this: a worker in the manufactory has a
hollow tooth, it generally begins there,
resembles tooth-ache; then there is inflammation
about it; the periosteum of the lower jaw
becomes inflamed; the bone dies: a man is
recorded to have picked his lower jawbone
out of his chin as we pulled winkles out of
their shells, when winkles were eaten, in the
good old times. It's true that forewarned is
forearmed. Great care is taken in lucifer
factories on a large scale; those who work
over the phosphorus have their mouths
shielded, I believe, and so on: but then,
what a thing it is! Here's your march
of improvement! A new luxury, a new
disease.

You have been looking over Water-works;
isn't beer good enough for the folks now-
a-days? To be sure one cannot wash in beer,
but it's not much need one has for washing.
I saw a little boy the other day, bothering
about a cabstand; he wanted a bucket of
water, but the tap was locked—and could be
unlocked only for the horses. He said there
was no water in his alley, and he looked as if
there were no water in the world. I gave
him twopence to go and buy a pint of beer,
and went on, feeling that I had done a charitable
action. Water indeed! Don't you think,
Mr. Conductor, that some of you reformers
carry the thing a little bit too far? I wrote
the other day to a grandson of mine, he sets
up for a sanitary reformer, and because I was
angry at a little rapscallion who stole three
pounds of Wiltshire bacon (a nice lean piece)
from my kitchen dresser, what does he write
and say? I know what I wrote and said in
answer very well. He never darkens my doors
again, and it's 2000l. he will be out of pocket
one of these days. I'll just copy his
impudence. He says—

'Let it be supposed, grandmother, that you
were born in one of the thousand London
alleys; that you were nursed with milk and
opiates by a mother able or willing to pay
small attention to your wants. Your first
recollection is of having 'scalled head,' a
disgusting skin disease, begotten among dirt,
with which poor ragged children are infested.
Then you remember the death of a brother
who was your baby playmate. He died of a
fever. You remember other deaths, and how
you pondered much in a child's way, while
playing with a pool of filth, upon this fever,
what it was. You remember the pool in your
undrained alley, when it was not quite so bad
as it is now. You remember how you laboured
three times a week, when water was turned on
for two hours at the common tap, how you
laboured for your mother to supply her want
of it, and came with your bucket into
competition with the tenants of the other houses,
all eager to lay in a stock. You remember
how you enjoyed a wash when you could get
it; how you saw your mother strive to wash
a tub full of linen in a pipkin full of water,
and the precious juice then could not be
thrown away until you had aided her attempt
to scrub the floors with it. You remember
how your father died of a fever, and you
slept so near his corpse that when you were
restless in the night once, you were awakened
by your hand touching upon its cold face.
You remember how your mother moaned by
day, and how you heard her sob in the night
season. So much, that now and then you
went to kiss her. You remember when your
elder sister drowned herself, nobody ever told
you why;—you think you know why. How
your mother went out, when she could, for a
day's work, but was too ragged and too dirty
to find many patrons. How she took to gin-
drinking, lost her old love for you, and her
old memories. How you wished that you
could find employment, but could find none
for the ragged little wretch. How you begged
some pence, and bought some oranges, and
prayed to God that you might be honest in a
trade however small. How you were taken
by a policeman before a magistrate, who said
that he must put you down. How you were
sent to prison, and came out shaking your
little fists against Society, who made you be
the dirty thief you are.'

There! I can't copy any more for rage.
There's a fellow, to address a woman of my
years! But he'll live to repent it, Sir, when
I am dead and gone. My hand shakes so
after copying this insolence, that I can't hold
my pen any more to-day; besides, it has got
bad, and there is nobody now here to mend
it. I should like my letter to be put first in
your next number; let it have large print
and a great many capitals.

A SAMPLE OF THE OLD SCHOOL.

BY AN OLD BOY.

ALL the particulars of the ensuing narration
are strictly matters of fact, except the
proper names of places and persons, as we
used to say at Rood Priory, better known, in
its time, as Roberts's, better still as Old Bob's;
the Establishment for Young Gentlemen—
much as Old Bob would have been enraged
to hear it called so—which I am about to
describe.

Rood Priory was so called from standing
near the site of that monastery. Though
really a private school, it was conducted after
the manner of a public one. Situated in the
same Cathedral Town with the College of
St. Joseph, it maintained, indeed, a sort of
rivalry with that foundation. I was sent to
Rood Priory—or Old Bob's—about twenty-
four years ago. The school had then been
kept by Old Bob for, I suppose, half a
century, and had existed long before. Old Bob's
was one of those genuine specimens of the
good old school, in which scarcely anything
whatever was taught except the Latin and
Greek languages; and they were inculcated
principally by the rod. Its scholars, when
first I became one of them, mustered nearly a