lantern, want with me?"

"Please, sir, Mr. Brown Bunkem has give him half-a-crown."

"Well, you little ruffian, what's that to me?"

"Why, sir, he guv it him to come here, and ask you--"

Here policeman A1, with the dark lantern, took up the conversation.

"Jist to step down to the station-'us, and bail him therefrom--"

"For what!"

"Being werry drunk--uncommon overcome, surely--and oudacious
obstropelous." continued the alphabetically and numerically-distinguished
conservator of the public peace.

"How did he get there?"

"On a werry heavily-laden stretcher."

"The deuce take the mad fool," muttered the disturbed housekeeper; then
added, in a louder tone, "Ask the policeman in, and request him to take--"

"Anything you please, sir; it is rather a cold night, but as we're all in
a hurry, suppose it's something short, sir."

Now the original proposition, commencing with the word "take," was meant
by its propounder to achieve its climax in "a seat on one of the hall