2.  On the abolition of “The Spinning-House,” as plucked candidates are often spoken of as men who were “spun” for such-and-such an examination, might not the Senate-House be known as “The Spinning-House”?

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[Illustration:  A FEW ONE-POUND NOTES; OR, THE QUICK-CHANGE CHANCELLOR.]

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BY GEORGE!

    [In a recent libel action, brought against an author by an
    African merchant, Mr. GEORGE MEREDITH was called as a witness. 
    He said:—­

“The story in dispute passed through his hands as reader for the publishers.  Asked in cross-examination if he thought that the opening of the story relating to the hero’s mother did not offend against the canons of good taste, the witness answered that it was the attempt of a writer of serious mind to be humorous.  It might be almost called a stereotype of that form of the element of humour.  It was a failure but still passed with the public.—­The Judge:  A kind of elephantine humour?—­The Witness:  Quite so.  I did not like it, but one would have to object to so much.”

There the report of Mr. MEREDITH’S evidence ends.  Exigencies of space apparently caused the omission of a great deal of it.  Fortunately it is in our power to supply this deficiency.—­ED.]

[Illustration:  Very much En Evidence; or, George in the box.]

The Judge.  Quite so, Mr. MEREDITH.  I may say for myself that I fully understand you.  But perhaps it would be well to explain yourself a leetle more clearly for the benefit of the jury.

Mr. George Meredith.  My Lord, I will put it with a convincing brevity, not indeed a dust-scattering brevity fit only for the mumbling recluse, who perchance in this grey London marching Eastward at break of naked morn, daintily protruding a pinkest foot out of compassing clouds, copiously takes inside of him doses of what is denied to his external bat-resembling vision, but with the sharp brevity of a rotifer astir in that curative compartment of a homoeopathic globule—­so I, humorously purposeful in the midst, of sallow—­

The Judge.  One moment, Mr. MEREDITH.  Have you considered—­

Mr. G.M. Consideration, my Lord, is of them that sit revolving within themselves the mountainously mouse-productive problems of the overtoppingly catastrophic backward ages of empurpled brain-distorting puzzledom:  for puzzles, as I have elsewhere said, come in rattle-boxes, they are actually children’s toys, for what they contain, but not the less do they buzz at our understandings and insist that they break or we, and, in either case, to show a mere foolish idle rattle in hollowness.  Nor have the antic bobbings—­

Sir Charles Russell (cross-examining).  Really, Mr. MEREDITH, I fail to follow you.  Would it not be possible—­