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 

 {queer e) 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. 

 " Provender ! " I think I hear some pretty pouting 

 lip, with a little — a very little — aiFectation, 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, 

 cabbage, were the head and front of the offence?" 

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

 has dined on bacon and abomination, and, faute 

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

 also, seen your lovely prototype take a tablespoon- 

 ful of soup at ten sips ; a particle of sweetbread. 



