mortification, and one dime to my cost,) and so is not likely to discern the source of the fun.  I merely informed Mr. DROWSE that the editor was very tall, very handsome, with very black skin and rosy hair, (at which he opened his eyes with astonishment, and asked if I meant so; at which I said, “Yes, I guess so,”) and that he laughed out of his nose, eyes, head, and hands, as well as his mouth.  DROWSE wants to see the editor very much.  He has seen men with black skins and hearts, (for he used to know lots of politicians;) but wants to put his vision on some “rosy hair”—­and when he does, no doubt his gaze will be fixed.  It is healthy sometimes to have the gaze fixed; and often, like sauce-pans and sermons, it has to be fixed.  When Mr. DROWSE calls at 83, please show him in Parlor 6 with the Brussels, fresco-work, and lace curtains.

April is a model month.  So serene, steady, clear, and balmy.  Nothing but blue sky, gentle zephyrs, kissing breezes, genial suns by day and sparkling stars by night.  PUNCHINELLO no doubt likes sparkling stars—­stars of magnitude—­stars that show what they are.  PUNCHINELLO perhaps goes to NIBLO’S, and not only sees plenty stars, but plenty of them.  But of April.  It is called “fickle;” but that’s a slander.  “Every thing by turns and nothing long”—­that is a libel on which a suit could be hung.  The same vile falsehood is cruelly uttered of some women, when every body knows, or should know, that these same women are nothing of the sort.  Who ever knew a fickle woman?

Where in history is there record of such an Impossibility?  Fickle—­that implies a change of mind.  What woman ever changed her mind any more than her hands?  Nonsense, avaunt!—­banished be slander!  April is not fickle—­woman is not fickle.  As one is evenly beautiful, divinely serene, bewitchingly winning, so is the other sunny, cerulean, balmy, paradisiacal.  April for ever—­after that the rest of the calendar.

Does PUNCHINELLO believe in the Woman Movement?  TODD does.  He believes woman should move as much as man; and he regards her movement in such numbers to the great West as full of hope (and husbands) for the sex.  Mrs. TODD has not as yet been irresistibly seized by the movement; but if TIMOTHY knows himself, he longs for the day when the seizer may come.  Although TODD—­who is the writer of this epistle—­says it, who perhaps shouldn’t, lest the shaft of egotism be hurled mercilessly at him, he does unhesitatingly say that to aid this movement he would make the greatest of sacrifices.  He is willing to sacrifice his wife and other female relations upon the sacred altar of the movement, and contribute liberally to the expense thereof.  He is quite willing they should vote—­early and often, if need be; but he wishes to see the movement go westward like the Star of Empire—­westward via cheerful Chicago.  TODD trusts PUNCHINELLO will espouse this movement; for if it does, it—­the movement, no less than PUNCHINELLO—­will go straight onward and upward; but not by the route known as the Spout.