little sheet of six columns; we have aspired to eight, but it was under very favourable circumstances these six columns containing the intelligence most desired in Ceylon, a brief summary of political news, a fuller digest of colonial matters or deliberations affecting the colonial interest generally, commercial items, particularly the prices of coffee, sugar, and cinnamon in the home market, and the extent of the sales effected, together with a list of the ships which had arrived in England from the island and those which had sailed for Ceylon. These, with an odd scrap of Indian news here and there, put in to fill up a corner or complete a column, and intended originally for our next regular issue of the Herald, complete the Extraordinary, which Mr. Fonseca distributes by messengers over Colombo, and by the post throughout the island. "Run over to the Observer office," shouts out Mr. Perez to one of his devils," and see whether his Extraordinary is out, and what time he got done, if he is out.' Away goes the boy, his ink-bespattered appearance telling of the printing-office in unmistakeable terms, and gets the desired information readily and truly,

for courtesy prevails in both offices, and an emissary from either is well received in the camp of the enemy. The subordinates know that the editors shake hands when they meet -nay, that they dine with each other sometimes-and they, therefore, regard it as their duty to emulate this fraternal feeling.

The extra duty imposed upon the editor, however, by the arrival of the English mail did not end here. Leading articles were to be written on colonial topics of interest-speculations were to be indulged in of good or evil fortune, and hopes raised or warnings. reiterated in consequence. Files of papers were to be searched for articles referred to in the Monthly Times, which merely gleaned the chief items of news for us, and directed us to the rest. Columns of the London daily papers were to be run carefully over with the fingers, pencil in hand, to extract a few lines from some debate, relative to Ceylon-how Mr. Stick had laid a petition from the coffeeplanters upon the table of the house, and had then resumed his seat-how Mr. Stick had said nothing, or, if he did, how, what he said was inaudible in the reporters' gallery. Such

a notice served for the foundation of an indignant comment, as to the way in which colonial affairs were neglected by the British parliament a comment palatable to men, with irritated feelings, who had lost their fortunes in an artificial undertaking, fostered by one set of legal enactments, and overthrown by another.

Nor was the period of the departure of the English mail less bustling and noisy in our little office; we, too, had our Overland Summary to dispatch to subscribers in England, containing the editorials which we most prized -the local items considered of most importance-the commercial, the domestic, and the shipping news. A busy and a bustling time that in which this Summary was "got out;" for whilst, on the one hand, we did not wish "to go to press" a moment too soon, we must not, on the other, run a risk of losing the mail. This Summary was, for the most part, ordered by English residents in the island to be sent to their European friends—some minute-typed domestic occurrence or shipping announcement, intended to catch the eye of friends and relations left behind in the loved

home"-a few lines, to the rest of the world nothing, to the little circle for which they were intended of the utmost interest and importance. Not a paper published anywhere but contains many such notices, brief records of the joys and sorrows of a few, unheeded or unread by the many!

CHAPTER II.

THE EDITOR'S HOLIDAY.

My previous residence in the jungle had made me passionately fond of jungle sports. The chase of the elephant, the leopard, the elk, and the deer, were physical excitements craved earnestly for, amidst the mental wear and tear of editorial life; nor was I altogether excluded from such.

At the time of which I write, Captain Lister, of the Ceylon Rifles, was one of the finest sportsmen in the island; and having made acquaintance, nay, contracted a friendship with him, during my residence in the forest, I maintained that acquaintanceship and friendship uninterrupted during the period of my