.

Robin next let in upon me a sub-section of the General Purposes
Committee of the Municipal Library, who begged that I would kindly
consent to open the new wing thereof, jointly with the rival Candidate,
at three o'clock next Wednesday; and intimated as an afterthought that
the oak bookcase in the eastern alcove was still unpaid for. They
departed calling down blessings upon my head. (Five pounds ten.)

Next, after a brief call from a gentleman in a blue ribbon, who came to
solicit a guinea for the Band of Hope, and who left in exchange one
hundred copies of a picture of the interior of a drunkard's stomach,
executed in three colours, came Beery Bill, to whom the reader has
already been introduced. He had not come to talk Politics, he said, but
just to have a quiet chat with one whom he hoped he could regard as a
personal friend. (I got out my fountain pen.) The chat materialised
presently into an intimation that the Licensed Victuallers Benevolent
Something-or-Other was short of cash; and my visitor suggested that a
trifle in support of the charities of that most deserving institution
would come gracefully from my pocket. On handing me the receipt he
informed me that the brewing trade was in a bad way, and that he looked
to me to do something for it if he used his influence on my behalf at
the Election.

The next visitor was an eccentric but harmless old gentleman who eked
out a precarious livelihood as a Herbalist--whatever that may be--in the
most plebeian quarter of the town. He inhabited a small and stuffy shop
up a discreet alley, suffered much from small boys, sold curious drugs
and potions of his own composition, and prescribed for persons whose
means or modesty precluded them from consulting an orthodox
practitioner.

He was threatened, it appeared, with the penalties of the law. He had
sold a "love-philtre" (pronounced infallible for recalling errant
_fiances_ to a sense of duty) to an amorous kitchen-maid who was seeking
to rekindle the sacred flame in the bosom of an unresponsive policeman.
The damozel had mingled the potion in a plate of beefsteak pudding, and
had handed the same out of the scullery window to her peripatetic swain;
with the sole result that that limb of the law had been immediately and
violently sick, and, the moment he felt sufficiently recovered to do so,
had declared the already debilitated match at an end. The kitchen-maid,
rendered desperate, had told him the whole truth; and con