t to them--when the mountain must go to Mahomet--

Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelvemonth.

It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings came up; but
mostly, instead of it, some rugged, untractable subject; some topic
impossible to be contorted into the risible; some feature, upon which
no smile could play; some flint, from which no process of ingenuity
could procure a distillation. There they lay; there your appointed
tale of brick-making was set before you, which you must finish,
with or without straw, as it happened. The craving Dragon--_the
Public_--like him in Bel's temple--must be fed; it expected its daily
rations; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we
could on this side bursting him.

While we were wringing our coy sprightlinesses for the Post, and
writhing under the toil of what is called "easy writing," Bob Allen,
our quondam schoolfellow, was tapping his impracticable brains in a
like service for the "Oracle." Not that Robert troubled himself much
about wit. If his paragraphs had a sprightly air about them, it was
sufficient. He carried this nonchalance so far at last, that a matter
of intelligence, and that no very important one, was not seldom palmed
upon his employers for a good jest; for example sake--"_Walking
yesterday morning casually down Snow Hill, who should we meet but Mr.
Deputy Humphreys! we rejoice to add, that the worthy Deputy appeared
to enjoy a good state of health. We do not remember ever to have seen
him look better._" This gentleman, so surprisingly met upon Snow Hill,
from some peculiarities in gait or gesture, was a constant butt for
mirth to the small paragraph-mongers of the day; and our friend
thought that he might have his fling at him with the rest. We met
A. in Holborn shortly after this extraordinary rencounter, which he
told with tears of satisfaction in his eyes, and chuckling at the
anticipated effects of its announcement next day in the paper. We did
not quite comprehend where the wit of it lay at the time; nor was it
easy to be detected, when the thing came out, advantaged by type and
letter-press. He had better have met any thing that morning than a
Common Council Man. His services were shortly after dispensed with,
on the plea that his paragraphs of late had been deficient in point.
The one in question, it must be owned, had an air, in the opening
especially, proper to awaken curiosity; and the sentiment, or moral,
wears