ESSENCE OF ROSES. Ill 



flowers ; but I never heard that he ate them. 

 Now, horses do just the reverse; they do not 

 play with them, but they will certainly eat them. 

 Yet, upon my own authority, I venture to assert 

 they will no more live on them than the un- 

 breeched urchin who scatters them so profusely 

 in the way of young ladies and gentlemen before 

 they are married. These said flowers retain their 

 bloom the whole time the to-be-happy couple 

 (qu&re) are in church nay, form a fragrant path 

 on their way from it; but, somehow or other 

 (though it ought not to be so, I allow), by the time 

 seven o'clock arrives, the loving couple (for, as I 

 have said before, I like to draw conclusions from 

 analogy) begin to think, like the horses, that 

 something substantial, by way of provender, would 

 not be amiss, and that flower-totalism won't do. 

 " Pro vender!" I think I hear some pretty pouting 

 lip, with a little a very little affectation, ex- 

 claim, " Provender ! " Has the monster ever as- 

 sociated with any thing beyond a ploughman and 

 his wife ? Has he ever dined at a table higher than 

 one where bacon and its concomitant horror, cab- 

 bage, were the head and front of the offence ? Yes, 

 fair lady, he has, though, sooth to say, he has 

 dined on bacon and abomination, smd 9 faute tfautre 

 chose, with a good appetite too. He has, also, 

 seen your lovely prototype take a tablespoonful 

 of soup at ten sips ; a particle of sweetbread, the 



