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a wife and a mother-in-law in court, and whose present miseries pale before the thought of another inquisition that awaits him.

"Gentlemen of the jury," cries Buzfuz, in a voice like that of an avenging angel, "I call upon you to take note of the reply the witness has just returned to my question-a reply of which I hesitate to marvel more at its evasion than at its outrageous effrontery. Instead of a simple yes or no to my question, he tells you that his unhappy victim was in a humble position-a poor, perhaps friendless girl."

Really, brother Buzfuz," interposes the judge, "I must stop this line of cross-examination. It is totally irrelevant to the matter before us."

"My Lord, it is essential to my case to show that this man is not worthy of credit. He comes here to-day to resist the just demand of a poor and industrious tradesman, and on the faith of his own words to deny the contract that subsisted between them; but before he leaves that box the jury shall see what credence they will accord to one whose whole life has been a tissue of treachery, evasion, and falsehood. My instructions, my Lord, extend to the period of his school-days, of which I now purpose to ask him some questions."

It is in vain for the Court to declare that the witness need not reply to this, that, and the other. We

all of us know what effect is produced by a man's refusing to answer some home question, the reply to which we ourselves fancy to be the easiest of all imaginable things, so that when the moment has arrived that the counsel can say, You may go down, sir! he says it with a look, voice, and emphasis that seem to consign the unhappy victim to a depth from which he is never more to emerge for the remainder of his life.

Now, if these be sore trials to a man, what are they when a woman is the victim? what are they when the vaguest insinuation swells to the magnitude of an insult, and an imputed possibility becomes a grave outrage?

We boast about liberty-we rant about our house being our castle-and we repeat the Pittite about that sanctuary where "the rain may enter, and the wind enter, but the King cannot enter;" and yet we endure a serfdom ten thousand times more degrading than all the perquisitions of a police, and all the searchings of a gendarmerie.

While I write, I read that a verdict, with one thousand pounds damages, has been obtained against a well-known journal for having employed in a criticism the same expressions of disparagement the Attorney-General had used in court: the lawyer being, it is alleged, privileged, the critic is held a defamer!

THRIFT.

I KNOW of nothing so continuously, so pertinaciously overpraised in this world as thrift; nor do I believe that human selfishness ever took on a mask of more consummate hypocrisy than in this same laudation. When I lecture the labouring man on the merits of economy-when I write my little book to show him how life can be maintained on infinitesimal fragments of food, and that homoeopathy can apply to diet as well as to physic-my secret motive is often this to prevent the same man becoming a burden to me, and a charge to the rates, if sickness should overtake or idleness fall upon him. I tell him how he may eke out life on half rations, because the day might come in which he would address himself to me for a meal.

I know there are numbers who do not so act or think, and who really feel for and compassionate the

poor; but even they are prone to suggest sacrifices not one of which they would be capable of making, and to instil precepts of self-denial of whose cost they have not the faintest idea.

First of all, thrift is not every man's gift. It is as much an idiosyncrasy as a taste for drawing or an ear for music. There are people in the world whom no amount of teaching would enable to draw a pig or play a polka. You might hammer at these till doomsday without success. Whatever be the cerebral development that confers the quality, they are deficient in it. To harangue such men as these on economy, is like arguing with a deaf man to induce him to dance in time, or insisting on the blind observing the laws of perspective. The quality that should supply the gift is not there; like St Cecilia's angel, Ils n'ont pas de quoi.

In this universal appeal, therefore, to thriftiness, we are as unjust as if we were to enjoin that all men should be painters, statuaries, or poets. There are even races in which the gift is a very rare endowment, and the man who possesses it an exceptional being. The whole Celtic family are deficient in thrift. There is a mingled recklessness and hopefulness-a dash of devil-may-care with self-confidence, that renders them wasteful. They are spendthrift partly out of a certain impulsiveness that drives them to attract

notice; partly out of the general kindliness which loves to disseminate pleasure, and partly because they are intensely sensational; and next to the luxury of affluence is the struggle with a positive difficulty. The Irishman is a strong instance of what I mean. To attempt to make him provident is to try to make the Ethiopian change his skin. You are, in fact, about to do something that nature never intendednever, in her most fanciful mood, so much as speculated on.

Thrift sits very ill on certain natures. If a man's whole system of life is not penetrated with the motive, his attempt to be thrifty will be a failurenot impossibly something worse than a failure. Let me give an instance from my own experience.

A good many years ago, when I was better off in worldly wealth and in spirits than it is likely I shall ever be again, a great man, who was gracious enough to take an interest in me, tendered me some very excellent advice on the score of my wasteful and extravagant mode of life. He pointed out to me how I kept too many horses, gave too many dinners, played high points at whist, and in general indulged in habits totally unsuited to any but men of large means. He brought the matter so home to me by a reference to himself and his own expenditure—he being, as I have said, a "Personage "-that I could

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