as an usher at a school I was at, and
he used to read tracts about good boys and bad boys to the fellows on
Sunday afternoon. He always took out the real names, and put in the
names of the fellows instead. Those who had done well in the week he
put in as good ones, and those who hadn't as the bad. He didn't like
me, and I was always put in as a bad boy, and I came to so many
untimely ends I got sick of it. I was hanged twice, and transported
once for sheep-stealing; I committed suicide one week, and broke into
the bank the next; I ruined three families, became a hopeless
drunkard, and broke the hearts of my twelve distinct parents. I used
to beg him to let me be reformed next week; but he said he never would
till I did my Caesar better. So, if you please, we'll have a story that
can't be true."

"Very well," said the friend, laughing; "but if it isn't true, may I
put you in? All the best writers, you know, draw their characters from
their friends now-a-days. May I put you in?"

"Oh, certainly!" said Richard, placing himself in front of the fire,
putting his feet on the hob, and stroking his curls with an air which
seemed to imply that whatever he was put into would be highly
favoured.

The rest struggled, and pushed, and squeezed themselves into more
modest but equally comfortable quarters; and after a few moments of
thought, Paterfamilias's friend commenced the story of

MELCHIOR'S DREAM.

"Melchior is my hero. He was--well, he considered himself a young man,
so we will consider him so too. He was not perfect; but in these days
the taste in heroes is for a good deal of imperfection, not to say
wickedness. He was not an only son. On the contrary, he had a great
many brothers and sisters, and found them quite as objectionable as my
friend Richard does."

"I smell a moral," murmured the said Richard.

"Your scent must be keen," said the story-teller, "for it is a long
way off. Well, he had never felt them so objectionable as on one
particular night, when, the house being full of company, it was
decided that the boys should sleep in 'barracks,' as they called it;
that is, all in one large room."

"Thank goodness, we have not come to that!" said the incorrigible
Richard; but he was reduced to order by threats of being turned out,
and contented himself with burning the soles of his boots against the
bars of the grate in silence: and the friend continued:--

"But this was not the worst. Not only was he, Melchi