"We profess to have abolished public-house
betting; and list-keepers, some fraudulent, some
honest, spread their nets for shop-lad, workman,
and clerk, with complete impunity. We are
excruciatingly severe on the gipsy who tells the
fortunes of silly servant-girls; and we allow a
race of professional " tipsters" to batten on the
money they receive for pretending to peer into
the future. We are justly harsh in our treatment
of the swindlers who victimise that artless innocent
the British tradesman; and we leave Rustic
and his brother correspondents to the tender
mercies of Abel and the " welshers." These are
some of the anomalies my paper brings to light,
while faithfully holding up the mirror to the
classes to whom it appeals. Not many years ago,
its comparative freedom from slang and coarseness
would have unfitted it for the sporting world.
If it really be, as the hypercritical assert, The
Roughs' Guide, then has the rough of today,
in spite of occasional grandiloquence, better
reading and a more reputable instructor than
would have been tolerated or understood by the
aristocratic bloods who wrenched off knockers
and maltreated watchmen a generation back.

A DISH OF POULTRY.

As I had a wish to be fashionable, I decided
to set up a poultry-yard.

There is one disadvantage in being married:
if single, you can say you will do a thing, and do
it; if married, you may assert what you please,
but you will find that you cannot do it, without
reservation.

In this particular instance of keeping poultry,
my husband, who is a practical man, made a
reservation. " I have no objection, provided you
make it pay, and promise me a fresh egg every
morning of the year." I set to work to find
out how to make it pay, and I came to the
conclusion that, to do so, I must be poultry-woman
myself.

It was a little irksome at first to get up at six
o'clock in the morning; but I comforted myself
by remembering, that in the pursuit of fashion
people did many more disagreeable things than
that. Indeed, I soon began to like it; and if I
chose to try and describe the beauty of a dewy
morning, I am pretty sure I should not know
where to end, for every morning there was
something fresh to admire.

Making my poultry pay, involved another
regulation. I could not pretend to make my name
famous by some wonderful breed of new fowls,
and provide my husband with a fresh egg every
morning of his life. I must have breeds of all
sorts and kinds to do that. So I found myself,
at the end of a year, surrounded by plenty of
poultry, of every sort, size, and description.
Moreover, they interested me extremely. I used
to take a chair, sit down among them, and study
their characters.

Setting aside their little peculiarities as birds,
how wonderfully they reminded me of the society
in which we lived! Each hen had her little
peculiarities, just as each of my female friends
had their whimsies. The feathered cocks were
not more absurd than many a gentleman of my
acquaintance; and so many likenesses did I find
in my cackling and crowing company to my
visiting and bowing acquaintances, that I
christened my cocks and hens after their human
prototypes. I could write pages on the dispositions
and idiosyncrasies of fowls; but I intend to
confine myself to two.

Among my various sorts and kinds, I had
one little golden-laced Hamburg hen, of so
elegant a form, so beautifully complexioned, and
of such sweet, engaging manners, that I called
her Lady Mary, after a certain lovely and
beloved young friend.

Lady Mary made herself the favourite,
whether I would or not. She was always the
first to see me coming; she did not fuss herself,
or gobble eagerly after food, but flew on to a rail;
as I passed that rail, she flew into my hand. From
it she daintily helped herself out of the tin of
food. During the whole process of feeding, she
remained on my hand or shoulder, looking down
on the greedy crowd below with lofty disdain.

Had she any grievance to communicate to me,
she flew upon my hat, and made onslaughts on
it. I thus understood the water was not fit for
her to drink, or that some one had been daring
to use her nest, or that she had serious thoughts
of laying an egg. She was immensely fussy
about her nest, going in and out of it, peering
at me, as if I was perfectly aware of all her
wants. In her nest I had put a little gallene
egg, by way of a nest-egg, thinking the size of
it would be about the size of her own egg. Not
a bit of it. In her various trials of all the nests
about, she had come upon one with an addled
turkey-egg in it, by way of nest-egg. I understood
as well as possible, that though Lady
Mary's nest was made of chopped straw, unlike
all the others, and though I had put a grating
so that few but herself could get into it, she
never would be satisfied, or lay an egg
comfortably, until she had the addled turkey-egg
substituted for the gallene's egg. Readers,
have you not often met a friend similarly
whimsical, with everything in the world but one little
trifle, the possession of a neighbour? Lady Mary
was immensely delighted when she had the
turkey's egg given her. In hen language, she
chuckled over it for hours, and diligently laid a
little tiny egg by it, almost every other day.

My other "historical" fowl was also a hen.
A heavy short-legged stupid-looking creature,
with a little Polish blood in her veins; for she
had a shabby-looking topknot of feathers on her
head, that never would arrange itself straight.
Like an old dowager, who thinks the family
diamonds will make amends for the dyed satin gown,
this old hen fancied her topknot was a patent
of nobility, and she strutted about as if queen
of the yard. She reminded me very much of an
old great-aunt of mine, whose head-gear was the
one worry of her own life, and the life of those
near her. She thought of what she should put