'Ye myrtles brown, and ivy never sere.'
Milton's Lycidas.
[7] 'Poculum ex hedera, cissybium dictum, ratione duplici conviviis summè est accomodum: imprimis, quod hedera vini temulantiam, arcere fertur: deinde quod cauponum fraudes, qui vinum aqua miscent, eo poculo deprehenduntur.'—Memorabilium, Utilium ac Jucundorum Centuriæ Novem, &c. Paris, 1566.
THE MISHAPS OF MISS HOBBS.
'New beauties push her from the stage;
She trembles at the approach of age;
And starts, to view the altered face
That wrinkles at her in her glass.'
Trumbull's Progress of Dulness.
CHAPTER I.
Ann Harriet Hobbs was getting cured of her youth. 'She was going backward,' as the French say of people when Time is running forward, and they themselves are being forwarded a little too rapidly by his Express. All the ladies said so of her; all the gentlemen said so; and, worse than all, even the mirror made similar reflections a little—the only difference being that the ladies and gentlemen said so behind her back, but the mirror expressed it before her face. One by one her sisters and companions ripened and were plucked by the admiring crowd, but Ann Harriet remained untouched. No one even pinched her to see if she were good. And finally, as the throng were rapidly passing on, it became her settled conviction that she must shake herself into some one's hands, or she would be left to wither forsaken on the ancestral tree.
Ann Harriet, like some patent medicines, was not bad to take. True, children did not cry for her as they did for the famous cough lozenges of old; but the fact was, that in Peonytown most of the people were homœopathists, and preferred small doses; therefore Ann Harriet, who was popularly reported to weigh three hundred and one pounds—vires acquirit eundo—was altogether too large a dose for any gentleman of the homœopathic persuasion. Possibly, if Ann Harriet could have been divided into twin sisters of about one hundred and fifty pounds each, her matrimonial chances would have greatly increased; for however it may have been in years past, this putting two volumes into one is not at all popular at the present duo-decimal time.
Business, too, was dull in Peonytown, and the men could not afford to marry a wife who would require twenty-five yards for a dress, when they could get one that ten yards would cover up.
Miss Hobbs's twenty-sixth birthday was approaching. She could see it in the dim distance, and she knew too well that the twenty-seventh was ready to follow it up; and that Time stepped heavier than he used to—the clumsy fellow; for, 'handsome' as she was, she could see the marks of his feet on her face.