LXXXIV FANNY 8 IDEAS ABOUT MONEY MATTERS. "The Military Argus has a long and prosy article headed 'How to make Home Happy.' A friend of ours has now a work in preparation, which solves the question—' It is to give your wife as much money as she asks for.' entirely abolishes the necessity of kisses and soft sawder.' True Flag, Aug. 28. This BETTY! throw up the windows, loosen my belt, and bring me my vinaigrette! "It's no use to faint, or go into hysterics, because there's nobody here just now that understands my case! but I'd have you to understand, sir- -(fan me, Betty!) that-o-o-h! that (Julius Cæsar, what a Hottentot!) that if you have a wife as is a wife, neither 'kisses,'' soft sawder,' or 'money,' can ever repay her for what she is to you! "Listen to me! Do you remember when you were sick? Who tip-toe-d round your room, arranging the shutters and curtain-folds with an instinctive knowledge of light, to a ray, that your tortured head could bear? Who turned your pillow on the cool side, and parted the thick, matted locks from your hot temples? Who moved glasses and spoons and phials without collision or jingle? Who looked at you with a compassionate sinile, when you persisted you 'wouldn't take your medicine because it tasted so bad;' and kept a sober face, when you lay chafing there like a caged lion, calling for cigars and newspapers, and mint-juleps, and whiskey punches? Who migrated, unceasingly and uncomplainingly, from the big baby before her to the little baby in the cradle, without sleep, food, or rest? Who tempted your convalescent appetite with some rare dainty of her own making, and got fretted at because there was 'not sugar enough in it?' Who was omnipresent in chamber, kitchen, parlor and nursery, keeping the domestic wheels in motion that there should be no jar in the machinery? Who oiled the creaking door, that set your quivering nerves in a twitter? Who ordered tan to be strewn before the house, that your slumbers might be unbroken by noisy carriage wheels? Who never spoke of weary feet or shooting pains in the side, or chest, as she toiled up and down stairs to satisfy imaginary wants, that nobody but wife' could attend to? and who, when you got well and moved about the house just as good as new, choked down the tears, as you poised the half dollar she asked you for, on your forefinger, while you inquired 'how she spent the last one?' "Give her what money she ASKS for!' Julius Cæsar! (Betty! come here and carry away my miserable remains!) Nobody but a polar bear or a Hottentot would WAIT to have a wife 'ask' for 'money !'" LXXXV. A LETTER TO A SELF-EXILED FRIEND IN THE COUNTRY. DEAR NORAH:-'Tell you the news!' Ah, เ I knew you'd come to it! I was sure you'd tire of your oyster life, up there in the mountains. Pleasant, isn't it-after dandelions and buttercups have ceased to be a novelty-after you know who lives in the little brown house opposite, and who in the hut at the end of the lane? After you have read through that Alpha and Omega' of a country library-the Almanac! After you've watched your landlady wash dishes, and feed pigs, and make butter, till you are qualified to take a diploma in those branches yourself! After you've seen the old rooster fight his hen-harem till they are subjugated to his lordly mind! After you've listened to the drowsy hum of insect life, till you are half a vegetable yourself! After you have seen the old ricketty front door fastened up, when the hens go to roost, and every soul in the house in the land of Nod,' and you sitting at your window, expiring for a new sensation, though it come in the shape of a lightning stroke, or a tornado! listening compulsorily to the doleful doxology of the cricket, and the base voluntary of the bullfrog, and lamenting that brick and mortar are unfashionable in dog-days! True, 'tis a pity-pity 'tis true -that the mind rusts, while the body flourishes, in the country. "Not less to be avoided, is that mockery of comfort, a gay watering-place; where neither mind nor body can remain en dishabille for one blessed hour. Where slander, and gossip, and humbug, reign triumphant; where caps and characters are pulled to pieces by the feminines, and the chart of conquest is marked out (without a shoal or quicksand,) by the gentlemen. Where half a year's salary is spent in a week by the ambitious dandy, (in embryo,) who gets laughed at for his pains and pretensions, and returns with damaged pockets and wardrobe to his attic room, to be dunned remorse lessly by tailor and laundress for many a pitiless day. Where the simpering demoiselle who has cried 'give, give,' to papa's pocket-book, till it is |