THE SHORT GENTLEMAN'S APOLOGY,

SUBLIMEST, fairest of thy sex, how can I match with thee, When I'm but four feet and a half, and you are six feet three? The time is really past, my dear, of which old writings tell, When the little angels deep in love with giantesses fell.

I'm flattered much, I vow and swear, and may my oath be

booked,

In not being by so tall a dame entirely overlooked;

Yet what may be a pleasant thing in meaningless mirtation, Might prove, in wedlock's graver time, a pretty smart vexation.

First, now, suppose that courtship had commenced betwixt us two,

How strange a thing, if every time when I came here to woo,

I had to bring a telescope of Herschel's greatest size

To pitch at you, that I might read the language of your eyes!

And if at last, some summer night, you were to blush consent, And I was almost overpowered with love's soft ravishment, You'll own 'twould be, upon the whole, an awkward sort of bliss,

Had a ladder to be ordered in ere I could reach a kiss.

These things, 'tis true, might be got o'er, being only entre nous, But how, my dear, in heaven's name, d'ye think we e'er should do,

When we were going, man and wife, on friends and foes to call, Already christened by some wag, "The Cannon and the Ball?"

'Twould break my heart, I'm very sure, though a stoutish heart it be,

If, while I walked in Prince's Street, hard trotting by your

knee,

Some purblind dame were to cry out, "La, Mrs. So-and-so,

This lady sure, her reticule, she hangs it rather low."

I really am afraid, my dear, I should look something queer, Hung from your lofty arm, like gem that hangs from Ethiop's

ear;

Why, as you fashions lead sometimes, folk might begin to

hint

At having patterns copied from your "elbow ornament."

Their endless jokes, I see them all, by Jove, drawn out

before me,

As clear and dreadful as the kings that made Macbeth so

stormy;

First some one, in contrasting us, would give me credit

due,

But say that, on the whole, I fell a good deal short of

you.

Another would remark that you must jealousy defy,

Seeing you kept your little man so much beneath your

eye:

A third would wonder how at all I ever met your eyes,

Which ever go, like Milton's thoughts, "commercing with the

skies."

No, no, my dear, it will not do, we can't be man and wife;

66

"Unequal yokes," St. Paul has said, bring misery and

strife;

Odds life, d'ye think I'd wed with one, who, spite of previous

speeches,

Would be, however ill they'd fit, so sure to wear the breeches.

THE UNLUCKY PRESENT.

66 can never see

A Rev. (?) minister of the church of Scotland, who lived within the present century, was one of those unhappy persons, who, to use the words of a well known Scottish adage, green cheese but their een reels." Scotsmanlike, he was extremely covetous, and that not only of nice articles of food, but of many other things which do not generally excite the cupidity of the human heart. The following fact is in corroboration of this assertion:-Being on a visit one day at the house of one of his parishioners, a poor lonely widow, living in a moorland part