cannons all thundered at once! The cup went
the round of the table, and into it and out
of it there passed another hundred bottles
of old wine. After this every one left the
table—the gentlemen as well as they could,
with after dinner feet.

By this time it was night; the ladies therefore
retired to their rooms to dress for the
ball; only the bride and bridesmaids remained
as they were. When the fumes of the wine
had dispersed a little, dancing was talked of,
and the king's representative opened the ball
with Barbara. A polonaise was first danced,
then came minuets and quadrilles; but,
when the company grew to be more
animated, mazurkas and cracoviaks usurped
their places, gentlemen became energetic—
(regular hop-Poles.) Kochanowski, the Duke
of Courland's representative, dances the
cracoviak admirably. The person who is at the head
of the line in this dance sings a couplet which
the others all repeat, so Kochanowski improvised
one on the occasion, something like this:

  Oh to-day I would neither be emperor nor king,
  I but envy one man, I desire but one thing;
  Oh that I were the Starost, and Barbara my bride,
  I'd ask nothing else in the world beside!

At last the dancing and the drinking, which
had again begun, were interrupted, and a
chair was set in the centre of the room.
The bride seated herself in it, and the twelve
bridesmaids began to unfasten her coiffure,
singing all the while in the most melancholy
tone: "Barbara! it is all over then; you are
lost to us; you belong to us no more!" My
mother took the branch of rosemary from her
hair, and Madame Malachowska put in its
place a little lace cap. I would have laughed
heartily at this change, had I not seen
Barbara all in tears. The cap suited her face to
perfection, and everybody told her her
husband would love her very, very
dearly. Who could doubt it; how could
he help loving such a sweet dove of a
creature!

This ceremony over, dancing was
recommenced; and, out of respect for the custom
introduced by the court, the bride
danced the drabant with the king's representative.
Then the band played a grave
polonaise; the Palatine offered his hand to
Barbara, walked a few measures with her, and
then consigned her to the next gentleman, who
in turn again relinquished her to another,
and so on, till the bride had danced with
every one in the room. As the polonaise is
more of a promenade than a dance persons
of all ages figure in it. My father, at last,
after making one round with the bride, gave
her up to the Starost, and in so doing gave
her up for ever. The ball ended with this
polonaise, and my mother advised all of us
to go to rest.

The married ladies afterwards conducted
Barbara to the chamber that had been
prepared for her, and there, I am told,
speeches were again made, recommendations
given, felicitations uttered, and tears
shed.

Dear Barbara, I hope they were the last of
all her tears.

              A GOOD BRUSHING.

THE Patent Trichosaron! Never mind the
meaning of the word; it is a good long hard
word, and must mean something or other.
We are bound to suppose that some two or
three out of the four syllables convey the
meaning that, "although possessing in use
an almost incredible cleansing power, yet
it (the Trichosaron) does not produce the
slightest irritation of the skin of the head,
which so frequently creates dandriff, and
even premature baldness;" and there must
be some part of the word, too, clearly implying
that "the peculiar mechanical construction
accomplishes the two operations of
cleansing and polishing simultaneously, thus
leaving THE HAIR BEAUTIFULLY SOFT AND
GLOSSY, unattainable by any other means."
When, in addition to all this, it is considered
that, "to meet the requirements of all, they
(the plural of Trichosaron) are made of
SIX DIFFERENT DEGREES OF QUALITY, varying
from very hard to very soft!" it will at
once be seen how impossible it is that hair
treated by such an apparatus can be otherwise
than beautiful.

And even though the Trichosaron should
fail in its duty, there is the Sine Manubrium
to fall back upon; so that we shall still be
able to "do" our hair. Of course, every one
can see that Sine Manubrium means a
hair-brush without a handle; a hair-brush oval in
form "the back grasped as it usually is, even
when there is a handle." Of course, the two
words indicate that, "the hairs being fixed
obliquely, one brush acts as a comb and a
hard brush, a soft brush, and two medium
penetrating brushes, of different actions, by
merely turning it." That "they take only
half the room of the old fashioned sort, and
make the hair beautifully glossy and curly,"
is, of course, quite as evident in this case as
in that of the Trichosaron. It will not be
difficult, either to credit the assertions that
the Sine Manubrium may also render service
as a clothes-brush, that "one on two passes
of the rough side cleanses;" that the soft
side will suffice to immediately remove the
dust; that the nap of the cloth is not
injured; and that "the clothes will look new
twice as long." All this, we say, might have
been easily foreseen from the look of the name
itself: but who would have supposed the
Census Commissioners were anything in
common with the Sine Manubrium? "If it
had been possible when taking the Census, to
ascertain the number of persons in every
hundred who take hold of the handle while using
their hair-brush, how many would there
have been? Not ten. The experience of most
perfumers would prove this." The inference