ated the circumstance, that
"if the fine boy's father had contradicted him in the state of mind in
which he then was, he should have 'fetched him a crack' and took the
consequences." As for the appreciation of Master Harry by the female
dependents at the Holly Tree, there were two allusions to _that_--one
general, as may be said, the other particular--that were always the
most telling hits, the two chief successes of the Reading. Who that once
heard it, for example, has forgotten the Author's inimitable manner
of saying, as the Boots--"The way in which the women of that
house--_without_ exception--_every_ one of 'em--married _and_
single--took to that boy when they heard the story, is surprising. It
was as much as could be done to keep 'em from dashing into the room and
kissing him. They climbed up all sorts of places, at the risk of their
lives, to look at him through a pane of glass. _They was seven deep at
the key-hole!_" The climax of fun came naturally at the close, however,
when, having described how Mr. Walmers lifted his boy up to kiss the
sleeping "little warm face of little Mrs. Harry Walmers, junior," at the
moment of their separation, Boots, that is the Reader, cried out in the
shrill voice of one of the chambermaids, "_It's a shame to part 'em!_"

Two reflections indulged in by Boots during the course of his narrative,
being among the pleasantest in connection with this most graceful of all
the purely comic Readings, may here, while closing these allusions to
it, be recalled to mind not inappropriately. One--where Cobbs "wished
with all his heart there was any impossible place where them two babies
could have made an impossible marriage, and have lived impossibly happy
ever afterwards." The other--where, with genial sarcasm, Boots propounds
this brace of opinions by way of general summing up--"Firstly, that
there are not many couples on their way to be married who are half as
innocent as them two children. Secondly, that it would be a jolly good
thing for a great many couples on their way to be married, if they could
only be stopped in time, and brought back separate." With which cynical
scattering of sugar-plums in the teeth, of married and single, the
blithe Reading was laughingly brought to its conclusion.

BARBOX BROTHERS.

Nobody but the writer of this little freak of fancy could possibly have
rendered the Reading of it in public worthy even of toleration. Perhaps
no Reading that could be selec