What droll scenes hobgoblins and sprites catch a peep at, in their perambulations through this ludicrous world of ours!

Now we, poor mortals, rarely stumble upon any thing funny, because, forsooth, we must ring the bell, or knock at the door, and then people throw themselves into proper positions and put on their company faces, and the farce is at an end. No human being, for instance, could have walked, unannounced, into Miss Ariana Huntingdon’s boudoir, on that morning when Mr. Atherton Burney was kneeling at her feet, but the merry sprites gathered around, and it is a wonder that he did not hear them shout:

Mr. Burney’s courtship was by no means a premeditated affair. Who ever thinks exactly how he shall tell pleasant news? Such, that gentleman thought, would be the intelligence of his most honorable preference. And now that Miss Ariana looked coldly on his suit, he was lost in wonder at the blindness to her own interest which she exhibited. Like most men, he never dreamed that a refusal could arise from personal dislike, and while wounded pride turned his attempt at a pathetic face into a wry one, he desired to know the motives which had induced so uncomplimentary a decision.

Miss Ariana’s face wore the expression of Sir Joshua Reynold’s “Mucipula,” excepting that it said, “I have caught a man!” instead of “a mouse;” but she remembered that a respectable offer must be respectfully treated, and covering the smile lurking around her mouth with one of her plump little hands, she looked as gravely as she could from out her mischievous hazel eyes. It might have been nervousness which kept her tiny foot in motion, but it seemed very like a desire to make a football of her kneeling suitor.

“I have two reasons, sir,” she said, “for declining the honor you intended me. The first is, I have determined not to marry at all, and the second, that you are by no means the person likely to make me change this resolution.”

Had Mr. Burney been practicing that exercise in gymnastics, by which one rises at a single jerk from a horizontal to an upright position, he could not more suddenly have changed his suppliant attitude to the most rigid of perpendiculars.

“Madam,” he replied, in that husky voice which men in a passion assume when trying to appear cool. “Madam, the first reason is so singular for a person in your situation, that the second excites no surprise.”

Ariana was an orphan and dependent upon her brothers-in-law. Her piquante face exhibited no irritation at this insulting remark; although the motion of her pugnacious little foot was somewhat quickened, a merry laugh was the only rejoinder.

Mr. Atherton Burney was prepared for a burst of indignant scorn, but he found no words to express his surprise and indignation at this ill-timed mirth; he wheeled round as if on drill, “right about face,” and made a “forward march,” which did not terminate till he found himself, hat in hand, upon the pavement of Washington Square. His head and his temper being by this time a little cooled, his few scattering brains were again packed in their narrow-brimmed receptacle, and none who met Mr. Atherton Burney that day on the pavÉ, suspected that behind his elegant moustache a refusal was sticking in his throat.

——