imagined,--for it is to be hoped, in the interests of educational
establishments and social decorum, that he was not in the situation
to draw the incidents from actual observation,--is transpiring on the
outside of a Young Ladies' Seminary, where maidens are 'boarded and
educated,' and their minds trained. According to the notice-board,
there seems no reason to question this being a 'finishing school'
in the fullest acceptation of the expression. 'The young ideas' are
shooting in a precocious fashion which is setting the restraint of the
governesses at defiance. Certain well-favoured young house painters
are inciting the mischievous hoydens to disregard the injunctions of
their preceptresses. A daring scamp is stealing a kiss from a buxom
belle, over the eaves of the adjoining house, and three terrible young
flirts are exchanging pleasantries with a youth on a ladder, who is
stopping the torrent of menace, poured forth by the mistress, by
bedaubing his whitewash brush in the learned features of the infuriated
old lady. It is evidently early morning, before the customary studies
have commenced.