NOVEMBER.

Creeping along the shallow, sedgy way,
Where the tall rushes rear their phantom ranks,
Comes pale November, clad in mournful grey,
And weeping on the sunless river banks—
A shrouded form, all indistinct and wan,
That shivers in the noisome, sighing wind,
And, wraith-like, glides amongst the homes of man,
Bringing sharp memories of past days unkind,
Recalling harsh misfortune, hours of gloom,
When the thick mists no break of heaven showed;
Or hovering, a predestiny of doom,
O'er faithless eyes that cannot pierce the cloud.
    Blanks on the wall where misery can but pray,
    That God and Time will take its sting away.

                         DECEMBER.

Loud rings the blast across the eerie wold,
Sharp strikes the storm against the window pane;
Rich men, warm sheltered from the biting cold,
Think of the poor out in the icy rain!
Pile your fire high, gather your dearest kin,
Laugh and rejoice in the sweet light of home,
But turn not all your treasures into sin,
By driving thence the waifs of life's wild foam,
Drift that the tide casts helpless at your feet,
Pleading an alms of mercy from your hand.
Do as did He whom great and small must meet
Beyond the confines of the silent land;
   For hark! His voice sounds ever and again,
   "Peace upon earth, and good will unto men!"

      OUR EYE-WITNESS AND CERTAIN
                  STORY-TELLERS.

OH, for something new under the sun! Some
new amusement, some new experience! Oh,
for some bill of an entertainment which shall
not comprise the turning into ridicule, in vile
burlesque, of stories by which our sympathies
have been rightly and nobly appealed to all our
lives long! Oh, for an end to the reign of female
pertness as a stock article by which the
purveyors of public amusements may always feel
sure of filling a house! Oh, for less hornpipe
dancing by young ladies dressed as stage sailors!
Oh, for some new thing to give life a zest! Oh
——Why, what's this?

            BEDFORD HEAD TAVERN,
         Upper Royal-street, Freshbury,
           Proprietor, George Cooing.
                         THE
             STORY-TELLERS,
                      EVERY
             Sunday Evening.
      First Story at Eight o'clock.

The Eye-witness was walking through the
thoroughfare called Upper Royal-street, and was
soliloquising in the words with which this report
begins, when happening to look up at the
moment of passing the Bedford Head Tavern—
what is a Bedford head?—he observed a great
green-lettered bill in the window of the tavern
in question, and, on pausing to read it, found
that it announced what has been printed above.

The Story-tellers! Was the Eye-witness in the
East? was he among Bedouin Arabs, or in Freshbury,
London? Was this some strange club that
met together to listen to stories; and if so, who
told them? Did they draw lots which of the
members was to relate an experience? Was it
a public thing, where any person present might
be suddenly pounced upon and compelled to tell
an anecdote, whether he knew one or not?
And this was only Tuesday, and it would be
necessary to wait nearly a week before any of
these questions could be decided!

For your Eye-witness had not stood staring
at that bill two seconds, before he had quite
determined in his own mind that he would attend
the very next meeting of the Story-tellers, come
of it what might. No risk of being expected to
tell a story himself should deter him. He would
learn one by heart, he would revenge himself on
society for what he had gone through in old
Longyarn's company, by relating one of that
gentleman's most prolix narratives; in a word,
he would do anything rather than not be present
on the very next occasion of the assembling
together of the Story-tellers.

So dreadfully afraid was the E.-W. that
something would happen to frustrate his intention;
that the Story-tellers would give up their
séances, that the Bedford Head would be
prematurely cut off, or that some other horror
would occur to put an end to these meetings,
that he made it his practice (at great inconvenience)
to pass through Upper Royal-street
every day, to see if the bill was still up in the
windows.

The Bedford Head Tavern might, by some
matter-of-fact persons, be called (saving the
reader's presence) a public-house. It has a bar—
and a very nice thing a bar is—it has a parlour;
it has a secret retreat behind the bar for the
landlord and landlady, and occasionally for the
party in ribbons and the gross youth with his
shirt sleeves tucked up and a short apron, who
works the German silver handles; this retreat
is inaccessible except by jumping over the bar;
it is windowless and air-proof, and yet its
inhabitants look well and happy enough for
anything.

"What's for you?" said the gross youth,
holding a glass in one hand and a beer-handle in
the other, as the E.-W. approached the bar to
inquire for the head-quarters of the Story-
tellers. There was a dark passage visible near
the entrance to the parlour, and dim visions in
its innermost depths of a steep wooden staircase.

"What's for you sir?"

"Story-tellers," answered the Eye-witness,
as if he was giving an order.

"Refreshment ticket," said he of the short
apron, rapidly—"refreshment ticket, fourpence,
have what you like, up-stairs, first-floor."

Refreshment and Story-telling all for fourpence!
What a mercifully economical entertainment!
Oh, noble landlord! oh, philanthropic
Cooing, may you prosper for this!

Following the advice of the gentleman with
the rolled shirt-sleeves, and ascending the steep
wooden staircase before mentioned, the E.-W.
soon found himself in a large upper room, over
that bar of which affectionate mention has just