THE EXHAUSTED TOPIC.
BY CAROLINE C——.
What shall I write about? A sensible question enough for me to address to you, good reader, were I a worn-out school-girl, with a mind quite like an "exhausted receiver" on the one subject, frightful, dismal, and hated at all times to her. But, thanks be to Time, I am no school-girl—and it is rather a foolish question, this same one I have proposed, considering that for sixty long seconds my mind has been fully determined as to what I will write about this morning.
I have been looking over a file of old magazines, which are now scattered about me in most beautiful confusion, for the sole purpose of discovering in the steps of how many "illustrious predecessors" I am to follow, when I expatiate on that, which, by the last tale in the last new magazine, seems to be still a marvelous object in creation, namely, "The Coquette."
And oh the poems, and tales, and essays, by the Mrs.'s and Misses—the Mr.'s and Esqr.'s, let alone the Dr.'s and Rev.'s, who have not disdained to pour forth their thoughts like water on this exhausted (?) topic! I will spare you, through mere Christian charity, dear reader, from listening to their enumeration.
By this time, if you are any thing of a magazine or newspaper reader, you must necessarily have arrived at some conclusion as to this tribe of humans. Well, what do you think of coquettes in general, my friend—what do you think of those with whom you have had to do with in particular? According to Johnson, a coquette is "a gay, airy girl, who by various arts endeavors to gain admirers." Natural enough, all that, I should say.