to establish the positive necessity of woman's superior insight, and
natural dispassionate fairness of mind, for the future wisest exercise
of the elective franchise and most just administration of the highest
judicial office. It may be said that the mother-in-law is the highest
development of the supernaturally perceptive and positive woman, since
she usually has superior opportunities to study man in all the stages
from marriage to madness; but with her whole sex, particularly after
certain sour turns in life, inheres an alertness of observation as to
the incredible viciousness of masculine character, which nothing less
than a bit of flattery or a happily equivocal reflection upon some rival
sister can either divert or mislead for a moment.

"Now don't you really think, OLDY," said Gospeler SIMPSON to his mother,
as he sat watching her fabrication of an immense stocking for the poor,
"that Hopeless Inebriate and Midnight Assassin are a rather too severe
characterization of my pupil, Mr. MONTGOMERY PENDRAGON?"

"No, I do not, OCTAVE," replied the excellent old nut-cracker of a lady,
who was making the charity stocking as nearly in the shape of a hatchet
as possible. "When a young man of rebel sentiments spends all his nights
in drinking lemon teas, and trying to spoil other young men's clothes in
throwing such teas at them, and is only to be put down by umbrellas, and
comes to his homes with cloves in his clenched fists, and has headaches
on the following days, he's on his way either to political office or the
gallows."

"But he hasn't done so at all with s's to it," exclaimed the Reverend
OCTAVIUS, exasperated by so many plurals. "He did it but once, and then
he was strongly provoked. EDWIN mentioned the sharpness of his sister's
nose to him, and reflected casually upon the late well-known Southern