Mrs. Dawson Dawdle is one of those natural and proper people, who become sleepy of evenings, and who are rather apt to yawn after tea. Mr. Dawson Dawdle, on the other hand, is of the unnatural and improper species, who are not sleepy or yawny of evenings never so, except of mornings. Dawson insists on it that he is no chicken to go to roost at sundown; while Mrs. Dawson Dawdle rises with the lark. The larks he prefers, are larks at night. Now, as a corrective to these differences of opinion, Dawson Dawdle had been cunningly deprived of his pass-key, that he might be induced.,to remember not to forget", to come home betimes a thing he was not apt to remember, especially if good companionship intervened. - ness, overpending like the sword of Damocles, that sooner or later the disturbance must come, to call us staringly from dreams? Nor, after we have tossed and tumbled into a lethargy, is it to be set down as a pleasure to be aroused, all stupid and perplexed, to scramble down the stairway, for the admission of delinquents, who the fact admits of no exception ring, ring, ring, or knock, knock, knock away, long after you have heard them, and persist in goading you to frenzies, by peal upon peal, when your very neck is endangered by the rapidity of movement in their behalf. It is a lucky thing for when them they so ungratefully ask,, why didn't you make haste", as they always do, or mutter about being,, kept there all night", as they surely will, that despotic powers are unknown in these regions, and that you are not invested with supreme command. But now get thee to sleep again, as quickly as thou canst, though it may be that the task is not the easiest in the world. ,,Waiting up", too; this likewise has Thus, Mrs. Dawdle was ,, waiting up" its delectations. The very clock seems at for him.... To indulge in an episode here, apropos to the general principle involved, it may be said, pertinently enough, that this matter of waiting, if you have nerves waiting up", or, " waiting down" choose either branch of the dilemma is not to be ranged under the head of popular amusements, or classified in the category of enlivening recreation. To wait who has not waited? fix it as we will is always more or less of a trial; and whether the arrangement be for ,, waiting up" disdainful of sleep or for ,, waiting down" covetous of dozes it rarely happens that the intervals are employed in the invocation of other than left-handed blessings, on the head of those who have caused this deviation from comfortable routine; or that, on their tardy arrival people conscious of being waited for, always stay out as long and as provokingly as they can we find ourselves at all disposed to amiable converse, or complimentary expression. And reason good. If we lie down, for instance, when my young lady has gone to а Polka party", or my young gentleman has travelled away to an affair of the convivialities, do we ever find it conducive to refreshing repose, this awkward conscious last to have entered into the conspiracy the hands move with sluggish weariness, and there is a laggard sound in the swinging of the pendulum, which almost says that time itself is tired, as it ticks its progress to the drowsy ear. There is a bustle in the street, no doubt, as you sit down doggedly to wakefulness; and many feet are pattering from the theatre and circus. For a time the laugh is heard, and people chatter as they pass, boy calling unto boy, or deepmouthed men humming an untuned song. Now doors are slammed, and shutters closed, and bolts are shooting, in earnest of retirements for the night. Forsaken dogs bark round and round the house, and vocal cats beset the portico. The rumbling of the hack dwindles in the distance, as the cabs roll by from steamboat wharf and railroad depot. You are deserted and alone tired of book sated with newspaper indisposed to thought. You nod ha! ha! -bibetty bobetty! as your hair smokes and crackles in the lamp. But it is folly now to peep forth. Will they never come? No do they ever, until all reasonable patience is exhausted? Yes here they are! Pshaw! sit still it is but a straggling step; and hour drags after hour, until you have resolved it o'er and o'er again, that this shall be the last of your vigils, | When was it otherwise than late with the let who will request it as a favour that you late Mr. Dawson Dawdle? will be good enough to sit up for them. I wouldn't do it! Well", said he at the bell-handle all this time,,,Well, I suppose it 's late again it rings as if it was late; and somehow or other it appears to me that it always is late, especially and particularly when my wife tells me to be sure to be home early ,you, Dawson, come back soon; d'ye hear?' and all that sort o' thing. I wish she wouldn't it puts me out, to keep telling me what I ought to do; and when I have to remember to come home early, it makes me forget all about it, and discomboberates my ideas so that I'm a great deal later than I would be if I was left to my own sagacity. Let me alone, and I'm So it is not at all to be marvelled at that Mrs. Dawson Dawdle disposed, as we know her to be, to sleepiness at times appropriate to sleep was irate at the nonappearance of Mr. Dawson Dawdle, or that after he had reached home, she detained him vengefully at the street door, as an example to such dilatoriness in general, for it is a prevailing fault in husbandry, and that, in particular, being thus kept out considerably longer than he wished to keep out too much of a good thing being good for nothing