ure, has
occurred lately. The lodge at Frogmore, which was, during the lifetime of
Queen Charlotte, an out-of-town nursery for little highnesses, has been
constructed (by command of the Queen) into a Royal Eccalleobion for a
similar purpose.

[Illustration: FAMILIES SUPPLIED.]

* * * * *

WIT WITHOUT MONEY:

OR, HOW TO LIVE UPON NOTHING.

BY VAMPYRE HORSELEECH, ESQ

CHAPTER II.

"A clever fellow, that Horseleech!" "When Vampyre is once drawn out, what a
great creature it is!" These, and similar ecstatic eulogiums, have I
frequently heard murmured forth from muzzy mouths into tinged and tingling
ears, as I have been leaving a company of choice spirits. There never was a
greater mistake. Horseleech, to be candid, far from being a clever fellow,
is one of the most barren rascals on record. Vampyre, whether drawn out or
held in, is a poor creature, not a great creature--opaque, not luminous--in
a word, by nature, a very dull dog indeed.

But you see the necessity of appearing otherwise.--Hunger may be said to
be a moral Mechi, which invents a strop upon which the bluntest wits are
sharpened to admiration. Believe me, by industry and perseverance--which
necessity will inevitably superinduce--the most dreary dullard that ever
carried timber between his shoulders in the shape of a head, may speedily
convert himself into a seeming Sheridan--a substitutional Sydney Smith--a
second Sam Rogers, without the drawback of having written Jacqueline.

Take it for granted that no professed diner-out ever possessed a particle
of native wit. His stock-in-trade, like that of Field-lane chapmen, is all
plunder. Not a joke issues from his mouth, but has shaken sides long since
quiescent. Whoso would be a diner-out must do likewise.

The real diner-out is he whose card-rack or mantelpiece (I was going to say
groans, but) laughingly rejoices in respectful well-worded invitations to
luxuriously-appointed tables. I count not him, hapless wretch! as one who,
singling out "a friend," drops in just at pudding-time, and ravens horrible
remnants of last Tuesday's joint, cognizant of curses in the throat of his
host, and of intensest sable on the brows of his hostess. No struggle
there, on the part of the children, "to share the good man's knee;" but
protruded eyes, round as spectacles, and almost as large, fixed alternately
upon his flushed face and that absorbing epigastrium which is making their
miserab