n a large sack. These are useful in
putting on the finishing touches, and ensuring an unapproachable
lustre.

2. Brushes of various kinds, comprising shoe-brushes, hat-brushes,
clothes-brushes, hair-brushes, tooth-brushes, nail-brushes,
shaving-brushes, and sometimes, a stove-brush. These are useful in
many respects, the shoe-brushes and hair-brushes being instrumental in
doing the heavy and plain work, while the shaving-brushes and
tooth-brushes are extremely handy in doing justice to the filagree
work and ornamental portion.

3. A platform, or dais, on which to place the stove.

4. A stick, curiously carved, to beat out of pipes.

5. Cloths, of various sizes and patterns, to wipe the poker and the
legs of the stove.

6. Oil-cloths, for emergencies.

7. One large bottle or jug with a stick in it, and two smaller ones,
all filled with mysterious decoctions whose composition and properties
are known to Bill alone.

8. A sponge.

9. Small boxes containing a dingy powder.

10. A wheel-barrow, on which Bill vainly attempts to carry the rest of
his goods.

We have been thus minute in describing his equipment, knowing him to
be at the head of his profession, and hoping that any youth aspiring
to celebrity in it, who may chance upon these pages, will profit
therefrom. We regret to be obliged to state that there are some so
utterly out of sympathy with the cause of art, as to assert that the
greater portion of Bill's utensils are useless; and that by much
puttering he loses time without improving his work. These persons we
are inclined to class among those zealous but unthinking lovers of
simplicity, whose misdirected reformatory efforts in other departments
of life are so well known. As might be expected, Bill treats these
sacrilegious innovators with the contempt they so justly merit. Were
an officious stranger to try to convince an artist that one color
would answer all his purposes as well as a greater number, would the
suggestion of the untutored interloper cause the artist to waver in
the sternness of his faith? And shall the subject of this sketch
revolutionize his mode of stove-blacking at the promptings of an
untaught spectator?

It would be by no means surprising if such nicety of execution as that
to which we have alluded tended to draw his attention from rhetorical
themes. Yet, spite of this apparently necessary result, some of his
grandest and most startling flights of oratory have had their
inspir