CANCEL, OR RECALL.

The World last week sounded a note about the compulsory retirement, by reason of age, from one of the large Revenue Departments, of a gentleman who has the great honour to be the son of "the most distinguished Irishman of this century." If this sentence has really been passed authoritatively, which Mr. Punch takes leave to doubt, then said "Authority" will do well to recall it in favour of the son of the Liberator, which his name is also "DAN." And, to give the well-known lines so often quoted,—

When DAN'L saw the writing on the wall,

At first he couldn't make it out at all."

And the sooner the official writing on the wall—if it exists—be obliterated, the better for the public service, as, when the public, like the Captain in the ballad of "Billy Taylor," "Comes for to hear on't," the said British Public will "werry much applaud what has been done" in suppressing, not issuing, reconsidering, or revoking the order. So says "Mr. P.," and the "B.P." will agree with him.


THE ANCIENT MILLINER.

(His Reminiscences of the Recent Gale.)

PART I.

IT was the Ancient Milliner