To retire was all we could do—and we did it. On regaining the street, I sorrowfully bade my Solicitor good-bye.
"Oh dear no, Sir," he said, with the ghost of a smile. "You have quite forgotten one little formality—my Bill of Costs."
Upon this he produced an enormous roll of paper! The rest of my story can be briefly told. Unable to pay my Lawyer's bill, I was compelled to seek refuge in a country where I could not be reached by the Extradition law. I took a passage in The Flying Dutchman, and went to Spain. I am now settled in Grenada, where I am believed by the peasantry to be an English ghost that has escaped from a branch of the Moorish Alhambra that has been recently established in Leicester Square. I find some consolation in the thought that those whom I now haunt seem to be growing rather fond of me. I trust that this is not a specimen of the national politeness, and that the affection they apparently entertain towards me is not merely assumed to save me unnecessary embarrassment.
WAITING HIS ORDERS.
The Home Secretary, after the revelations made by a distinguished member of the Representative body of Theatrical Managers and Music Hall Proprietors that called upon him last week to protest against the further extension of Inspecting Powers to the Metropolitan Board, having expressed a wish to hear something still further of the correspondence, said to be of a blackmailing character, which was referred to in the course of the proceedings, the Deputation again called on him yesterday afternoon for the purpose of supplying him with fresh information on the subject.
Augustus Druriolanus opposing the Invasion of Plancus Operator Autocraticus.
In re-introducing them, Mr. Jackson Partland, M.P., said that since their last interview they had heard that, with a view to the better control of the correspondence of subordinate officials of the Board, an enterprising firm of publishers had undertaken to provide for their use A Complete Letter-writer, a few of the proof-sheets of which had chanced to come into their possession. As they seemed to have some bearing on the present case, they thought that perhaps the Home Secretary might like to look at them. In presenting them to his notice, they felt it was hardly necessary to point out that a public Department from which such documents might be expected to issue was scarcely calculated to inspire that general confidence so essential to the smooth and efficient working that might reasonably be expected of it. The subjoined proof-sheets, which he appeared to peruse with much attention, were then handed to the Home Secretary:—