1st of May. My flue on fire. Not a sweep to be had for love or money!-Lucky enough for me-the parish engine soon arrived, with all the charity school. Boys are fond of playing-and indulged their propensity by playing into my best drawing-room. Every friend I had dropped in to dinner. Nothing but Lacedemonian black broth. Others have pot-luck, but I have not even pint-luck-at least of the right sort.

8th. Found, on getting up, that the kitchen garden had been stripped by thieves, but had the luck at night to catch some one in the garden, by walking into my own trap. Afraid to call out, for fear of being shot at by the gardener, who would have hit me to a dead certainty-for such is my luck!

10th. Agricultural distress is a treat to mine. My old friend Bill -I must henceforth call him Corn-bill-has, this morning, laid his unfeeling wooden leg on my

tenderest toe, like a thresher. In spite of Dibdin, I don't believe that oak has any heart: or it would not be such a walking tread-mill!

12th. Two pieces of "my usual." First knocked down by a mad bull. Secondly, picked up by a pick-pocket. Any body but me would have found one honest humane man out of a whole crowd; but I am born to suffer, whether done by accident or done by design. Luckily for me and the pickpocket, I was able to identify him, bound over to prosecute, and had the satisfaction of exporting him to Botany bay. I suppose I performed well in a court of

A CORNISH MAN.

justice, for the next day-" Encore un coup !"-I had a summons to serve with a Middlesex jury, at the Old Bailey, for a fortnight.

14th. My number in the lottery has come up a capital prize. Luck at last-if I had not lost the ticket.

A TRUE STORY.

WHOE'ER has seen upon the human face
The yellow jaundice and the jaundice black,
May form a notion of old Colonel Case
With nigger Pompey waiting at his back.

Case, as the case is, many time with folks
From hot Bengal, Calcutta, or Bombay,
Had tint his tint as Scottish tongues would say
And show'd two cheeks as yellow as eggs' yolks.
Pompey, the chip of some old ebon block,
In hue was like his master's stiff cravat,
And might indeed have claimed akin to that,
Coming, as he did, of an old black stock.

Case wore the liver's livery that such
Must wear, their past excesses to denote,
Like Greenwich pensioners that take too much,
And then do penance in a yellow coat.
Pompey's, a deep and permanent jet dye,
A stain of nature's staining-one of those
We call fast colours-merely, I suppose,
Because such colours never go or fly.

Pray mark this difference of dark and sallow, Pompey's black husk, and the old Colonel's yellow

The Colonel, once a pennyless beginner,
From a long Indian rubber rose a winner,
With plenty of pagodas in his pocket,

And homeward turning his Hibernian thought,
Deem'd Wicklow was the very place that ought
To harbour one whose wick was in the socket.

Unhappily for Case's scheme of quiet,
Wicklow just then was in a pretty riot,
A fact recorded in each day's diurnals,
Things, Case was not accustomed to peruse,
Careless of news ;

But Pompey always read these bloody journals,
Full of Killmany and of Killmore work,
The freaks of some O'Shaunessy's shillaly,

Of morning frays by some O'Brien Burke,
Or horrid nightly outrage by some Daly;
How scums deserving of the Devil's ladle,
Would fall upon the harmless scull and knock it,
And if he found an infant in the cradle

Stern Rock would hardly hesitate to rock it ;

In fact, he read of burner and of killer,

And Irish ravages, day after day,

Till, haunting in his dreams, he used to say,
That "Pompey could not sleep on Pompey's Pillar."

Judge then the horror of the nigger's face

To find with such impressions of that dire land-
That Case, his master,-was a packing case
For Ireland!

He saw in fearful reveries arise,
Phantasmagorias of those dreadful men
Whose fame associate with Irish plots is,
Fitzgeralds-Tones-O'Connors-Hares-and then
"Those Emmets," not so "little in his eyes"
As Doctor Watts's!

He felt himself piked, roasted,-carv'd and hack'd,
His big black burly body seemed in fact
A pincushion for Terror's pins and needles,-
Oh, how he wish'd himself beneath the sun
Of Afric-or in far Barbadoes-one
Of Bishop Coleridge's new black beadles.

Full of this fright,

With broken peace and broken English choking,
As black as any raven and as croaking,
Pompey rushed in upon his master's sight,
Plump'd on his knees, and clasp'd his sable digits,
Thus stirring Curiosity's sharp fidgets-

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"O Massa!-Massa!-Colonel!-Massa Case.-
Not go to Ireland!-Ireland dam bad place;
Dem take our bloods-dem Irish-every drop-
Oh why for Massa go so far a distance

To have him life?' -Here Pompey made a stop,
Putting an awful period to existence.

"Not go to Ireland-not to Ireland, fellow,

And murder'd-why should I be murder'd, Sirrah?"
Cried Case, with anger's tinge upon his yellow,-

Pompey, for answer, pointing in a mirror
The Colonel's saffron, and his own japan,-

"Well, what has that to do-quick-speak outright, boy?" "O Massa"-(so the explanation ran)

'Massa be killed-'cause Massa Orange Man,

And Pompey killed-'cause Pompey not a White Boy!"

To mention only by name the sorrows of an Undertaker, will be likely to raise a smile on most faces,-the mere words suggest a solemn stalking parody of grief to the satiric fancy;-but give a fair hearing to my woes, and even the veriest mocker may learn to pity an Undertaker who has been unfortunate in all his undertakings.

My Father, a Furnisher and Performer in the funeral line, used to say of me,-noticing some boyish levities-that "I should never do for an Undertaker." But the prediction was wrong-my Parent lied, and I did for him in the way of business. Having no other alternative, I took possession of a very fair stock and business. I felt at first as if plunged in the Black Sea-and when I read my name upon the shop door, it threw a crape over my spirits, that I did not get rid of for some months.

Then came the cares of business. The scandalous insinuated that the funerals were not so decorously performed as in the time of the Late. I discharged my mutes, who were grown fat and jocular, and sought about for the lean and lank visaged kind. But these demure rogues cheated and robbed me-plucked my feathers and pruned my scarfs, and I was driven back again to my "merrie men,"-whose only fault was making a pleasure of their business.

Soon after this, I made myself prominent in the parish, and obtained a contract for Parochial Conchology-or shells for the paupers. But this even, as I may say, broke down on its first tressels. Having as my first job to inter a workhouse female-Etat. 96-and wishing to gain the good opinion of the parish, I had made the arrangements with more than usual decency. The company were at the door. Placing myself at the head, with my best burial face, and my slowest solemnity of step, I set forward, and thanks to my professional deaf