A TALE OF LOVE.

I've been in love some twenty times,
With more than twenty people;

From ladies, like a washing tub,
To ladies, like a steeple.

And some of them were lily white,
With cheeks as red as roses;

And some of them had ruby lips,—
And some had ruby noses.

There was tough old gentleman,
Who dealt in bricks and mortar;

And by some odd coincidence,

He had a pretty daughter:

Her outside walls were very neat,
Her voice was very winning,

She had a pair of little feet
To serve for underpinning.

I met her in the house one day;
And, in the lover's fashion,

I threw myself upon my knees,
And told my tale of passion.

She burst into a flood of tears,

And said that she was thinking,

As how she loved their 'prentice boy,
But he had took to drinking!

The next, she was a blacksmith's girl;
Her hair, it was like charcoal;
Her eyes, they sparkled out like red-
Hot iron from a dark-hole.

My heart, it beat a ten pound ten,
Whenever I came nigh her;
And Cupid's bellows blew me up,
Till I was all on fire.

At last, I ventured to declare

The hopes I long had cherished;

How often when I thought she frowned My very soul had perished;

And begged her for one gentle breath

To wake the dying cinder

She took me by the neck and heels,
And flung me out of winder.

The next, she was a blue-eyed miss;
A pie-compounder's daughter;
She set my feelings in a stir,

Like carbonated water.

My wretched heart she cut it up,

Into a thousand slices;

For she was sweeter than her cake,
But colder than her ices.

The next, she was a sexton's girl—

A maid of whims and fancies:

For while he dug the neighbours' graves,

She delved on old romances.

She measured me against the wall;

Said she, 'He might be smaller; But then the tailor down the lane, Is full two inches taller.'

And I have had a dozen more,
But I have left them all now;
I use my card case for my quids,
And never make a call now.

I do not turn my collar down,
To make myself look thinner;
And as for love, my tender thoughts
Are wasted on my dinner.

CONVENT SCENES.

BY A SPANIARD.

I was, for four years of my nonage, a student in the convent of the Escurial at the college there. There were about one hundred and fifty boys that a stranger would suppose were princes, for they were called after the names of their towns; as, Toledo, Alcala, Granada, and Cordova. I was called Madrid, No. 7, for there were several from the capital. Our tutors were, of course, ecclesiastics, and of course, also, they were fat. One of them, who had but a single eye, we named Domine Fuerto, and we studied to annoy him more diligently than we ever pursued the humanities. Since those idle days, that look so pleasant in the retrospect, I have had graver things to do and suffer, and I cannot now remember a tythe of the tricks it was our delight to play upon the Domine. He had the irritability that gives such zest to a practical joke! and, to tell the truth, we kept him in a continual ferment.

Sometimes we would steal into his room, and sprinkle his couch with finely powdered salt. Its action upon the skin was fatal to sleep; and a sleepless night was sure to bring in a passionate morning.

He was a squire of dames, and wore a red wig, to conceal the defect that so mortified the first bald Cæsar. This wig excited us to constant vigilance, and honored among us was the boy that could contrive to have a pluck at it. We limed the top of his chair, so that when he rose, his wig and his head would part company. We trained a magpie to pounce upon a red wig on a stuffed image; and at last let him slip upon the Domine's, which he carried off like Sadi's turban. This learned ecclesiastic was proud of his deficiencies, for he had the vanity to believe that he had a good person, though he looked like a turnspit on its hinder legs. Yet under all these disadvantages, he boldly attempted the graces, and at his entrance and exit, would treat us to a superb bow. On one occasion, when some strangers were present, we executed another stratagem against that eternal wig. A packthread with a hook, was skilfully let down through a small hole in the ceiling, and while he was in the act of bowing, it caught up his wig to the roof, where it flamed like a meteor in the sky.

At another time, when Domine Fuerto was to appear in the chapel before some ladies of Madrid, we sewed in his cassock several of the little bells, that are worn by mules. When he addressed the assembly, every gesture jingled the bells, and his flutter of