respected fellow-constable Sharpeye addressing
Mr. Superintendent, says:

"You noticed that young man, sir, in at
Darby's?"

"Yes. What is he?"

"Deserter, sir."

Mr. Sharpeye further intimates that when we
have done with his services, he will step back
and take that young man. Which in course of
time he does: feeling at perfect ease about
finding him, and knowing for a moral certainty
that nobody in that region will be gone to bed.

Later still in. the night, we came to another
parlour up a step or two from the street, which
was very cleanly, neatly, even tastefully, kept,
and in which, set forth on a draped chest of
drawers masking the staircase, was such a
profusion of ornamental crockery, that it would have
furnished forth a handsome sale-booth at a fair.
It backed up a stout old lady—HOGARTH drew
her exact likeness more than once—and a boy
who was carefully writing a copy in a copybook.

"Well, ma'am, how do you do?"

Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentlemen,
sweetly. Charmingly, charmingly. And
overjoyed to see us.

"Why, this is a strange time for this boy to
be writing his copy. In the middle of the night!"

"So it is, dear gentlemen, Heaven bless your
welcome faces and send ye prosperous, but he
has been to the Play with a young friend for
his diversion, and he combinates his improvement
with entertainment by doing his school-writhing
afterwards, God be good to ye!"

The copy admonished human nature, to subjugate
the fire of every fierce desire. One might
have thought it recommended stirring the fire,
the old lady so approved it. There she sat,
rosily beaming at the copy-book and the boy,
and invoking showers of blessings on our heads,
when we left her in the middle of the night,
waiting for Jack.

Later still in the night, we came to a nauseous
room with an earth floor, into which the refuse
scum of an alley trickled. The stench of this
habitation was abominable; the seeming poverty
of it, diseased and dire. Yet, here again, was
visitor or lodger—a man sitting before the fire,
like the rest of them elsewhere, and apparently
not distasteful to the mistress's niece, who was
also before the fire. The mistress herself had
the misfortune of being in jail.

Three weird old women of transcendant
ghastliness, were at needlework at a table in this room.
Says Trampfoot to First Witch, " What are you
making?" Says she, "Money-bags."

"What are you making?" retorts Trampfoot,
a little off his balance.

"Bags to hold your money," says the witch
shaking her head, and setting her teeth; "you
as has got it."

She holds up a common cash-bag, and on the
table is a heap of such bags. Witch Two
laughs at us. Witch Three scowls at us.
Witch sisterhood all, stitch, stitch. First Witch
has a red circle round each eye. I fancy it like
the beginning of the development of a perverted
diabolical halo, and that when it spreads all
round her head, she will die in the odour of
devilry.

Trampfoot wishes to be informed what First
Witch has got behind the table, down by the
side of her, there? Witches Two and Three
croak angrily, "Show him the child!"

She drags out a skinny little arm from a
brown dust-heap on the ground. Adjured not
to disturb the child, she lets it drop again.
Thus we find at last that there is one child in
the world of Entries who goes to bed—if this be
bed.

Mr. Superintendent asks how long are they
going to work at those bags?

How long? First Witch repeats. Going
to have supper presently. See the cups and
saucers, and the plates.

Mr. Superintendent opines, it is rather late
for supper, surely?

"Late? Ay! But we has to 'arn our supper
afore we eats it!" Both the other witches
repeat this after First Witch, and take the
Uncommercial measurement with their eyes, as for
a charmed winding-sheet. Some grim discourse
ensues, referring to the mistress of the cave, who
will be released from jail to-morrow. Witches
pronounce Trampfoot "right there," when he
deems it a trying distance for the old lady
to walk; she shall be fetched by niece in a
spring-cart.

As I took a parting look at First Witch in
turning away, the red marks round her eyes
seemed to have already grown larger, and she
hungrily and thirstily looked out beyond me into
the dark doorway, to see if Jack were there.
For, Jack came even here, and the mistress had
got into jail through deluding Jack.

When I at last ended this night of travel and
got to bed, I failed to keep my mind on
comfortable thoughts of Seaman's Homes (not
overdone with strictness), and improved dock
regulations giving Jack greater benefit of fire
and candle aboard ship, through my mind's
wandering among the vermin I had seen. Afterwards
the same vermin ran all over my sleep.
Evermore, when on a breezy day I see Poor
Mercantile Jack running into port with a fair
wind under all sail, I shall think of the unsleeping
host of devourers who never go to bed, and
are always in their set traps waiting for him.

FRANCE AND FREE TRADE.

IF our ancestors were to rise from their
tombs, were to be boiled down young again,
and were to mix with their fellow-men as of
old, eating and drinking, marrying and giving
in marriage, what would most astonish them in
this nineteenth century? Mr. Silk Buckingham
has declared that teetotalism is the great fact of
the age—the mightiest revolution that has
been achieved since the disciples went forth
from Jerusalem to convert the Gentiles to
Christianity. Another authority maintains that
chloroform, abrogating, as it does, the curse of
pain under which man has suffered ever since he