364 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
OUR COUSIN 
c / 
Our cousin was a dashing young love 
of sixteen, who had come into the eoun 
try to sacrifice a week or two among 
the rural population. It was a gaj 
morning in June, when we sat together un¬ 
der a maple-tree, we in our homespun, and 
she in “ full dress,” giving a thrilling account 
of an unfortunate breach which somecountrj 
girls had made the night before on the rulet 
of etiquette. At length, the tale being ended. 
*'Come, cousin,” said we, “suppose we go 
into the garden and inhale the odoriferous- 
breezes arising from the cucumber vines 
“ Ah, Monsieur, with pleasure,” said she. 
at the same time throwing herself on out 
arm with all the freedom in the world. Af¬ 
ter sweeping up and down the alleys for a 
while, “ Cousin,” said we gravely, “ whai 
Jo you call the distant verdure twining about 
yon poles, and hanging from the top in grace¬ 
ful festoons ?” “ That,” said she, “ must br 
a species of evergreen. I think it is the 
polyanthus.” “ Pole-beans, you mean, rath¬ 
er,” said we, composedly ; the beans grow 
in those flat things called pods, and which in 
their green state may be eaten, beans and 
all; in that case they are called string-beans.” 
“ And what are those green, round things 
stuck up on sticks,” asked she, innocently. 
“ Those are called cabbages,” we replied : 
“ a term not unfrequently associated with 
pork, and which, when cooked together, con¬ 
stitute a most excellent dish. And those 
round, bulbous roots, with green, tubular 
stalks, how would you characterize those 1” 
continued we. “ I think they are called 
turnips,” she replied, “ are they not?” “They 
bear a resemblance to them,” we answered, 
“ though they are usually called onions, we 
believe. They sometimes emit an unpleas¬ 
ant odor, and should never be eaten before 
going into young ladies’ society.” “ They 
never are in New-York,” said she ; “ indeed, 
they are never eaten there at all.” “ Ah !” 
we replied. Having gone through the vege¬ 
table and floral kingdoms, in the latter of 
which a poppy and hollyhock were pronoueed 
respectively a snow-drop and primrose, we 
strolled up to an enormous bunch of fennel, 
standing in the corner of the garden. “Here,” 
began we emphatically, “ is one of the most 
beautiful plants in the whole herbiverous 
kingdom. Observe the stalks, how round 
and regular! and the leaves, how exquisitely 
delicate ! and all terminating in these deli¬ 
cious little seeds so prevalent in tea-cakes !” 
At this, she caught hold of a bunch, and in 
her effort to pull it off, shook down a huge 
fennel worm upon her brocade. “ Why, 
cousin,” said we, admiringly, “ what a beau¬ 
tiful little creatare is crawling on your 
dress.” “What is it?” said she, looking 
about. “ A charming little fennel worm.” 
“ A what! a worm ? murder ! where is it ? 
get itoff!” She began shaking her dress, and 
backing across some carrot-beds, and finally 
tripped in a row of bush-beans, and fell into 
a huge gooseberry-bush. “Sir!” said she, 
energetically, “ I shall never forgive you for 
this—never !” “ Becalm yourself, cousin,” 
said we quietly. “ Suffer not passion to pre¬ 
side over reason. Let not the innocent euf" 
fer for the sins of the guilty, for then the 
rule of justice is made null. Let us seek 
rather to rescue you from this perilous posi¬ 
tion without doing violence to your flounces. 
In that case, however, they shall be conver¬ 
ted into kite tails, where, you must acknow¬ 
ledge, they will serve an equally useful and 
ornamental purpose.” “ Oh, you mean 
thing,” exclaimed she impatiently, “ do be 
still.” At last, with some difficulty, the dress 
was disentangled without harm, except a 
rent of about a yard in the fifth tier of this 
superfluous foliage, which, we suggested, 
could be easily repaired by cutting a strip 
from the bottom. 
“ And now, dear cousin,” said we, “let us 
go into the kitchen and regale ourselves with 
a dish of cold ham, and when you feel dis¬ 
posed to ridicule country girls again, call to 
mind the young lady who mistook pole-beans 
for polyanthusses, and who, through fear of 
a fennel-worm, trampled down three carrot- 
beds, and fell into a gooseberry-bush.” 
Long Preaching. —“ There is nothing,” 
says Jay of Bath, in his recently published 
autobiography—“ there is nothing against 
which a young preacher should be more 
guarded thanlength.” “Nothing,” says La- 
mont, “ can justify a longsermon. Ifit be a 
good one, it need not be long ; and if it be a 
bad one, it ought not to be long.” Luther, in 
the enumeration of nine qualities of a good 
preacher, gives as the sixth, “ that he 
should know when to stop.” Boyle has an 
essay on patience under long preaching. 
