The Magnolia Author:Henry William Herbert Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: "ANGELINA'S FAINTED!" BT BED Iudint; HOOD. The talk was of Hottentots — " Don't speak of 'em," cried Miss Angelina Daffy, "I'm certain of it — if I were... more » only to look at a Hottentot, I should faint — I must faint." " Fiddledee ! " said Miss Lilly white ; and there was a hush — a pause in the conversation; for when Miss Lillywhite exclaimed " Fiddledee ! " it behoved thoughtless young ladies to look to themselves. Now, Miss Daffy had a great talent for fainting. Perhaps the talent was originally a natural gift; nevertheless, it could not be denied that a frequent and earnest cultivation of the endowment had brought it to perfection. Miss Daffy, at one minute's notice, could faint at any time, and upon any subject. She could faint at either extreme of the day — faint at breakfast, or faint at supper; could faint with equal beauty and truthfulness, whether the matter to be fainted uponwere a black beetle, or a blackbird — a bull or a bullfinch. She had wonderful powers of syncope; though, it must be allowed, like most folks haunted with a despotic sense of their own genius, she now and then employed it a little out of place. Vanity, however, is a human weakness. For a philosopher, to his own satisfaction, has proved, that the peacock takes no pride in its own effulgent glories, but, all unconscious of their beauty, spreads them because it was ordained to do so ; and, after all, had Miss Daffy been philosophically examined upon her proneness to faint, she would have attributed the habit to no self- complacency, but to the simple but inevitable truth that she was made to faint. She would not have recognized any beauty in the art of fainting, but merely the natural consequence that to faint was feminine. Eve, she thought, was made for sal- volatile. . Miss Lillywhite was a...« less