it was an ornamental one. They knew by the smoke that so
gracefully curled from the end of his weed that a Pickwick was near.
They knew that a gent of fashionable exterior and elegant manners was
nigh likewise. If he was obliged to consume his own smoke, how could he
continue to diffuse fragrance in society? He identified himself with the
party of smokers; as he was a smoking party himself. If smoke was such a
nuisance, why did they make so much the other day at the review at
Spithead? Let them put that question in their pipe--and, he would add,
smoke it. Talking of pipes, he would tell PALMERSTON that his idea of a
chimney consuming its own smoke was a mere sham.

[_The speaker resumed his seat amid great laughter, principally from
himself, and the meeting terminated as it began, with clamour._

* * * * *

RESOURCE, FOR YOUNG LADIES.

[Illustration: W]

Why should young ladies in distress commit suicide, or turn governesses
in genteel families, when they might earn a decent competence by
penny-a-lining? Can they? Why yes, to be sure they can. For example,
here is a piece of that work as characteristic as crochet:--

"THE MOORS.--This morning, with the break of dawn, the quick report
of the rifle would be heard on all the moors of Scotland, and before
this sheet is in the hands of our readers, many thousand boxes of
birds will have been bagged by the keen sportsmen."

"Many thousand boxes of birds," each box containing several, will have
been "bagged by the keen sportsmen;" every single bird almost out of the
several thousand bagged on "the quick report of the rifle." For, you
see, the rifle could not, except very rarely, kill two birds with one
bullet: so that a brace of grouse dropping to the "quick report of the
rifle" would be a rare occurrence. Pop goes the rifle; down goes the
bird, perhaps; but that is all, in general. As the keenest sportsmen,
however, sometimes miss, and rifle balls have a longish range, the
sporting on these moors must have been rather dangerous to unfeathered
birds as well as to game. Six shots might "achieve;" but the seventh, at
least, would, in all probability, "deceive," as the British
melodramatist says in _Der Freischuetz_. But we are ourselves firing wide
of our mark, or digressing from the point: which is, that the above
paragraph, copied from the _Stirling Journal_, is evidently the
production of a lady. The sex of the wri