ever on a dark night see a face and hand in
the darkness turn suddenly orange with the
flame of a fusee—and not regret your pharisaic
abstinence? Powers above us, is it not grand
to remember how, in past twilights, one has
heard glorious thoughts emerge from the smoke
of Charles Lamb's pipe, while presently shot by
fireworks of drollery, or rose, like the low
murmurs of an organ, passages from Chapman
or Brown, or rich harmonies from the pages of
Middleton or Marlow? The greatest talking of
our later world has been held over the pipe-
bowl.

The swallows flash past me as, overcome by
the force of my own arguments, I whirl the
burning stump of my fourth "Intimidada" into
a green corner among the laurels, where I leave
it burning, sullen and dangerous-looking as the
fuse of a slow mine. But it is surely burning
out, for all that—and so am I, for all this stray
writing here written.

OUR SUBURBAN RESIDENCE.

PRIVATE CHARACTER.

[A REPRESENTATION has been made to us that
the article entitled "Our Suburban Residence"
(see No. 365) is not pure fiction, as it purported
to be, and as we believed it to be, but has in it
some colouring of distorted fact, calculated to
misrepresent and injure an amiable and useful
gentleman. We believe this representation to
be strictly true, and we profoundly regret the
publication of the article, though no Editor can
possibly guard himself at all times against such
deception. In making this reparation for our
own innocent part in the wrong done, we
publish the author's letter on the subject.]

TO THE CONDUCTOR OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

Dear Sir. I beg to acknowledge the receipt
of your communication informing me that Dr.
Laseron, of Upper Edmonton, has taken exception
to a paragraph in the article entitled "Our
Suburban Residence," published in No. 365 of
your journal, dated the 21st of April last; of
which unlucky article I am the writer, and which
you accepted and published as a piece of fiction.

Dr. Laseron considering himself satirised or
aimed at in that paragraph, under the mask of
a certain imaginary personage called Zeller, I
have no hesitation in avowing that I am
exceedingly sorry for it. I never intended to
impute any fraudulent conduct or motives even
to that purely mythical personage; far less to
Dr. Laseron, whom I never saw in my life, and
with whom I never held any communication
whatever, direct or otherwise.

Though conscious under these circumstances
of the impossibility of my having been actuated
by any malevolent feeling towards Dr. Laseron,
I still deeply regret to have given him offence,
and I hope he will accept my apology for having
unfortunately done so, as freely and fully as I
hereby offer it.

I do not seek to make reparation by halves,
and I feel that I have no right to object to my
apology being published.

I am, dear Sir,
Yours faithfully,
THE WRITER OF THE ARTICLE
"OUR SUBURBAN RESIDENCE."

LITTLE PEG O'SHAUGHNESSY.

IN TWO PARTS. PART I.

WHEN I promised, Tom, to write you an
account of Castle Shaughnessy and Peg,
remember you gave me your word in return that
you would not look at what I had written till
you had gone back to your ship for good, and
the ocean lay between you and the persons who
figure in my story. Be charitable if you can,
to some of those last, when you have re-pocketed
the manuscript. But don't ask me to practise
as I preach.

Gorman Tracey and I are so much akin that
we had once a common relative.

"Gorman," said I one day, "that old lady at
Ballyhuckamore is dead at last, and has left her
estate to——"

"To you!" he said, with a grimace. "Like
the luck of you rich chaps. Lord! To think of
how that old lady used to pet me when I was
a boy, and never saw you in her life. I wish
you joy, old fellow, from the bottom of my
heart! Ugh! How I envy you! Ballyhuckamore!"
(musingly).

"A beggarly old place, I'll be bound!" said
I. "A house like a barn, a potato-field, and
a pigsty."

"Not a bit of it. But I won't tell you.
Pearls to swine, ugh! Ballyhuckamore! I
wonder whether little Peg O'Shaughnessy ought
to be 'grown up' yet."

"Little Peg O'Shaughnessy?" said I.

"Yes, O'Shaughnessy of Castle Shaughnessy.
But you don't know, and never will, you beastly
bigot of a Saxon!"

"Little Peg?" said I again, as we walked on.

"A mop-headed little flirt who used to drop
frogs down my back. Tip-top family, but
awfully poor. Father ruining himself with fox-
hunting even when I was there. Mother died of
care. Peg's toes came through her shoes."

"Grown up now, you were saying?"

"Should think so. Lost count of the years."

"Any more pretty girls at Ballyhuckamore?"

"Bless your heart! there never was a place so
overrun with them. When I think of the
crowd that poor old lady used to have about her
in Ballyhuckamore Hall of a Christmas-eve!
I was always in love with half a dozen of them
at a time. But you don't know. I believe I
was to have married Peg and settled down at
the Hall whenever I succeeded to the estate.
What a gathering there should have been there
this next Christmas if I had had your luck!"