interior of Africa. I do not say that your tastes will be gratified, but your charity may be enlarged. One great difficulty in dealing with the poor is their jealousy of intrusion into their homes. Look into the shop windows and you will gain a pretty fair idea of what these must be, without the fear of being indiscreet.

The window of a shop is its face, which is sometimes its fortune, and always an indication of its character. From the small ware dealer with almost all his stock pinned up on strings, to the aesthetic Piccadilly hosier, who crumples a few silk handkerchiefs into artistic "bits of colour," and leaves the rest to our imagination—what a range of character we have! Pride revelling in ostentation, pride aping humility, self-conceit, trickery; you can read as you run. It was once considered low to advertise, and lower still to mark. Who does not advertise and mark now? A few pretend, with their noses in the air, that they do not make advertisements, and put a wiregauze screen in the window to show that they do not mark. What is this but advertising and marking? These be your trade Pharisees who are not-so they think-like other shopmen, and some of us take them at their word, and pay them twenty-five per cent. more for what we purchase than we would have to give elsewhere. This, taken as an insurance that the goods are of the best and fairly measured, may be wisely expended by such as do not study shop windows, and is a subject of delight to others who value a thingnot for what it is, but for what they can say it cost. Therefore such shops prosper. They may be maintained-propped up by traditions of the past—but they cannot be created.

This history of advertisements, its uses and abuses, and its effects upon the sons of men, has yet to be written. Considering the subject theoretically, we cannot read the advertisementing columns of a newspaper, or glance at the hoardings as we pass through the streets, without coming to the conclusion that every advertiser must be a liar and a fool—a liar because they all deal in superlatives, and a fool because they spend money on the publication of statements which no rational man will believe. It goes without saying that there cannot be five hundred grocers each one of whom keeps the best teas in the market, and has them expressly imported for him; five hundred clothiers who have the cheapest and most fashionable attire in the world; five hundred haberdashers who sell for cash lower than any other house in the trade; five hundred quacks who possess the only possible cure for all the diseases to which human flesh is liable. We know that the printing of shop-window tickets is a trade, and that cardboards marked " The style"-"Very choice "-" Fashionable""Very cheap," and so on, can be bought by the dozen, and stuck on this or that at the sweet will of the window-" dresser." We have

made a proverb out of the insinuating mendacities of the shoemaker, and Crispin is not the only tradesman who assures us, against our senses, that something we don't want will do beautifully, and that something else which we really like will not. Practically we know that advertising is to trade what manure is to agriculture. The purest seed will not grow without a free use of the one, nor the best gools go off without a liberal expenditure on the other. Now a chemist will tell us only manure will benefit a crop, but the process under which advertising affects trade is unknown to our philosophy. All we affect to know is that it does not influence us one bit. We use our own judgment-it is only other people who believe in advertise

ments.

The advertising shop window, with laudatory adjectives stuck upon every article, and delusive prices annexed, is a snare set in sight of the bird, and into it the bird hops, picks up his or her (generally her) chaff, and, even when she finds that she has been caught, comes back again for more. Sometimes she will spend a shilling on a cab or will walk a mile to get something for four and elevenpence halfpenny that she could buy within a hundred yards of home for five shillings. Distance seems to lend enchantment to the view into shop windows. Paddington makes a pilgrimage to Brompton, for "You don't know, my dear, how cheap things are there!" Pimlico girds up its loins, and finds its happy shopping fields in Westbourne Grove, for a like reason. When we are staying in the country, and accompany our host to the market town, we are sure to buy something to which the strange shop window has given a delusive charm. It was never vulgar to look into shop windows abroad.

As I write, an intimate friend, who is a capital fellow, and an oculist of renown, comes in, and I tell him what is the text of this week-day sermon. Says he, "I once noticed a man whom I had cured of cataract, and who had not seen for fifteen years; on the first day that he went out into the streets, he stood before the shop windows and literally shook with excitement and delight. It did me good to see him." Now, one who has never seen a thing-be it what it may-is, so far as it is concerned, a blind man ; and shall he not show his eyes, and grieve the heart of Mrs. Grundy? Dry up, Pepchin! Vade retro! Dry-as-dust!! Mind your own business, Mrs. Grundy!!! And thou, my friend!-whom I have convinced of the pleasure to be found in disobeying these humbugs--we will put into practice the old motto of TEMPLE BAR, "Let us take a walk down Fleet Street," and look at the shop windows.

To Lia.

LIA! why that averted head?
That cheek whose dimples all are fled?
Is aught amiss, dear?

What is it, pretty trifler, say?

You know you must not, even in play,
Refuse a kiss, dear!

