Her voice is strident, her laugh too much like a giggle, and she has that foolish way of dancing and bobbing like a quill-float with a "minnum" biting the hook below it, which one sees and weeps over sometimes in persons of more pretensions.
I can't help hoping we shall put something into that empty chair yet which will add the missing string to our social harp.

I hear talk of a rare Miss who is expected.

Something in the schoolgirl way, I believe.
We shall see.
-- My friend who calls himself The Autocrat has given me a caution which I am going to repeat, with my comment upon it, for the benefit of all concerned.
Professor,--said he, one day,--don't you think your brain will run dry before a year's out, if you don't get the pump to help the cow?
Let me tell you what happened to me once.

I put a little money into a bank, and bought a check-book, so that I might draw it as I wanted, in sums to suit.

Things went on nicely for a time; scratching with a pen was as easy as rubbing Aladdin's Lamp; and my blank check-book seemed to be a dictionary of possibilities, in which I could find all the synonymes of happiness, and realize any one of them on the spot.