changes his ground to the very wide field of
foreign policy.

"May I ask, sir," he says, "if you consider
that Colicotroni's measure for the introduction
of foreign corn into Greece will have
any effect upon the coal trade?"

"Decidedly,"  I reply, seeing the necessity
of making a bold assertion; which originates
a general discussion, under cover of which I
escape.

A dinner-party may be enjoyment to many
people; but it is none to me. I am always
asked the most extraordinary questions ever
put to any man who is not the editor of a
newspaper, or a penny cyclopaedia. Young
curates going to distant livings, question me
anxiously about the character and doctrine
of their new bishop. I cannot undertake to
say with any certainty, when I am asked (and
I am asked very frequently) who was the
prime minister at the time of the great
cabbage-rot, when bread was two and four-
pence halfpenny the four pound loaf; who
was the marquis who won a hundred and
twenty thousand pounds at billiards, in a
lonely country-house, in the course of a
single week, from young Lord Mull, of
Galloway; who was the lady who left the stage
in eighteen hundred and twelve; to marry
the Duke of Dunstable, and what was her
real maiden name,; who it was that went up
in a balloon at Ceylon, nearly a century
before Montgolfier was ever heard of; who
it was that witnessed Captain Barclay's
feat of walking a thousand successive miles
in a thousand successive hours; and who
was the man who last fought with Molyneux,
when that distinguished pugilist behaved
with so much magnanimity, that the
Prince Regent, who was present, wished
to knight him on the spot. These, and
thousands of such questions, have been
asked me at different times, before a special
inquiry department was instituted in the
weekly publications, and the weekly press.
But there is one bore who sticks to me with
the pertinacity of a barnacle, a horse-leech,
a burr, a parasite. He is not to be shaken
off by any such weak suggestion as a reference
to the columns of the weekly prints. In
alluding to individuals he clings to the
alphabetical form; for he is very scrupulous about
mentioning names, which might cloud my
judgment, and affect the purity of that
opinion he is always so anxious to obtain.
He generally meets me in the street, and
takes my passive arm, leaning his head upon
mine, as he dwells upon the latest of those
wrongs, which he seems for ever doomed to
suffer.

"Now," says my confidential friend, "I 'll
put the case to you in this way: A goes to
B's house to dinner, where he meets C. I
don't give any names; I don't accuse any
man. I am A; there are four ladies in the
drawing-room,—one the lady of the house,
whom I will personify by D, and the other
three by the letters E, F, and G. I hope I
make myself clearly understood?"

"O, perfectly," I. reply, listlessly.

"Very well," he continues, "D, in the
absence of B, asks me to take down F, but
before I can comply, C steps in, pushes me
upon G, and takes F, leaving me E, G, D."

"How annoying!" I exclaim, mechanically.

"Annoying?"  inquires my confidential
friend, astonished at the mildness of the
term; "annoying? it's more. But this is
not all; for E—no D, makes a pointed
observation to B —no C, across the table (I
will not mention the remark), by which I am
brought in direct collision with C. The
matter don't end here, for B takes it up after
C has gone up-stairs with G, F, B, and D."

"G, F, B?" I ask; "are there two Bs?"

"G, F, E, and D, I should say,"  he answers.
''Thank you. Now what would you do
under these circumstances?"

Having filled the position of everybody's
referee for many troublesome year?, I want to
resign it. It must have fallen upon me originally
because I wear spectacles, am a trifle
bald, am blessed with black, bushy,
wise-looking eyebrows, am master of my time, and
am always to be found; but so ready am I to
resign my doubtful honours to those who
may covet them, that I have at last made
arrangements to obtain a post inder Government
as the only thing I could think of, that
would not trouble me with employment, and
yet would give me an excuse for saying, I
am fully engaged.

           THREE YEARS OLDER.

A FRIEND who is no jester, when asked
to lend a new and interesting book, sends
a blue volume of Miscellaneous Statistics
of the United Kingdom, Presented to both
Houses of Parliament by Command of Her
Majesty. We open it, and see a great
spreading of tables; in fact, as in the world
generally, it contains more tables than feasts.
What, then, could the judicious friend have
meant by sending a book containing returns
of the statistics of the country for the three
years last reckoned out by the Statistical
Department, Board of Trade?

No doubt he intends us not only to read,
but to write on these tables to show what
progress England has made as it gets three
years older. We shall begin with the
interesting topic of marriage. The population
of Great Britain is about twenty-two millions,
now increasing at the rate of more than a
quarter of a million yearly, and, in England,
the great multitude of marriages are those of
bachelors to spinsters. Of these there are
every year in England and Wales, London
included, about one hundred and thirty
thousand.  All the other marriages do not make
up another thirty thousand, and, in half of
that outlying number, the brides are spinsters
and the bridegrooms widowers, while only in