Mr. Bunyan (whose corns have just been subjected to severe pressure). “YOU OLD BEGGAR, YOU!”

Mr. Lightfoot (who is a little hard of hearing). “NO APOLOGY NECESSARY, I ASSURE YOU, SIR; MATTER OF NO CONSEQUENCE WHATEVER; PRAY DON’T MENTION IT.”]

* * * * *

MR. BEZZLE’S DREAM.

MR. BEZZLE was the editor and proprietor of a large and influential newspaper that sold two for a cent, and had special correspondents in every corner of the office.  By honest industry and a generous disregard of what went into the newspaper, so that it paid, he had raised himself to the highest rung of fortune’s ladder, and we all know what tall ringing that is.  He used to say that to accept one kind of advertisement and to reject another, was an injustice to the public and an outrage upon society, and that strict integrity required that he should accept, at as much as he could get a line, every advertisement sent for insertion.  It would have done you good to have witnessed Mr. BEZZLE’S integrity in this respect, and the noble spirit of self-sacrifice with which he resolved that none of the public should be slighted.  He used to laugh to scorn the transcendental notion about the editorial columns not being purchased, “If my opinions are worth anything,” he used to exclaim, “they are worth being paid for; and if I unsay to-morrow what I said yesterday, the contradiction is only apparent, and is in accordance with the great spirit of progress and the breaking up of old institutions.”  The sequel to this magnanimous career may be imagined.  The enterprise paid so well that old BEZZLE found it to his interest to employ a man at fifteen dollars a week to do nothing else but write notes from “Old Subscribers,” informing BEZZLE that they had taken his “valuable paper” for over twenty years, that no family should be without it, and that they would rather, any morning, go without their breakfast than go without reading the Hifalutin’ Harbinger.  One day, when BEZZLE had been an editor for forty years, he fell asleep and had a dreadful dream.  He thought that he rose early one morning, dressed himself in his best suit of broadcloth, which he had taken for a bad debt, walked up to the ticket office of a theatre where he was well known, and asked for a couple of seats.  The gentlemanly treasurer (was there ever a treasurer that wasn’t gentlemanly in a newspaper notice?) handed him two of the best seats in the house—­end seats, middle aisle, six rows from the stage.  Mr. BEZZLE slapped down a five-dollar bill with that air of virtue which had become a second nature to him. (Second nature, by the by, is no more like nature at first hand than second childhood is like real childhood.)

“Why, Mr. BEZZLE!” exclaimed the treasurer, “have you taken leave of your senses, sir?  Put that back in your pocket;” and he pointed to the recumbent bank-note.  “Who ever heard of an editor paying for two seats at the theatre since the world began?  What have we ever done to offend you, Mr. BEZZLE, that you should behave thus?”