Your daughters now demand your serious attention. Dress and plant them in rows for evening parties. Weed poor relations. Sift "Debrett's Peerage" well through, and do your best to nail the oldest branches. Lay traps for bets at races, and hoe young gentlemen for gloves. Calculate the advantages of foreign, as compared with English husbandry, and cultivate whichever promises to turn out best. Remove younger daughters to the nursery, and towards the 30th transplant young sprigs to narrow beds at preparatory schools. Cut your box at the opera, and look forward to spa watering for the autumn. Trim your old man well, if he does not come out handsomely: if the trimming should fail, forcing must be resorted to. Put your frames in muslin bags, and cart away loose furniture to the Pantechnicon. Graft slips on window-panes, labelled "To Let," and harrow your servants with board wages. Clear out your husband's purse, or if he is rather backward this year, transplant him to back kitchen; and, screening yourselves from exposure, drill policemen to say "the family have gone out of town."
HORTICULTURAL FATE.
THE HORTICULTURAL FATE.
The morn was beautiful and bright,
The sun—that general adorner—
Was gilding with its glowing light
The iron rails at Hyde Park Corner.
The lodge beneath its radiance gleamed,—
Into some curds there shot a ray;