amplitude, rustling and sweeping proudly and defiantly along the Broadway of human events and opinions,—­how that which but a lustre ago was wicked is now virtuous,—­we see no reason for despair; and our century may yet witness the time when it will be considered the highest mixture of philosophic courtesy and Christian urbanity to make the most graceful semi-lateral bow, as you pass your friend in the street, and, kissing the tip of your finger, to lisp, with bending head and smiling eye,—­

“May I never disagree with you!”

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.

[The Professor talks with the Reader.  He tells a Young Girl’s Story.]

When the elements that went to the making of the first man, father of mankind, had been withdrawn from the world of unconscious matter, the balance of creation was disturbed.  The materials that go to the making of one woman were set free by the abstraction from inanimate nature of one man’s-worth of masculine constituents.  These combined to make our first mother, by a logical necessity involved in the previous creation of our common father.  All this, mythically, illustratively, and by no means doctrinally or polemically.

The man implies the woman, you will understand.  The excellent gentleman whom I had the pleasure of setting right in a trifling matter a few weeks ago believes in the frequent occurrence of miracles at the present day.  So do I. I believe, if you could find an uninhabited coral-reef island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with plenty of cocoa-palms and bread-fruit on it, and put a handsome young fellow, like our Marylander, ashore upon it, if you touched there a year afterwards, you would find him walking under the palm trees arm in arm with a pretty woman.

Where would she come from?

Oh, that’s the miracle!

——­I was just as certain, when I saw that fine, high-colored youth at the upper right-hand corner of our table, that there would appear some fitting feminine counterpart to him, as if I had been a clairvoyant, seeing it all beforehand.

——­I have a fancy that those Marylanders are just about near enough to the sun to ripen well.—­How some of us fellows remember Joe and Harry, Baltimoreans, both!  Joe, with his cheeks like lady-apples, and his eyes like black-heart cherries, and his teeth like the whiteness of the flesh of cocoa-nuts, and his laugh that set the chandelier-drops rattling overhead, as we sat at our sparkling banquets in those gay times!  Harry, champion, by acclamation, of the College heavyweights, broad-shouldered, bull-necked, square-jawed, six feet and trimmings, a little science, lots of pluck, good-natured as a steer in peace, formidable as a red-eyed bison in the crack of hand-to-hand battle!  Who forgets the great muster-day, and the collision of the classic