tions). "_Oh, Sir!
Please, Sir! don't, Sir! Don't for goodness sake Fire, Sir!_"]

* * * * *

WHAT IS A MILE?

We think that the question of "What is a Mile?"--a question which
promises to swallow up in interest the Eastern Question, and all other
questions which as yet remain unanswered--should be settled as soon as
possible; for, until it is settled, we shall never be able to arrive at
a proper settlement of the Cab fares. This settlement is due--not only
to the persons who ride in cabs--but to those who drive them, for there
are so many varieties of a mile, and so many different ways of measuring
it, that it is impossible to say which is the right one. For instance--

If a young lady walks round the corner of the street in which she lives,
she comes home quite fatigued, and "is sure she has walked more than a
mile."

If a husband is dragged--a little against his will--to a certain street
where there happens to be a bonnet shop, though it is not more than
twenty yards, he is morally certain "he has been taken a mile out of his
way, if he has been taken an inch."

It is curious the number of miles a mother-in-law has walked when she
feels desirous, poor creature, of having a cab.

Besides, miles vary so much. A mistress's mile is generally very
different to a servant's--a master's to a clerk's. Auctioneers' miles
are proverbially very short ones when they are describing a property as
being not more than "an omnibus distance from town," or when they are
enlarging upon the merits of a Villa that is "only an easy drive from a
railway station." Travellers' miles, on the contrary, are generally very
long ones. You will hear a delicate young man, who has just returned
from a pedestrian tour, boast of having walked his "two thousand miles,"
just as if he had trailed a pedometer behind him, and had measured every
inch of the road. Panoramas also, have a very elastic method of
stretching out a mile, which cab-drivers would doubtlessly not object to
adopt as their own particular standard of measurement. They talk very
glibly of being "three miles long," whereas, if the distance came to be
measured, it would probably turn out to be--like cabmen's distances
generally--not more than half. There is another deficiency, too, that
frequently occurs with the mileage question. We have known a distance,
that when a party first went over it, was only four or five miles,
become suddenly increased to ei