A friend of mine who has discovered that Shakspeare knew all about steam-engines, electric telegraphs, cotton-gins, the present rebellion, and gas-lights, assures me that dressing-gowns are distinctly alluded to in The Tempest: 

    ’TRINCULO:  O King Stephano! look, what a wardrobe here is for
    thee!

    CALIBAN:  Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash.

    Having thus proved its age, let us next prove that it is in its
    dotage, and is as much out of place in this nineteenth century as
    a monkey in a bed of tulips.

We find in the Egyptian temples paintings of priests dressed in these gowns:  proof that they are antiquely heathenish.  And as we always associate a man who wears one with Mr. Mantilini, this proves that they are foolish. Ergo, as they are old and foolish, they are in their dotage.

I have three several times, while wearing this gown, been mistaken for Madame Fling by people coming to the house.  The first time I was shaving in my chamber:  in bounced Miss X——­, who believed, as it was rather late, that I had gone down-town.  She threw up her hands, exclaiming: 

    ‘Good gracious, Fanny! do you shave?’

    N.B.—­Fanny is my wife’s first name.

The second time I had brought the woodsaw and horse up from the cellar, and was exercising myself sawing up my winter’s wood, in the summer-kitchen, according to Doctor Howl’s advice, when the Irishman from the grocery entered, bearing a bundle.  My back was to him, and only seeing the gay and flowery gown, he exclaimed, in an awfully audible whisper to the cook: 

    ‘Shure yer mistriss has the power in her arms, jist!’

Think of my wife, my gentle Fanny, having it shouted around the neighborhood that her brute of a husband made her saw all their winter’s wood—­yes! and split it, and pile it too, and make all the fires, and so on and cetera, and oh!  I am glad my husband isn’t such a monster!’

    I turned on the Irishman, and when he saw my whiskers, he quailed!

The third time, I was blacking my boots, according to Dr. Howl’s advice, ’expands the deltoid muscles, is of benefit to the metacarpis, stretches the larynx, opens the oilsophagers, and facilitates expectoration!’ I had chosen what Fanny calls her conservatory for my field of operation—­the conservatory has two dried fish-geraniums, and a dead dog-rose, in it, besides a bad-smelling cat-nip bush; when, who should come running in but the identical Miss X——­ who caught me shaving.

    ‘Poor Fanny,’ said she, before I could turn round; ’do you have to
    black the boots of that odious brute?’