114
^AJNTITY   FAIE.
[SEPTEMBER 1, 1860.
A CASE  OF  REAL DISTRESS.
Yonkers, August 26, 1960.
(p^^rn^
ell-Beloved Vanity :—Talk about female sorrows being " lew but
deep," as Somebody does ! Sir, they are deep and as immensely
variegated as the possible changes of a kaleidoscope. There are
the anti-marital sorrows and the post-marital sufferings of the individual, not to mention the vidual or those of widowhood. My
present griefs are of the marito-horticultural.
I have a Husband. A Husband is, Iadmit, a good thing to have
in the country. But that Husband has a Garden—and not satisfied with this he goes abroad to other gardens until he has become
fascinated with a horrid Horticultural Society, which takes away
not only his precious time, but also all my pet posies, roses, pinks,
and peonies, with the choicest fruit for his dreadful Exhibition. Sir,
an Exhibition is not a good thing to have in the country when it
snips away with ruthless scissors, our feelings and fine tomatoes,
our hopes and our peaches, our enjoyments and our egg-plants.
But as you are well aware the most profound grief finds its only
solace in poetry, (poetry as you are aware is a very good thing to
have in the country) and I accordingly vanish in the following,
every line of which I trust will be a hornet of remorse to every
individual interested in that wicked Yonkers Horticultural Society.
Yours Truly,
Viotima Salsify.
Act I, Scene I.
Curtain rises to slow and solemn music and discovers a Yonkers
garden.    A large rose-bush in centre.    Enter Mrs.  Salsify,
anxiously, r. h. u. e.
Mrs. S.    Albert !
Alb.    (Who is hidden behind rose bush) My love ?
Mrs. S.    What are you doing there ?
Alb.    Nothing, my love.
Mrs S.   Nothing ! you call it nothing,
But I  see it all! (seats herself on rustic chair and weeps.)
Alb.    (Still invisible) My love ?
Mrs. S. (starting tip) Call me no more by that pellucid name !
Nor duck, nor dear, nor honey, any more ;
Where have the daisies gone, that bloomed for me!
Where are the pinks and pansies I adored,
Wheie are my Salvias, Fuchsias, Auricarias;
My Perlagoniums and Eucoracrias ?
And now you've clipped my roses with your shears,
And left my precious pretty garden bare. '
Alb.   (emerging from Pose-bush, c. his spectacles on his nose, a bucket of
roses in one hand, and his garden shears in the other) Have I not left you
all the rarest plants,
The Raglan roses, and the Ericas ;
That costly thing Spergula Pilifera ?
Mrs. S.    Ah yes, but these you know will never bloom.
Alb. (softened) It is too true !
Mrs. S.    Did I not tell you so, When that you bought 'em?
Alb.   Yes, you did my love.
Mrs. S. And have they bloomed, oh Albert ?
Alb.    Nary time.
Mrs. S.   Ah, Albert, Albert, once there was a time,
When you would cloak.my waist within your arm,
And lead me through these gravel garden walks,
And say look there ! that is your bean, my love,
And there your cucumbers and Mummy-pea,
There is the cauliflower which you admire,
And there the oyster-plant that bears my name,
But now those halcyon days are flown and gone,   (crosses to-i*. h.
U. E.)
Alb. (musingly) That's so !
Mbs. S.    But now all's changed, I know no more
Those sweet deluding— (shrieks) Oh! where is my aloe?
Alb. (moodily) Gone where the rest have gone !
Mrs. S.    Thou bitter aloe ! hast thou left me too ?
Alb.  (crossing his shears and bouquet to his breast c.) It have.
Mrs. S.    Oh, cursed fate that ever made thee join,
The Yonkers Horticultural Society !
There everything we cherish and admire,
There everything we hope for or desire,
There everything we plant, or rear, or buy,
In one grand heartless Exhibition vie.    (Tableau*)^ j.......... _
HO!   FOR   PARIS.
If we can only fix it so as to be in Paris next year our cup of
bliss will be filled to the brim. It is true, that a residence in that
city ever promotes joy in the human heart. It is also true that
good people go there when they die. For our part we should
prefer to visit the Department of the Seine-et-Loire in the flesh, and
not wait to "take our chances" after that ancient person of the
scythe and hour-glass had cut us down. And especially in the
coming year do we desire to pay that visit. For the Paris of 1861
will have, to us, a special charm. A charm that we are already
prancing to partake of. Not the splendor of the Boulevard? is the
charm. Not the palace nor the gardens of the Tuileries. Not the
great singers of the ** Italians." Not the gay halls of the Mabille
and the Closerie. [We are too old and respectable for that sort of
thing now.] Not the Quartier Latin is it that entices us. Neither
the grisettes—celles qui restent. The inducements lies elsewhere. In
the French Academy, in point of fact. The F. A., some of the
Vanity Fair readers may not know, is almost as lively an institution as our Smithsonian thing at Washington. It is even said that
the members of the F. A. are so remarkably progressive that the
dear Parisians are kept awake nights trying to think what they
will do next.    Just imagine !
And it is at their next annual exhibition that the "fat and forty,"
intend to surpass themselves. For that occasion the poets of the
country are requested to twang their harps to a particularly festive
tune.    What that tune is the following paragraph shows :
" The French Academy at its last sitting fixed as the subject of the prize of
poetry, for the year 1861, the Isthmus of Suez.
Who wonders now that we are dying to be in Paris in 1861 ?
The Last of the Japanese.
Ever since the Times pricked itself into a state of howling virtue
about Tateish Onojero (otherwise "Tommy") and the love-letters
of that risky young person, it has borne a grudge against the
gentle Japs.
When the subjects of the Tycoon quitted these shores, the Times
was so impolite as to come out in an editorial and say that it was
glad to get rid of them. Last week we heard from the Cape Verde
Islands, of the Japs on their homeward voyage. The Times at
once nipped the opportunity to display some more of its malevolence,
and expressed the hope that we might never see our queer Oriental
friends again.    These are the Times' own fiendish words ':
"We trust that they will not come again until we have an honest Common
Council."
Could anything, we ask, be more utterly unhospitable than that ?
Con. by an Ex-Policeman.
Why is the Japanese Donation to the New-York Police like a
0 ?   Because it cannot be divided.