is continued failures, the unhappy R. Fennarf
walked abstractedly into the next room, half hoping his antagonist
wanted an opportunity to put on a pair of extra-heavy boots.

In two minutes a boy put a note into his hand.

"'MY DEAR SIR: Name your own terms for contributing a daily
article to the Fife. Select your own subjects.

ST. ALBANS.'

"The miserable Briton involuntarily groaned, shook his head
hopelessly, and once more touched the Ghost's rod. He heard the
roll of drums, the scattering cracks of muskets, and found himself
seated in the tent of that same Major General Steward who has so
nobly said, on innumerable appropriate occasions, that he was ready
to fulfil his whole duty in defeating the Southern rebels; but
could not help wishing, as a man, that the enemy were Englishmen
rather than our own brothers. _Then_ he would show you!

"'I want to take a look at your military shopkeepers,' observed Mr.
R. Fennarf, with great brutality, 'and see how you Bull Runners
make your sandbanks--fortifications, as you absurdly call them.
You're "Brute Steward," I suppose.'

"'Ha! ha!' laughed the able General, cheerily, 'that's what you
English gents call me, I believe. We're going to have a battle,
to-day, and you must stop and see it.'

"'A battle!' growled R. Fennarf. 'What do you mean by that? I've
got a permit from your vulgar blunderers at Washington to go
through your so-called lines to Richmond, as that's the only place
where one can find anything like gentlemen in this blawsted
country. I intend to go to-day, too; so you must put off your
so-called battle.'

"He'll certainly kick me after that, thought R. Fennarf, beginning
to feel quite hopeful.

"'Put off the battle?' said the great commander, cordially. 'I'll
do it with pleasure, sir.'

"The Englishman stared at him in utter despair, and, for the last
time, clasped his mystical rod, murmuring: 'Back to England, back
to my own street. I give up all hope!'

"No sooner said than done. In a second he was at the corner of his
own street, and, with the rod in his hand, started upon a
distracted run for his own lonely house. Not looking where he ran,
he went helter-skelter against a fine, fleshy old English gentleman
with a plum nose and a gouty great-toe, who had hobbled out for a
mout