By the bye, I don’t know a better application, in the present weather, than claret punch.  Apply yourself continually to that cooling beverage, and apply it continually to your lips, and the result is a sort of reciprocity treat, whose results are much more certain than those of the reciprocity treaty, of which Congress has latterly had so much to say.

To contemplate La Giselle in all its bearings is a pleasure which is peculiarly appropriate to the season.  KATHI LANNER and her companions may not be really cool, but they look as though they were.  They remind one of the East Indian country houses that are built on posts, so as to allow a free circulation of air beneath the foundation.  Anyhow, they look as if they took things coolly.

(A joke might be made on the words coolly and Coolie.  The reader may mix to his own taste.  It’s too hot for any one to make jokes for other people.)

But La Giselle?  Yes! yes!  I am just ready to speak of it. La Giselle is a grand ballet in which an elaborate plot is developed by the toes of some fifty young ladies.  There is a young woman in it who loves a man, and there is another woman who also loves him, and another man who loves the first woman, and meddles and mars as though he were a professional philanthropist.

The woman—­the first woman, I mean—­goes crazy down to the extremity of her feet, and dies, and then there are more women,—­no; these last are disembodied spirits, with nothing but light skirts on,—­who dance in graveyards, and make young men dance with them till they fall down exhausted, calling in vain for BROWN to take them home in carriages, and pay for their torn gloves.  The first young woman, and a young man—­not the other young man, you understand—­does a good deal of—­Well, in fact, things are rather mixed before the ballet comes to an end, but I know that it’s a good thing, for FISK sits in his private box and applauds it, which he wouldn’t do if he didn’t.

And now, having placed La Giselle plainly before your mental vision, I desire to rise to a personal explanation.  For the ensuing four weeks, the places, in PUNCHINELLO, which have heretofore known me, will know me no more.  I am going to a quiet country place on Long Island to write war correspondence for the—­well, I won’t mention the name of the paper.  You see the editor of the Na——­ of the paper in question, I should say,—­wants to have an independent and unprejudiced account of the great struggle on the Rhine—­something that shall be different from any other account.—­Down on Long Island, I shall be out of the reach of either French or Prussian influence, and will be able to describe events as they should be.  I have made arrangements with the “Veteran Observer” of the Times to take charge of this column during my absence.  If he can only curb his natural tendency toward frivolity and jocoseness, I am in hopes that he will be able to draw his salary as promptly and efficiently as though he were a younger man.  Remarking, therefore, in the words of Kathleen Mavourneen, that my absence “may be four weeks, and it may be longer,” I bid my readers a warm (thermometer one hundred and five degrees) farewell.