me the
names and addresses of any charitable friends and neighbours whom
you think at all likely to follow your noble example?... I thank you
from my heart, Madam, and, when I succeed in recovering my literary
in'eritance, and am called upon to issue a collected edition of my
works, I shall take the liberty of inscribing on the title-page a
dedication to the generous benefactress who first 'elped to restore my
fallen fortunes!"

With this he seals his lips again with the respirator, pockets his
documents and your donation, and bows himself gratefully out, leaving
you to meditate on the unscrupulousness of popular Authors, and the
ease with which a confiding public is hoodwinked.

* * * * *

M.P. MANFIELD, M.P.

Northampton's new Member an honour can claim
On which he need set little store:
He now has M.P. written after his name,
But he always had M.P. before.

If every M.P. in the lobby counts one,
To the _Ayes_, or the _Noes_, walking through,
Does logic demand, in each case, _pro_ and _con._,
M.P. MANFIELD, M.P., should count two?

* * * * *

CHANCE FOR SPINSTERS OF AN UNCERTAIN AGE.--There is to be a Mahommedan
Mission in England.

* * * * *

[Illustration: "THE WATER BABIES AND THE ROYAL GODMOTHER."]

* * * * *

BRAVO, BAGSHAWE!

A lady of Bedford, despotic and rash,
Tried to force her poor groom to shave off his moustache.
Judge BAGSHAWE the wise, made her pay for her prank.
This makes one inclined to sing, "_I know a Bank_,"
Where BAGSHAWE might bring common-sense, for a change;
They're worse than the Lady of Goldington Grange,
These Banking Bashaws with three tails, who must clip
Nature's health-giving gift from a clerk's chin or lip.
Bah! What _are_ they fit for, these stupid old rules?
To be shaped by rich tyrants, obeyed by poor fools!

* * * * *

QUEER QUERIES.

ENGLISH HISTORY.--I have been reading several books on this subject,
and am rather puzzled. Are the English people, _as existing now_,
Teutons, or Danes, or Celts, or what? Can we be Teutons when the
aborigines of these islands were not Teutonic? I feel that my own
genius--and I have a lot--is Celtic; at the same time I have always
prided myself on my Norman blood; yet from my liking for the sea,
which never makes me sick, at least