gleams with silver where copper has been.

A WORD IN SEASON.

This dismal piece of verse effectually cleared the smoking-room, and
filled me with a great sorrow, since I had just recollected three or
four stories of my own. I now take the liberty of laying these before
the ingenuous reader. If he says they are dull, let me tell him (i.)
that he has no perception of humour, and (ii.) that occasional dulness
is the inalienable privilege of every free-born Briton. Many a spry
wight thinks it his duty to be _continuously funny and monotonously
merry_. Let a quiet and demure dulness be the foil of your
side-splitting sallies. Learn to keep the peace, yea for hours at a
time. If you are in a mixed company, cultivate the dictum of "give and
take." Be not for ever doling out your scraps of mirth to the dyspeptic
stomachs of your associates. A wise reciprocity and interplay of
merriment is the best rule--a fair share among the entire party. Burns
himself, sparkling talker as he was, is recorded to have been at times
sunk in gloom and shadow. But anon emerging from his moodiness, he would
utter such words as set the table in a roar. And now for these
masterpieces of humour.

A NAIRN CRITIC.

Why is it that publishers, aye, and even booksellers, are so often out
of sympathy with the poets? I spoke once to a bookseller in Nairn about
a local poet's volume that was lying on the counter. "Do you personally
know this bard?" I asked. "Ay, that I do," was the reply; "he's an
eccentric wee chap. I've many a laugh at him as he goes along the
street, muttering to himself and picking his teeth with a fountain-pen.
Eccentric! bless my soul, how could a poet be anything but eccentric?
Besides, he's bound to be a liar: for if he can't get the end of a line
to come right with truth for a rhyme, he has got to make it _clink with
a whopper_. Why, man, it's a great worry for an honest man like me to
speak the truth in plain prose. If I were to send out my bills in metre
to my customers, there would be a rise of temperature soon in the town
of Nairn. No, no: the only thing that can be done with a poet's
manuscript is to take it to the head of the garden, sprinkle it with
paraffin, and apply a vesta."

"A GRAND DAY FOR IT."

While one of the great six-day battles of the Eastern war was going on,
a country doctor, by some mistake in delivery, did not get his _Herald_
to breakfast one morning. Anxious to get the news, he bolted his meal