(_Drops hammer_.) Sold at four
pounds, SAM! (_Looks round_.) Who bid four? [_No response, as the last
bid was imaginary._

_Sam_ (_huskily_). Gen'l'man as bid four jest slipped hout, Sir.

_Auctioneer_ (_tartly_). Tut--tut--tut! _Too_ bad, really. Well,
Sir, then I must take _your_ bid. Sold to this Gentleman, SAM, at
Three-fifteen!

[_Paterfamilias, highly pleased, pays deposit, and arranges to
send for his bargain in the morning. As he and his "good lady"
leave, they notice close by, three men with barrows, each
bearing a blazingly red and strongly-smelling chest of
drawers. Materfamilias complacently remarks on the manifest
superiority of the article they have purchased, to "that
red rubbish." Next morning they receive, instead of their
own "bargain," one of those identical brand-new, badly-made,
unseasoned, thinly-veneered "shop 'uns," which are "blown
together" by the gross for such purposes. They protest, but
vainly, notwithstanding their true assertion that the drawers
they received contain "fresh shavings" instead of the "sprigs
of blooming lavender" they had observed in those they thought
they had purchased. Paterfamilias, a week later, looking in
at the Auction-room, sees what he could swear to be the very
chest of drawers he had purchased being "sold again" in a
similar fashion._

* * * * *

"MY PRETTY JANUS, OH NEVER LOOK SO SHY!"

[Illustration: JANUS DRURIOLANUS.

_Suggestion for Costume at another Masked Ball._]

AUGUSTUS DRURIOLANUS is greater than ever. It is the penitential
season of Lent; some excellent persons renounce all worldly
amusements; others, not quite so excellent, and both lots thinking, it
may be, no small beer of themselves, we may term the first lot Treble
Excellent and the second Double Excellent--the latter division think
that concerts possibly, sacred concerts certainly, and certain other
forms of mild and non-theatrical entertainments, are of a sufficiently
severe character to constitute, as it were, a form of discipline. Then
there are the larger proportion of those "who," as _Mrs. Malaprop_
would say, "'care for none of these things,' like GALILEO, my dear,"
and who inquire. "What is the state of the odds as long as we think
we're happy?" and who would indulge in balls and theatres, and in
every other form of amusement, while such pursuits afforded them, or
seemed, to affo