Your looks my harmless warmth reprove,
You murmur, ""Tis a sin to love:
The wise decry it."

But, Lia, since the world began
There never yet was one wise man
Who did not try it!

There's time for us ere wisdom yields
Her sterile growth of flowerless fields,
And years in plenty;

You are a maid so soft and shy,
You want your mother still, and I
Am only twenty.

Then why, my girl, so strange and coy?
You know you love no other boy,

You've often vowed it.

And if your simple faith were wrong,
Could you believe that I so long
Should have allowed it?

Your little waist I love to clip,
Your auburn hair, your pouting lip
(Fire is it, or dew?).

Say, why were graces made like these,
If not to pleasure you, and please
Another too?

Sweet saint, the wrong is merely this,
"Tis not that you and I should kiss,
As some construe it;

The scandal that to heaven would cry
Could only be if you and I

Were not to do it!

F. K. B.

Two Handsome People; Two Jealous People; and a

Ring!

II.

Of course, when the jeweller heard this uncomfortable promise, he took care not to mention the fact that the brown-and-grey gentleman had said he would call at mid-day.

In fact, all he was anxious about was to get the young man well out of his shop before the hour struck! He scarcely knew what to make of this tumultuous being, who, instead of being alarmed or anxious, was much more furious than the other, who was certainly the injured party, inasmuch as clearly the ring had most certainly originally belonged to him!

If there was to be any fighting or spitting on each other, it should not take place in his very shop, if he could possibly help it! He would give the gentleman the name and address of the young man, and they might meet there, and fight till they were exhausted if they chose.

The girl was evidently a good-for-nothing little creature, and the less said about her the better! As for the young man, poor boy! let him get into a rage. It would do him good. It would do him good. But the other

the gentleman-now, there was an old imbecile for you! Twelve o'clock came. So did one o'clock.

Two, three, four, and

five o'clock, and then evening swooped suddenly down-and no gentleman had come!

That evening passed, then several others, a week-ten days-a fortnight, and still no gentleman. And, thought the jeweller, They must have met somewhere. I must confess that I should have liked to have seen the end of this little comedy-but, perhaps, after all it is better as it is!"

They had not met, however, and the little comedy, far from being ended, had scarcely begun, and was about to take a rather tragic turn. When Monsieur d'Orsoff had left the jeweller's shop (to go back two weeks) he went straight to the "Jardins Publiques," and there he sought out the most solitary spot he could find, and sat himself down on an iron bench half stunned with grief and resentment. He confessed to himself that he had often been jealous before, perhaps unwarrantably so. Hélène had naturally taken little fancies at

times! And among her admirers there had been some at whom she had smiled oftener than at others. She had had her little caprices, in fact, as all charming women, young or old, do have! But there had been no harm in them!

. . And this . . . this! Why, this looked like one of those terrible infatuations that suddenly overwhelm a whole family-antecedents, associations-connections duties-interest-all-all, in fact, like an avalanche overwhelms whole villages!

True, the young man was splendidly handsome. It would hardly be possible for any one not to admire him but... he wasn't a gentleman!

And she had given him a ring!—his little turquoise ring?

"Oh, of course there was no harm in it. There could not possibly be any harm in it! Though that was why she was always going to Pernes then!" said he aloud, and wiping the drops of perspiration from his forehead.

She had met him there, and of course she had noticed him-who would not? And most likely he had been able to render her some slight service. She might for instance have lost her way, or something like that, and they had talked and laughed together! At their age talking and laughing comes easily-my God, it does indeed!

And then by accident they had met once or twice, and she hadshe had begun to feel unhappy! "Oh, no, no, no!" cried he loudly and suddenly.

"Plaît-il ?" said a nurse who had just sat herself down at the other end of the seat, and was beginning to nap most comfortably when his cry woke her.

'I did not speak, did I?" said he, very much confused.

"That is a very fine child," added he, and in his abstraction proceeded to chuck its fat little chin with so little precaution that it woke and was furious, and screamed loud enough to be heard at Marseilles.

The nurse darted a look of disgust at the unhappy gentleman. "Faut-il être bête !" said she, getting up and walking off angrily. But Monsieur d'Orsoff hardly saw her.

"I will fling myself at her feet. I will not reproach her; I will only say, 'Hélène, be strong! The young man is very nice to look at, but you would not be able to bear his society for one single day. He would come into your room with muddy boots. He would eat with his knife . . . he would wear his hat while he spoke to you and your friends . . . he would use strong vulgar language Could you bear that? . . . Never!'

"There, there, I will be very gentle with her . . . but firm