und, and
counted both batches. After the counting was over they returned from the
lobbies, and business proceeded as before. I have seen the closure very
effectually put on a talkative rook.

Yours,
VERACITY.

SIR,--I can confirm these tales of animal Policemen in every
particular--indeed, I am able to add to them. I have often seen a couple
of tom-tits, on leaving their nests for an outing, put a tom-tit
constable on guard till they came back. But here is a still more
remarkable circumstance. On one occasion several other tom-tits wanted
to rob this deserted nest, and they actually came up to the constable
and put something in his claw, after which he looked the other way while
they were rifling the nest. _They had bribed him!_ Comment is
superfluous.

Yours,
KEEN OBSERVER.

* * * * *

Grandolph's Logic.

Your Purchase Bill is bad from top to toe--
Drop it, dear boys, then to the country go,
And say 'twas through Gladstonian ill-will
It lost that blessed boon, your bad, bad Bill!

* * * * *

LIVING AND LEARNING.--Sir, from a paragraph in _The Times_ about the
Newfoundland Fisheries, I gather the existence of "Lobster Factories."
Never knew this was an industry. Had always thought that Lobsters, like
poets, were born, not made.

Yours,
A NATURALIST.

* * * * *

L'ABBE INCONSTANTIN PARSONIFIED.

THE first impression of _A Village Priest_ is that, in one respect, Mr.
GRUNDY has done well to choose the historical name of the execrable
"Abbe DUBOIS," and bestow it on the _Cure_, who is meant to be the
interesting hero of what, without him, would have been a sufficiently
strong melodrama. The very A B C of the practice of the confessional
being that everything between Priest and Penitent (even when the
Penitent is impenitent) is _sub sigillo_, this Abbe can have, as the
Grand Inquisitor in the _Gondoliers_ sings, "No possible probable shadow
of doubt, No possible doubt whatever," as to his plain duty; and yet he
demands of Heaven a miracle to show him how _not_ to do it. And to this
pious request comes an answer (by limelight) which demonstrates once
more how the Devil can quote Scripture to his purpose.

[Illustration: The Tree at the Haymarket.]

Frankly, Mr. GRUNDY has written three Acts of a play which must have
been powerful had he not extended it to five, and, had he not attempted
to