The attorney's clerk declined to lay himself open to an action for illegal arrest, so the policeman went home, and put on his uniform. I was thinking of continuing my remarks by giving one or two hints with regard to the most popular kind of fraud of the present day, I mean the Joint Stock Company plan; but as I am at present engaged in one or two frauds of this description, and hope to realise much profit by them, I feel constrained, from obvious reasons, to refrain. We cannot allow this curious production to go forth to the world, without pointing out that a great many more virtues appear to be required successfully to practice the science of knavery, than are necessary for the practice of common honesty. THE BALLAD OF THE "RHINOCEROS." BY WALTER C. BRYCE. [The writer desires to state that the picture drawn in these verses is, of course, of the past. It requires this explanation to justify incidents now, in all probability, wholly unknown in merchant vessels.] I had read my Peter Simple and my Tops'l Sheet Blocks too; So at last when my employers, Messrs. Bishopsgate and Co. To devote it to the study of the Mercantile Marine. And I rigged myself in serges, with buttons big as plates, There I swept the far horizon with my scientific eye At last I met a "party"-"Let us liquor, mate," he said, True, his coat was somewhat dirty, and he had a pinky eye, So we "liquored." And what follows is exactly like a dream Which it was. For I was going, with my benefactor, down, For the good ship the Rhinoceros was standing right away And a friendly voice requested me at once to "bear a hand” Well the thing was done 'twas certain. So I reasoned in this way, After all the British sailor is entitled to his pay; But my friend, with fond prevision, had "annexed" my first advance And had left me to subsist upon a shirt and pair of pants. For, alas, the suit of serges, with the buttons big as plates, Then I thought of Newton Forster, and I looked above the "trees," And I said at least my fellows are the countrymen of Drake, Let me still retain the " light heart" with the "breeches" of the song. But, alas, a fresh deception to that other one succeeds, And the mate is an American, whose favourite caress From an over-application to the mysteries of Rum. And I swear if the Rhinoceros but once can reach the shore (We had all but reached the bottom when a little past the Nore,Only saved from a collision by the other vessel's shout, For the lights of the Rhinoceros were in the cabin, out;) I say, if Fate befriend us, and the rations only last (We have been at sea a fortnight and they're going very fast, For the fresh meat that the owners, per agreement, should provide To anticipate the killing most unconscionably died;) Let me only have the option, though disrated, to return SUBURBAN TRAGEDIES. BY THE AUTHOR OF "A QUESTION OF HONOUR." In search of a house a little way out of town I came to a place which we will call Suburbopolis, new, gay, and pretty, with dozens of quaintlybuilt villas, bright with stone facings, red brick mosaic, and gilt ironwork, and surrounded with shrubs and trees, as though the place had sprung up in the middle of an old forest: which was not far from the truth. I soon found that the sole way to acquire one of these eligible residences was to apply to the Estate Agent, a man of boundless importance, who looked me over from head to foot, as if taking my size, and when I mentioned the moderate figure which I was prepared to spend yearly in house rent, remarked, with a nod of his head, "Ah, I thought that would be about it." "Cissy, my dear," he added to a pretty girl about twelve, with a small brother in her arms and a small sister holding on to her skirts, "just run down to No. 11, Lime Lane, and say that I must know whether they are going to stay, as there is a party after the house. No, stop here, I will go myself." Whether it suddenly occurred to the parent that his wife was out, and that he would rather have the walk than the care of the babies, one or two more of whom put their heads through the door occasionally, I don't know, but at all events he went and left me with Cissy. Whether the way to Lime Lane is very long I have not yet discovered, but he left me with Cissy for a long while, during which I improved her acquaintance and that of several of her brothers and sisters in a rapid way with the aid of a packet of sugar-plums. Cissy liked sugar-plums, she was not too old for that, but she was old enough to be a very great help to a mother of a large family, and she had a pretty face and a wise little head of her own. She liked stories, too, and I told her one or two, and then asked her, half in fun, to tell me one in return; but Cissy evidently did not readily see jokes, and was accustomed to do what she was asked, and so, to my surprise, she told me several, one after the other, in a simple, quiet, earnest way. They were not pretty stories nor satisfactory stories, they began nowhere in particular and sometimes had no end, but they were very suggestive, and, as they interested me and led me to much speculation, I have tried to recall one or two of them exactly as Cissy told them. Suppose then, reader, that you have just asked Cissy to tell you some stories, and she answers, as she answered me :— |