een sober!"

PETER was astounded.

"Why, Sir WILFRID LAWSON says--" he began.

"Never mind what Sir WILF-LAWSON says, I say if you want, keep your
health you must--hic--always--be--in--in--intoxicavated! Now go to
public-house. My patients in public-houses yonder."

And, urged by a sense of duty, PETER withdrew; and, joining the Sage's
cures, found them in various stages of renewed health, and increased
intoxication.

* * * * *

THE BITTER CRY OF THE BRITISH BOOKMAKER.

(_AFTER A FAMOUS ORIGINAL._)

'Tis a very good land that we live in
To lend, or to lose, or to give in;
But to _sell_--at a profit--or keep a man's own,
'Tis the very worst country that ever was known.
Men give cash for their wines, wives, weeds, churches and cooks,
But your genuine Briton _won't_ pay for his--Books!

* * * * *

JOURNAL OF A ROLLING STONE.

EIGHTH ENTRY.

Since my call to the Bar, have been treating myself to rather a long
roll abroad. Now, however, the time has come to devote myself to the
work of the profession, which seems to mean studying practical law
with some discreet and learned Barrister.

[Illustration: Dick Fibbins.]

Met a few nights ago, at dinner, a very entertaining fellow. Full
of legal anecdotes. Told that it was DICK FIBBINS, a Barrister, "and
rather a rising one." DICK (why not RICHARD?) talked about County
Courts with condescending tolerance; even the High Court Judges seemed
(according to his own account) to habitually quail before his forensic
acumen.

Mentioned to FIBBINS that I had just been "called," and was "thinking
of reading in a Barrister's chambers;" and he seemed to take the most
friendly and generous interest in me at once--asked me, indeed, to
call on him any day I liked at his chambers in Waste Paper Buildings,
which I thought extremely kind, as I was a complete stranger.

Go next day. Clerk, with impressive manner, receives me with due
regard to his principal's legal standing. (_Query_--has a _rising_
Barrister any standing?) Ushered into large room, surrounded with
shelves containing, I imagine, the Law Reports from the Flood
downwards. Just thinking what an excellent "oldest inhabitant"
METHUSELAH would have made in a "Right of Way" case, when DICK FIBBINS
rises from the wooden arm-chair on which he has been sitting at a
table crowded with papers, and bundles tied up in dirty red tape, and
shakes hands h