g on him.

" 'Do you see any thing that looks _green_ in there?' he asked, pulling
down his eyelid with his forefinger.

" 'No, sir, I do not,' I replied, looking very earnestly into his eye.

" 'Nor in _there_, either?' said he, pulling open his other eye.

" 'Nothing at all, sir,' I replied, after a minute examination.

" 'I guess _not!_' said Mr. Lummocks; and without making any other answer,
he turned on his heel and left me.

" 'Regularly sucked, eh, Jack?' asked a young man who had been listening
to our conversation.

" 'Don't mention it!' said Mr. Lummocks; 'the man is a fool.' "

Our friend was about to demand an explanation of this strange conduct,
when the proprietor came forward and told him that he was not a retailer
but a _jobber_, and advised him, "if he wanted a vest-pattern, to go into
Chatham-street!"

-------------------------------------

He must have been a good deal of an observer, and something of a
philosopher also, who wrote as follows, in a unique paper, some fifteen
years ago:

"Man is never contented. He is the fretful baby of trouble and care, and
he will continue to worry and fret, no matter how pretty are the
playthings that are laid before him to please him. He will sometimes fret
because he can _find nothing to fret about_. I've known just such men
myself. If he were bound to live in this world forever, he would fret
because he couldn't leave and go to another, 'just for a change;' and now,
seeing that sooner or later he _must_ go, and no mistake, he frets like a
caged porcupine, and thinks he would like to live here always. The fact
is, he don't know _what_ he wants.

"I've seen about enough of this world myself. For forty years I've been
searching every nook and corner for some pleasant spring of happiness,
instead of which I have only found a few flood-swollen streams, bearing
upon their surface innumerable bubbles of vanity, _and all along by their
margins nests of young humbugs are continually being hatched_. I have
drunk of these waters nigh unto bursting, and have always departed as dry
as a cork.

"In fact, I've been kicked about like an old hat, nearly used up by the
flagellations of Old Time, and am now feeling the way with my cane down to
the silent valley. But, yet, I'm happy--'happy as a clam at high water.' I
sleep like a top, but I don't eat as much as I used to. Oh! it is a
blessed thing to lie down at night with a light stomach, and a ligh