"It was agreed that I should send in my
article the next Tuesday, and go up the
following day to learn its fate. I was not
much accustomed to English composition;
but I got up the facts from the daily papers,
and compounded a piece of prose on the
subject, which I forwarded by the maid-
servant. On the Wednesday, I found the
Editor sitting with two manuscripts before
him—mine and another. He looked
particularly unpromising; but asking me to be
seated, addressed me as follows:—

"'This paper that I have, Sir, in my right
hand, is your leading article. How does it
begin? "It is no doubt to be considered and
borne in the attentive mind, that the ill-fated
Queen, who is even now about to be
submitted as a criminal to the loftiest tribunal of
her country, has, under circumstances which
have scarce need of recapitulation, but which
will recur to the mind as having occurred at
various times and epochs, been ill-treated."
'Pardon me, Sir, but that's a terribly
unwieldy sentence. Well, what's the next?'
"She was led to the Hymeneal altar on the
eighth day of April, 1793; the officiating
clergyman's name—," and so on.

"'You see we don't want to know all these
things. We want something sparkling,
cutting, spicy! Excuse me. Sir, but you're a
University man, and that's your article.
Now hear the one on the same subject just
sent by Tom Twincher, who scarcely had
ever any education at all, but whom we all
remember at one time as potboy at the
Headless Horseman. "It was a remark of
Rochefoucauld." There, you see!—lively and
sparkling for you at once!'

"'But," said I, 'I never read Rochefoucauld,
so I could not quote him.' 'No more
has Tom,' replied the Editor, 'never a word
of him. What of that?' "It was a remark of
Rochefoucauld that, a man was never so
happy as when his wife was unhappy. If the
dashing philosopher could be permitted to
revisit for awhile the earth, we would gladly
send our devil as an exchange prisoner"—
funny you see, too!—"and sought for a
confirmation, of his remark—we would direct
his attention to a certain bloated potentate
not a hundred miles from—," and so on.
There, Sir, that's the kind of article we want.
If you can only produce such a one as you
have sent us by way of specimen, why the
negotiation must be at an end.'

"The above form only two examples of the
many efforts which at this time I made to
obtain respectable employment, and in which
I found that my University education acted
as a barrier to my progress. I shall not
entail upon you any more of these examples;
suffice it to say, that, after having
picked up a precarious subsistence for some
years, I was at last induced to enter into a
sort of partnership with my brother, and
there to commence my education over again.
I released myself from the load of Latin and
Greek which had been weighing me down
from my earliest infancy, and for once devoted
my attention to something sound, useful, and
practical. At his death I succeeded to the
wine-business and to a brewery which we had
added to it. So that, instead of disfiguring,
creation by remaining, at my time of life, a
rusty and musty old fellow, you behold me a
—in fact, what I am. That is all. I have
said my say. You don't happen to have a
glass of wine, or even of brandy-and-water on
the premises, do you?"

At this moment my clerk opportunely
hastened into the room announcing "Sir J.
Cocculus-Indicua's carriage!"

"Bless me!" cried the old gentleman, rising
and looking at his watch. "I have been here
a long time. However, I won't detain you
further. I only came in to say that I hope
you have put that marriage deed into a
conveyancer's hands, and to remind you that it
is fifteen, not ten thousand pounds that I
settle on my daughter Jane."

FOOD FOR THE FACTORY

THE weekly mail from America is not of
more moment to the great cotton lord of
Manchester than it is to John Shuttle, weaver, and
his thousands of shop-mates. If he ever
thinks how entirely his own existence, and
that of his little household, depend upon the
plant that grows five thousand miles off, he
must pray that the sun may shine propitiously,
and the wind subside to the gentlest zephyr,
about the cotton-fields of the Southern States
of America. He would regard the flies of
Alabama to be as deadly as serpents to him;
and when the frost pinches him on his way to
his work early in the morning, he would
wonder how the temperature stands in Georgia
and New Orleans; tremble at the least
rumour of war with the Yankees; and would
rather read a declaration of defiance,
addressed by the Secretary for Foreign Affairs,
to Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, than
glance at the mildest remonstrance officially
directed to the American Minister.

War with America—a hurricane in Georgia
a blight in Alabama—continued rain in
New Orleans are one and all death-cries to
the mill spinner and power-loom weaver; for
when the cotton-fields of the Southern States
yield less than their average quantity of cotton,
the Manchester operative eats less than his
average quantity of food. He flourishes or
decays with the cotton-pod. Cheap bread is to
him a less important question than cheap
cotton. When his blood boils at the indignities
and cruelties heaped upon the coloured race, in
"the land of the free;" he does not always
remember that to the Slave States of America he
owes his all; that it is to his advantage that
these States should remain untroubled—that
the negro should wear his chains in peace. It is
for his gain that slavers dare the perils of slave
dealing, since his loom is furnished with the