had a desk, it seldom had books upon it, and he was
rarely there: drifting instead about the vast room, exchanging a few
words with this or that crony, and too often leaving it with them on
brief expeditions across the road. He may merely have been a
sermon-copyist, busy only towards Sunday. He may have been a loafer pure
and simple. I say I don't know; but he was a landmark of the place,
idiosyncratic enough to be stamped indelibly on at any rate one retina.

One other touch is needed to complete his appearance. He always wore
gloves, which my memory inclines me to believe had once been pale
yellow, and he was always accompanied by a copy of _The Times._ This,
however, he did not carry in his hand, but he tucked it between the
first and second buttons of his frock-coat, so folded that the title was
visible, thus guaranteeing to the world that he was one who went to the
fountain-head for his politics and foreign information. By this
sign-mark, in spite of the wear and tear which were only too visible in
his clothes, he became a man apart, for few regular readers among us
could afford such an organ, even if we were attracted by anything so
august and severe. But naturally we all thought the more of him for his
journal. The suggestion of poverty became merely eccentricity.

And then one day, standing by him closely, I made the humiliating
discovery--as humiliating to me as to him--that the date of the
protruding copy of _The Times_ was a year or so past, and, looking more
narrowly at the paper itself, I realised that it had been folded thus
for months and months and months ...

Innocent deception! I wish I had never detected it, and I am glad to
think that the gallant old gentleman never knew that it was pierced. But
how comforting it is to know that he was well in his grave before the
great revolution of this month set in, to reduce his proof of gentility
to a penny, and thus reducing it, to render it invalid evermore!

* * * * *

[Illustration: LOYALTY.

"IS THAT RIGHT, CHARLIE, 'AS YOUR MISSUS 'ITS YOU WIV A FLAT-IRON?"

"ER--YUS--BUT ONLY WITH THE BLUNT END OF IT."]

* * * * *

Commercial Threat.

"General Bakery and Confectionery. We carry a large stock in both
lines. Get the Richardson Bread habit. It will tickle you."

_Daily News (Port Arthur, Canada)._

* * * * *

"ITALIAN WAR MEDALS.

(Fr