use, burgeoning forth into full blossom with
astonishing suddenness, seizing Opportunity by the forelock with manly
promptitude, and gaining golden opinions from all sorts of people;
so that, after brief probation, he slipped, by general acclaim, into
that very premier place so strangely, suddenly, and intempestively
abdicated by the Idle Apprentice, GRANDOLPH.

Concerning the latter, the latest reports are not reassuring. Like his
celebrated prototype of fable, the ill-fated "Don't Care," he runneth
a chance of being "devoured by lions"! At least he appears to have
sought the company of those parlous beasts in their _native Afric
wilds_. We hear that "the lions kept him tucked up one night," which
same news (--gathered from a diurnal intituled the Johannesberg
_Star_--) hath a fearsome and ill-boding sound. That he is--for the
time at least--in every sense "tucked up," is only too obviously
true. Peradventure he may yet think the better of it, correct his
Frothy Distemper and Vagrant Disposition, and (as the agonising
advertisements have it) return to his friends that all may be forgiven
and much forgotten!

But the last accounts of him picture him as lying languidly asprawl
upon a Mausoleum in Mashonaland, _playing dice with himself!_ The tomb
would indeed appear to be, in the sombre words of the Mystick Poet:--

"The vault of his lost Ulalume,"

the runic-sounding word, "Ulalume," being taken perchance as the
African synonym for "Reputation." Whether the cheering word _Resurgam_
will ever be appropriate to _that_ Tomb remaineth to be seen. But
it would appear only too plain that GRANDOLPH (in the words of the
aforesaid SHAFTESBURY) "hath been a great frequenter of the woods and
river-banks, where he hath consum'd abundance of his breath, suffer'd
his Fancy to evaporate, and reduc'd the vehemence both of his Spirit
and Voice." In short, that the erst ambitious and aspiring GRANDOLPH
is still content, for the time at least, to play the part of _The Idle
Apprentice_.

* * * * *

[Illustration: THE IDLE AND THE INDUSTRIOUS APPRENTICE.

(_A long way after Hogarth._)]

* * * * *

"WHYS"--WISE AND OTHERWISE.

(_BEING QUEER QUERIES._)

[Illustration]

I wonder why, whene'er a four-
Wheeler advances to a door,
(A common thing on Britain's shore,)
I wonder why,
At once some aged man will stand
And stare until its inmates land,
A