contrived to live upon my
six companions for many days. He had reserved me until the last--I
believe because I was the brightest and best-looking of the whole; and
when he was at last induced to change me, for some coarse description of
food, to his and my own horror, I was discovered!

The poor fellow was driven from the shop; but the tradesman, I am bound
to say, did not treat me with the indignity that I expected. On the
contrary, he thought my appearance so deceitful, that he did not scruple
to pass me next day, as part of change for a sovereign.

Soon after this, somebody dropped me on the pavement, where, however, I
remained but a short time. I was picked up by a child, who ran
instinctively into a shop for the purpose of making an investment in
figs. But, coins of my class had been plentiful in that neighborhood,
and the grocer was a sagacious man. The result was, that the child went
figless away, and that I--my edges curl as I record the humiliating
fact--was nailed to the counter as an example to others. Here my career
ended, and my biography closes.

A SUPPLY OF COCKED HATS.

In new work entitled _A Voyage to the Mauritius and Back_, just
published in London, we find the following capital story, from which it
is apparent that the Chatham-street auction system, even if indigenous,
is not peculiar to New-York. The subject of the joke was an Indian
officer at the Cape, on leave of absence, and an inmate of the
boarding-house where the writer was living.

"The most singular character which Cape Town presented was a Major
Holder, of the Bombay Army. In dress he was entirely unique. He wore
invariably a short red shell jacket, thrown open, with a white
waistcoat, and short but large white trousers, cotton stockings, and
shoes; on his head a cocked-hat, with an upright red and white feather,
the whole surmounted by a green silk umbrella, held painfully aloft to
clear the feather: to this may be added a shirt-collar which acted
almost as a pair of blinders on either side. In person he was ample, but
somewhat shapeless; and he had a vast oblong face, which neither laughed
nor showed any sign of animation whatever. The history of the Major's
cocked-hat was as follows. Strolling into an auction at Bombay, he was
rather taken with the reasonable price of a cocked-hat, which the
flippant auctioneer was recommending with all his ingenuity. 'Going for
six rupees--must be sold to pay the creditors. No advance up