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believes a word he utters. Were he a man with any pretensions to respectability, the consequences might be serious as well to others as to himself; but he is not: he is at best but a half-witted butt, without a particle of manly pride about him."

"You're going it!" exclaimed Obadiah. "Now I dare say you think that I care a great deal about what you say, don't you?"

"If I thought that, I would, both for your own sake and that of society, say more: I would then take some pains to show you exactly what you are; but I know that you don't care—that you haven't the sense to care: if you had, you would scorn to go prowling about as you do—picking up loose scraps of slander to 'fructify;' chuckling over the misfortunes of your neighbours; magnifying their follies, and making those follies the bases of lies. I really don't know a more contemptible character than that of a lazy—"

"Do you mean to say that I'm lazy?"

"Lazy! Why, what do you do besides lounging about barber's shops? You don't do twenty-four hours work in a week. I have nothing, of course, to do with that; but when a man has a family, and squanders away, newsmongering, three-fourths of his time, when that time might be occupied in benefiting his family, what is he but a lazy man? I should be ashamed to lead such a life."

"Oh! don't you trouble your head about me."

"I don't want to trouble my head about you. I only want to show how much better it would be if you were not to trouble your head—such a head as it is—about others. Not that I imagine that I shall be able, by showing this, to do you any good—you're past that; you must talk, and I'm not at all surprised at your talking; all that I'm surprised at is, that you should still find people to listen to your talk. You have pretty nearly tired all the old ones out: Pokey, I believe, is the only one of the lot that will listen to you now, and the sooner he sends you to Coventry, the better."

"Let him do it!" exclaimed Obadiah. "What do I care for Pokey? Who's Pokey placed in juxtaposition with me?"

Pokey, who didn't at all like this contemptuous observation, drank up his beer and departed; and as Quocks, who had already finished his, went with him, Obadiah was left there to "fructify" alone.

During Sylvester's residence with Mr. Scholefield, his career as a somnambulist was checked, and as his history as a somnambulist is all that we have to contemplate, it will be necessary to leap over a space of five years, with a brief explanation of the means which induced the de-