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When a pretty woman came to me, I should plant her down in the crucifying chair; open sundry mysterious-looking drawers, spread out a formidable array of instruments under her little nose, take up all the files, and saws, and scrapers, one by one, and hold them up to the light to see if they were ready primed. Then I'd step round behind her chair (getting napkin, basin, and footstool fixed to my satisfaction.) The effect I calculated on being produced, the little blue-eyed victim would turn pale and look deliciously imploring into my facethen I'd use a little 'moral suasion,' as the ministers say - and quiet her nerves. Then follows an examination of her mouth, (I should make a long job of that!) Very likely the light would not be right, and I should have to move her head a little nearer to my shoulder, then it is more than probable her long curls would get twisted round the buttons of my coat; there'd be a web for two to unweave! Then we'd commence again; the file in my hand makes an unlucky move against some sensitive tooth,-by that time it is to be hoped she'd be ready to faint, and need something held to her lips! Oh, Fan, my mind is in a state of vibration between dentistry and the shoc business/'

"What do you think of the clerical profes

sion?' said Fan, laughing. That would give you an opportunity to ask them plump, without any circumlocution or circumbendibus, the state of their hearts? You'd be of the Methodist persuasion, of course, and patronize 'Love Feasts.'

"Not a bit of it. If I went into that line of business, I'd be a Roman Catholic priest, and get up a confession box, and the first exercise of my authority after that would be to get you into a nunnery somewhere. I never saw a 'Fanny' yet that wasn't as mischievous as Satan.'

"The name is infectious, my dear; can't you get it changed for me? Speaking of that, Tom, you know that 'miserable young man' that talked so freely of 'prussic acid and daggers' once on a time? May I die an old maid if he isn't the owner of a pretty little wife and two or three children-he is as fat as a porpoise, merry as a cricket, gay as a lark-don't he sing out to me how d'ye do Fan?' in the most heart-whole fashion, as if he never said anything more than that to me all the days of his life! Oh, Tom! men have died-and worms have eaten 'em-but-not for love!'

"Do women ever die for love?'

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"Heaven forbid! I did see a man the other day, though, oh Tom!!-never mind; he's gonewith your little feet;' vanished into that grave of

our mutual hopes-an omnibus! my heart went with him-such a figure as he had! Saints and angels! wouldn't I like to see him again? I've had an overpowering sensation of goneness ever since! and speaking of goneness, won't you walk out, before you light that horrid cigar.'

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XXXII.

A LETTER TO THE TRUE FLAG.

Next get into the habit of writing letters to your female acquaintances, which will draw from them replies; from both of which sources you will in time learn enough of female vanity and sentimentality to form the ground-work of a lovestory.-True Flag, No. 39.

DEAR MR. TRUE FLAG:-I'm appointed ‘a

committee of one,' to inquire who perpetrated that sentiment in your last week's paper? Trot him out! please, and let me put my two eyes on him; and if looking will annihilate him, there shan't be anything left for the undertaker to shovel up. I'm indignant, very! and what's more; I don't like it!

"Female vanity and sentimentality 'Oh, Delilah, Dolly, Julia, Jane, Agnes, Amelia, Kathleen, Kitty, your letters fell into the hands of the Philistines, and that's their epitaph!

"Female vanity and sentimentality!'

O-o-h!

May you never have a string to your dickey, or a dickey to your string! button to your coat, or a pair of whole gloves or stockings. May you sit in a state of utter inconsolability over your unswept, untidy hearth, and bachelor fire. May you never have a soft place to lay your head when it aches; no nice little hand to magnetize away the blue devils; nobody to jump up on a cricket and tie your neck-cloth in a pretty little bow! No bright eyes to look proudly out the window after you when you go down to the store! no pretty little feet to trip to the door to meet you when you come back! May your coffee be smoky, your toast burnt, your tea be water-bewitched; your razor grow dull, your moustache turn the wrong way! your boots be 'corned!' your lips be innocent of a kiss from this day, henceforward and forever; and may you die a cantankerous, crusty, captious, companionless, musty, fusty old Benedict! Amen!

"FANNY FERN.

"P. S.-If he's handsome, dear Mr. Flag, we'll remove the anathema, and let him off with a slight reprimand, under promise of better behavior.

"F. F."

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