forget it--
Put decorum first, and all things shall be added unto you.

"Lies! all lies! I've done with virtue. Why should _I_ be interested
In the cause of moral progress that I served so long in vain,
When the fifteen hundred odd I've so judiciously invested
Will but go to pay the debts of some young rip who marries Jane?

"But the reptile overcomes me; my identity is sinking;
Let me hasten to the finish; let my words be few and fit.
I was walking by the river in the starry silence, thinking
Of what Providence had done for me, and I had done for it;

"I had reached the saurian's rumoured haunt, where oft in fatal folly
I had dropped garotted dogs to keep his carnal craving up"
(Said Joe Thomson, in a whisper, "That explains my Highland colley!"
Said Bob Williams, _sotto voce_, "That explains my Dandy pup!").

"I had passed to moral questions, and found comfort in the notion
That fools are none the worse for things not being what they seem,
When, behold, a seeming log became instinct with life and motion,
And with sudden curvature of tail upset me in the stream.

"Then my leg, as in a vice"--but here the revelation faltered,
And the medium rose and shook himself, remarking with a smile
That the requisite conditions were irrevocably altered,
For the personality of Biggs was lost in crocodile.

Now, whether Sludge's story would succeed in holding water
Is more, perhaps, than one has any business to suspect;
But I know that on the strength of it I married Biggs's daughter,
And I found a certain portion of the narrative correct.

THE AMENITIES OF SHOPPING.

BY LEOPOLD WAGNER.

If there is one thing I do dislike, it is to go into a draper's shop.
To my mind, it is not a man's business at all; it is one essentially
feminine. I have never been able to reconcile, myself to the
troublesome formalities one has to go through in these marts of
female finery; there seems to be no such thing as to pop inside for
a trifling article, lay down your money for it, and get away again.
No; the system of trade pursued at such establishments is undoubtedly
to get you to sit down, with leisure to look about you, and coax you
into buying things you don't want.

Years ago, when I was living in lonely lodgings, I had occasion one
Saturday night to slip into the nearest draper's shop for some pins.
"I only want a farthing's worth of pins," I observed,
apologetically, to the bald-headed shopwalker who