To the Readers of the Heir of Applebite.

DEAR FRIENDS,—­Having finished the infanto-biography upon which we have been engaged, it is our design to cut off our heir, and bring our tale to a close.  You may want to know why—­or if you don’t, we will tell you.

We should not regard the anxiety, the close confinement, or the constant attention inseparable from a nursery, did we feel that the result was agreeable to you.  But we have not done so.  We have been strongly tempted to think, that after waiting from week to week, you have never arrived at anything interesting.  We could not bear this jerking of our conscience, which was no sooner ended than begun again.

Most “passages in a tale of any length depend materially for the interest on the intimate relation they bear to what has gone before, or what is to follow.”  We sometimes found it difficult to accomplish this.

Considerations of immediate profit ought, in such cases, to be of secondary importance; but, for the reasons we have just mentioned, we have (after some pains to resist the temptation) determined to abandon this scheme of publication.

Taking advantage of the respite which the close of this work will afford us, we have decided in January next to rent a second floor at Kentish Town.

The pleasure we anticipate from the realisation of a wish we have long entertained and long hoped to gratify, is subdued by the reflection that we shall find it somewhat difficult to emancipate our moveables from the thraldom of Mrs. Gibbons, our respected but over-particular landlady.

To console the numerous readers of PUNCH, we have it in command to announce, that on Saturday, Nov. 27th, the first chapter of a series under the title of the “Puff Papers,” appropriately illustrated, will be commenced, with a desire to supply the hiatus in periodical fiction, occasioned by the temporary seclusion of one of the most popular novelists of the day.

Dear friends, farewell!  Should we again desire to resume the pen, we trust at your hands we shall not have to encounter a

[Illustration:  DISPUTED RETURN.]

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THE LAMBETH DEMOSTHENES.

We are happy to find that Dr. Tully Cicero Burke Sheridan Grattan Charles Phillips Hobler Bedford has not been deterred by the late unsatisfactory termination to the “public meeting” called by him to address the Queen, from prosecuting his patriotic views for his own personal advantage.  Dr. &c.  Bedford has kindly furnished us with the report of a meeting called by himself, which consisted of himself, for the purpose of considering the propriety of petitioning the Throne to appoint himself to be medical-adviser-in-general to her Majesty, and vaccinator-in-particular to his little Highness the Prince of Wales.

At 10 o’clock precisely Dr. &c.  Bedford entered the little back parlour of his surgery, and advancing to the looking-glass over the mantel-piece, made a polite bow to the reflection of himself.  After a few complimentary gestures had passed between them, Dr &c.  Bedford hemmed twice, and in a very elegant speech proposed that “Doctor &c.  Bedford shoold take the cheer.”