[WHITED SEPULCHRES.]
ALTHOUGH Aurelia has had a great deal on her mind during the past two or three days in getting ready for the Opera, she did not fail to remind me this morning, over her muffins, that I had agreed to say something about male whited sepulchres.
She also did not fail to remind me that mite parties, sewing societies, private musical soirees, young ladies' charitable institutions, ladies' aid societies, and other mild forms of social delirium on which the Women of America dote, had unanimously declared I was "too bad" and that it was "a shame."
If by some happy coincidence, I shall secure a similar state of feeling on the part of the Board of Trade, the Young Mens' Debating Society, the Society for the Propagation of Knowledge in Bridgeport, the Good Templars, the Masonic Lodges, the Turners, the late Philharmonic Society, and other mild forms of masculine gregariousness—on which the Men of America dote, I shall account myself fortunate.
Thus I said to Aurelia, as she rose from her muffins to once more endeavor to find the place in Swinburne's last poem, which she lost some days ago. The Dear Creature thinks it a duty she owes society to read Swinburne, but whenever she stops reading, she always loses her place, so that her reading of Swinburne is likely to prove the latest style of perpetual motion.
Persuading her to forego Swinburne for a few minutes, I took the Dear Child into my den, the only part of the house which has thus far escaped the innovations of Mrs. Grundy, and I said to her:
My Dear Child, you have hitherto formed your opinions of men from the samples furnished you at one dollar and fifty cents each, selected from the artificial articles concocted by Miss Muloch, Miss Bronte, Miss Evans, Dumas pere, Henry Ward Beecher and others. You know very little of the real article, for which reason I will catalogue a few of the best specimens of masculine whited sepulchres.
Old Gunnybags, who sits at the head of his pew every Sunday morning, pretending to listen to the preacher, but in reality thinking of the invoice of sugar to arrive Monday morning; who contributes certain sums for the conversion of the Siamese, but kicks the beggar from his door; who wreathes his face with smiles when he sees old Tea Chest in the next slip and in reality hates him because T. C. holds his I. O. U.; who reads the Confession very unctuously and pronounces the Amen very sonorously, at the same time inwardly cursing his next brown-stone-front neighbor, who got ahead of him in a bargain, on Saturday; who is all things to all men and a grindstone to the individual—he is a whited sepulchre and the sepulchre is full of hypocrisy.