he might be taught better, on the doctrine of curing an evil by aggravation-great upon sagacity; but yet what is sagacity both were aggravated. a But the difficulty presents itself here, that Mr. Dawson Dawdle has a constitutional defect, beyond reach of the range of ordinary remedial agents. Being locked out, is curative to some people, for at least a time till they forget it, mostly. But Dawson Dawdle is the man who is always too late - he must be too late he would not know himself if he were not too late it would not be he, if he were not too late. Too late is to him a matter of course fixed result in his nature. He had heard of soon", and he believed that perhaps there might occasionally be something of the sort spasmodic and accidental but, for his own part, he had never been there himself. And as for,,too soon;" he regarded it as imaginative altogether an incredibility. The presumption is, that he must have been born an hour or so too late, and that he had never been able to make up the difference. In fact, Dawson Dawdle is a man to be relied on no mistake as to Dawson Dawdle. Whenever he makes an appointment, you are sure he will not keep it, which saves a deal of trouble on your side of the question; and at the best, if an early hour be set, any time will answer, in the latter part of the day. Dawson Dawdle forgets, too; how complimentary it is to be told that engagements in which we are involved are so readily forgotten! Leave it to the Dawdles to forget; and never double the affront by an excuse that transcends the original offence. Or else, Dawson Dawdle did not know it was so late; and yet Dawson might have been sure of it. when it has no key and the dead-latch is ,,Two o'clock, Mr. Dawdle isn't it two, I ask you?" ,,If you are positive about the fact, Mrs. Dawdle, it would be unbecoming in me to call your veracity in question, and I decline looking. So far as I am informed, it generally is two o'clock just about this time in the morning at least, it always has been whenever I stayed up to see. If the clock is right, you'll be apt to find it two just as it strikes two that 's the reason it strikes, and I don't know that it could have a better reason." pretty enough!" responded Dawdle; „ when it don't rain, one time of night is as pretty as another time of night it's the people that 's up in the time of night, that 's not pretty; and you, Mrs. Dawdle, are a case in pint man out of his own house. night that 's not pretty, Mrs. the goings on, the goings on. - keeping a It's not the Dawdle, but that 's not and you are As for me, I'm for peace a dead-latch key and peace; and I move that the goings on be indefinitely postponed, because, Mrs. Dawdle, I've heard it all before I know it like a book; and if you insist on it, Mrs. Dawdle, I'll save you trouble, and speak the whole speech for you right off the reel, only I can't cry good when I 'm jolly." likes - „I do wish she would say something", muttered Dawdle;,,something cross, if she any thing, so it makes a noise. It makes a man feel bad, after he's used to being talked to, not to be talked to in the regular old-fashioned way. When one's so accustomed to being blowed up, it seems as if he was lost or didn't belong to anybody, if no one sees to it that he's blowed up at the usual time. Bachelors, perhaps, can get along well enough without having their comforts properly attended to in this respect. What do they know, the mi- | paring a speech for them; but I feel just serable creatures, about such warm recep- as if I was a widower, if I'm not talked tions, and such little endearments? When to for not being at home in time."...... they are out too late, nobody 's at home pre NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. BROWN'S DAY WITH THE MIMPSONS. Somewhere about two o'clock I left daylight behind, and plunged into Mark Lane. Up one side and down the other plate, set in a green baize door. With my unbuttoned coat nearly wiped off my shoulder by the strength of the pulley, I shoved through, and emerged in a large room, with twenty or thirty clerks perched on high stools, like monkeys in a menagerie. ,As I was calling myself to account, the other day, over my breakfast", said Mr.,Mimpson and Co. at last, on a small brass Brown,,,it occurred to me that my round of engagements required some little variation. There's a , toujours perdrix', even among lords and ladies, particularly when you belong as much to their sphere, and are as likely to become a part of it, as the fly revolving in aristocratic dust on the wheel of my lord's carriage. I thought, perhaps, I had better see some other sort of people. I had, under a presse papier on the table, about a hundred letters of introduction the condemned remainder, after the selection, by advice, of four or five only. I determined to cut this heap like a pack of cards, and follow up the trump. ,John Mimpson, Esq., House of Mimpson and Phipps, Mark Lane, London' The gods had devoted me to the acquaintance of Mr. John Mimpson. After turning over a deal of rubbish in my mind, I remembered that the letter had been given me five years before by an American merchant probably the correspondent of the firm in Mark Lane. It was a sealed letter, and said, in brackets on the back,,Introducing Mr. Brown. I had a mind to give it up and cut again, for I could not guess on what footing I was introduced, nor did I know what had become of the writer nor had I a very clear idea how long a letter of recommendation will hold its virtue. It struck me again