we can have the fatted kid—wholesome savoury
meat, neither white nor porky, and not too much
of it. The hardy goat will live on vegetable
rubbish, will bear to be tethered, and will supply
capital milk. But the English million will no
more dine off kid, than it would off wombat. A
family who were presented with a quarter,
acknowledged it with the remark that "they were
not in the habit of eating dog." Diminutive
sheep are therefore elected to stop the gap.
Wales possesses breeds quite small enough for
the purpose; lovely little creatures, delicious
mutton: only they wander like antelopes and
jump like grasshoppers, without an elementary
notion of the law of trespass. Would an
arboricultural squire or a horticultural rector regard
cottagers possessed of small flocks of those
sheep, in the light of pleasant and quiet
neighbours?

SEA-SIDE LODGERS.

I LIVE at the sea-side—at Bastings, in fact—
and I keep a lodging-house. My establishment
is a regular bona fide lodging-house. I am not
one of those who have a room or two to let, and
so eke out their living. Far from it, I let out
the whole of my house in apartments, and make
a livelihood by so doing.

Although these words appear to come from
me, Martha Bee-flat, they are not really my
words—that is, not altogether. Mr. Broadhead,*
a literary gentleman, takes down my
words, and puts them into shape. Mr. Broadhead
is one of my oldest customers, and has
spent the greater part of every summer under
my roof for many years past. It is through him
that I am now able to give my observations to
the world.

* Mrs. B. is a very superior woman, and what
she says requires so little doctoring, that I have
really no right to take any credit in this matter at
all. J. B.

I see by the papers, which I have plenty of
time to read in the winter and spring months,
that it is very common for scientific gentlemen
to write accounts of their observations on the
stars, the weather, the meteors, the comets, and
what not, with which the nature of their studies
has made them familiar. Now, what I want to
do is to make some observations on the
particular subject with which I, in my way, am
familiar: to say, in short, a few words about—
Lodgers.

The world has been in the habit of looking at
the subject of lodgings, and all that belongs to
it, from one point ot view, and from one point
of view only—that is to say, from the lodgers'
point of view. They never see it from the
landlady's. The reason of this is, that all the people
who can write letters to the papers, or articles
in the different periodicals, are themselves almost
always lodgers, and never landladies. I myself
could not write this if it were not that I am
fortunate enough to have the assistance of Mr.
Broadhead, as before mentioned.

Mr. Broadhead says that just here some little
account of myself, how I happened to let
lodgings, and so on, would come in very well; that
it would make what I have to say flow easily;
that it would fill up an awkward gap between
these introductory remarks, and the observations
which I am about to make. Somehow I
don't see this. I want to get on to my
observations at once. I mention Mr. Broadhead's
protest, however, to exonerate him from any
blame in case my style should by any person be
considered at all disjointed or abrupt. It isn't
his fault, but mine.

One of the most remarkable things I have
noticed in connexion with this subject is, that
there are certain classes to one of which
all the lodgers who have ever come under my
notice, belong. Sometimes they will belong to
more than one of these classes, but under some
one of the heads which I will now proceed to
give, I do believe that every lodger who ever
entered an apartment is certain to come.

I divide my lodgers into eight classes: The
Neat lodgers, and the Muddling lodgers; the
Severe lodgers, and the Easy lodgers; the
Respectable lodgers, and the Scampish lodgers;
finally, the Sociable lodgers, and the Secluded
lodgers.

I have many opportunities of observing the
different residents under my roof. When I tap at
the door and enter with a letter—which I
sometimes do when I know the letter is not for the
party I bring it to, in order that I may take
them unawares—when I come to receive orders
about dinner; and when—the lodgers being out
airing or sea-ing themselves—I take a good
long look round the rooms to see if anything
has been damaged, and to find out in a general
way what my lodgers are up to—at all these
times, and at many others, I have many a good
chance of noticing their ways and forming my
own opinions about them.

Of course on these occasions I can make
out at a glance the class to which my lodgers
belong. Indeed, I can generally settle this in
my own mind long before they come in, and
when I am showing them over the apartments.
At such times, the neat lodger or the muddling
lodger proclaims himself in a moment.

The first of these has a way of glancing sharply
at me, personally, directly he enters the house,
to see if there are any screws loose in my
costume. He sniffs, too, continually, especially on
the staircase and in the bedroom (he may sniff
there as much as he likes. I flatter myself that
my establishment is as free as any private house
from unpleasantness in any shape).* My
neat lodger opens the cupboard in the sitting-room,
and sniffs into that, and then he joins his
wife, who has been turning up the bedclothes,
and prying into the tick of the mattresses in the
bedroom, and they whisper together and sniff