entirely. But, recollecting suddenly that he had three spare top-pieces in the butt, his heart was cemented and bound up, so to speak, in a rough and ready manner. Next, he stepped into a hole, which turned out to be three feet deep, so that he was instantly soaked up to the waist. Being extremely hot, besides having grown quite reckless, Mr. Sudberry did not mind this; it was pleasantly cooling. He was cheered, too, at the moment, by the re-appearance of the sun, which shone out as bright as ever, warming his heart (poor, ignorant man!) and, all unknown to him, damaging his chance of catching any more fish at that time.

Soon after this he came to a part of the river where it flowed through extremely rugged rocks, and plunged over one or two precipices, sending up clouds of grey mist and a dull roar which overawed him, and depressed his spirits. This latter effect was still further increased by the bruising of his shins and elbows, which resulted from the rough nature of the ground. He became quite expert now in hanking on bushes and disentangling the line, and experienced a growing belief in the truth of the old saying that "practice makes perfect." He cast better, he hanked oftener, and he disentangled more easily, than he had done at an earlier period of the day. The midges, too, increased as evening advanced.

Presently he came upon a picturesque portion of the stream where the waters warbled and curled in little easy-going rapids, miniature falls, and deep, oily pools. Being an angler by nature, though not by practice (as yet), he felt that there must be something there. A row of natural stepping-stones ran out towards a splendid pool, in which he felt assured there must be a large trout-perhaps a grilse. His modesty forbade him to hint "a salmon," even to himself.

It is a very difficult thing, as every one knows, to step from one stone to another in a river, especially when the water flowing between runs swift and deep. Mr. Sudberry found it so. In his effort to approach the pool in question, which lay under the opposite bank, he exhibited not a few of the postures of the rope-dancer and the acrobat; but he succeeded, for Mr. Sudberry was a man of indomitable pluck.

Standing on a small stone, carefully balanced, and with his feet close together, he made a beautiful cast. It was gracefully done; it was vigorously, manfully done-considering the difficulty of the position, and the voracity of the midges-and would have been undoubtedly successful but for the branch of a tree which grew on the opposite bank and overhung the stream. This branch Mr. Sudberry, in his eagerness, had not observed. In casting, he thrust the end of his rod violently into it ; the line twirled in dire confusion round the leaves and small boughs, and the drag hook, as if to taunt him, hung down within a foot of his nose.

Mr. Sudberry in despair made a desperate grasp at this and caught it. More than that-it caught him, and sunk into his forefinger over the barb, so that he could not get it out. The rock on which he stood was too narrow to admit of much movement, much less to permit of his resting the butt of his rod on it, even if that had been practicable—which it was not, owing to the line being fast to the bough, and the reel in a state of dead-lock from some indescribable manœuvre to which it had previously been subjected,

There he stood, the very personification of despair; but while standing there he revolved in his mind the best method of releasing his line without breaking it or further damaging his rod. Alas! fortune, in this instance, did not favour the brave. While he was looking up in rueful contemplation of the havoc above, and then down at his pierced and captured finger, his foot slipped and he fell with a heavy plunge into deep water. That settled the question. The whole of his tackle remained attached to the fatal bough, excepting the hook in his finger, with which, and the remains of his fishing-rod, he floundered to the shore. Mr. Sudberry's first act on gaining the land was to look into his basket, where, to his great relief, the trout was still reposing. His next was to pick up his hat, which was sailing in an eddy fifty yards down the stream. Then he squeezed the water out of his garments, took down his rod, with a heavy sigh strangely mingled with a triumphant smile, and turned his steps homeward just as the sun began to dip behind the peaks of the distant hills.

To his surprise and relief, Mrs. Sudberry did not scold when, about an hour later, he entered the hall or porch of the White House with the deprecatory air of a dog that knows he has been misbehaving, and with the general aspect of a drowned rat. His wife had been terribly anxious about his non-arrival, and the joy she felt on seeing him safe and well, induced her to forget the scold.

"Oh! John dear, quick, get off your clothes," was her first exclamation.

As for Jacky, he uttered a cheer of delight and amazement at beholding his father in such a woeful plight; and he spent the remainder of the evening in a state of impish triumph; for, had not his own father come home in the same wet and draggled condition as that in which he himself had presented himself to Mrs. Brown earlier in the day, and for which he had received a sound whipping? "Hooray!" and with that the amiable child went off to inform his worthy nurse that " bad a boy as himself—badder, in fact; for he [Jacky] had only been in the water up to the waist, while papa had gone into it head and heels!" (To be continued.)

papa was as

LA

AT A CIRCUS!

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

S one who has undertaken the duties of "your own correspondent "at many of the great sights of the present year, I naturally feel myself in a far more dignified position than when my effusions appeared in your pages under the modest signature of "Schoolboy ;" and although I experience some slight trepidation at the thought of the important post which you have assigned to me, yet, judging from the many manifest signs of favour which "The Schoolboy Letters" met with, I hope that in my new character my contributions will prove acceptable to almost "Every Boy;" for, although it may be urged that reports of some of the events I shall feebly attempt to chronicle will also appear in the London newspapers, yet I trust that my account will yet be welcome to Town Boys, and if to them, how much more to your friends in the country, and some of our distant colonies! I also feel well aware that, as "your own correspondent," I cannot reasonably expect the same blindness to faults which as a schoolboy I received at the hands or rather eyes of your subscribers, and that I shall now be judged by the same standard as my adult literary brothers. This idea makes me feel, I frankly admit, rather nervous, and it is for this reason that I have craved a little extra space to inform your readers of the facts just mentioned, in the hope that they will be lenient judges, and not act on Iago's principle, about being nothing if not critical.]

