"Louisa, you've the brightest eyes,
They look me _through_, just like a dart."
"Do they, Sir Fop?" Louisa cries;
"If so, I'm sure _they see no heart_."
* * * * *
A scrap from a conversation between too "literary and fashionable
characters," in the immediate vicinity of Thorburn's garden.
"Hist now and I'll sing you a _solo_."
"Well, sing it _so low_, then, that nobody can hear it."
* * * * *
A wag of the first water closed an amusing and spirited article in the
last Knickerbocker with the following "brace" of clever items. I have
been sick of poetry since I saw the Vermont editor's quotation from
Shakspeare. Speaking of the free negroes in New York, and their
depredation on society, he says, that during the fervors of a summer's
solstice, they come,
--------"from the sweet South,
_Stealing and giving odor_."
But more especially, since a friend of mine travestied a noble line of
Byron's by applying it--while riding along a road which commanded a
view of Weathersfield, Connecticut--to that place of onions, tears and
pretty maidens:
"Niobe of nations--there she stands!"
* * * * *
The following epigram from the North American Magazine, is a "Bonne
bouche."
I'm sorry dear M----, there is a damp to your joy,
Nor think my old strain of mythology stupid,
When I say that your wife had a _right_ to a boy,
For Venus is nothing without a young Cupid.
But since Fate the boon that you wished for refuses,
By granting three girls to your happy embraces,
She meant, while _you_ wandered _abroad_ with the _Muses_,
Your _wife_ should be circled at _home_ by the _Graces_.