NOW I like a fool—a genuine fool, who is obliviously unconscious of the fact! Life is too dull at best; a fool has his mission, and where's the harm of laughing, invulnerable as he is in his panoply of self-conceit? The fool I am thinking of this moment, however, is of the feminine gender—one who loomed upon my astounded vision in the cabin of a ferry-boat, gorgeous as a shivered rainbow, or a bed of variegated tulips, or a garden of staring sunflowers, which challenge notice, flauntingly forbidding quiet passers-by to go abstractedly on the winding way of their various duties and avocations. Thus challenged, I of course surveyed my challenger. Heavens! what an array of millinery and mantua-making was spread over that human lay-figure. What a vapid, inane face that gay bonnet framed; what big feet those cream-colored gaiters betrayed! What a sweep of flounce, and ruffle, and ribbon and lace. What an all-over consciousness of "go-to-meetin'" fixins, in every lineament and limb! What a haven't I done it now? in every defying glance? It was astounding. I was mentally knocked over and stultified. And as if this were not enough, the woman actually had the sacrilegious presumption to perpetuate herself in a child which she led by the hand, a little four-year-older, bedizened in orange and black, and green and blue, and pink and purple, effectually stifling all the graces of childhood, if such a mother had bequeathed any. A little tottling bunch of brilliant dry-goods, happily putting an end to its existence, however, with double handfuls of sugar-candy, which the mamma was supplying without stint or limit. Disgusted steady-going business-men gazed and sighed like a pair of bellows, as they inwardly said to themselves, in the language of that eminent philosopher, Pop Weasel, "That's the way the money goes." Young men tittered, and old matrons wondered how her kitchen closets and cupboards, her pickle and preserve jars, looked at home. Meanwhile the child, unobserved, strayed from the maternal side to take a survey of the cabin, looking curiously round, much as you have seen an organ grinder's monkey. "George Washington!" We all started patriotically at the sound of this honored name, shouted from lungs that would not have disgraced an omnibus-driver; only to collapse again, smothering with laughter, as George Washington's mamma seized him by the belt, splitting her pea-green glove in the operation, and deposited him right end up with care upon the seat by her side, well pleased with her maternal prowess, and putting only a favorable construction upon the grinning faces around her.