I took her for.  What is the matter with
me?  Am I looking at her with perceptions
made morbid already by excessive
idleness?  Is this dreadful necessity of doing
nothing to end by sapping the foundations of
my matrimonial tranquillity, and letting down
my whole connubial edifice into the bottomless
abyss of Doctors' Commons ?  Horrible!

The door of the room opens, and wakes me,
as it were, from the hideous dream in which
my wife's individuality has been entirely
altered to my eyes.  It is only half an hour
to dinner; and the servant has come in to lay
the cloth.  In the presence of the great event
of the day I feel myself again.  Once more
I believe in the natural slimness of my wife's
waist; once more I am contented with the tops
of her fingers.  Now, at last, I see my way
to bed-time.  Assuming that we can make
the dinner last two hours; assuming that I
can get another nap after it; assuming——

No!  I can assume nothing more, for I am
really ashamed to complete the degrading
picture of myself which my pen has been
painting up to this time.  Enough has been
written—more than enough, I fear—to show
how completely I have failed in my first
day's attempt at Nothing.  The hardest
labour I ever had to get through, was not so
difficult to contend with as this enforced
idleness.  Never again will I murmur under the
wholesome necessities of work.  Never again
—if I can only succeed in getting well—will
a day of doing nothing be counted as
pleasant holiday-time by me.  I have stolen
away at the dead of the night in flat
defiance of the doctor's directions, to relieve
my unspeakable weariness by writing these
lines.  I cast them on the world as the
brief personal narrative of a most
unfortunate man.  If I systematically disregard
medical orders I shall make myself ill.  If I
conscientiously obey them, how am I to get
through to-morrow?  Will any kind reader,
who possesses a recipe for the killing of time,
benevolently send me a copy of the
document?  I am known and pitied at the office
of this Journal; and any letters addressed to
me under the name of Nobody, and endorsed
on the outside of the envelope Nothing,
would be sure to reach the watering-
place in which I am now vainly trying to
vegetate.

THE SELF-MADE POTTER.

"M. BABINET," say the annals of the French
Institute, in the report of the session of the
Academy of Sciences of the twenty-third of
March last, "presented in the name of M.
Pull some specimens of Delft-ware
imitating those of Bernard Palissy, and worthy
of attracting attention by the fineness and
hardness of the earths employed, as by the
perfection of the figures of animals which
adorn them. All the parts which are in relief
above are hollow beneath, giving great lightness
to these products, which are,
notwithstanding, remarkably solid."

La Revue des Beaux Arts of the first of
June last admires the dishes in the mediæval
style made by M. Pull, and praises the little
figures upon them representing fish, reptiles,
crustaceans, and vegetables, moulded after
nature, and imitating the movements and
colours of life,— for the solidity and lightness
of the paste, the elegance and finish of the
modelling, and the brilliancy and hardness of
the enamel.

M. Pull, who is not literate, has dictated
the following autobiography.

My name is George Pull; I was born at
Wissembourg, in the department of the lower
Rhine, upon the tenth of May, eighteen
hundred and ten.  My father followed in that
town the trade of a locksmith.  Without
being able to lay by anything, he knew how
to find in his labour and his economical habits
the means of maintaining his family honourably;
but he never had the pretension, which,
besides, his resources would scarcely have
permitted, of making me greater than
himself by a more brilliant education.  He did
well, for in my young years I did not give
signs of any predilection for the studies
which demand head-work; and it was with
great difficulty I succeeded in comprehending
and retaining the little they tried to teach
me. My intelligence was completely asleep
in regard to questions of science, but in regard
to handiwork— the knack of reproducing,
counterfeiting, imitating, the form, the figure
of the first object which came to hand—my
intelligence awoke instantly; she came out
of her ordinary lair (gîte), and came and
placed herself entirely at the end of my ten
fingers.  Inspiration, ideas, everything then
came to me at once: I fashioned, I manipulated
many baubles and little figures; those
who prided themselves upon their taste or
their knowledge did me the honour to call
them all little master-pieces.   I very often
heard them say, in their admiration,  "If
George had masters, he would go far."  I
often expressed a wish to learn drawing, but
they could not pay for the lessons of a master.
It was thus, it may be said, having learned
nothing, without a fixed plan, only feeling
within me a decided taste for sculpture, a
very decided one for working with my fingers
—an inclination which, unhappily, did not
receive any help—I saw my young years pass
without taking to any occupation, and without
learning any trade.  That inaction was
not at all the wish of my father; he
complained of it, and was even uneasy about it.
More by necessity than enthusiasm, I
engaged myself, at the age of twenty, as a
military musician in the Eighth regiment of
Light Infantry, which was then in garrison at
Wissembourg.  As I had received some
lessons in instrumental music, I obtained easily
the appointment of second cor d'harmonie.