rather duster, about six inches wide, including the holes,-house-maid's comb, and triangular scrap of looking-glass-scanty (if any) curtainscat left under your bed, and kittening over you in the night, &c. &c. &c. On rising, quite re freshed! in the morning, (no one coming to open your windows) you break your nails in baffled attempts to find out, in the dark, the cramp principle upon which the shutters are fastenedno bell in the room, or, if there be, no one attends it except a gawky malkin, who snuffles to you through the door, and then mistakes all your orders-all this while, you are shivering in your shirt, barefoot; your boots having been clawed away (but not cleaned), and no slippers left in their room. There! I hope my performance answers to my promises. And now I'll give you a concluding Groan, compared with which all the rest are like the sighs of a sleeping baby :and what is more, it shall be uttered in a single word: SERVANTS! 127. (T.) Sen. There came a thunder-bolt indeed!that word is, in itself, a volume it is the very prince of sweeping clauses. Dean Swift, indeed, may be said to have effectually forestalled us in this region of plagues, and has often made me wish that he had been as merciful as he is stout; for it costs me a fit of the bile, whenever I open that cruelly elaborate catalogue of abominations, which is contained in his " Directions to Servants :" -more docile Disciples never rewarded the assiduity of a Teacher!-And yet it does not well become me to complain of him, on this occasion, I must confess; for, when I have been applied to for a character, as it is termed, by one of these domestic Scourges, I have more than once referred the enquirer to the chapter containing the Dean's directions to the particular description of servant then required; assuring the Lady, or Gentleman, that the instructions in question have, at all times, been most punctually followed by the present applicant, while he continued in my employ ment. Tes. No bad method, I confess-though not quite so short as mine. Sen. What may that be, my good Mr. Testy ? Tes. Kicking the rascal headlong down stairs on the spot, the moment he asks me for a character. Sen. Compendious, certainly — and, as it should seem, not unlikely to disembarrass you, in a considerable degree, from future applications of that nature. Tes. Yes, yes. it answers there, too:but enough of the " caterpillars," which torment us more than any other reptiles, because we are such fools that we won't go on without 'em.-Well, Sensitive, I begin to hope we have now pretty well exhausted" Pandora's box," as you called it, and that we may now sit down upon our old stock of Miseries, without going out upon the hunt after new ones. Sen. Nay, there are multitudes of Miseries besides those which are to be sought abroad. Turn your eyes, for instance, upon your own person, and tell me whether every joint, limb, and feature, is not a separate ren-. dezvous for an innumerable legion of annoyances, which, though they do not suddenly destroy you, yet fail not in the end to wear you out by a harassing system of petty warfare, of irritating skirmishes, that allow you neither the recruit of rest, nor the glory of a battle. Tes. Aye, aye-I see plainly whereabout you are; Miseries personal, or of the body," as I take it, would be a fit title for the enemies you mean.-If I can't conquer them, you shall see, however, that I can count them-no man better. When shall we meet upon it? Sen. As soon as my nerves shall be strengthened, and your blood cooled, after this longest and hardest of all our days of difficulty. Tes. Well, then, as the Tough should wait upon the Tender, I will abide the leisure of your worship's nerves; but, as to myself, it |