Further there appeared a couple of Duettists in ordinary evening habiliments, who sang in unison with egregious melodiousness. One was plump as a partridge; the other thin as a weasel; and they related how they were both the adorers of a certain lovely damsel called "Sally," who was the darling of their co-operative hearts, and resided in their Alley. And of all the days in the week they loved Sunday, because then they were dressed in all their best, and went for a walk with Sally.
I should have thought that it was not humanly feasible for Sally to continue such periodical promenades without exhibiting some preferential kind of choice, either for the partridge or the weasel, and that such a triangular courtship and triple alliance would infallibly terminate in the apple of discord, but Jessie did assure me that it was quite usual and the correct cheese for a girl to have more than one beau upon her string.
"IN GARBAGE OF UNPARAGONED SHABBINESS."
I made the further observation that the Comedians and Comics must be reduced to extreme pauperism, since they presented themselves before a well-dressed, respectable audience in garbage of unparagoned shabbiness, and with hair of unbrushed wildness, and needing immediate tonsure.
One songster did offer some excuse for the poverty of his appearance, telling us his hard case, how that he was occupied in declaring his passion to a beauteous damsel, when she was "all over him in a minute," and, while he was making love to the pretty stars above, she cleared out all his pockets in a minute! At which many laughed; but, though Jove is said to regard lovers' perjuries with cachinnation, I could not help feeling the most pitiable sympathy for such a disappointing conclusion to a love affair, seeing that it is impossible for the comeliest nymph who returns her admirer's devotion by stealing his purse, and similar trash, to remain posed any longer upon the towering pedestal of an ideal. Upon making this remark to Jessie, however, she uttered the repartee that I was the silly noodle; though she is, I am sure, notwithstanding her attachment to gewgaws, not capable of descending personally to such light-fingered tactics.
I was additionally bewildered by a chorus chanted by one of the Society Belles, which I took down verbatim, in the hope of a solution. It was as follows: "For I like a good liar, indeed I do! Provided he comes out with something new! But why did he tell me that story with whiskers on, why, why, why?"
Now to me it is wholly incomprehensible that the female intelligence should admire mendacity in the opposite sex on the sole conditions that the said liar should present himself in some novel article of attire, and, previously to relating his untruth, remove from his cheeks any hirsute appendages. One of the boarders whom I consulted on the subject attempted to persuade me that it was the story that had the whiskers; but it is nonsensical to suppose that a purely abstract affair like an untruth could be furnished with capillary growth, which belongs to the concrete department.