strongest-minded women, and yet she can never hear me speak of one of the sex without fizzing like a squib.

Nosebag (solemnly). Same with 'em all. I suppose it's love.

Nutts. Why, it is; that is, it's jealousy, which is only love with its claws out.

Tickle. Well, claws brings you to the cat again; so go on. Nutts. To be sure. Well, as I was saying- (To LIMPY.) What's the matter? I'm sure this razor would shave a newborn baby; but for a poor man I don't know where you got such a delicate skin. I will say this, Mr. Limpy, for one of the swinish multitude, you are the tenderest pork I ever shaved.

Slowgoe. But the Duke of Wellington

Nutts. Don't hurry me; I'm going to his grace. Well, they do say that he's going to get rid of the cat by little and little. He knows the worth of knotted cords to the British soldier, and, like a dowager with false curls, can't give 'em all up at once. So there's to be a law that the cat is still to be used upon the British lion in regimentals, only that the cat is to lose a tail every year.

Slowgoe. Is it true?

Nutts. Certain. So you see, with the loss of one tail per annum, in only nine years' time, or in anno Domino 1855, every tail will be 'bolished; that is, the cat with its nine tails will have lost its nine lives, and be defunct and dead.

Slowgoe. I don't like to give an opinion, but that seems a very slow reform.

Nutts. Why, yes; when folks have a tooth that pains 'em, they don't get cured in that fashion. But then, again, it's wonderful with what patience we can bear the toothache of other people.

Nosebag. What horrid things there's been all the week in the papers. Officers of all sorts writing what they've seen done with the cat. Well, if I was a sojer, my red coat would burn like red-hot iron in me; I should think all the world looked at me, as if they was asking themselves, "I wonder how often you've been flayed."

Slowgoe. Bless your heart! and here's a dreadful matter. James Sayer, a marine on board the Queen, sentenced to be hanged for assaulting two sergeants-to be hanged by the neck. And the president says, "James Sayer, I am sorry indeed that I cannot offer you hope that the sentence of this court will not be fully carried out, and I recommend you to prepare yourself to meet your doom."

Bleak. What a difference is made by salt water! Frederick White, private soldier, is sentenced to be flogged for giving a blow to his sergeant. James Sayer, marine, is to be hanged for the same offence. So a blow afloat and a blow ashore isn't the same thing.

Nutts. But there'll be no hanging in the case; they say as much in Parliament, don't they?

Slowgoe. But it says here the president was affected." Why pass sentence, why give no hope?

"much

Nutts. Why now, I suppose that's what they'd call a fiction of the law; and when we think what a dry matter all law is, can we wonder that the 'torneys and such folks spice it up with a few lies? Bless you, if all law was all true, nobody would go on swallowing it. It's the precious fibs that's in it that gives it a flavour, and makes men live, and grow fat upon it." The Barber's Chair."

Thomas Hood

Faithless Nelly Gray

BEN BATTLE was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms,
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.

Now as they bore him off the field,
Said he, "Let others shoot;
For here I leave my second leg,
And the Forty-second Foot."

The army surgeons made him limbs;
Said he, "They're only pegs;
But they're as wooden members quite
As represent my legs."

Now Ben he loved a pretty maid,
Her name was Nelly Gray;

So he went to pay her his devours,
When he'd devoured his pay.

But when he called on Nelly Gray,
She made him quite a scoff;
And when she saw his wooden legs,
Began to take them off.

"Oh, Nelly Gray! Oh, Nelly Gray!

Is this your love so warm?

The love that loves a scarlet coat
Should be more uniform."

Said she, "I loved a soldier once,
For he was blithe and brave;
But I will never have a man
With both legs in the grave.

"Before you had those timber toes
Your love I did allow,

But then, you know, you stand upon
Another footing now."

"Oh, Nelly Gray! Oh, Nelly Gray!

For all your jeering speeches,

At duty's call I left my legs

In Badajoz's breaches."

"Why, then," said she, "you've lost the feet

Of legs in war's alarms,

And now you cannot wear the shoes
Upon your feats of arms."

"Oh, false and fickle Nelly Gray!

I know why you refuse

Though I've no feet, some other man
Is standing in my shoes!

"I wish I ne'er had seen your face; But now, a long farewell!

For you will be my death; alas !

You will not be my Nell."

Now, when he went from Nelly Gray,
His heart so heavy got,

And life was such a burthen grown,
It made him take a knot.

So round his melancholy neck
A rope he did entwine,

And, for the second time in life,

Enlisted in the Line!

One end he tied around a beam,
And then removed his pegs,
And, as his legs were off, of course
He soon was off his legs.

And there he hung till he was dead
As any nail in town;

For though despair had cut him up,
It could not cut him down.

A dozen men sat on his corpse,

To find out why he died;

And they buried Ben in four cross-roads, With a stake in his inside.

A Lay of Real Life

WHO ruined me ere I was born,

Sold every acre, grass or corn,
And left the next heir all forlorn?
My Grandfather.