season's bonnets, together with heaps of ribbons, yellow lace, and
much other half-worn milliner's ware, all of which proved even more
evanescent in the fire than it had been in the fashion. A multitude
of lovers of both sexes--discarded maids or bachelors and couples
mutually weary of one another--tossed in bundles of perfumed letters
and enamored sonnets. A hack politician, being deprived of bread by
the loss of office, threw in his teeth, which happened to be false
ones. The Rev. Sydney Smith--having voyaged across the Atlantic for
that sole purpose--came up to the bonfire with a bitter grin and
threw in certain repudiated bonds, fortified though they were with
the broad seal of a sovereign state. A little boy of five years
old, in the premature manliness of the present epoch, threw in his
playthings; a college graduate, his diploma; an apothecary, ruined
by the spread of homeopathy, his whole stock of drugs and medicines;
a physician, his library; a parson, his old sermons; and a fine
gentleman of the old school, his code of manners, which he had
formerly written down for the benefit of the next generation. A
widow, resolving on a second marriage, slyly threw in her dead
husband's miniature. A young man, jilted by his mistress, would
willingly have flung his own desperate heart into the flames, but
could find no means to wrench it out of his bosom. An American
author, whose works were neglected by the public, threw his pen and
paper into the bonfire and betook himself to some less discouraging
occupation. It somewhat startled me to overhear a number of ladies,
highly respectable in appearance, proposing to fling their gowns and
petticoats into the flames, and assume the garb, together with the
manners, duties, offices, and responsibilities, of the opposite sex.

What favor was accorded to this scheme I am unable to say, my
attention being suddenly drawn to a poor, deceived, and half-