earance in this world.

Tom, though he has a small income, and lives in a small house, yet sits
down one of a party of twelve to dinner every day of his life; these
twelve consisting of Mrs. Fairfax, the nine Misses Fairfax, and Master
Thomas Fairfax--the son and heir to twopence halfpenny a year.

It is awkward just now to go and beg pot-luck from such a family as
this; because, though a guest is always welcome, we are thirteen at
table--an unlucky number, it is said. This evil is only temporary, and
will be remedied presently, when the family will be thirteen WITHOUT the
occasional guest, to judge from all appearances.

Early in the morning Mrs. Fairfax rises, and cuts bread and butter from
six o'clock till eight; during which time the nursery operations upon
the nine little graces are going on. If his wife has to rise early to
cut the bread and butter, I warrant Fairfax must be up betimes to earn
it. He is a clerk in a Government office; to which duty he trudges
daily, refusing even twopenny omnibuses. Every time he goes to the
shoemaker's he has to order eleven pairs of shoes, and so can't afford
to spare his own. He teaches the children Latin every morning, and is
already thinking when Tom shall be inducted into that language. He
works in his garden for an hour before breakfast. His work over by three
o'clock, he tramps home at four, and exchanges his dapper coat for his
dressing-gown--a ragged but honorable garment.

Which is the best, his old coat or Sir John's bran-new one? Which is the
most comfortable and becoming, Mrs. Fairfax's black velvet gown (which
she has worn at the Pocklington Square parties these twelve years, and
in which I protest she looks like a queen), or that new robe which the
milliner has just brought home to Mrs. Bumpsher's, and into which she
will squeeze herself on Christmas-day?

Miss Clapperclaw says that we are all so charmingly contented with
ourselves that not one of us would change with his neighbor; and so,
rich and poor, high and low, one person is about as happy as another in
Our Street.

DOCTOR BIRCH AND HIS YOUNG FRIENDS

by MR. M. A. TITMARSH

THE DOCTOR AND HIS STAFF.

There is no need to say why I became assistant-master and professor of
the English and French languages, flower-painting, and the German flute,
in Doctor Birch's Academy, at Rodwell Regis. Good folks may depend on
this, that it was not for CHOICE that I left lodgings near London, and
a gente