I fairly cried with happiness when I crossed the threshold. When I dropt in my chair at my fireside, I felt like the happiest Queen upon her throne. How beautiful, too, everything looked! There seemed a bloom, a brightness upon everything in the house; whilst the garden was glowing, brimming with flowers; all of them nodding at me, as I thought, a welcome.
What a house-warming we've had! And I never can complain of the smallness of the house after such a party! A hundred and fifty, and still plenty of room for _Roger de Coverley_. Mamma danced with TRUEPENNY who--the foolish fellow!--would go upon his knees on the hearth, and drink a glass of champagne in honour, as he said, of the household gods. We've had merriment enough almost for a life! I begin to be afraid of so much happiness--can it last?
_May 1, Twenty-ninth return of Wedding Day._
Thankful, grateful, for all blessings! Happiness has continued; happiness the purest and best, for--as dear, dear FRED says--the happiness was ever home-made.
LORD PALMERSTON has furnished the Women of America with a new answer to the Women of England. The American ladies say that now the Smoke Nuisance Bill has passed, we cannot blame the States for their Runaway Negro Act, inasmuch as we ourselves have made a law to prevent the escape of the Blacks.
The Yankee scheme for purchasing the fictitious title to the American Fisheries from the pretended EARL OF STIRLING, comes out under the auspices of an Ex-Secretary of State with the portentous name of--WALKER!
[Illustration: THE GREAT BARBARIAN DRAGON THAT WILL EAT UP "THE BROTHER OF THE MOON," &c. &c. &c.]
Whether everybody has his price or not; there are some quite capable of selling themselves, even by auction: as, for one instance, we should think, the author of the subjoined advertisement:--
AS LEDGER CLERK, Manager, and Correspondent.--A gentleman, of close-sticking business habits, who does nothing by halves, whose references as to character, &c., are first-rate, and whose devotion to his employers' interests ever has been unbounded, is just now open to a RE-ENGAGEMENT. The advertiser is of ripe, vigorous, middle-age, and so undeviatingly systematic, as by the restless force of example, to be qualified to establish, in all around him, habits of perseverance, self denial, and fagging industry, such as could not fail to tell wonderfully, as those habits became more and more fully developed, on any set of people so organised. Clever men of business, who, one and all, admire cleverness in others, and especially when it makes to them its own peculiar bow of the most profound obeisance, are most respectfully requested to address their replies to ALPHA DELTA, &c., &c.