G.P.O. Your complaint shall receive consideration.

* * * * *

REFLECTION BY A GENERAL READER.

  I have been reading books wherein ’tis shown
    (In diction autocratic, sour, un-civil),
  That nothing can be absolutely known,
    Save that the Universe is wholly evil! 
  And even this poor result is only plain
    To Genius—­which, of course, is quite a rarity.
  I should have thought this would have given it pain,
    And moved it to both modesty and charity;
  But what surprises me (—­ZOILUS, to mock sure,
    Will whip me with sham-epigrams would-be witty,—­)
  Is that Agnostics seem so awfully pure,
    And Pessimists so destitute of pity.

* * * * *

ANNALS OF A WATERING-PLACE

THAT HAS “SEEN ITS DAY.”

[Illustration]

The weather which, in Mr. DUNSTABLE’s varied experience of five-and-twenty years, he assures me, has never been so bad, having at length afforded some indications of “breaking” I make the acquaintance, through Mrs. COBBLER, of Mr. WISTERWHISTLE, the Proprietor of the one Bath-chair available for the invalid of Torsington-on-Sea, who, like myself, stands in need of the salubrious air of that health-giving resort, but who is ordered by his medical adviser to secure it with the least possible expenditure of physical strength.

[Illustration:  A Mess Dinner.]

Both Mr. WISTERWHISTLE and his chair are peculiar in their respective ways, and each has a decided history.  Mr. WISTERWHISTLE, growing confidential over his antecedents, says, “You see, Sir, I wasn’t brought up to the Bath-chair business, so to speak, for I began in the Royal Navy, under His Majesty King WILLIAM THE FOURTH.  Then I took to the Coast-Guard business, and having put by a matter of thirty pound odd, and hearing ‘she’ was in the market,”—­Mr. WISTERWHISTLE always referred to his Bath-chair as “she,” evidently regarding it from the nautical stand-point as of the feminine gender,—­“and knowing, saving your presence, Sir, that old BLOXER, of whom I bought her, had such a good crop of cripples the last season or two, that he often touched two-and-forty shillings a-week with ’em, I dropped Her Majesty’s Service, and took to this ’ere.  But, Lor, Sir, the business ain’t wot it wos.  Things is changed woeful at Torsington since I took her up.  Then from 9 o’clock, as you might say, to 6 P.M., every hour was took up; and, mind you, by real downright ’aristocracy,’—­real live noble-men, with gout on ’em, as thought nothink of a two hours’ stretch, and didn’t ‘aggle, savin’ your presence, over a extra sixpence for the job either way.  But, bless you, wot’s it come to now?  Why, she might as well lay up in a dry dock arf the week, for wot’s come of the downright genuine invalid, savin’ your presence, blow’d if I knows.  One can see, of course,