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An Ornithological Con.

What bird does General PRIM most resemble? 
A Kingfisher.

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[Illustration:  NOTES ON THE FERRY.

MR. CARAMEL, WHO IS OBSERVANT, CONTEMPLATIVE, AND GIVEN TO COMPARISON,
ARRIVES AT THE CONCLUSION THAT SOME WOMEN ARE NICER THAN OTHERS.]

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THE MISERIES OF A HANDSOME MAN.

Ever since my earliest recollections I have been a victim to circumstances.

Beauty, which others desire and try every means to obtain, to me has been a source of untold misery.  From my infancy, when ugly women with horrid breaths would stop my nurse in the streets and insist upon kissing me—­through my school-days, when the girls would pet me and offer me a share of their nuts and candies, and the boys laugh at me in consequence, and call me “gal-boy,” squirt ink upon my face for beauty-spots, and present me with curl-papers and flowers for my hair—­until the present, when I am denied introductions to young ladies and am put off on old women—­I have suffered for my looks.

In my boarding-house I am shunned as if I had the plague.  When I enter the parlor or dining-room, I see the ladies look at each other with a knowing air, as much as to say, “Look at him!” And the answer is telegraphed back, “Ain’t he handsome? but he knows it,” as if I could help knowing it with every one telling me so fifty times a day; and husbands pay unusual attention to their wives when I am around, as if I were an ogre.

I am naturally a modest man, made more so by my extreme sensitiveness to personal criticism; and to be obliged to stand apparently unconscious, when I know I am being looked at and commented upon, is harrowing to my feelings.  I feel sometimes as if I should drop down on the floor, but then folks would never stop laughing if I did, at what they would be pleased to term my extreme ladylikeness!  I have actually prayed that I might get the small-pox, and once walked through the small-pox hospital for that purpose, but escaped unharmed.

I suppose I must have been vaccinated.  In fact, I know I have been, for how often have I looked at the scar on my arm, and wished it had been on my cheek, or at the end of my nose, or, in fact, on any place where it might be considered a blemish.

When I was a child I came near killing myself one night by going to bed with two large bottle-corks thrust into my nostrils, to make them large, like other boys’; and have made my mouth sore by stretching it with my fingers, or forcing melon-rinds into it, to enlarge it.  But it was useless; perhaps the mouth might be sore for a couple of days, but its shape remained unaltered.

Now that I am a man, I am as unfortunate as ever.  My hair will curl, even when shaved within half-an-inch of the scalp; my moustache will stay jet-black, although I sometimes wax the ends of it with soap, and walk on the sunny side of Broadway; my teeth are perfect, and I never need a dentist; and my hands are shameful for a man,—­so all my old-maid-aunts and bachelor-uncles say.