splendid diamond rings on his not too clean
hands, and whose face struck me as being one
of the very knowingest I have ever met with.
Very affable was Mr. Marks, answering all my
questions in the readiest manner. No! he didn't
consider it a full morning; you see, the great
diamond sale at Amsterdam was on just now, and
many of his frequenters were away at it. Had
any great bargains been made that morning?
Well, there had been a set of diamonds brought
in, which were sold about ten o'clock for seventeen
hundred pounds, and which, up to the
present time (it was now about twelve), had been
re-sold in the room nine times, and each time at a
profit. Some men had made two pounds profit,
some three, one as much as thirteen pounds—but
each had re-sold his diamonds at a profit. "That's
the vay vith our people!" said Mr. Marks; "anything
for a deal! Ve mustht have a deal, and
in a deal ve mustht have a leetle profit. Latht
veek I had a thouthand poundth transaction—I
re-thold the goods the thame day. Vot was my
profit? Fifty poundth? No! Theven and
thicpeth! Thtill, there vos a profit. Look here
now" (pulling a handful of various coin, perhaps
four pounds fifteen in value, out of his left-hand
trousers-pocket), " that'th vot I've made on my
little transactionth thith morning! Committhion
money, I call it."

I asked Mr. Marks if there were any celebrated
characters at that time in his house, and
he begged us to walk into his sanctum: a cheery
well-appointed kitchen, arrived at by passing
through the bar. There he introduced us to Mr.
Mendoza, one of the largest diamond merchants
in the world, and a gentleman who had been
consulted as to the cutting and setting of the
Koh-i-noor. A quiet-looking man Mr. Mendoza,
with a sallow complexion and an eye beaming
like a beryl. Told by Mr. Marks that we are
curious strangers without any objectionable
motive, Mr. Mendoza was truly polite, and, on
being asked if he had anything of price with
him, produced from the breast-pocket of his
over-coat a blue paper which looked like the cover
of a Seidlitz powder, but which contained large
unset diamonds to the value of four hundred
and seventy-five pounds. As these were exposed
to our view, Mr. Marks took from his
waistcoat-pocket a glittering pair of fine steel
pincers, and, selecting three or four of the
largest diamonds, breathed upon them and then
put them on one side, with a view to purchase.
"You use pincers, I see, Mr. Marks?" I remarked.
"Vell, thir!" says that urbanest of men, with
a wink that conveys volumes, "fingerth is thticky,
and dimonth cling to the touch. Mr. Mendoza
knowth me and don't mind vot I do, but he
wouldn't let everybody try his dimonth. You
thee, the vay to try a dimonth ith by breathin'
on him. Vell, ven thum folkth trieth 'em, they
inhaleth inthed of ekthalin, and thoveth out their
tongueth at the thame time, tho that ven they
put'th their tongueth back again, there ain't
qvite tho many dimonth in the paper ath there
voth at firtht!" I asked Mr. Mendoza if he
had ever been robbed, and he told me never.
Was he not well known? Yes! but he kept to
the broad thoroughfares, and never went out at
night. He showed us several other papers of
diamonds of greater or less value, and several
stones handsomely set in rings.

Hospitable intentions overcome Mr. Marks
(a really sensible, good-natured, most obliging
man), and he insists upon our having a bottle
of wine. Clicquot, he proposes. We decline
Clicquot, but as he will not be balked, and
insists upon our " giving it a name," we stand
sponsor to sherry. And very good sherry
it is, and very good is Mr. Marks's talk over
it. He tells us what sober people they are
in Jewry, and how they never, by any chance,
have more than one glass of brandy-and-water at
a sitting; how they leave his rooms at two and
go home to dinner, not returning until six in
the evening, when they have coffee and sit down
to whist, playing away till eleven; ''' when,"
says Mr. Marks, with a terrific wink in the
direction of Inspector Wells, whose back happens
to be turned, "when thith houth alwayth clotheth
to the minute, accordin' to the Act o' Parlyment."
Every word of which talk is, as the
Inspector afterwards pithily informs me, " kidment:"
a pleasant dissyllable, meaning, I believe,
in pure Saxon, playful flight of fancy.

TRIFLES FROM CEYLON.

BEFORE SIR EMERSON TENNENT wrote his
masterly book on Ceylon, he would have been a
bold man who would have ventured to state in
general society in England, that one gentleman
shot twelve hundred elephants himself; and yet
it is perfectly well known in Ceylon that Major
Rogers did so. Two gentlemen, whose names
need not be mentioned, were at an evening party
in England a good many years ago, when one
of them happened to narrate some of his sporting
adventures in Ceylon. Mortified by observing
some marks of incredulity in his hearers, he
appealed to his companion to corroborate his
statements; but to his great surprise, and the
amusement of the company, his friend in an off-
hand, half-jesting, half-serious manner, begged
him not to call on him to support any of his
marvellous tales, and turned the conversation
into another channel. As soon as they had left
the house, the disconcerted story-teller asked
his companion why he had thus deserted him,
instead of corroborating what he well knew to
be true? " My dear fellow," said the other,
taking him by the arm, "did you not see that
nobody believed you? Had I stood by you,
they would only have said there was a pair of
us. Take my advice, and tell no more elephant
stories while you remain in England, for you
will never be believed."

In spite of this caution, I purpose jotting
down from time to time such incidents as I
have come across during a lengthened sojourn
in Ceylon, or which I have heard from others;
also, to give some account of the animals to be
met with in that island.