"Oh! do not paint her charms to me,
I know that she is fair!
I know her lips might tempt the bee,
Her eyes with stars compare:
Such transient gifts I ne'er could prize,
My heart they could not win:
I do not scorn my Mary's eyes,
But—has she any 'tin?'
"The fairest cheek, alas! may fade,
Beneath the touch of years;
The eyes where light and gladness played,
May soon grow dim with tears:
I would love's fires should to the last
Still burn, as they begin;
But beauty's reign too soon is past;
So—has she any 'tin?'"
There is something very touching and pathetic in a circumstance mentioned to us a night or two ago, in the sick-room of a friend. A poor little girl, a cripple, and deformed from her birth, was seized with a disorder which threatened to remove her from a world where she had suffered so much. She was a very affectionate child, and no word of complaining had ever passed her lips. Sometimes the tears would come in her eyes, when she saw, in the presence of children more physically blessed than herself, the severity of her deprivation, but that was all. She was so gentle, so considerate of giving pain, and so desirous to please all around her, that she had endeared herself to every member of her family, and to all who knew her.
At length it was seen, so rapid had been the progress of her disease, that she could not long survive. She grew worse and worse, until one night, in an interval of pain, she called her mother to her bed-side, and said, "Mother, I am dying now. I hope I shall see you, and my brother and sisters in Heaven. Won't I be straight, and not a cripple, mother, when I do get to Heaven?" And so the poor little sorrowing child passed forever away.
"I heard something a moment ago," writes a correspondent in a Southern city, "which I will give you the skeleton of. It made me laugh not a little; for it struck me, that it disclosed a transfer of 'Yankee Tricks' to the other side of the Atlantic. It would appear, that a traveler stopped at Brussels, in a post-chaise, and being a little sharp-set, he was anxious to buy a piece of cherry-pie, before his vehicle should set out; but he was afraid to leave the public conveyance, lest it might drive off and leave him. So, calling a lad to him from the other side of the street, he gave him a piece of money, and requested him to go to a restaurant or confectionery, in the near vicinity, and purchase the pastry; and then, to 'make assurance doubly sure,' he gave him another piece of money, and told him to buy some for himself at the same time. The lad went off on a run, and in a little while came back, eating a piece of pie, and looking very complacent and happy. Walking up to the window of the post-chaise, he said, with the most perfect nonchalance, returning at the same time one of the pieces of money which had been given him by the gentleman, 'The restaurateur had only one piece of pie left, and that I bought with my money, that you gave me!'"
This anecdote, which we are assured is strictly true, is not unlike one, equally authentic, which had its origin in an Eastern city. A mechanic, who had sent a bill for some article to a not very conscientious pay-master in the neighborhood, finding no returns, at length "gave it up as a bad job." A lucky thought, however, struck him one day, as he sat in the door of his shop, and saw a debt-collector going by, who was notorious for sticking to a delinquent until some result was obtained. The creditor called the collector in, told him the circumstances, handed him the account, and added:
"Now, if you will collect that debt, I'll give you half of it; or, if you don't collect but half of the bill, I'll divide that with you."
The collector took the bill, and said, "I guess, I can get half of it, any how. At any rate, if I don't, it shan't be for want of trying hard enough."