comes upon the little household, her friends will be called into council. Some will recommend a retired life in a distant suburb, where it is currently reported that £250 a year may be made to play the part of £2,000 in the heart of May Fair. Others will hint that governesses have been known, after years of painful labour, to lay by a sufficiency for a short old age; others, again, will dive into the storehouse of their reminiscences, in order to produce for inspection the well-known example of a colonel and his wife, who defied both the fates and the rheumatism in the modest pension of a Continental watering-place. All these suggestions, however, are eventually put aside in favour of the advice that a shop should be started, a nom de commerce adopted, and a circle of friendly customers be acquired by discreet advertisement. After these matters have been decided, but not till then, it becomes necessary to determine to what special branch the talents of the prospective Shopkeeper are to be devoted. At last even this is accomplished, and in a few months more the world of fashion may learn by private circular or public paragraph, that a new competitor for its favours has been launched into commercial activity under a sweetly symbolical name.

After this everything depends upon the Lady herself. At first everything will go swimmingly. Friends will rally round her, and she may perhaps discover with a touching surprise that the staunchest and truest are those of whom, in her days of brilliant prosperity, she thought the least. But a succès d'estime is soon exhausted. Unless she conducts her business on purely business lines, delivers her goods when they are wanted, and, for her own protection, sends in her accounts as they fall due, and looks carefully after their payment, her customers and her profits will fall away. But if she attends strictly to business herself, or engages a good business woman to assist her, and orders her affairs in accordance with the dictates of a proper self-interest, she is almost certain to do well, and to reap the reward of those who face the world without flinching, and fight the battle of life sturdily and with an honest purpose. Some painful moments may fall to her lot. It may be that in a crowded assemblage of wealth and fashion she may see one of her masterpieces in the dress-making art, torn into shreds under the clumsy heel of a Cabinet Minister, or a Duchess may speak unkindly in her hearing of her latest devices in floral decoration. Or, some brainless nincompoop may, in his ignorance of her profession, cast aspersions on the general character and behaviour of all who keep shops. And it may be that friends, after a prolonged period of non-payment, will desert her, and speak ill of her business. But she will be able to console herself for those and similar bitternesses by the knowledge that on the whole the world honours those who battle against ill-fortune without complaint far above the needy crowd of spongers who strive to batten without effort on the crumbs that fall from the tables of the rich.

ROBERT ON THE HEMPERER'S VISIT TO THE CITY.

Well, we are jest a going for to have a fine time of it in the old Citty, we are! On the werry tenth of next month, which this year happens for to be Jewly, we are a going for to receive to Lunshon, quite in a frendly way, the Hemperer and the Hempress of all GERMANY, not forgitting Hellygoland which we so kindly guv 'em larst year, and, in addishun, about twenty other princes and princesses from differing forren parts, as has all agreed for to cum at the same time to do 'em honour, and as if that wasn't quite enuff for one day, the noble Prince of WHALES, and the butiful Princess of WHALES, and all the Royal Family, will be werry much "hall there" for to receeve 'em and shew 'em praps the luvlyest site in Urope, wiz., the butiful Gildhall made into a bower of roses, and covered with reel dammarsk tablecloths from top to bottom, and them all covered with such a fairy-like Lunshon as makes my pore old mouth water ony jest to think upon! There's one thing as I'm afraid as His Himperial Madjesty will be werry angry at, and that is, as they ain't a going for to make him free of the Citty, which is one of them grate honners as all the celibryties of the World pines for. BROWN says it ain't commy fo, as the French says, but BROWN don't know everythink, tho' he is a trying his werry best to learn a few German words in case the Hemperer asks him for sumthink to eat, such as a little sour krowt. The best of the fun is that he acshally spells sour, sauer! I ain't not a pertickler good speller myself, but I reely shoud be artily ashamed of sich a blunder as that.

The pore Committee, as has to see to hewerythink, begins for to look jest a little pail and worryed—and who can wunder at it, for I'm told as they is amost torn to peaces with applications for Tickets, tho they ony has two a-peace for their friends, and won't have one for theirselves, but will have to walk about all the time of the Lunch, with their long sticks of office, to see as ewerybody xcept theirselves is nice and cumferal, and got plenty to eat and drink. And, torking of drink, jest reminds me of the tasting Committee, pore fellers! who has got for to go to all the werry best Wine sellers in the Citty, to taste all their werry best wines, and decide which, of every kind and description, they shall select for their himperial royal gests. Why it's amost enuff to give 'em all hedakes for the rest of their nateral lives.

I don't know of any further arrangements as is quite finally settled, so praps I may have jest a few lines to add nex week.

ROBERT.

QUEER QUERIES.—A FIRST READING.—Would some person kindly inform me of a good Recitation for a Smoking Concert? I have been asked to recite "something telling" after the annual banquet of a Club of local Licensed Victuallers. I am thinking of the First Book of Paradise Lost. Or would parts of The Excursion be more likely to create a furore? I have never recited in public before, and feel rather doubtful of my ability to "hold" the Victuallers.—WILLING TO OBLIGE.

GENTLE SATIRE.

"I SAY, BILL, LOOK 'ERE! 'ERE'S A OLD COVE OUT RECORD-BREAKING!"

"THE DILEMMA."

(An old Irish Story newly applied.)

["On which horn of the dilemma will the Gladstonians elect to stand?"—Mr. Chamberlain, in his controversy with Sir W. Harcourt on the place of Home Rule in the Gladstonian programme.]

Faithful Unionist Sentry, loquitur:—