dish. Good luck to the experienced and widely-travelled Sir East-and-West Ridgway. Our English Rosebery couldn't have made a better choice.

To a Brewer (by Our Christmas Clown).—"Wish you a Hoppy New Year!"

THE MAN WHO WOULD.

VI.—THE MAN WHO WOULD BE A SOUL.

Lincoln B. Swezey was a high-toned and inquiring American citizen, who came over to study our Institootions. He carried letters to almost everybody; Dukes, Radicals, Authors, eminent British Prize-fighters, Music-hall buffoons, and he prosecuted his examination steadily. He did not say much, and he never was seen to laugh, but he kept a note-book, and he seemed to contemplate in his own mind, The Ideal American, and to try to live up to that standard. When he did speak, it was in the interrogative, and he pastured his intellect on our high-class Magazines.

Lincoln B. discovered many things, and noted them down for his work on Social Dry Rot in Europe, but one matter puzzled him. He read in papers or reviews, and he vaguely heard talk of a secret institution, the Society of Souls. They were going to run a newspaper; they were not going to run a newspaper. There was a poem in connection with them, which mystified Lincoln B. Swezey not a little; he "allowed it was darned personal," but further than that his light did not penetrate. He went to a little Club, of which he was a temporary member; it was not fashionable, and did not seem to want to be, and Swezey thought it flippant. There he asked, "What are the Souls, anyhow?" "Societas omnium animarum," somebody answered, and Swezey exclaimed "Say!" "They are a congregation of ladies. Their statutes decree that they are to be bene natæ, bene vestitæ, and mediocriter,—I don't remember what."

Swezey perceived that he was being trifled with, and turned the conversation to the superior culture and scholarship of American politicians, with some thoughts on canvas-backed ducks.

He next applied to a lady, whom he regarded as at once fashionable and well-informed, and asked her, "Who the Souls were, anyhow?"

"Oh, a horrid, stuck-up set of people," said this Pythoness. "They have passwords, and wear a silver gridiron."

"Why on earth do they do that?" asked Swezey.

"No doubt for some improper, or blasphemous reason. Don't be a Soul—you had better be a Skate. I am a Skate. We wear a silver skate, don't you see" (and she showed him a model of an Acme Skate in silver), "with the motto, Celer et Audax—'Fast and Forward.'"

Swezey expressed his pride at being admitted to these mysteries—but still pursued his inquiries.

"What do the Souls do?"

"All sorts of horrid things. They have a rule that no Soul is ever to speak to anybody who is not a Soul, in society, you know. And they have a rule that no Soul is ever to marry a Soul."

"Exogamy!" said Swezey, and began to puzzle out the probable results and causes of this curious prohibition.

"I don't know what you mean," said the lady, "and I don't know why you are so curious about them. They all read the same books at the same time, and they sacrifice wild asses at the altar of the Hyperborean Apollo, Ibsen, you know."

These particulars were calculated to excite Swezey in the highest degree. He wrote a letter on the subject to the Chanticleer, a newspaper in Troy, Ill., of which he was a correspondent, and it was copied, with zinco-type illustrations, into all the journals of the habitable globe, and came back to England like the fabled boomerang. Meanwhile Swezey was cruising about, in town and country, looking out for persons wearing silver gridirons. He never found any, and the more he inquired, the more puzzled he became. He was informed that a treatise on the subject existed, but neither at the British Museum, nor at any of the newspaper offices, could he obtain an example of this rare work, which people asserted that they had seen and read.

Finally Swezey made the acquaintance of a lady who was rumoured darkly to be learned in the matter. To her he poured forth expressions of his consuming desire to be initiated, and to sacrifice at the shrine.

"There is not any shrine," said his acquaintance.

"Then what in the universe is it all about?"

"Well, I guess I want bad to be a Soul—an honorary one, of course—a temporary member."

"There are conditions," said the Priestess.

"If there's a subscription"——Swezey began.

"There is not any subscription."

"If there's an oath"——

"There is not any oath."

"Well what are the conditions, anyhow?"

"Are you extremely beautiful?"

Among the faults of Swezey, personal vanity was not reckoned. He shook his head sadly, at the same time intimating that he guessed no one would turn round in Broadway to look at the prettiest Englishwoman alive.

Afterwards, he reflected that this was hardly the right thing to have said.

"Are you extremely diverting?"

Swezey admitted that gaiety was not his forte. Still, he pined for information.

"What does the Society do?" he asked.

"There is not any Society."

"Then why do they call themselves Souls?"

"But they don't call themselves anything whatever."

"Then why are they called Souls?"

"Because they——but no! That is the Mystery which cannot be divulged to the profane."

"Then what in the universe is it all about?" asked Swezey; but this was a problem to which no answer was vouchsafed.

Swezey is still going around, and still asking questions. But he has moments of despondency, in which he is inclined to allow that the poor islanders possess, after all, something akin to that boasted inheritance of his native land, the Great American Joke. "Guess they've played it on me," is the burden of his most secret meditations.

THE INFANT'S GUIDE TO KNOWLEDGE.

(Revised to date by Mr. Punch.)

Question. What is an Infant?

Answer. A guileless child who has not yet reached twenty-one years of age.

Q. What is a year?

A. An unknown quantity to a lady after forty. And this reply is distinctly smart.

Q. What is "smartness"?

A. The art of appearing to belong to a good set.

Q. What is a good set?—A. A clique that prefers modes to morality, chic to comfort, and frivolity to family ties.

Q. What is chic?—A. An indefinable something, implying "go," "fast and loose style," "slap-dash."

Q. What is a dinner-party?

A. A large subject, that cannot be disposed of in a paragraph.

Q. What is a subject?—A. Something distinct from Royalty.

Q. Can one be distinct after dinner?—A. Yes,—with difficulty.

Q. What is a difficulty?

A. When of a pecuniary character—the time following the using up of the pecuniary resources