our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable
moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an
outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder
whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married
to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride,
since he led her to the altar, and which make her so much more than he
ever bargained for! Is it not a sounder view of the case, that the
matrimonial bond can not be held to include the three-fourths of the
wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? And as a
matter of conscience and good morals, ought not an English married pair
to insist upon the celebration of a silver wedding at the end of
twenty-five years in order to legalize and mutually appropriate that
corporeal growth of which both parties have individually come into
possession since they were pronounced one flesh?




THE TRAGEDY OF IT

BY ALDEN CHARLES NOBLE


Alas for him, alas for it,
Alas for you and I!
When this I think I raise my mitt
To dry my weeping eye.