P.S.—My faithful "Co." has been reading The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, No Thoroughfare, and The Perils of Certain English Prisoners, the joint work of CHARLES DICKENS and WILKIE COLLINS, and now published for the first time in a single volume. He says that the book is instructive, inasmuch as it shows the growth of its authors' collaboration. When the writers started The Lazy Tour they were, so to speak, like the gentleman seated one day at the organ, "weary and ill at ease;" they grew more accustomed to one another during The Perils, and attained perfection in No Thoroughfare. This last novel shows no traces of dual workmanship, and might have been the outcome of a single pen. My "Co." has but one fault to find with Messrs. CHAPMAN AND HALL (Limited)—he says that the stories deserved better illustrations.
A VALID EXCUSE.
[A Juror who failed to put in an attendance at the Old Bailey sent an excuse that he was away on his honeymoon. The LORD MAYOR declared this was a perfectly valid excuse.]
The sly Undergraduate, eager to be
Of Tutors and Deans an acute circumventist,
Has been known to declare, when he went on the spree,
'Twas to bury his uncle, or call on his dentist.
The husband who's ever in scrapes or in pickles,
And in coming home early displays a remissness,