"Going to Spring Gardens, Sir?" asked the faithful adherent. "If you are it is time to be off."
"No," returned Mr. Blank Threestars; "never again. I shall resign. I have had enough talking to last me a lifetime."
From that moment Blank Threestars became a changed character. He goes in for all sorts of hard work—wood-cutting, cricket, football, and golfing—but he never approaches the L. C. C. In fact, he has only mentioned Spring Gardens once since his conversion, and then only to link with its name an expression usually represented by the fourth capital letter of the alphabet. And with this declaration his story must come to an end, as he declines to utter another syllable in explanation.
QUEER QUERIES.
Future of Africa.—Having read in the papers that Mr. Johnston, our Commissioner in Central Africa, advocates the colonising of that country by "the yellow races," I write to ask if it would be of any use for me to apply? As I have now suffered from chronic jaundice for sixteen years, complicated with intermittent attacks of bilious fever, and, as my skin is usually of a bright orange, I think that I should fulfil Mr. Johnston's requirements down to the ground. Some of my friends urge me not to go because they are sure the swampiness of the country would carry me off; but Africa can hardly be much swampier than Lower Tottenham has been during the past autumn, and, personally, anything that would really "carry me off" from the latter place I should welcome as a blessed change. Perhaps some reader, with more knowledge of Africa than I possess, could inform me whether there would be much danger of my yellow complexion, in case of my having a fit of the blues out there, being converted into green? Would Mr. Johnston in that case regard me as a sort of colourable fraud, and ship me back home?
Would-be Pioneer.