"Not a mouthful," said the agent.

"Well," replied Mr. Slugg, "if this be
electioneering I think the country's going
to the devil, and I, for one, don't care
about having a vote at all."

"Nor I, neither," said his companion, who
looked as if he had had his beer already,
and a great deal of it. "What's the good
of a vote if it isn't worth so much as a bob,
let alone ten pounds?"

"Go along, my good fellows," said the
agent, "and don't bother any more. Be
patriots for once, and vote for liberty!"

"Yes, for beer all round," said Mr. Slugg.
"That's what I call liberty. As for
patriots, whatever that may mean, you needn't
reckon me as one. What's the good of
being a patriot, if you can't even get a pint
of beer by it."

There was considerable talk before Mr.
Slugg and his friend retired finally. When
they did, they retired swearing both audibly
and awfully.

"They'll vote for us—some of them,"
said the Man in the Moon, "and some for
the other side, and make a show of
independence, of which I know the value. But
you're not done with them quite. They'll
turn up after the election's over, and the
sitting member will hear of them."

Before the close of the poll our candidate's
majority had been increased by thirty,
which thirty, or the greater part of them,
were in the opinion of the Man in the Moon,
to be reckoned as Jolterheads, who had
made a virtue of necessity, and voted
according to their political sympathies, not
altogether without the hope that they had
established a "pull" upon the sitting
member. The predictions of the Man in
the Moon were verified. There was a long
pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether
upon the pocket of the sitting member,
before he had been three months in Parliament,
and the pull came, not alone from
the respectable electors—not too respectable
to want favours and places—but from
a very large moiety of the Jolterheads. As
for the Man in the Moon, he vanished,
without a word of farewell to anybody;
but, possibly, the successful candidate had
to give him, personally or by proxy, a very
handsome honorarium. And who shall say
he did not deserve it? One bribe to the
Jolterheads would have vitiated the election.
And he had strength of mind enough
(with full power, perhaps, to act in another
direction) to win by purity, when he found
that impurity was unnecessary. I never
or heard of him any more; and I
am quite certain that his name was not
Tompkins, and that he did not come from
Norwich.

SOME OTHER ODD LIVINGS.

IN no city in the world is greater ingenuity
exercised to gain a living than in Paris, where
there is absolutely nothing wasted. Before
the chiffonnier gets the chance of picking
anything of the smallest value off its
hundred thousand rubbish heaps, the thrifty house-
wife has usually put aside all that she can
find a market for, and the servants have made
their selection. Parisian industry, an ever-
moving wheel, crushes, grinds, and renews
every particle of refuse which thousands of
men traverse the streets day and night to
collect—foul rags, half gnawed bones, broken
glass, matted hair, parings and peelings of
fruits, cigar ends dropped from the lips of
smokers, faded flowers, dry and mouldy crusts
of bread, and other more or less repulsive
rubbish, are carefully collected to serve as raw
materials to obscure industries, which transform
and send them forth again in well nigh all their
pristine freshness.

Out of this refuse, ingenious men are
continually realising fortunes, and thousands
of people gain their daily bread. The profit
made from the mere mud scraped off the
streets of Paris is something incredible; more
than one individual has achieved independence
by buying up the crusts and crumbs
that fall from prodigal Parisian tables; others
have gained competencies by collecting the
pieces of squeezed lemon thrown aside by
oyster eaters, or by contracting with the
"restaurateurs" for their scraps; and indeed
there is scarcely any kind of industry out of
the mere leavings of which somebody or other
does not manage to glean sufficient for a livelihood.
The manufacturing jeweller, after having
burnt his ashes and the sweepings of his work-
shop, finds a ready customer for the ashes of
his ashes, among thousands anxious to turn a
honest penny to make both ends meet. There
is always something to be gleaned, they believe,
from fields already reaped, and the wits maintain
that anyone who would take the trouble
might manage to live even upon the huissiers,
those detested legal subordinates who live upon
every one else.

A few years ago an ingenious individual
on observing some chiffonniers unload their
baskets, was struck by seeing the numerous
pieces of bread they all turned out. On
questioning them, he ascertained how these scraps
were disposed of, and forthwith conceived the
idea of embarking wholesale in a trade which
others were content to follow retail. Without
loss of time he purchased a pony and a cart,
hired a large room in one of the old colleges, so
numerous in certain quarters of Paris, paid a
visit to the cooks of the different great
scholastic establishments, and proposed to buy up
all their scraps of bread. They had hitherto