CONTRIBUTIONS TO OUR DRAWER.
Miss Trephina and Miss Trephosa, two ancient ladies of virgin fame, formerly kept a boarding-house in the immediate neighborhood of the Crosby-street Medical College. They took in students, did their washing, and to the best of their abilities mended their shirts and their morals. Miss Trephina, in spite of the numerous landmarks which time had set up upon her person, was still of the sentimental order. She always dressed "de rigueur" in cerulean blue, and wore false ringlets, and teeth (miserabile dictu!) of exceedingly doubtful extraction. Miss Trephosa, her sister, was on the contrary an uncommonly "strong-minded" woman. Her appearance would have been positively majestic, had it not been for an unfortunate squint, which went far to upset the dignified expression of her countenance. She wore a fillet upon her brows "à la Grecque," and people did say that her temper was as cross as her eyes. Bob Turner was a whole-souled Kentuckian, for whom his professorial guardian obtained lodgings in the establishment presided over by these two fascinating damsels. Somehow or other, Bob and his hostesses did not keep upon the best of terms very long. Bob had no notion of having his minutest actions submitted to a surveillance as rigid as (in his opinion) it was impertinent. One morning a fellow-student passing by at an early hour, saw the Kentuckian, who was standing upon the steps of the dragons' castle, from which he had just emerged, take from his pocket a slip of paper, and proceed to affix the same, with the aid of wafers, to the street door. The student skulked about the premises until Bob was out of sight, and he could read without observation the inscription placarded upon the panel. It was as follows—we do not vouch for its originality, although we know nothing to the contrary:
"To let or to lease, for the term of her life,
A scolding old maid, in the way of a wife;
She's old and she's ugly—ill-natured and thin;
For further particulars, inquire within!"
An hour afterward the paper had disappeared from the door. Whether Bob was ever detected or not we can not tell, but he changed his lodgings the next term.
The Spaniards have a talent for self-glorification which throws that of all other nations, even our own, into the shade. Some allowance should be made, perhaps, for conventional hyperbolism of style, but vanity has as much to do with it as rhetoric. A traveled friend saw performed at Barcelona a play called "Españoles sobre todos"—"Spaniards before all"—in which the hero, a Spanish knight, and a perfect paladin in prowess, overthrows more English and French knights with his single arm than would constitute the entire regular army of this country. All these absurdities were received by the audience with a grave enthusiasm marvelous enough to witness. The play had a great run in all the cities of Spain, until it reached Madrid, where its first representation scandalized the French embassador to such a degree, that, like a true Gaul as he was, he made it a national question, interfered diplomatically, and the Government suppressed the performance.
There is a light-house at Cadiz—a very good light-house—but in no respect an extraordinary production of art. There is an inscription carved upon it, well peppered with notes of exclamation, and which translated reads as follows:
"This light-house was erected upon Spanish soil, of Spanish stone, by Spanish hands."