cents were hurried into a ladies' carriage, and the door locked upon them; but that did not trouble me much. At the very next station we changed trains to get on the "Burnhampton and Exton " line, and then I knew my opportunity would arrive. So I flung myself into an empty first-class, and violated the byelaws by smoking a weed between Durlea and the junction. Soon we steamed into the junction -slamming, whistling, and shunting-and we were mingling together on the platform. Emma blushed deeply as I walked up to her and bowed, and offered my assistance with the luggage. Her two companions were, I daresay, amazed, but as they were going straight on to Torchester, they had not much time for wonderment. Emma and I were soon alone, and, having crossed the line, I managed to secure an empty carriage, so that we might talk undisturbed. Never have I had such a jolly thirty miles ride in a train. Time sped by so swiftly, I could hardly believe it possible we could have reached Bathtown so quickly. I could not tear myself away so soon, so I got a ticket on twenty miles farther to have a little more of Emma's company. She was quite as jolly in reality as I had imagined her. If I did not really seriously pop the question in the train, I said quite enough to make Emma understand my feelings, and I believe, though we are both of us so young, we shall one day get married. This is my last half at school, and then I am going in hard for a doctor. I forgot to say that, of course, I saw my aunt, after all, that day, and they don't know at home yet but what I was with her all the day. I get a letter from Emma twice every week and I get fonder of her every day. OGLEN DOWTY NEW YEAR'S EVE. "TIS New-Year's Eve,--again I sit The night is all but sped, and ere An hour it will have passed to limbo; I stir my fire, tilt up my chair, And sit me with my arms a-kimbo; A year has gone, and I have done Heavier my trials, my pockets lighter- What promises and vows I made That night-my promises are broken, My vows have certes ne'er been paidMy present plight does that betoken; Methinks this year, poor me will leave Much as I was last New-Year's Eve! Older-of course, not wiser though, For cer ain I am none the richerDame Fortune's hard to catch, I know, Do what I will I can't bewitch her. Old Year, I've wasted you! receive I meant to marry darling Kate, I meant my fortune to retrieve, I meant to give up "weeds" and wine THE ODD BOY IN ST. PAUL'S. SEE that I am announced to make sundry observations from the top of St. Paul's and elsewhere. Right you are; but never having ascended the Pauline heights-never having been in the Stone Gallery, the Golden Gallery, much less gone to the Ball, I prefer for the present to stick to Elsewhere. Elsewhere is a geographical country of large extent, bounded on the one side by Probability, if you like, and on another by Possibility, if you choose, with a range of the mountains of Ambition "fore anent (wherever that is), and the whole well watered by the rivers of Imagination. If I write to my uncle or cousin, officers in the Bengal Indefensiblesright big chaps, I can tell you, with lots of "go" in them-at Churucporee or "Elsewhere," the latter address is sure to find them, whether they be for the time stationed at Kingston, Jamaica, or at Knightsbridge Barracks, London. Elsewhere it is grandly comprehensive and beautifully unbounded-it means Here and There and Everywhere: consequently, it is immensely inclusive-if we ain't here or ain't there—well, we are Elsewhere, and that's all about it. But on the present occasion, although I gracefully describe my whereabouts as Elsewhere, I am really in St. Paul's. You may think I am playing with this subject. No such thing. On St. Paul's and in St. Paul's are very different things. Smudge and two fellows-excellent fellows in their way fellows whom it is unnecessary for me to describe more closely than Duffer and Buffer-accompanied me to our Cathedral, and we entered the building. For a moment I stood irresolute as to the etiquette of the structure. Twice had I been snubbed on church-going manners. I had once entered St. Clement Danes on a week day, when no further divine service was going on than painting and glazing, and an official in a voice of thunder had bidden me take off my hat. Shortly after this, I went to a Jewish church in Great St. Helen's, and there, mindful of what had happened at St. Clement's, I took off my hat. "Put on your hat!" roared out a sturdy official. I put it on, and saw that the preachers kept theirs on too. Well, I knew what to do, when I went into St. Paul's, therefore I took my hat half off - just enough on to keep my head out of the draught, just enough off to politely acknowledge the character of the building. It suited me—it suited them : "Dolce cose a verdere e dolci inganni”— which is Italian for "Things sweet to see are sweet, pleasing deceptions." Smudge, Duffer, and Buffer were mad to go up the building-foolish lads! they had already seen London by Night at the Colosseum (a long while ago), in the days of the famous lecturer who is always going away, and is Back oftener! That's a joke. Solemnly I observe to the youths, Que supra nos nihil ad nos, signifying thereby in the Latin tongue that the things which are above us are nothing to us; but they would not have it. Smudge said, "Booh!" Duffer snorted, and Buffer grinned. Those boys were bent on going up the ladder; they were impatient of delay-Quam maxima possunt celeritate. It were vain to tell them all I felt. My bellows, which are not the best, suggested stopping down below; and down below I stopped, and with silent tread walked the cathedral Filled with mementoes, satiate with its part I tried to stop them-to talk to them Ruskinified about the dome-doom,—which do you call it ?