ted ape, but a smart fellow at the insurance business. Great fun
at the 'Queen's' the other day with him. He came in, dressed in frock
coat, tall hat, and carrying a thick, curly stick as big as himself. Of
course every one smiled, and he took it badly--couldn't see what there
was to laugh at; and when old Charteris, the Commissioner, asked him
how much he would 'take for the hat,' he put his monocle up and said
freezingly, 'Sir, I do not know you.' That made us simply howl, and
then, when we had subsided a bit, Morgan the barrister, who is here on
circuit with Judge Cooper, said in that fanny, deep, rumbling voice of
his--

"'Are you, sir, one of the--ah--ah--circus company which--ah--arrived
to-day?'

"The poor little beggar was furious, lost his temper, and called us a
lot of ill-mannered, vulgar fellows, and then some one or other whipped
off the offending hat, threw it into the street, and made a cockshy of
it.

"'I'll have satisfaction for this outrage!' he piped. 'Landlord, send
for a policeman. I'll give all these men in charge. Your house is very
disorderly. Do you know _who_ I am?'

"'No, nor do I care,' said old Cramp, down whose cheeks the tears were
running; 'but if you'll come here like that every day, I'll give you a
sovereign, and we'll have the hat. Oh, you're better than any circus I
ever saw. Oh, oh, oh!' and he went off into another fit.

"The poor little man looked at us in a dazed sort of a way--thought us
lunatics, and then when old Char-tens asked him not to mind a bit of
miners' horseplay, but to sit down and have some fizz, he called him 'an
audacious ruffian,' and shrieked out--

"'I am Mr. B. D. Assheton--the manager of the Australian Insurance
Company. Do you possibly imagine I would drink with a person _like
you_?'"

Grainger laughed: "It must have been great fun."

"Rather--but the cream of it is to come yet. He rushed oat into Flinders
Street, found Sergeant Doyle and a policeman, and came back panting and
furious, and pointing, to Charteris, told them to take him in charge.
Doyle looked at us blankly, saw we were nearly dead with laughing, and
then took Assheton aside, and said in his beautiful brogue--

"'Me little mahn, it's drinkin' ye've been. Do yez want me to arrest the
Po-liss Magisthrate himsilf? Who are ye at all, at all? Ye'd betther
be after goin' home and lyin' down, or I'll lock ye up for making a
dishturbance. Do ye moind me now?'"

Grainger could no longer con