p on the gates, "Only English Waiters
need apply?" Why the hidear is ridiclous, but where's the difference
I should like to kno. No, no, no one can kno better than I do, from
a long and waried xperience, from the Grand old City, the ome of
ospitality and turtle soup, to the "Grand" and "Metropole," the omes
of lucksury and refinement, that the British Public likes his British
Waiter, he likes his nice respecful ways, the helligent Bow with which
he ands him his At, and the graceful hair with which he receeves his
little doosure.

ROBERT.

* * * * *

SPECIMENS FROM MR. PUNCH'S SCAMP-ALBUM.

NO. IV.--THE HUSBAND'S OLD SCHOOL-FELLOW.

We will suppose that you are a young wife, and that your husband is
absent in the City during the greater part of the day. One afternoon a
card is brought in bearing the inscription:--

CAPTAIN CAULKER.

_United Service Club. The Hermitage, Coventry_.

Which document is followed closely by a tall, well-groomed, rather
portly and florid stranger, with a military moustache, who greets
you with the utmost cordiality. "I happened to find myself in
this neighbourhood," he says, "and I could not--I really could
_not_--resist this opportunity. My name, I venture to think, is a
sufficient introduction?"

It is nothing of the sort--but you are too shy and too polite to admit
it, so you merely murmur some incoherency. He detects you at once.
"Ah!" he cries, in good-tempered reproach; "I see, I've been too
sanguine. Now confess, my dear lady, you haven't a _notion_ who I am!"

Thus brought to bay, you own that you have no clue to your visitor's
identity--as yet. "Well--well," he says, tolerantly, "Time is a
terrible sponge--though I had hoped that, even after all these years,
your dear husband might have occasionally mentioned the name of his
old school-chum! I've never forgotten _him_--no, all through the years
I've been in India I've never forgotten dear old WALTER!"

"But my husband's name is _WILLIAM_!" you say here.

[Illustration]

"He was always WALTER to _me_, Madam, or rather--WATTY. He was so
like a favourite young brother of mine, who died young. That drew
us together from the first. Did dear old WATTY never tell you how
he saved my life once?... No? So like him!--he wouldn't. But he did,
though; yes, by Gad, jumped into fifteen foot of water after me, and
kept me up when I was going under for the last time. Pardon me, but I
see a photograph up