composition of protestant mythology. At each
corner were intricate red loops, like mud-worms in convulsions, termed
true lovers' knots; and below were eight exquisite and novel lines, of
which we present the reader with the _termini_, leaving him to fill them
up as he pleases:—"heart—smart," "languish—anguish," "flame—name," "you
be mine—Valentine."