“BOWER OF NATURE,
  AT THE MATIN HOUR.

  “CHARMING, AND, ALAS! 
  TOO DANGEROUS YOUNG MAN: 

“Since seeing thee, on yester eve, my feelings have greatly changed in intensity, and I fluctuate beneath an emotion of oblivious delight.  Alas! we young, weak women, try in vain to obstruct the gurgling of the bosom; for I perceive that even I am not proof against the arrows of the god Diana.  My heart has thrilled, my dearest friend, ever since you departed, yester eve, with a devious and intrinsic sensation of voluminous delight.  The feelings cannot be concealed, but must be impressed in words; or, as the great Milton says, in his Bucoliks, the o’er-fraught heart would break!  Love, my dear Mr. Verty, is contiguous—­you cannot be near the beloved object without catching the contagion, and to this fact I distribute that flame which now flickers with intense conflagration in my bosom.  Why, cruel member of the other sex! did you evade the privacy of our innocent and nocturnal retreat, turning the salubrious and maiden emotions of my bosom into agonizing delight and repressible tribulation!  Could you not practice upon others the wiles of your intrinsic charms, and spare the weak Sallianna, whose only desire was to contemplate the beauties of nature in her calm retreat, where a small property sufficed for all her mundane necessities?  Alas! but yester morn I was cheerful and invigorating—­with a large criterion of animal spirits, and a bosom which had never sighed responsible to the flattering vows of beaux.  But now!—­ask me not how I feel, in thinking of the person who has touched my indurate heart.  Need I say that the individual in question has only to demand that heart, to have it detailed to him in all its infantile simplicity and diurnal self-reliance?  Do not—­do not—­diffuse it!

“I have, during the whole period of my mundane pre-existence, always been troubled with beaux and admirers.  I have, in vain, endeavored to escape from their fascinating diplomas, but they have followed me, and continued to prosecute me with their adorous intentions.  None of them could ever touch my fanciful disposition, which has exalted an intrinsic and lofty beau—­idle to itself.  I always had to reply, when they got down upon their knees to me, and squeezed my hands, that I could not force my sensations; and though I should ever esteem them as friends, I could not change my condition of maiden meditation and exculpation for the agitation of matrimonial engagements.  I need not say that now my feelings have changed, and you, Mr. Verty, have become the idle of my existence.  You are yet young, but with a rare and intrinsic power of intellect.  In future, you will not pay any more intention to that foolish little Reddy, who is very well in her way, but unworthy of a great and opprobrious intelligence like yours.  She is a mere child, as I often tell her, and cannot love.

“Come to your devoted Sallianna immediately, and let us discurse the various harmonies of nature.  I have given orders not to admit any of my numerous beaux, especially that odious Mr. Jinks, who is my abomination.  I will tell Reddy that your visit is to me, and she will not annoy you, especially as she is in love with a light young man who comes to see Fanny, her cousin, Mr. Ashley.