I

HAVE a passion for fat women. If there is anything I

hate in life, it is what dainty people call a spirituelle. Motion-rapid motion-a smart, quick, squirrel-like step, a pert, voluble tone-in short, a lively girl-is my exquisite horror. I would as lief have a diable petit dancing his infernal hornpipe on my cerebellum as to be in a room with one. I have tried before now to school myself into liking these parched peas of humanity. I have followed them with my eyes, and attended to their rattle till I was as crazy as a fly in a drum. I have danced with them, and romped with

them in the country, and perilled the salvation of my "white tights," by sitting near them at supper.

I swear off from this moment. I do. I won't-no-hang me if ever I show another small, lively, spry woman a civility. Albina McLush is divine. She is like the description of the Persian beauty by Hafiz: "Her heart is full of passion, and her eyes are full of sleep." She is the sister of Lurly McLush, my old college chum, who, as early as his sophomore year, was chosen president of the Dolcefarniente Society, no member of which was ever known to be surprised at anything-(the college law of rising before breakfast excepted). Lurly introduced me to his sister one day, as he was lying upon a heap of turnips, leaning on his elbow with his head in his hand, in a green lane in the suburbs. He had driven over a stump, and been tossed out of his gig, and I came up just as he was wondering how in the d-l's name he got there. Albina sat quietly in the gig, and when I was presented, requested me, with a delicious drawl, to say nothing about the adventure—“it would be so troublesome to relate it to everybody!" I loved her from that moment. Miss McLush was tall, and her shape, of its kind, was perfect. It was not a fleshy one exactly, but she was large and full. Her skin was clear, fine-grained and transparent; her temples and forehead perfectly rounded and polished, and her lips and chin swelling into a ripe and tempting pout, like the cleft of a burst apricot. And then her eyes-large, languid, and sleepy-they languished beneath their long, black fringes as if they had no business with daylight-like two magnificent dreams, surprised in their jet embryos by some bird-nesting cherub. Oh! it was lovely to look into them!

She sat usually upon a fauteuil, with her large, full arm embedded in the cushion, sometimes for hours without stirring. I have seen the wind lift the masses of dark hair from her shoulders, when it seemed like the coming to life

of a marble Hebe-she had been motionless so long. She was a model for a goddess of sleep; as she sat with her eyes half-closed, lifting up their superb lips slowly as you spoke to her, and dropping them again with the deliberate motion of a cloud, when she had murmured out her syllable of assent. Her figure, in a sitting posture, presented a gentle declivity from the curve of her neck to the instep of the small round foot lying on its side upon the ottoman. I remember a fellow bringing her a plate of fruit one evening. He was one of your lively men- a horrid monster, all right angles and activity. Having never been accustomed to hold her own plate, she had not well extracted her whole fingers from her handkerchief before he set it down in her lap. As it began slowly to slide towards her feet, her hand relapsed into the muslin folds, and she fixed her eyes upon it with a kind of indolent surprise, drooping her lids gradually, till, as the fruit scattered over the ottoman, they closed entirely, and a liquid jet line was alone visible through the heavy lashes. There was an imperial indifference in it worthy of Juno.

When she does it is with the
Her small, plump feet melt

Miss McLush rarely walks. deliberate majesty of a Dido. to the ground like snow-flakes, and her figure sways to the indolent motion of her limbs with a glorious grace and yieldingness quite indescribable. She was idling slowly up the Mall one evening, just at twilight, with a servant at a short distance behind her, who, to while away the time between her steps, was employing himself in throwing stones at the cows feeding upon the common. A gentleman, with a natural admiration for her splendid person, addressed her. He might have done a more eccentric thing. Without troubling herself to look at him, she turned to her servant and requested him, with a yawn of desperate ennui, to knock that fellow down! John obeyed his orders; and, as his mistress resumed her lounge, picked up a new

handful of pebbles, and tossing one at the nearest cow, loitered lazily after.

Such supreme indolence was irresistible. I gave in-I who never before could summon energy to sigh—I to whom a declaration was but a synonym for perspiration-I—who had only thought of love as a nervous complaint, and of women but to pray for a good deliverance-I-yes-I knocked under. Albina McLush! thou wert too exquisitely lazy. Human sensibilities cannot hold out for ever.

I found her one morning sipping her coffee at twelve, with her eyes wide open. She was just from the bath, and her complexion had a soft, dewy transparency, like the cheek of Venus rising from the sea. It was the hour, Lurly had told me, when she would be at the trouble of thinking. She put away with her dimpled forefinger, as I entered, a cluster of rich curls that had fallen over her face, and nodded to me like a water-lily swaying to the wind when its cup is full of rain. "Lady Albina," said I, in my softest tone, "how are you to-day?"

'Beltina," said she, addressing her maid in a voice as clouded and rich as a south wind on an Æolian, “how am I to-day?"

The conversation fell into short sentences, and the dialogue became monologue. I entered upon my declaration with the assistance of Beltina, who supplied her mistress with cologne. I kept her attention alive through the incipient circumstances. Symptoms were soon told. I came to the avowal. Her hand lay reposing on the arm of the sofa, half buried in a muslin foulard. I took it up. I pressed the cool, soft fingers to my lips-unforbidden. I rose and looked into her eyes for confirmation. Delicious creature! she was asleep.

I never have had courage to renew the subject. Miss McLush seems to have forgotten it altogether. Upon reflection, too, I am convinced she would not survive the

excitement of the ceremony, unless, indeed, she should sleep between the responses and the prayer. I am still devoted, however, and if there should come a war or an earthquake, or if the millennium should commence, as it is expected, in 1833, or if anything happens that can keep her waking so long, I shall deliver a declaration abbreviated for me by a scholar friend of mine, which he warrants may be articulated in fifteen minutes-without fatigue.

Nathaniel Parker Willis.

A LONG TIME AGO.

(FROM ACT I. OF "THE WHITE FEATHER." A RED
INDIAN COMEDY.)

Owosco. Here, here, enough of this nonsense! Why should you sing about that which you think peculiar to yourselves, when, as a matter of fact, all tribes, nations, and classes are alike?

Wanda. But are you sure all are alike?

Owosco. Certainly. We are all tarred with the same

stick.

Sings:

The same black tar,

By the same black stick,

No matter who we are,

Is laid on thick.
If poor, we're marred,

If rich, we kick,

But we're all of us tarred

With the same black stick.