-being a legacy of Byzantine art dating from the temple palace of the Kremlin, reproduced in the Alhambra of Granada, seen in the mosque of Bozrah, and echoed all the way from Santa Sophia to St. Peter's. They paid no heed to me at all, but they chinked their money, anxious to pay coppers to the man in the gown that they might rattle and scramble up to the top; and, as I observed, copying a joke from somebody else, but which was quite as good as new to them, sit upon the cross and bawl! "Much you know about it," said they. "I know everything about it," said I. "What is the length of the nave ?" said they, checking me off from an old gnidebook. about him, which everybody quotes. Here, over Sir Ralph Abercrombie, Britannia sheds £6,300, and she drops another tear of the same extent over Nelson. Well, it is pleasing to know that when men have been dreadfully "The knave is generally under six feet," knocked about all their lives, working hard said I. for the nation, aud getting a precious sight more kicks than ha'pence, there is a chance of their being given a stone after they're dead of being caricatured in stone, and misrepresented to posterity. I had the chance once You don't believe it: well, then, stop and listen. I had the honour-that's the phrase -of once knowing one of the small pieces of artillery. Yes: I mean minor canons, of course. That's a joke. He and I were intimate. I did not mind associating with the fellow. I don't like class distinction-except on the railway, when I am going first-and I would forget his cloth in the atmosphere of sociability. I feel ill; I over-exerted myself in public duty. Yes, you are right in saying that is my great failing. I work much too hard; and my conviction is, the more you do the less you get for it, either in credit or ready money. That's another joke-sly, like. Yah-how slow you are! But to return to our muttons. When my friend again-after I had recovered he stood aghast'Not dead?" says he. "Not dead yet," says I. "Well, I am sorry," says he. "Don't take on," says I. 66 But I surveyed the glorious building, and criticised the pictures in the dome, or doom, which, of course, I could not see. I began to reflect, but stopped short-I am not tall at any time, never was-by the recollection that Bishop Berkeley-Bark/ay-had reflected already, and that my intention might be mistaken. Miserum est aliorum incumbere famæ. It is a wretched thing to live on the fame of others. And narrow are the views of men, were I to compare yon fly-there was no fly there, but plenty of cabs outside-to a freethinker. Hey presto! I should be plagiarising | he, "I would have stamped you in immortal from the bishop. No, I will look at the monuments. There is £4,250 of grief shed for Captain Westcott, and scooped up by Banks; there is a stony tear, worth £6,300, dropped by Britannia over Rodney; and another tear, just of half the value, that trickled down Britannia's nose for Picton. Here is a tear for Dictionary Johnson, value £1,575; here is one for Howe, worth £6,300; one for Collingwood, worth £4,200; another, to the same tune, to Sir John Moore of course we all know about him and Corunua, because somebody wrote some rhymes "I had hoped," says he, "to have buried you decent." "What do you mean ?" says I. "If you had made a die of it now," says monumental stone within yon sacred fane." This was his way of alluding to St. Paul's. "Bless you," says I, with tears of gratitude or something standing in my eyes; bless you"-and I pressed his hand-" it would give me satisfaction to bury you at any time." Of course I was thinking about this as I gazed at the effigies around me, and saw in imagination your Odd Boy a grinning through a shrouded horse-collar in a monumental sculpture. Saint Paul's! Do all the dwellers in Chamouny go up shops, busy; there's the warehouses; there's Mount Blanc ? No; I opine they leave that to strangers. Smudge, Duffer, and Buffer, were ascending the height. I recognised them cheerfully in the Whispering Gallery, where I knew, or at least suspected, a door would be banged for their special edification. Saint Paul's. I have seen the charity children, all the parochial schools of London, come trooping in, year after year, and singing the Old Hundredth, as if it was done to give the newsboys-I mean the reporters-the chance of telling us what the great somebody said of it; and how George III. hit a page of honour on the head with a roll of music for misbehaving. I have seen all the pother got up about the sons of the clergy; as if daughters counted for nothing, dash it: place aux dames, the girls ought to have the best of it. I have seen fussy judges, in gowns and wigs, going to hear a sermon in the big church. I have been to church there myself ever so many times; I have canght the toothache there, and the earache, and the faceache, and cold in the eye, and cold in the other eye, and neuralgia-directly it came up, and rheumatics-before it did, in the chapel. Bother, I have been a martyr to St. Paul's, which of course accounts for my judicious adjustment of chapeaur. Why, I have heard a bishop deliver a charge there, and tell all the diocese that White was not black, And black was not white; And night was not day, And day was not night; spinning it out for ever so long. "What has the bishop been talking about?" says one cove Doctors' Commons, with white-apron dragons waiting to pounce on you, and get you married by licence out of hand. Once I attended a very intimate friend of mine into the secret penetralia of the Commons; yea, I faced the dispenser of licences. Said my intimate friend, "How soon can I use this licence ?” 'To-morrow, sir, if you please. Give notice to-night, and he" (meaning the clergyman) 'dare not refuse!" Easy to get into it! how long would it take to get out of it? Ah, I have known Dr. Scommons for a long time. Yes, very likely you have heard that before: I have. I look about me. I see the Bone-house; and remember how I was party to the boning a skull on one occasion. An artist wanted it. We took it. I bore it—like a basin in which I might have carried my dinner-tied up in a blue and white pocket-handkerchief. I look about me, and wonder how the St. Paul's boys see to play in the dark cage assigned to them. I don't believe Dean Colet ever intended them to have such sport. When he was alive he used to whip them soundly— have them birched, as Erasmus tells us (how learned I am !), while he munched pippins; but I am sure he never would have been so cruel as to shut them up there. Yah-I won't hear of it. Back into the Cathedral, and Smudge, ! Duffer, and Buffer are waiting for me-tired, hot, dusty, cleaned out. Well, what did you see ?" I remain, THE ODD COY. |