are generally payments on account—on very
small account—of the sums due to individuals
or to government. I think if I had ten
thousand a-year, and a great many shares in a
great many mines and railways, all purchased
at a considerable discount, and all quoted,
now, at a considerable premium; if I had a
large house and many servants, and my
aunt in Somersetshire had disinherited my
disreputable brother Bob in my favour; if
my brother Ned's children (he failed poor
fellow shortly after I retired from the firm)
were in a charity school, and Ned's widow
(her dowry started us in business) taking in
needle-work,—if my last little ventures in
slaves in Cuba, and Brummagem guns in
Caffraria, and bowie-knives in Arkansas, and
rum and brandy on the Guinea coast had all
been very successful,—I think, now and then,
when I had begun to think that I was getting
old, and that I had been a hard man, or that
I had the gout, or a fit of indigestion, or the
blues,—that I could send the halves of a few
notes to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as
conscience-money:—reading the announcement
of the enclosure in the next morning's
Times would help down my tea and toast
a little. I think, too, that I should like to
see my name in a few subscribers' lists,
and committee lists, and stewards for public
dinner lists.

Where are the people who advertise
children's cauls for sale? And where, more
difficult to find still, are the people who buy
them—ay, and give ten guineas for them?
It has occurred to me sometimes, wandering
through London, to lose my way, and in some
unknown street in some little known
neighbourhood to come suddenly upon a dingy
shop, in the window of which was the
announcement: "A child's caul to be sold here."
But I never had courage to enter. I never
had courage to ask to inspect the weird
article, possessing, according to popular
superstition, more occultly nautical powers than
the famed egg-shells in which, unless broken
by the cautious egg-spoon at the morning
breakfast-table, the unholy witches sail about
in yachting expeditions on their hideous
sabbath. I had never the courage to wait
till the unknown customer with the ten
guineas arrived. He does arrive, I believe,
to this day; but where he is I know not,
neither where are the cauls or the children
that are born with them. The places where
they are on sale are to be sure published in
the advertisement, but don't believe that the
original proprietors of the cauls come from
or live there. The only place where I could
imagine a child's caul to be indigenous, would
be at a herbalist's, than which, with the
solitary exception of a ladies' second-hand
warehouse, I do not know a more mysterious
and cloudy establishment.

There are two classes of people who, though
their whereabouts is wrapped in much
mystery I am not very curious about. These are
the writers of the cypher or puzzle advertisements,commencing somewhat in this style—:

"Fxm5obtlmztyivk6oZithhho8tmqgllpTT55gglol
Yi9."

And secondly, the monoverbal advertisers:
—the Pickackifaxes, Boot-jacks, No hearthrug,
How about X? and gentlemen of
that style of literature. I don't think that
much good would result to us or to anybody
if we knew where those worthies were.
Besides, they, and the makers of appointments,
and the sayers of soft sayings and the
talkers of drivelling nonsense in a newspaper,
with forty thousand subscribers and goodness
knows how many million readers, enter into
the category I mean to descant upon some of
these days when I ask, Where are the
Ninnies?

Where are all the "perpetual
commissioners for witnessing the deeds to be
executed by married women?" The Lord
Chancellor is perpetually appointing them;
they have all curious names and
addresses; but where are they? I never saw
a perpetual commissioner; I never knew a
married woman who was doomed to go
through the awful ordeal of executing a deed
and having it witnessed by one of these dread
beings. Are they perpetually sitting, these
commissioners? Do they never leave off
witnessing the deeds I never saw? There is
one Hugh Harmer Hollowpenny, dwelling
at Bettwys-y-boyd, in Wales. Fancy a
commissioner having to sit perpetually at
Bettwys-y-boyd, to witness the execution of the
deeds never, under any circumstances whatever,
executed by the married women of that
ilk!

Where are three-fourths of the barristers
who are called to the bar? Do they practise,
do they earn anything, does anybody ever
see anything of them?

The gentlemen who have commissions
signed by the Lord-Lieutenant, where are
they? Where is the Court of Lieutenancy of
London, and who belongs to it? I have seen
a deputy-lieutenant at a levée, but I want to
know where he is when he is at home; what
he is lieutenant over, and why, and all about it?

I don't care where the dissolute Initials are.
My private opinion is, that if they are foolish
enough to run away from home, their parents
are well rid of them. I have a little curiosity
to know where the people are who are to call
in Bedford Row or Southampton Buildings,
or Lincoln's Inn, in order that they may hear
something to their advantage. I wonder what
it is! My curiosity is checked by the
knowledge that it will not be by any means to my
advantage to find out; yet I can't give up reading
this portion of the Times every morning,
lest there should be by chance a stray notice
hinting that a call of mine somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the inns of court would be
advantageous to me, or that there are