k had his pocket picked, at a
_milling_ match, of a valuable gold repeater. He has favoured the world
with several literary productions, among which are Memoirs of his own
Life, embellished with a view of the author, suspended from (to use the
phrase of a late celebrated auctioneer) a _hanging wood_; and a very
elaborate treatise on the Art of Rat-catching. In the advertisement of
the latter work, the author engages it will enable the reader to "clear
any house of these noxious vermin, however much infested, excepting
only a certain great House in the neighbourhood of St. Stephen's,
Westminster."{1}

1 It appears by the newspapers, that the foundation of a
certain great house in Pall Mall is rotten, and giving-way.
The cause is not stated; but as it cannot arise from being
top-heavy, we may presume that the rats have been at work
there. Query, would not an early application of the Major's
recipe have remedied the evil, and prevented the necessity
of a removal of a very heavy body, which of course, must be
attended with a very heavy expense? 'Tis a pity an old
friend should have been overlooked on such an occasion.

~29~~"Do you," said Tom, pointing to a person on the other side of
the way, "see that young man, walking with a half-smothered air of
indifference, affecting to whistle as he walks, and twirling his
stick? He is a _once-a-week man_, or, in other words, a _Sunday
promenader_--Harry Hairbrain was born of a good family, and, at the
decease of his father, became possessed of ten thousand pounds, which
he sported with more zeal than discretion, so much so, that having been
introduced to the gaming table by a pretended friend, and fluctuated
between poverty and affluence for four years, he found himself
considerably in debt, and was compelled to seek refuge in an obscure
lodging, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Kilburn, in order to avoid
the _traps_; for, as he observes, he has been among the _Greeks and
pigeons_, who have completely _rook'd_ him, and now want to crow
over him: he has been at hide and seek for the last two months, and,
depending on the death of a rich old maiden aunt who has no other heir,
he eventually hopes to '_diddle 'em_.'"

This narrative of Hairbrain was like Hebrew ta Tallyho, who requested
his interesting cousin, as he found himself at _falt, to try back_, and
put him on the _right scent_.

"Ha! ha! ha!" said Tom, "we must find a new Lond