room—as exactly as if they had been the same
articles painted on both sides, and fitted into a
couple of apertures. Indeed, as they were
painted on wood, and therefore returned a
ligneous sound to inquiring knuckles, this might
actually been the case for all Mr. Solomon
Gunn knew to the contrary.

The connoisseur of art is in the habit of walking
round sculptured works, and contemplating
them from various points of view, but few minds
are prepared to find that a painted portrait has a
back as well as a front. The antagonistic notions of
flatness and solidity jarred together disagreeably
in Solomon Gunn's mind, and caused it to fall
into a morbid state of credulity, such as we feel
in dreams. If the world ever contained a military
hero and a civilian who insisted on having
their backs and their pig-tails copied, by way of
completion to the portraiture of their faces, what
might it not contain?

Had the waiter been more communicative,
perhaps some light might have been thrown on the
extraordinary whim of the two venerable gentlemen,
but, as it happened, the waiter was a taciturn,
cadaverous-looking little man, who seemed
always in a fidget to perform his duties as quickly
as possible, and bustle out of the room.

"Very odd, those pictures!" Solomon Gunn
contrived to ejaculate.

"Werry odd, werry odd, indeed; in short, it's
an odd world altogether, as well I knows to my
cost," was the only response.

Chimney ornaments, when composed of fragile
materials, are always among the first victims of
mischance, and if endowed with consciousness,
would look forward to a general dusting as some
South American people anticipate periodical
earthquakes. The fact, therefore, that all the
shepherds, shepherdesses, and Cupids that
enlivened the mantelpiece of the sitting-room had
lost their heads, was scarcely worthy of a passing
observation. Still, Solomon Gunn's surprise
was natural, when on the mantelpiece of the
bed-chamber he found all the detached heads
carefully placed on little velvet-covered stands,
and shielded from dust by glass receivers, whereas
the truncated carcases were exposed to the effect
of every simoom that the house-broom might
engender.

"Curious, those images!" said Solomon Gunn
to the waiter.

"Werry cur'ous, werry cur'ous, indeed! In
short , it's a cur'ous world altogether, as well I
knows to my cost," was still the answer.

The waiter was hopeless; he had evidently
been trained to a theory that the universe is a
system of incongruities, all equally inexplicable,
and, therefore, in perfect harmony with each
other.

Perhaps, of all the animals that are kept for
the recreation of mankind, the gold-fish is, after
the first glance, the least interesting. That a
well-stocked globe looks pretty in a luxuriously
furniished apartment, is not to be denied; but such
a globe offered as a sole object of contemplation,
is the reverse of exciting. It was rather with a
gloomy listlessness, therefore, that Solomon Gunn
hung over the very large globe of gold-fish that
was placed in one of the corners of his sitting-
room: though, indeed, those fish were, curious
beyond the average, being marked with a
combination of red, yellow, and black, which in a cat
would have been called tortoiseshell.

It was not till Solomon Gunn was in bed, that
the gold-fish began to make any impression on
his mind. He was very restless, sometimes
fancying that he was sitting with his back to a
sign-painter, who was taking his likeness;
sometimes imagining that his body was in a first-class
railway-carriage, while his head was in the
luggage-van; and when he woke from the sort of
doze that produced these vanities, his eye glanced
at the pattern of his bed-curtain, which was
faintly illuminated by a rushlight. Singular! the
pattern was composed of fish, coloured exactly
in the same manner as those that peopled the
globe in the sitting-room.

This fact was so remarkable, that Solomon
Gunn got out of bed, and stepped into the
sitting-room to ascertain, by renewed observation,
whether the real and the mimic fish were really
semblances of each other, or whether his memory
had been treacherous. No—his memory had been
faithful. The gaslight outside, which shone
powerfully into the room, showed him that the
fish on the curtain veritably corresponded to
those in the globe.

There was something frightful in this series of
inconsistent consistencies. We can scarcely
describe the feeling with which he walked up to
one of the windows of the sitting-room, and
looked into the main street, as if anxious to ascertain
whether or not he belonged to the ordinary
every-day world of shops and thoroughfares.

The clock of the nearest church was booming
one, the shops were all shut, and the pavement
was trod by a single person—a child of about
three years old, who, with the greatest gravity,
was drawing a little cart. A respectably dressed
child too, that seemed perfectly satisfied with its
occupation. This was a strange phenomenon at
one o'clock in the morning.

Whilst the eyes of Solomon Gunn were riveted
on this lonely child, he heard the tramp of an
approaching policeman. The functionary of justice
soon appeared, preceded by the radiating light of
his official bull's-eye. He was on the same side
of the way as the child, whom, of course, he would
accost, and probably take to the station-house,
as a place—not of harsh confinement, but of
hospitable refuge. No, he did nothing of the kind;
he passed the child, without so much as a
moment's pause, and continued his walk till he was
lost in the distance. To suppose that he did not
see the urchin, would be to suppose an impossibility,
for it moved along the middle of the pavement,
and the gas shone strongly upon it.

Presently Solomon Gunn heard the sound of
wheels, and in a few moments an empty four-
wheeled cab stopped at the edge of the pavement,