But, captain——"

"It's a very pleasant position to be in, after
thirty years' service, eleven campaigns, and
seven wounds!"

"If you would only promise me not to talk?"

"As for that, colonel, I can easily promise
you; even if I had your permission, I would
not open my month."

"Positively?"

"It I utter a word, I'll spit out my tongue
five-and-twenty feet above the level of the sea."

" I had rather have your word of honour."

"You have it, colonel; you have it."

On the day of the dinner, the captain, in full
uniform, presented himself at the colonel's, and
bowed to everybody without pronouncing a
syllable. One gets used to everything. Shortly,
nobody paid any further attention to the captain's
pantomime, who ate like an ogre to render
silence less difficult. The third course was about
to be succeeded by a dessert; the captain was
eating a roasted woodcock; the colonel was
congratulating himself at having escaped
humiliating an old brother in arms.

All at once, a horrible cry burst from the
captain's lips. One of his grinders had boon
broken by a shot lodged in the woodcock's
thigh.

"Sacré nom de millions de diables!" shouted
the grognard, holding out with one hand the
murderous shot and with the other the woodcock's
head. "This infernal brute didn't die of
the measles!"

DICTIONARY DREAMS.

The merits of these small sugar-plums—
which appear to have been dropped with a spat
upon the yellow paper to which they adhere—
may be very great; yet are they something fly-
blown, and less protected from dust and other
defilement than their neighbours the brandy-
balls, which live in a square green bottle stopped
at the mouth with a wedge of newspaper. The
"Parliament" looks as if it had been in existence
for such a length of time that it might
with propriety be called the Long Parliament.
Tin- transition from parliament to sleep is so
natural and easy, that it is no way surprising
to see a baby's nightcap in close proximity to
the pastry just named. The doll with the stare
and the eyelashes set in flat radiation like chevaux
-de-frise is in strict keeping with the baby
nightcap, and had they given any nostrils to its
wedge-shaped nose, it would have been as
pleasing an object of contemplation as the little
china baby in a bath, which, sitting up in a
singularly erect and rigid manner, looks as if it
had turned on the hot water in a scalding
stream, and, unable to turn it off again, was
summoning assistance with screams of anguish.

The writer begs many thousands of pardons
of the reader for not having mentioned before
that he is looking in at the window of the shop
in the village of Torpor-cum-Slugs, Bedfordshire.
It is a wet day, and he has nothing to
do: so, being of a restless nature, he goes out in
the rain, and finding a pent-house mercifully and
inexplicably erected over the shop front of the
shop, he encamps at once underneath it, and
stares into the window with all his eyes. The
objects already named are far from being the
only objects which claim his attention. Is there
not hair-oil in little thin blown bottles? Are there
not portraits of the clerical world? Are there
no papers of pins, no herrings, no whetstones
for scythes? Are there not masks, and besides
the tracts, strips of ballad and comic song? Is
there not one envelope with a Queen's head
upon it? There are all these things, and there
is one thing more (and in the literary department
of the window, too), which at once has a
marked effect upon the conduct of him who is
making this village shop a subject of study and
reflection.

To dive a finger and thumb into his waistcoat-
pocket in search of a penny, to rush into the
emporium, to come out again without the penny,
but bearing in his hands a small pamphlet
(stitched), to hasten along the village street,
reading as he goes, to stumble up the stairs
of his lodgings, reading still, and to drop upon
the horsehair sofa without even taking his hat
off, were with the present writer proceedings
which occupied infinitely less time than it has
taken to record them.

The object of all this excitement was a
pamphlet, a small and shabby pamphlet; the
principal external characteristic of which, was
that while the back of its cover was of a bright
pink colour, the front was of a pale drab—
indications which will carry at once to all thoughtful
minds the conviction that the work so bound
had been an old inhabitant of the shop-window,
and had paled on the side exposed to the light,
while its more protected cover had retained its
normal freshness of tint.

Let us speak of the illustration with which
the front or pale side of this little volume is
decorated, for it is one of much beautv and
refinement. It represents a lady and gentleman
kneeling on a cushion, hand in hand, the lady
dressed as a bride and the gentleman in a
shooting-jacket, but with his hair curled, to make
amends for this apparent carelessness in his
attire. The cushion on which this young couple
(they are both much depressed in spirits) kneel,
seems to surround the base of a circular stove,
which has, however, apparently no fire in it, as
a Cupid, very slightly draped and with not so
much as a sock to protect the foot on which he
is supported, stands on one leg upon the top
of the stove and flourishes a lighted torch, with
which he will perhaps ultimately light the fire.
A vase of flowers grows out of the lady's back,
and a smaller vase out of the gentleman's left
heel, completing the composition. Let us hope
that this is all right, but it must be admitted
that there is no clergyman present of any persuasion
or denomination whatsoever. The only
way out of this difficulty is to suppose that this
marriage is a Scotch one, and that the Cupid is
the witness.  He will do as well as another.

The illustration here described is found inside