I can't describe what I felt. All I know is,
that it was horrible, and that long afterwards I
used to jump up in bed with a scream; for so
sure as I was a little out o' sorts, came a dream
of hanging to that scaffold-pole, expecting every
moment to be one's last.

I can't say, either, how long I hung; but feeling
at length that I was going, I made one last try
for it. I thought of my poor lass, and seemed to
see her a-looking at me in a widder's cap; and
then I clenched my teeth hard, and tried to get
on to where the end of the pole was fastened.
I got one hand over the hard bricks, and hooked
my fingers, and held on; then I got the other
hand over, and tried to climb up, as a cheer
from below encouraged me; but my feet and
knees slipped over the smooth bricks, and in
spite of every effort they hung down straight at
last, and I felt a sharp quiver run through me
as slowly, slowly, my hands opened, my fingers
straightened, and, with eyes blinded and blood-
shot, I fell.

—Fell what seemed to be an enormous
distance, though it was only to the next stage,
where boards, bricks, and tools, shaken by the
concussion, went with a crash below. The deal
planks upon which I lay, still kep' in their
places, but with their ends jolted so near the
edge that it seemed to me that the least
motion on my part would make them slip, and
send me off again. I was too exhausted and
frightened to move, and lay there for some
time, not knowing whether I was much hurt or
not. The first thing as recalled me to myself
was the voice of a man who came up a ladder
close at hand; and I could see that he had a
rope and pulley with him, which he soon had
hooked on to the ladder.

"Hold on, mate," he says. "If I throw you
the end of the rope, can you tie it round you?"

"I'll try," I says. So he makes a noose, and
pulling enough rope through the block, he shies
it to me, but it wasn't far enough. So he tries
again and again, and at last I manages to ketch
hold on it. But now, as soon as I tried to move, it
seemed as if something stabbed me in the side,
and, what was more, the least thing would, I
found, send the boards down, and of course me
with them.

"Tell them to hold tight by the rope,"
says I; and he passed the word, while I got
both arms through the noose, and told him to
tighten it, which he did by pulling, for I could
not have got it over my head without making
the boards slip.

"Now then," he says, " are you ready?"

"All right," I says, faintly, for I felt as if
everything was a-swimming round me; but I
heard him give a signal, and felt the snatch of
the rope as it cut into my arms above the
elbows, and then I swang backwards and
forwards in the air; while, with a crash, away
went the boards upon which I had been a-lying.

I couldn't see any more, nor hear any more,
for I seemed to be sent to sleep; but I suppose
I was lowered down and took to the hospital,
where they put my broken ribs to rights in no
time, and it wasn't so werry long before I was at
work once more; though it took a precious while
before I could get on to a high scaffold again
without feeling creepy and shivery; but, you
know, "use is second nature."

Polly showed me the stocking t'other day,
and I must say it has improved wonderful, for
wages keep good, and work's plenty; and as
for those chaps who organise the strikes, it
strikes me they don't know what being out o'
work is like. But, along o' that stocking, one
feels tempted very much to go down in the
country again, but don't like to, for fear o'
things not turning out well; and Polly says,
"Let well alone, Bill." So I keeps on, werry
well satisfied, and werry comfortable.

A NEAT SAMPLE OF TRANSLATION.

"TRADUTTORE, traditore," says the Italian
proverb. It probably originated with some
unlucky wight, either smarting under recent
injuries inflicted on the offspring of his brain by
traditori, or gifted with the power to foresee
the dire calamities to be inflicted by them on his
brotherhood in future generations.

One would suppose that two qualifications are
essential to constitute a good translator. A
thorough acquaintance with the resources of
the language used for the reproduction, being
the first; and the second, a not less intimate
knowledge of the idiom destined to be
reproduced.

We will submit, as a rather remarkable
instance of the absence of both these qualifications
in a translator—or rather, in a translatress,
for the wonderful offender to be presented is
announced as a lady—a few extracts from a
surprising mystification which appeared a few
months ago in the columns of L'OPINION
NATIONALE: a French daily paper, well known for
its very liberal tendencies, and for that, or some
other reason, one of the most popular and
generally read in Paris. The editors had
announced some time beforehand the appearance
of a translation of Our MUTUAL FRIEND; and
the lovers of the feuilleton, whose name is Legion
in France, were on the tiptoe of expectation.
At last it came, bearing the title L'Ami Commun.
It came to grief, and that as deservedly as
speedily; for the subscribers to the above-named
journal take common sense for their guide,
and, like Mrs. Merdle, pride themselves upon
having no nonsense about them. So, after
having groped about in the dark during six
feuilletons of Mutual Friends, in the hope of
things brightening, though ever so little, they
protested en masse after the appearance of the
seventh, and demanded with a loud cry, not to
be resisted, the explanation of the dark enigma,
or its immediate withdrawal. For self-evident
reasons, the Sphinx remained silent, and
suppression was the righteous consequence.

From the outset, a sort of moral stand-up
fight was engaged in between the translatress and
Mr. Twemlow as to which should the most effectually