, not if
pens were fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint. With which,
for the present, adieu.

Your faithful

M. A. T.

To Mr. ROBERT MACGILP,

NEWMAN STREET, LONDON.

THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN.

Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and as all the world
knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows at their
profession. Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody bought; and Simon
took a higher line, and painted portraits to admiration, only nobody
came to sit to him.

As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession, and had
arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better
himself by taking a wife,--a plan which a number of other wise men
adopt, in similar years and circumstances. So Simon prevailed upon a
butcher's daughter (to whom he owed considerably for cutlets) to quit
the meat-shop and follow him. Griskinissa--such was the fair creature's
name--"was as lovely a bit of mutton," her father said, "as ever a man
would wish to stick a knife into." She had sat to the painter for all
sorts of characters; and the curious who possess any of Gambouge's
pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in numberless
other characters: Portrait of a lady--Griskinissa; Sleeping
Nymph--Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest;
Maternal Solicitude--Griskinissa again, with young Master Gambouge, who
was by this time the offspring of their affections.

The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple of
hundred pounds; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be
more lovely or loving. But want began speedily to attack their little
household; bakers' bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the reckless
landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her father, unnatural
butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies of mutton-chops; and swore that
his daughter, and the dauber; her husband, should have no more of his
wares. At first they embraced tenderly, and, kissing and crying over
their little infant, vowed to heaven that they would do without: but
in the course of the evening Griskinissa grew peckish, and poor Simon
pawned his best coat.

When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a kind
of Eldorado. Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that they, in the
course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her great warming-pan,
his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs, a washhand basin