The strange phenomena, connected with the
stamp-collecting mania, are among the peculiarities
developed in these pages. Extraordinary
revelations are made, of the patience and
perseverance exhibited by " collectors" of this
kind. Some of these advertise, for exchange,
books containing upwards of five hundred
stamps, foreign and colonial, or eight hundred
postmarks in an album. Is it conceivable that
anybody can want eight hundred postmarks?
Another collector offers " a book with double
clasps, containing one thousand and seventy
arms, crests, and monograms, all coloured;
Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, arms of all
nations, county arms, nearly all the army,
militia, volunteer, schools, &c." There are,
likewise, strange and terrible treasures of the
monogram and stamp kind, and some very
mysterious matters indeed, which are called
"eccentrics." Here is a fearfully mystifying
announcement: "I have twenty military
badges, and Adam and Eve eccentric, to exchange
for others; or would give two badges for
Tom Dawson's cat, Miss Senhouse, Miss Charlton's
fan, Mr. Milbank's eccentric." Mr. Tom
Dawson's cat is the subject of another advertisement,
and is evidently a much prized and
well-known specimen among " eccentrics."

Through the agency of the department of this
Periodical, called the " Exchange," persons
encumbered may get a different set of objects
more suitable to their wants; while another department
of the Journal, " The Mart," affords
them a chance of turning these same unappreciated
wares into money. It is probably a good
thing that such a system as this should be in
existence, for even if the parties to these transactions
do not acquire any very valuable additions
to the number of their possessions, they
at least get a change in the nature of their encumbrances,
and that is something. For, even
if you skip out of the frying-pan into the fire,
it must still be admitted that you do get a
change, and perhaps—though the general
opinion seems to run the other way—a change
not altogether for the worse.

THE HALL PORTER AT THE CLUB.

     " How long, good friend, have you sat here,
         A warder at the door,
     To let none pass but the elect
         Into the inner floor?"—
     " I think 'tis thirty years at least;
         I came in manly prime,
     And now I'm growing frail and old,
         And feel the touch of Time.

     " Many's the change that I have seen
         Since first I entered here;
     A thousand merry gentlemen
         Were members in that year.
     And of the thousand there remain
         Scarce fifty that I know,
     And they are growing old like me,
         And hobble as they go.

     " Seven hundred underneath the sod,
         The great, the rich, the free;—
     A hundred fallen on evil days,
         Too poor to pay the fee.
     Fifty resigned because their wives
         Forbade them to remain;—
     And half a score went moody mad
         From overwork of brain.

     " And two committed suicide,—
         One for a faithless wife,
     And one for fear to face the law
         That could not take his life.
     But why run o'er the mournful list?
         Each month that passes round,
     Sees some old leaf from this old tree
         Fall fluttering to the ground.

     " And you, my friend, who question me,
         Are young, and hale, and strong,
     You'll have such memories as mine
         If you but live as long!"——
     " Well! well! I know! Why moralise?
         Or go in search of sorrow?
     Here's half a crown to drink my health;
         And better luck to-morrow!"

MY VERSION OF POOR JACK.

THE " Poor Jack" of whom I write is
not a sailor, though perhaps for him also,
as well as for the Poor Jack whom Charles
Dibdin has immortalised, there may be a
sweet little cherub sitting up aloft. My
Poor Jack is a landsman, and, although
he will not admit the fact, a beggar.
There is this much to be said for his
denial of the truth, that he is to a certain
extent a trader, and that in the summer
months and the early autumn he does a
certain amount of profitable business—
profitable from his humble point of view,
though never sufficiently remunerative to
enable him to deal with either the tailor or
the shoemaker. His whole attire is eleemosynary,
and his raggedness, though
doubtless very uncomfortable to himself,
is exceedingly picturesque, and might, if
any good artist happened to fall in with
him, procure for him the honour of a
sitting, and such reward in silver as the
pose might be worth. Jack is sixty-five
years of age, and has a large handsome
brown beard, striped rather than sprinkled
with grey. Though I have known him for
three or four years, I never saw him but
once without his hat on—a very battered
and tattered one it is—and then I discovered
that his beard was the only hirsuteness
he could exhibit, and that, in fact,
his head was as bald and devoid of hair
as a basin. His elbows peep out from his
sleeves, and his toes from his miserable old
shoes, and his general raggedness is as
looped and windowed as that which Lear
pitied and Shakespeare described. In his
youth Poor Jack was a carpenter, but he
has not done a stroke of carpenter's work
for upwards of forty years, having, as he
says, been disabled at five-and-twenty by