"By all means. You won't mind my slipping out for half a minute to the Alms House to leave a few gum-drops for Sissy? Rather spoony, JACK."
Mr. BUMSTEAD almost loses his balance in an imprudent attempt to wink archly, and says, "Norring-half-sh'-shweet-'n-life." He is very thick with EDWIN DROOD, for he loves him.
"Well, let's skedaddle, then."
Mr. BUMSTEAD very carefully poises himself on both feet, puts on his hat over the wet towel, gives a sudden horrified glance downward toward one of his boots, and leaps frantically over an object.
"Why, that was only my cane," says EDWIN.
Mr. BUMSTEAD breathes hard, and leans heavily on his nephew as they go out together.
(To be Continued.)
~JUMBLES~
PUNCHINELLO has heard, of course, of the good time coming. It has not come yet. It won't come till the stars sing together in the morning, after going home, like festive young men, early. It won't come till Chicago has got its growth in population, morals and ministers. It won't come till the women are all angels, and men are all honest and wise; not until politicians and retailers learn to tell the truth. You may think the Millennium a long way off. Perhaps so. But mighty revolutions are sometimes wrought in a mighty fast time. Many a fast man has been known to turn over a new leaf in a single night, and forever afterwards be slow. Such a thing is dreadful to contemplate, but it has been. Many a vain woman has seen the folly of her ways at a glance, and at once gone back on them. This is not dreadful to contemplate, since to go back on folly is to go onward in wisdom. The female sex is not often guilty of this eccentricity, but instances have been known. It is that which fills the proud bosom of man with hope and consolation, and makes him feel really that woman is coming; which is all the more evident since she began her "movement." The good time coming is nowhere definitely named in the almanacs. The goings and comings of the heavenly bodies, from the humble star to the huge planet, are calculated with the facility of the cut of the newest fashion; and the revolutions of dynasties can be fixed upon with tolerable certainty; but the period of the good time coming is lost in the mists of doubt and the vapors of uncertainty. It is very sure in expectancy, like the making of matrimonial matches. Everybody is looking for it, but nobody sees it. The sharpest of eyes only discern the bluest and gloomiest objects. But PUNCHINELLO may reasonably expect to see, feel and know, this good time. The coming will yet be to it the time come. Perhaps it will be when it visits two hundred thousand readers weekly, when mothers sigh, children cry, and fathers well-nigh die for it. At all events, somewhen or other—it may be the former period, but possibly the latter—the good time will come. And great will be the coming thereof, with no discount to the biggest or richest man out.