standing in my dining-room, and a receipt for
twenty-five pounds lying on the table, signed
in a somewhat tremulous hand, "Enoch
Baxter."

Encouraged by my success with the
embarrassed cabinet-maker, I next experimented
upon a pianoforte merchant, who I
found from my list was suffering from a
County Court judgment for fifteen pounds,
eighteen shillings. He was a common,
cunning-looking man, with a good deal of the
mechanic in his appearance; and he gave
me the idea of a working carpenter, dressed
in a pianoforte-tuner's clothes. He was
fetched, I presume, from a public-house to
attend upon me; for he came in, smelling
very strongly of tobacco-smoke.

There was an instrument, noble in
exterior, with all the latest improvements,
delicacy of touch, metallic sounding-board,
&c., upon which I fixed my attention, while
the proprietor rattled over the keys with
short, thick, grubby fingers, performing one
of those brilliant flourishes peculiar to people
who undertake to exhibit the capabilities of
a piano for the purpose of effecting a sale.

I quietly inquired the price.

"Well, sir," said he, discontinuing his
harmony, and looking up at me with his small,
sharp eyes, " we couldn't make a hinstrument
of that kind to horder under seventy pund;
but we bought it on the quiet from a man
who shut up his shop and bolted to
Hostralia, and we can say fifty pund for it."

I saw the kind of man I had to deal with,
and I did not indulge in any unnecessary
negotiation.

"Eighteen pounds,"! said, after examining
the instrument, "is what I can give for that
piano."

"Make more for firewood," returned the
proprietor, shortly, closing the lid of the
case.

"That's my card," I replied, giving him
my address, "eighteen pounds; at home any
evening this week after eight."

I was right in my calculations. The next
night, about half-past ten, I received a visit
from the pianoforte merchant, who had a
cart with the instrument waiting at the
door.

"Say twenty pund," said he, "and I'm
your man."

"You have my bidding," I replied, with
dignity.

"You warn't born yesterday," he returned,
with a wink; and, coming closer to me in a
confidential manner, he continued, "keep it
dark, you know; keep it dark."

Whether he paid off the County Court
Judgment with the money I cannot tell, but
I saw his name in the list of bankrupts
a few weeks after this transaction: and
at the examination before the Commissioner,
there was a judicial rebuke about reckless
trading and making away with stock; which
I, of course, could not help, as I was only
carrying out the law of supply and demand,
and acting upon the maxim of buying in the
cheapest market.

HER FACE.

'TWAS the sweetest face imaginable—and
the most feminine. I could read in it—for
by our faces, our gestures, our attitudes, our
manner of dressing, and fifty other external
indications that we have not the least idea
of, we divulge continually all sorts of mental
characteristics that we think our neighbours
know nothing about, nay, that we ourselves
perhaps know nothing about;—I could read
in the face before me, I say, an ignorance of
evil, a good sense and kindness of heart, that
made me long to know the possessor of such
a countenance.

That look of cheerfulness, too,—was it
given by the eyes, or do all the features
combine, when an expression is to be produced?

At any rate, there it was. You could see,
with half an eye, that she was neither
discontented, nor listless, nor a grumbler. About the
whole face there was a great, but at the same
time an indescribable, charm. One glance at
the evenness of her braided hair, at the tying
of her bonnet strings, and at the arrangement
of her dress, told of an almost excessive
cleanliness and neatness.

Is it possible that I have absolutely
forgotten, till this moment, to mention that I
am talking all this time about a photograph?
About a cheap photograph, too, in a street-
door case, with a touter lying in ambush,
who was down upon me with a pressing
invitation to sit, just as I was concluding the
above analysis.

It is unnecessary to say, that by this
request I was, as everybody always is, driven
from the spot. Not, however, before I had
observed that the little lady whose portrait
had first caught my attention, certainly owed
nothing to surrounding circumstances; seeing
that she was bounded on the north by an
Ethiopian singer, in the costume of his
country; on the south by a clown, also in
canonicals; on the east by an itinerant
pastry-vendor (the tarts were exquisitely
rendered); and on the west by a member of
the Metropolitan Police Force, in whom the
artist had caught with singular felicity that
expression of slow and unresisting, nay,
satisfied strangulation peculiar to that body.

It was "the breathing time of the day
with me," and, driven by the touter from
the contemplation of the photographic
studies, I wandered on.

Haunted, though, by that face,—I could
not get rid of it. I saw it through everything
I looked at. Thus, when I got opposite
the Economical Shoe Mart, and found
that,—Yes, this was the cheap shop, and no
mistake,—that this was Tommy Peacock's,
and that the public were adjured with
affecting earnestness to "try T. P.'s nobby