that these difficulties rather gave it a zest, and I would abide by the oracle. I dressed, and, as the day was fine, started to stroll leisurely through the Strand and Fleet Street, and look into the shopwindows on my way assuring myself, at least, thus much of diversion in my ad venture. First door right!" said the nearest man, without raising his eyes from the desk, in reply to my inquiry for Mr. Mimpson. I entered a closet, lighted by a slanting skylight, in which sat my man. ,,Mr. John Mimpson?" After this brief dialogue of accost, I produced my letter, and had a second's lei sure to examine my new friend while he ran his eye over the contents. He was a rosy, well conditioned, tight-skinned little man, with black hair, and looked like a pear on a chair. His legs were completely hid under the desk, so that the ascending eye began with his equatory line, and whether he had no shoulders or no neck I could not well decide but it was a tolerably smooth plane from his seat to the top curl of his sinciput. He was scrupulously well dressed, and had that highly-washed look which marks the city man in London bent on not betraying his ,, diggins" by his complexion. I answered Mr. Mimpson's inquiries about our mutual friend with rather a hazardous particularity, and assured him he was quite well (I have since discovered that he has been dead three years), and conversation warmed between us for ten minutes, till we were ready to part sworn friends. I rose to go, and the merchant seemed very much perplexed. Mrs. Mimpson", he next went on to say, as he wrote down the geography of Rose Lodge,,Mrs. Mimpson expects some friends to-morrow indeed, some of her very choice friends. If you come early, you will see more of her than if you just save your dinner. Bring your carpet-bag, of course, and stay over night. Lunch at two dine at seven. I can't be there to receive you myself, but I will prepare Mrs. Mimpson to save you all trouble of introduction. Hampstead Road. Good morning, my dear sir. So, I am in for a suburban bucolic, thought I, as I regained daylight in the neighbourhood of the Mansion House. I made my bow, and begged leave to introduce myself as ,,Mr. Brown." With a very slight inclination of the head, and no smile whatever, one of the ladies asked me if I had walked from town, and begged her companion (without introducing me to her) to show me in to lunch. The spokester was a stout and tall woman, who had rather an aristocratic nose, and was not handsome, but, to give her her due, she had made a narrow escape of it. She was dressed very showily, and evidently had great pretensions; but, that she was not at all glad to see Mr. Brown, was as apparent as was at all necessary. As the other, and younger lady, who was to accompany me, however, was very pretty, though dressed very plainly, and had, withal, a look in her eye which assured me she was amused with my unwelcome apparition, I determined, as I should not otherwise have done, to stay it out, and accepted her convoy with submissive civility — very much inclined, however, to be impudent to somebody somehow. The lunch was on a tray in a side-room, and I rang the bell and ordered a bottle of champagne. The servant looked surprised, but brought it, and meantime I was getting through the weather and the other common It turned out a beautiful day, sunny and warm; and had I been sure of my navigation, and sure of my disposition to stay all night, I should have gone out by the Hampstead coach, and made the best of my way, carpet-bag in hand. I went into New-places, and the lady saying little, was watchman's for a postchaise, however, and on showing him the written address, was agreeably surprised to find he knew Rose Lodge. His boys had all been there. Away I went through the Regent's Park, behind the blood-posters, blue jacket and white hat, and, somewhere about one o'clock, mounted Hampstead Hill, and in ten minutes thence was at my destination. The postboy was about driving in at the open gate, but I dismounted, and sent him back to the inn to leave his horses, and then dispositing my bag at the porter's lodge, walked up the avenue. It was a much finer place, altogether, than I expected to see. Mrs. Mimpson was in the garden. The dashing footman, who gave me the information, led me through a superb drawingroom and out at a glass door upon the lawn, and left me to make my own way to the lady's presence. It was a delicious spot, and I should have been very glad to ramble about by myself till dinner; but, at a turn in the grand walk, I came suddenly upon two ladies. ing me very calmly. I liked her looks, however, and was sure she was not a Mimpson. ,,Hand this to Miss Armstrong!" said I to the footman, pouring out a glass of champagne. ,,Miss Bellamy, you mean, sir." I rose and bowed, and, with as grave a courtesy as I could command, expressed my pleasure at my first introduction to Miss Bellamy through Thomas, the footman! Miss Bellamy burst into a laugh, and was pleased to compliment my American manners, and in ten minutes we were a very merry pair of friends, and she accepted my arm for a stroll through the grounds, carefully avoiding the frigid neighbourhood of Mrs. Mimpson. Of course I set about picking Miss Bellamy's brains for what information I wanted. She turned out quite the nicest creature I had seen in England fresh, joyous, natural, and clever; and as I was delivered over to her bodily, by her keeper and feeder, she made no scruple of promenading me through the grounds till the dressing-bell |