remark to that effect in the hearing
of the hotel-porter. "Oh, no," said he, "_it is a good deal
bigger than you would wonder_." The same waiter, who had a talent
for confusing his language, said in reply to an irate visitor who
had questioned his intelligence: "You need not talk like that; I
am as good as you; _I am as good as any other man put together_."

MARY, THE MAID OF THE INN.

I have a great deal of sympathy with hotel-porters and waiters, and
think them unduly longsuffering at times. As to Mary, the exemplary maid
of the hotel alluded to, she can hold her own in repartee with any of
the visitors. She is a distinct character, and Moliere could have made a
"type" of her. She has no sinecure of a situation, and, after eleven at
night, when the last supper is over, she has to polish the knives for
the morrow's breakfast. She is young, slim, and active, and wears a
string of red corals round her neck. The place is not frequented by
plutocratic tourists, and so her tips are meagre. In spite of her long
days and her slim perquisites, the girl is affable, smiling, and gay.
She trips out and in, sylph-like, can carve fowls most dexterously by
the light of nature, never spills the soup, and has a laughing and
appropriate word for all. Mary, I hope, will get some decent fellow for
husband, and be a stay and comfort to him all the days of his life.
Meanwhile, however (to use the historic present), a nice old gentleman
in the soft goods line, who hails from the flourishing village of
Dundee, is paying her marked attentions. She will have none of him, for
all his apostolic looks. He repeats to her, with a comically sentimental
air, the lines of Omar:

"Here with a book of verse beneath the bough,
A loaf of bread, a cup of wine, and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness,
The wilderness were Paradise enow."

Mary looks in amazement at the old gentleman with the insinuating voice,
anon bursts into a merry peal, and trips off with the remark, "_There's
nae fules like auld anes_," which a listening Londoner takes to mean,
"There's nothing fills like onions!"

ANECDOTES OF THE SMOKING-ROOM.

SONNET TO RALEIGH.

The conversation of an intelligent commercial traveller is, as I said,
of a facetious and entertaining turn. He speaks to so many people in the
course of a day and hears so many anecdotes as he rushes about, that his
sense of humour becomes very keen. Old Burton, autho