us, on the proper sauce for teal and widgeon--and
the other, signed Scru-tatos, on the best means of cultivating the
kidney species of that vegetable--made no small noise at the time, and
got me in the paper a compliment from the editor). I was a constant
reader of the Notices to Correspondents, and, my early education having
been rayther neglected (for I was taken from my studies and set, as is
the custom in our trade, to practise on a sheep's head at the tender
age of nine years, before I was allowed to venture on the humane
countenance,)--I say, being thus curtailed and cut off in my classical
learning, I must confess I managed to pick up a pretty smattering of
genteel information from that treasury of all sorts of knowledge; at
least sufficient to make me a match in learning for all the noblemen
and gentlemen who came to our house. Well, on looking over the Flare-up
notices to correspondents, I read, one day last April, among the
notices, as follows:--

"'Automodon.' We do not know the precise age of Mr. Baker of Covent
Garden Theatre; nor are we aware if that celebrated son of Thespis is a
married man.

"'Ducks and Green-peas' is informed, that when A plays his rook to B's
second Knight's square, and B, moving two squares with his Queen's pawn,
gives check to his adversary's Queen, there is no reason why B's Queen
should not take A's pawn, if B be so inclined.

"'F. L. S.' We have repeatedly answered the question about Madame
Vestris: her maiden name was Bartolozzi, and she married the son of
Charles Mathews, the celebrated comedian.

"'Fair Play.' The best amateur billiard and ecarte player in England,
is Coxe Tuggeridge Coxe, Esq., of Portland Place, and Tuggeridgeville:
Jonathan, who knows his play, can only give him two in a game of a
hundred; and, at the cards, NO man is his superior. Verbum sap.

"'Scipio Americanus' is a blockhead."

I read this out to the Count and Tagrag, and both of them wondered how
the Editor of that tremendous Flare-up should get such information; and
both agreed that the Baron, who still piqued himself absurdly on his
play, would be vastly annoyed by seeing me preferred thus to himself. We
read him the paragraph, and preciously angry he was. "Id is," he cried,
"the tables" (or "de DABELS," as he called them),--"de horrid dabels;
gom viz me to London, and dry a slate-table, and I vill beat you."
We all roared at this; and the end of the dispute was, that, just to
satisfy the fel