he paper Mr. Pen did not take any share;
but he was a most active literary contributor. The Pall Mall Gazette had
its offices, as we have heard, in Catherine Street, in the Strand, and
hither Pen often came with his manuscripts in his pocket, and with a
great deal of bustle and pleasure; such as a man feels at the outset
of his literary career, when to see himself in print is still a novel
sensation, and he yet pleases himself to think that his writings are
creating some noise in the world.

Here it was that Mr. Jack Finucane, the sub-editor, compiled with paste
and scissors the Journal of which he was supervisor. With an eagle eye
he scanned all the paragraphs of all the newspapers which had anything
to do with the world of fashion over which he presided. He didn't let a
death or a dinner-party of the aristocracy pass without having the event
recorded in the columns of his Journal; and from the most recondite
provincial prints, and distant Scotch and Irish newspapers, he fished
out astonishing paragraphs and intelligence regarding the upper classes
of society. It was a grand, nay, a touching sight, for a philosopher, to
see Jack Finucane, Esquire, with a plate of meat from the cookshop and
glass of porter from the public-house, for his meal, recounting the
feasts of the great as if h had been present at them; and in tattered
trousers and dingy shirt-sleeves, cheerfully describing and arranging
the most brilliant fetes of the world of fashion. The incongruity of
Finucane's avocation, and his manners and appearance amused his new
friend Pen. Since he left his own native village, where his rank
probably was not very, lofty Jack had seldom seen any society but such
as used the parlour of the taverns which he frequented, whereas from his
writing you would have supposed that he dined with ambassadors, and that
his common lounge was the bow-window of White's. Errors of description,
it is true, occasionally slipped from his pen; but the Ballinafad
Sentinel, of which he was own correspondent, suffered by these, not the
Pall Mall Gazette, in which Jack was not permitted to write much, his
London chiefs thinking that the scissors and the paste were better
wielded by him than the pen.

Pen took a great deal of pains with the writing of his reviews, and
having a pretty fair share of desultory reading, acquired in the early
years of his life an eager fancy and a keen sense of fun, his articles
pleased his chief and the public, and