brickbat or a tomahawk; but it doesn't answer so well for a bouquet; you

will hurt somebody if you keep it up. Turn your nosegay upside down,

take it by the stems, and toss it with an upward sweep. Did you ever

pitch quoits? that is the idea. The practice of recklessly heaving

immense solid bouquets, of the general size and weight of prize cabbages,

from the dizzy altitude of the galleries, is dangerous and very

reprehensible. Now, night before last, at the Academy of Music, just

after Signorina had finished that exquisite melody, "The Last Rose of

Summer," one of these floral pile-drivers came cleaving down through the

atmosphere of applause, and if she hadn't deployed suddenly to the right,

it would have driven her into the floor like a shinglenail. Of course

that bouquet was well meant; but how would you like to have been the

target? A sincere compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long as

you don't try to knock her down with it.

YOUNG MOTHER."--And so you think a baby is a thing of beauty and a joy

forever? Well, the idea is pleasing, but not original; every cow thinks

the same of its own calf. Perhaps the cow may not think it so elegantly,

but still she thinks it nevertheless. I honor the cow for it. We all

honor this touching maternal instinct wherever we find it, be it in the

home of luxury or in the humble cow-shed. But really, madam, when I

come to examine the matter in all its bearings, I find that the

correctness of your assertion does not assert itself in all cases.

A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded

as a thing of beauty; and inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short

Sketches New and Old