I fortunately have the extreme pleasure of being called uncle by one of the prettiest little lads of eight years old imaginable. When he is dressed in his trim little knickerbockers, with his fair curly hair well brushed, his little small-featured face looks so comical and fascinating, that I defy any one to prevent him doing just as he pleases; and, although he is a very amiable boy, and one who would do anything rather than cause grief— a boy who never buys sixpennyworth of sweetstuff without giving the best part of it away-yet I must own that in his conduct towards me he is sometimes strangely tyrannical, and never quite so respectful as my avuncular position demands. He seems to look upon me as a sort of watchman, who is to take him wherever he wants to go, without the slightest opposition; but I must not complain, poor little fellow! His father, my sister's husband, died four years ago, so that my dear little nephew Charley has come to look upon me as a sort of paternal relative. Well,

Master Charley, not content with two pantomimes, visits to the Colosseum, Polytechnic, and the Zoological Gardens, insisted that I should take him to a grand equestrian entertainment at Islington, as one of his friends, another curly-haired little boy, with whom he walks handin-hand to school every morning, had been there, and had pronounced it "the splendidest thing he ever saw."

Knowing how futile resistance was, I at once trudged off to the boxoffice at the Agricultural Hall, and having secured two reserved seats in the best part of the house-for Charley is a little aristocrat in his way— I returned home to dine, and at seven in the evening of the 27th of January, in the present year, I drove up to my sister's house. Of course, when I arrived, Master Charley was not dressed. I was informed that, under the supervision of his nurse, he had been absent in his room already half an hour, and that, on being informed of my arrival, he sent to request that his uncle would quietly sit down and wait.

After twirling my thumbs for ten minutes, in the little fellow marched, dressed in his best suit of knickerbockers, with a natty pair of violet stockings, which showed the symmetrical proportions of his well-shaped legs. After shaking hands with me in his usual patronising manner, he called for his velvet cap and his dark green kid gloves, which, by-the-by, took both his mamma and the nurse five minutes to put on, during which time Charley did nothing but worry about being late. As soon as he had donned his cap off we went, but just as we entered the cab nothing would suit Charley but that he must go back to kiss his mamma, and to console her with the fact that we should be back in capital time, eleven o'clock at the latest. Then it struck him that his appearance would be more dignified if he took with him his cane, which was given to him on Christmas-day, and five minutes were therefore cut to waste while all the establishment searched for it. The cane was at last discovered behind the waterbutt in the back garden, where the young gentleman had placed it in readiness for his next chase after the cats-a pursuit he was very fond of, although as he never by any chance got within five yards of one, his pleasure must have been almost purely of an anticipatory nature. At last we were off, and, after a wearisome drive, we at length reached our destination. I say wearisome advisedly, for the cab was shaky, the horse was old, and the driver was deaf and stupid. Now, such a combination is not likely to produce a pleasant jaunt under any circumstances; and when, in addition to these defects, I mention that the streets were "up" in almost every direction, and that we had to go round I don't know how many miles; that Charley did not sit still for an instant, but ran several hundred yards inside the cab during the journey; that he asked a fresh

question every minute, and dropped his cane and made me pick it up from the damp straw about every other minute, I think all must allow that I might well be glad to leave the vehicle.

On taking our seats in the immense hall, I was very much struck with its colossal proportions and wonderful suitability for equestrian purposes. Almost the whole building was transformed into a ring, or rather an oblong, rounded at the corners, of about a hundred yards in length, while in the centre of it, and just between the band and the reserved seats, was a small circle or circus, in which the first part of the performance took place. When we entered, a boy and a girl about twelve years of age, clad in Highland costume, were careering on two listless dappled horses, who went round and round in a very mechanical manner, while a dozen gentlemen, who looked like grooms, with clean faces, whose lower parts were dressed in white tights and red Hessian boots, and whose upper portions were adorned by short coats, brass-buttoned, which were fastened tightly, but well thrown open at the chest, in order to show a good quantity of spotless linen, looked at the performance with the greatest interest, as if it was the first sight of its kind they had ever seen. The two children, who were called "The Caledonian Lovers," showed their mutual affection, as soon as the steeds returned to their stalls, by dancing a Highland reel on the carpet in the centre of the ring, and then made way for Master Perks and his trained pony. This youth, who certainly did not look more than five years old, for he was very small, and wore little white socks, and a pretty yellow frock, adorned with red ribbon, at once mounted his trained pony, and without the aid of stirrups galloped round the ring as easily as possible. Then the pony jumped over poles, held about two feet from the ground; next he sprang on a small platform, and with his fore feet, which were adorned with bells, beat time while the band played a polka and a hornpipe; then Master Perks perkily descended, and made the pony lie down and feign death, while he expressed his grief by rubbing his forehead with both his little hands. The juvenile wonder now reposed on the pony's back and head, and, after he had rested for a few minutes, commanded the animal to rise. His wish having been complied with, both retired amidst loud applause.

Charley, who had been sitting, wrapped in silent admiration, and in his little top-coat, now returned to his former self, in consequence of the wondrous jumping of a clown, who vaulted over six chairs placed in a line, one after the other. This portion of the entertainment was called in the bill "A Comic Intermède,” an agreeable combination of the French and English languages, which has unfortunately, become very common in many of our entertainments. In my opinion, interlude is a much better word than