When abandoned to her own devices, the average female has a tendency to “put on her things,” and to contrive the same, in a manner that is not conducive to patience in the male beholder.  Her besetting iniquity in this particular is a fondness for angles, and she is unwavering in her determination to achieve them at whatever cost.

Now we vehemently affirm that in woman’s apparel an angle is an offence to the male eye, and therefore a crime of no small magnitude.  In the masculine garb angles are tolerable-angles of whatever acuteness.  The masculine character and life are rigid and angular, and the apparel should, or at least may, proclaim the man.  But with the soft, rounded nature of woman, her bending flexibility of temper, angles are absolutely incompatible.  In her outward seeming all should be easy and flowing-every fold a nest of graces, and every line a curve.

By close attention to this great truth, and a conscientious striving after its advantages, woman may hope to become rather comely of exterior, and to find considerable favour in the eyes of man.  It is not impossible that, without any abatement of her present usefulness, she may come to be regarded as actually ornamental, and even attractive.  If with her angles she will also renounce some hundreds of other equally harassing absurdities of attire, she may consider her position assured, and her claim to masculine toleration reasonably well grounded.  A Wingless Insect.

It would be profitable in the end if man would take a hint from his lack of wings, and settle down comfortably into the assurance that midair is not his appointed element.  The confession is a humiliating one, but there is a temperate balm in the consciousness that his inability to “shave with level wing” the blue empyrean cannot justly be charged upon himself.  He has done his endeavour, and done it nobly; but he’ll break his precious neck.

In Goldsmith’s veracious “History of Animated Nature” is a sprightly account of one Nicolas, who was called, if our memory be not at fault, the man-fish, and who was endowed by his Creator-the late Mr. Goldsmith aforesaid-with the power of conducting an active existence under the sea.  That equally veracious and instructive work “The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments,” peoples the bottom of old ocean with powerful nations of similarly gifted persons; while in our own day “the Man-Frog” has taught us what may be done in this line when one has once got the knack of it.

Some years since (we do not know if he has yet suffered martyrdom at the hand of the fiendish White) there lived a noted Indian chieftain whose name, being translated, signifies “The-Man-Who-Walks-Under-the-Ground,” probably a lineal descendant of the gnomes.  We have ourselves walked under the ground in wine cellars.