“being wearied with watching the gambolling sheep, he laid himself down in the meadow to sleep, and never awoke till a blue-bottle fly, who buzzing about so tickled his eye that sleep fled away.  Then he rose to his feet, and looked around for the gambolling sheep, but found, they were gone he couldn’t tell where:  so he threw himself down in the deepest despair, bemoaning his strange unaccountable loss, and the horrible beating he’d get from the Boss, when at night he went home with his sad tale of woe.  He was sure he would never have courage to go.”

The sad tale so pathetically and ingenuously told melted the already simmering heart of the hearer, who counselled tranquillity and philosophy in the words

    “Let them alone and they’ll come home,”

and jocularly added, as he saw a ray of hope lighting up the eye of the boy, like the first rays of the sun seen through a fog,

    “And bring their tails behind them.”

The brilliant idea of their tails coming behind them instead of before them tickled the risibilities of the sympathizing friends, and for a few moments the woods echoed to their responsive mirth.

The laugh did them good.  The poet perceived instantly he had a theme upon which to build his verse, and hastily bidding BOB “good-by,” he flew exultingly to his paternal abode, rushed up the garret stairs, seized his goose-quill, and amid the tumultuous beatings of his over-charged heart and throbbing brain jotted down on the instant, in all the enthusiasm of poetic fervor, the incident that had fallen under his inspired observation.  Not to be too personal, and still to preserve the truthfulness of the history, he dropped a few letters from BOB PEEPER’S name, while, with a wonderful accuracy unknown to modern writers, he keeps to the subject of his verse, its misery, the remedy and result, and facetiously gives to the world the same cause for laughter and inspiration that he received so gratefully.

* * * * *

THE POLITEST NATION IN THE WORLD.

We had always considered JOHNNY CRAPAUD as the pink of politeness.  But we are now satisfied that JOHNNY BULL goes ever so far ahead of him.  We have never known that Frenchman yet, who would oblige his enemies by killing himself.  But the recent loss of the Captain shows that the noble Englishmen are prepared to do this by wholesale.  One could wish our enemies no worse luck than to have a few such Captains given them.  And how lavish the expenditure!  It takes no end of money to get up one of those big iron-plated coffins.  It is certainly a dramatic, auto-da-fe and a most obliging act, considered with reference to one’s possible enemies.  No Frenchman ever thought of such a thing.  In fact, they go no further than positively declining to do anything bad with their navy.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  FASHIONABLE INTELLIGENCE.