"Schloo-00-00-00-000p."

"And if ever I saw a wild, rakish, immoral, irreligious-looking young man, Dietrich, the Captain is one !"

"Schloo-00-00-00op."

"Did you observe, Dietrich, how shamefully he stared at me?" "Schloo-ooop."

"And the cut on his forehead, Dietrich, I'll be bound he got it for no good!"

"Schloo-00-00-00op."

"Confound Adam Kloot and his oysters to boot!" exclaimed the offended Madame Doppeldick, irritated beyond all patience at the bovine apathy of her connubial partner. "I wish, I do, that the nets had burst in catching them!"

"Why, what can one do, Malchen?" asked honest Dietrich, looking up for the first time from the engrossing dish, whence the one-a-penny oysters had all vanished, leaving only the two-apenny ones behind.

"Saint Ursula only knows!" sighed Madame Doppeldick, her voice relapsing into its former tone of melancholy. know that I will never undress in the room!"

"I only

"Then you must undress out of it, Malchen. Schloo-oop. Schloo-oo

dooo-oo-oo

"I believe that must be the way after all," said Madame Doppeldick, on whose mind her husband's sentence of transcendental philosophy had cast a new light. "To be sure there is a little landing-place at the stair-head-and our bed is exactly opposite the door--and if one scuttled briskly across the room, and jumped in-But are you sure, Dietrich, that you explained every thing correctly to the Captain? Did you tell him that his was the one next the window-with the patchwork coverlet ?"

"Not a word of it !" answered honest Dietrich, who, like all other Prussians, had served his two years as a soldier, and was therefore moderately interested in military manoeuvres. "Not a word of it-we talked all about the review. But I did what was far better, my own Malchen, for I saw him get into the bed with the patchwork coverlet, with my own eyes, and then took away his candle-Schloo-oo-oop!"

"It was done like my own dear, kind, Dietrich," exclaimed the delighted Madame Doppeldick, and in the sudden revulsion of her feelings, she actually pulled up his huge round bullet-head from the dish, and kissed him between the nose and chin.

The Domestic Dilemma was disarmed of its horns, Madame

Doppeldick saw her way before her, as clear and open as the Rhine three months after the ice has broken up. From that moment, as long as the dish contained two oysters, the air of "Schloo-oo -oo-ooop" was sung, as "arranged for a

duet."

CHAPTER VIII.

"ALL is quiet, thank Heaven! the Captain is as fast as a church," thought Madame Doppeldick, as she stood in nocturnal dishabille, on the little landing-place at the stair-head. "Now then, my own Dietrich," she whispered, "are you ready to run?" For like the best of wives, as she was, she did not much care to go anywhere without her husband.

But the deliberate Dietrich was not prepared to escort her. He had chosen to undress as usual, with his transcendental pipe in his mouth; indeed it was always the last thing that he took off before getting into bed, so that till all his philosophy was burned to ashes, his mind would not consent to any active corporeal exertion, especially to any locomotion so rapid as a race. At last he stood balancing, made up for the start; his eyes staring, his teeth clenched, his fists doubled, and his arms swinging, as if he were about to be admitted a burgess of Andernach— that is to say, by leaping backwards over a winnowing-fan, with a well-poised pail of water in his arms, in order to show if he accomplished it neatly.

"The night-light may be left burning where it is, Dietrich." "Now then, Malchen!"

"Now then, Dietrich,-and run gently-on your toes !"

No sooner said than done.

The modest Malchen with the

speed of a young wild elephant, made a rush across the room, and, with something of a jump and something more of a scramble, plunged headlong into the bed. The phlegmatic Dietrich was a thought later, from having included the whole length of the landing-place in his run, to help him in his leap, so that just as his bulk came, squash! upon the coverlet, his predecessor was tumbling her body, skow-wow, bow-wow, any-how, over the side of the bedstead.

"Santa Maria!" sobbed Madame Doppeldick, as she settled into hysterics upon the floor.

"Potz-tausend!" said Mr. Doppeldick, as he crawled backwards out of the bed like a crab.

"Ten thousand devils!" bellowed Captain Schenk-a suppressed exclamation that the first shock had driven from his mouth into his throat, from his throat into his lungs, and from thence into his stomach; but which the second shock had now driven out again in full force.

"Why, I thought, Mister Jean Paul Nemand (says the reader), that we left the Captain safe and sound, in his own bed, next the window, with the patch-work coverlet ?"

"And so we did, Mister Carl Wilhelm Jemand (says the author), but it was so short, that in five minutes he caught the cramp. Wherefore, as there was a second spare bed in the room, and as honest Dietrich had said nothing of other lodgers, and as of all blessings we ought to choose the biggest, the Captain determined to give it a trial-and between you and me he liked the bed well enough, till he felt a sort of smashing pain all over his body, his eyes squeezing out of his face, his nose squeezing into it, and his precious front teeth, at a gulp, going uninvited down his gullet !"