This was never more wanted since the com¬ 
monwealth than now, in our own day, espe¬ 
cially among our young divines and academ¬ 
ics, who seem to think their performances 
can never be too much attended to. “ I nev¬ 
er,” says Jay, “ err this way myself, but my 
conviction always laments it; and for many 
years after I began preaching l never offended 
in this way. 1 never exceeded three quar¬ 
ters of an hour at most. I saw one excellen¬ 
cy was within my reach—it was brevity— 
and I determined to attain it.” 
A Compliment. —As a lady of the Fortes- 
cue family, who possessed great personal 
beauty, was walking along a narrow lane, 
she perceived just behind her a hawker of 
earthenware, driving an ass with two pan¬ 
niers, laden with his stock in trade. To give 
the animal and his master room to pass, the 
lady suddenly stepped aside, which so 
frightened the donkey that he ran away, and 
had not proceeded far when he fell, and a 
great part of the crockery was broken. The 
lady in her turn became alarmed lest the 
man should load her with abuse, if not offer 
to insult her; but he merely exclaimed, 
“ Never mind, madam : Balaam’s ass was 
frightened by an angel.” 
Delicacy : for the Ladies. —Above every 
other feature which adorns the female char¬ 
acter, delicacy stands foremost, within the 
province of good taste. Not that delicacy 
which is perpetually in quest of something 
to be ashamed of, which makes merit of a 
blush, and simpers at the false construction 
its own ingenuity has put on an innocent 
remark : this spurious kind of delicacy is as 
far removed from good taste as from good 
feeling and good sense ; but the high-minded 
delicacy which maintains its pure and unde¬ 
viated walk alike among us in the society of 
men, which shrinks from no necessary duty, 
and can speak, when required, with serious¬ 
ness and kindness, of things at which i 
would be ashamed to smile or blush—that 
delicacy which knows how to confer a bene¬ 
fit without wounding the feelings of another, 
and which understands also how and when 
to receive one—that delicacy which can give 
alms without display, and advice without as¬ 
sumption, and which pains not the most sus¬ 
ceptible being in creation. Literary Journal 
FLORENCE VANE. 
I loved thee long and dearly, 
Florence Vane, 
My youth’s bright dream and early, 
Has come again ! 
I recall in my fond vision 
My heart’s dear pain, 
My hopes, and thy derision, 
Florence Vane 1 
The ruin lone, and hoary, 
The ruin old, 
Where thou did’st hark my story, 
At even told— 
That spot—the huesElysian 
Of sky, and plain, 
I treasure in my vision, 
Florence Vane ! 
Thou wert lovelier, than the roses 
In their prime ; 
Thy voice excelled the closes 
Of sweetest rhyme ; 
Thy heart was a river 
Without a main— 
Would I had loved the never, 
Florence Vane ! 
But fairest, coldest wonder, 
Thy glorious clay, 
Lieth the green sod under, 
Alas ! the day, 
And it hoots not to remember 
Thy disdain, 
To quicken love’s pale ember, 
Florence Vane 1 
The lilies of the valley, 
O’er young graves weep, 
And pansies love to dally, 
Where maidens sleep, 
May their bloom in beauty vieing, 
Never wane. 
Where thine earthly past is lying, 
Florence Vane! 
P. P Cooke 
Too Small.— A Yankee who went over to 
the mother country some time ago, was 
asked, on returning, how he liked Great Brit¬ 
ain. “ Well,” he said, “ England is a very 
nice country, exceedingly fertile, well culti¬ 
vated, very populous, and very wealthy; 
but,” continued the Yankee, “ I never liked 
to take a morning walk, after breakfast, be¬ 
cause the country is so small that I was 
afraid of walking off the edge.” 
A gentleman was once walking in a street, 
when he met a stone cutter whom he thus 
addressed: “ My good fellow, if the devil 
was to come now which of us would he take ?” 
After a little hesitation, Ihe man replied 
“ Me sir.” 
Annoyed by this reply, the querist asked 
him for a reason. 
“ Because, yer honor, he would be glad to 
ketch meself—sure ; and he’d have you at 
any time.” 
A Lock of Hair. —Hair is at once the most 
delicate and lasting of our materials, and 
survives us, like love. It is so light, so 
gentle, so escaping from the idea of death, 
that with the lock of hair belonging to a child 
or a friend, we may almost look up to Heaven, 
and compare notes with the angelic nature; 
may almost say, “ I have a piece of thee here, 
not unworthy of thy being now.” 
hoigh. Hum. 
