He now never knew an hour’s peace, until one day he determined to run away from home, leaving in the hands of his wife all that he possessed.  His absence made no perceptible difference in Mrs. PETER’s menage.  It was generally supposed that he was living abroad.  However, on one winter night there was a large gathering at his wife’s house, and, it being very cold, the guests eagerly availed themselves of the services of the linkman, who had told himself off to fetch their carriages.

And, when everyone was gone, the poor linkman asked the mistress of the house for some broken victuals.

“Good gracious!” exclaimed that Lady, “if it isn’t my husband!  What do you mean, PETER, by so disgracing me?”

“Disgrace you!—­not I!” returned PETER.  “No one recognises me.  Of all the guests that throng my house, and eat my suppers, I don’t believe there is a solitary individual who knows me by sight.”

And PETER was right.  Ah, how much better would it have been had PETER remained at school, and not found that sovereign!  Had he remained at school, he would some day have acquired a mass of information that would have been of immense assistance to him when his father died, and he succeeded to the paternal broom, and the right of sweep over the family street-crossing!

* * * * *

[Illustration:  TOO MUCH GENIUS.

Poet.  “OH—­A—­I ALWAYS WRITE MY POEMS RIGHT OFF, WITHOUT ANY CORRECTIONS, YOU KNOW, AND SEND THEM STRAIGHT TO THE PRINTER.  I NEVER LOOK AT ’EM A SECOND TIME.”

Critic.  “NO MORE DO YOUR READERS, MY BOY!”]

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ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

OSTRICH “FARMING.”—­We are afraid we cannot give you any sound or useful information to assist you in your project of keeping an ostrich-farm in a retired street in Bayswater; but that you should have already received a consignment of fifty “fine, full-grown birds,” and managed, with the aid of five railway porters, and all the local police available, to get them from the van in which they arrived up two flights of stairs, and locate them temporarily in your back drawing-room, augurs at least for a good start to your undertaking.  That three should have escaped, and, after severely kicking the Vicar, who happened to be dining with you, terrified the whole neighbourhood, and effected an entrance into an adjacent public-house, where they appear to have done a good deal of damage to the glass and crockery, upsetting a ten-gallon cask of gin, and frightening the barmaid into a fit of hysterics, being only finally captured by the device of getting a coal-sack over their heads, was, after all, but a slight contretemps, and not one to be taken into account when measured against the grand fact that you have got all your birds safely lodged for the night.  A little arnica, and a fortnight in bed, will, in all probability,