beer, and tea, and sugar, in a great gloomy
shop lit by two wretched candles. The only
beer-shop overflows with disappointed
customers, and the wild howl of Irish singers.
Hundreds are encamped at the cross-road.
Here is a double row of huts, built expressly
for the hoppers, each about ten feet square,
with a shelving roof, where half-a-dozen men,
women, and girls sleep together upon straw,
and have a fire. There are bread stalls, and
stalls of herrings in brine, and stalls of such
pastry as I never beheld before. One of the
huts is open on one side, and converted into
a shop or stall, where you may buy bread,
and candles, and such small quantities of tea
and sugar, all ready done up in paper, as
never were sold at any other time or place.
This is the private speculation of Mr. Bleary,
who is encouraged by the great hop-growers
to sell provisions here at this time ; they
having a good opinion of his mode of doing
business.

Mr. Bleary is said to be a man of property,
and I am introduced to him. He is a very
stout Irishman, with a moist eye, and a treble
chin lapping over a white cravat, and has
a chronic cold in the head: calls himself
"Purvey-her in gin'ral to the strangers in
Farrerleigh;" and is neither drunk, nor the
worse for liquor, but what Frenchmen in
common parlance call "ému." He is very
glad to see me, and "how are you?" — bids me
follow him into his hut, or shop; and describes
an arbitrary division of its only room into
kitchen, parlour, and bed-room. " The
furrerniture isn't all come down yet; but no
matter." Mr. Bleary is full of anecdotes, with
wrathful parentheses of " disorderly doins,
and shemful robbin' of poor creeturs " by his
predecessors in the " purveyhership." But,
coming forth and seeing his lines of customers,
all sitting at long tables, drinking soup in the
light of the moon, the poetry of his whole
being overflows:

"Look at me happy children! All livin'
in harrermony one with another: all drinkin'
soup and bread, and discoorsin' together, like
ladies and gentlemen, about politics and the
late Juke o' Willinton. Look at me happy
children! You remimber how it used to be,
Misther Day? How they used to fight like
so many wolves, and lie about the ground
like a flock o' pigs. Therer's soup for a
halfpenny a basin! Taste it. Here I stand in
defiance of all docthors. Let 'em all come
down to East Farrerleigh and examine it.
Oh, the days before I came down here! I
remimber 'em well. What shindies! There
usen't to be never a sound head, nor a sound
winder in all East Farrerleigh parish. And
only look at 'em now. Ask 'em thimselves
if they don't feel morer like Christians, and a
little morer happy-minded."

And thus Mr. Bleary continues till he bids
me good night; and then calls me back
again, and puzzles me by asking, "What I
might guess, now, to be the greatist number
o' sack o' potairtoes he ever sold in one
night '? " but immediately removes my difficulty
by mentioning that twenty-six was the
number.

Good night, Mr. Bleary! My road lies
Maidstone way, beside the river shining in
the full moon: and I would, for your sake, I
had started an hour earlier. Then should I
not have been compelled to tell how wild
disorder broke out in that happy family, that
night; how sticks and stockings loaded with
Mr. Bleary's stones were flourished, and
heads and windows broken, just as in the
days of old. How drunken hoppers sprawled
about as if you had never come to East
Farleigh, and had never sold sugar there, nor
soup; and how your mild paternal
admonitions were laughed to scorn.

A GUN AMONG THE GROUSE.

TOWARDS the end of this last August, when
London had been already cupped of a large
portion of its blood, I myself, a globule of the
blood of London, felt myself under the
influence of the great sucking power, and was
drawn out to fill up a vacuum among the
moors;— not the Moors where Othello was,
but the moors where Glenfern is, and whence
John Earl of Groats had sent word to me, in
London, that there was a vacancy for one
more sportsman at Glenfern, and that the
grouse were looking out for me.

I packed up my guns, therefore, and made
a parcel of alpaca coats and hob-nailed boots,
with a few other etceteras; and, as I like to
travel cheaply, went down to St. Katharine's
Wharf, to start by a Scotch steamer northward.
My man Friday objected to my plan;
I know he despised it, as being economical;
all servants despise economy. I had suspicion,
also, as he was a German, that he could not
stomach a tumble on the waves. I consoled
him, therefore, by giving him to understand
that we were warranted to go to Edinburgh
in forty-two hours; and we went down to
St. Katharine's Dock, from which the boat
was advertised to start at seven P.M. precisely.
It was five then, and I had not dined; but
that was of no importance, since of course it
would be possible to dine on board. After
boarding the steamer, my first care was to go
down and reconnoitre the pantry: there I saw
a round of beef, a ham with the prettiest pink
blush, and scores of bottles of XX. I felt
that all was safe, and went on deck again to
enjoy the bustle for a bit, and eat my dinner
for a little while in expectation. When you
are hungry, it is a luxury to feel that you can
have a slice of good beef laid before you at a
moment's notice — you have only to speak.
In such a case, you delay speaking, as you
delay breaking the seal of a letter that contains
delightful matter. Presently there comes,
however, a time when you say,  â€œNow I must
go into it!"  My hunger having reached that
point, I made a hasty descent into the pantry,