Now would this young Waterman keep out of sorrow,
No derelict casks let him--shall we say, borrow?
Madeira is nice, but you'd best have a care,
Before swigging the wine, that it's yours fair and square!

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

_The Childhood and Youth of Dickens_, a sort of short postscript to
FORSTER's Life, very well got up by its publishers HUTCHINSON & Co.,
will interest those who for the third or fourth time are going through
a course of DICKENS.

[Illustration]

The Baron is an amateur of pocket-books and note-books. The best
pocket-book _must_ contain a calendar-diary, and as little printed
matter, and as much space for notes, as possible. No pocket-book
is perfect without some sort of patent pencil, of which the
writing-metal, when used on a damp surface, will serve as well as do
pen and ink on ordinary paper. Such a pocket-book with such a pencil
the Baron has long had in use, the product of JOHN WALKER & Co., of
Farringdon House. It should be called _The Walker Pocket-book, or
Pedestrian's Companion_; for, as "He who runs may read," so, with
this handy combination, "He who walks may write." The Baron is led to
mention this _à propos_ of a novelty by T.J. SMITH AND DOWNES, called
_The Self-registering Pocket Note-book_, a very neat invention, _quâ_
Note-book only, but of which only one size has the invaluable patent
pencil. The ordinary pencil entails carrying a knife, and, though