of determined gamblers is visible, rattling
their sticks; and occasionally some industrious
old fellow mending his canoe, all the canoes
being invariably hauled up on the beach in
front of the village. The firing of a shot, or
any unusual sound, will bring the whole crew
out to gaze at you. They first wrap their
blankets round them, and then sit down on
their truncus in a position peculiar to
themselves—they are doubled up into the smallest
possible compass, with their chin resting on
their knees, and they look precisely like so
many frogs crouched on the dunghill
aforesaid."

Such are the men to whose country Englishmen,
Frenchmen, Americans, Germans,
Chinese (the Chinese have already established
an export trade to their own country of sea
slugs), now flock; from whose shores regular
steamboats already begin to ply; and to whom
it is considered, even by shrewd men of
business, that the Great Leviathan's first voyage
should be made.

Of the reports from the new gold districts
that now periodically fill our papers, we say
nothing. Report meets expectation;
expectation then outbids report. Legislation in
the last days of the last parliament already
began to provide for the mounting of the new
jewel in England's crown. Imagination is
excited. Many hasten to their ruin by that
coast of the far west; many deliberately and
with forethought go to be the founders of what
shall, perhaps, become the great metropolis
of the Pacific.

BUYING IN THE CHEAPEST
MARKET.

I WAS born and nourished under the wing
of political economy: not the theory, but the
science reduced to practice. I have known
many men in my time whose principles were
without a flaw that the keenest logician could
detect,—who had Smith, Bentham and Mill
supply, demand, at their fingers' ends,—who
could discourse most eloquent music about
markets, population, capital, rent, profits, but
who in themselves were imprudent members
of society, improvident centres of enormous
families, borrowers of money at usurious
interest, and strugglers up to their necks in
seas of debt. My principles may not have
been as sound, my reasoning powers not as
perfect as those of my friends, but I floated
harmlessly over the ocean of debt,—I was a
lender, and not a borrower of money at
usurious interest, and I did not enter upon a
matrimonial engagement until I had carefully
examined the ratio which capital at that
period bore to population.

One of the earliest pieces of practical
wisdom drawn from the science of political
economy, and instilled into me by a thoughtful
and far-seeing parent, was the well-known
maxim about buying in the cheapest market.
I say well-known, but I am sorry to have also
to state, that it is better known than trusted.
Of all who hear it, and comprehend what it
means, how many have the moral courage
and industry to act up to it? Who amongst
those who have the ability to find, will take the
trouble to find, the cheapest market? I would
address my present observations to persons
about to marry; but I know that it is useless
to do so. They are too young, too ill-taught,
too gushing, too generous, too believing, too
romantic, too imprudent, too much wanting
in that cold but very valuable quality of
calculation, to listen to my words, and to benefit
by the utterances of my experience. I turn
from them with hopeless contempt to that
other class comprised under the general title
of parents and guardians; people who, if they
have not learned wisdom, have at least lived
long enough to test the emptiness of the wild
romance of life.

When the preliminaries for my wedding
were fixed, the first necessity of my position
was to furnish a house; and the first duty of
my position was to find the cheapest market
for doing so. This important undertaking
rarely falls to the lot of a man more than
once in the course of his natural life, and it is
incumbent upon him, therefore, to be careful
how he performs it. There are two modes of
setting about the task which naturally suggest
themselves to the minds of the unthinking.
The first is to contract with a fashionable
upholsterer, who will supply all the regular
elegancies of life, give you no trouble about
selection, even in the number and subjects of
the volumes for your library, and by the
time you find you have got everything together
very pretty and correct, like some thousands
of your neighbours in the same position in
society, he will send in a heavy bill, which
you will duly pay, as your neighbours have
done before you.

The second mode of furnishing a house is
the one usually considered economical, und
is performed by attending sales and depôts
for second-hand furniture, in the hope of
finding bargains. People buy at such places
articles of inferior workmanship, manufactured
expressly for the peculiar market,
showy to the eye, weak in structure, with
every fault carefully varnished over. They
are proud of their purchases for a few weeks
—after which time the articles disappear, and
the song of triumph is heard no more.

I need scarcely say, that neither of these
plans was my plan. I had a certain sum of
money at my disposal, and I knew that
amongst the tradesmen to whom I must
apply for the articles I required, there must,
be a large number to whom that money would
be more than ordinarily welcome. I knew
that in the ranks of trade there is always a
large number of shopkeepers struggling to
maintain a position without capital—
embarrassed with writs, judges' orders, bills of
sale, and county court judgments; and
exposed to all the temptations which such a