acquaintance.

"I shall certainly call upon you," assented Mr. CLEWS, "if our young
friend, the stone-thrower, will accept a trifle to show me the way."

Before retiring to his bed that night, the same Mr. TRACEY CLEWS took
off his hair and beard, examined them closely, and then broke into a
strange smile. "No wonder they all looked at me so!" he soliloquized,
"for I did have my locks on the topside backmost, and my whiskers turned
the wrong way. However, for a dead-beat, with all his imperfections on
his head, I've formed a pretty large acquaintance for one day."[2]

(_To be Continued._)


[Footnote 1: "Buffer" is the term used in the English story. Its nearest
native equivalent is, probably, our Dead-Beat;" meaning, variously,
according to circumstances, a successful American politician; a wife's
male relative; a watering-place correspondent of a newspaper, a New York
detective policeman; any person who is uncommonly pleasant with people,
while never asking them to take anything with him; a pious boarder; a
French revolutionist.]

[Footnote 2: In both conception and execution, the original of the above
Chapter, in Mr. DICKENS's work, is, perhaps, the least felicitous page
of fiction ever penned by the great novelist; and, as this Adaptation is
in no wise intended as a burlesque, or caricature, of the _style_ at the
original, (but rather as a conscientious imitation of it, so far as
practicable,) the Adapter has not allowed himself that license of humor
which, in the most comically effective treatment of said Chapter, might