to about a pint and a-half.  As it boils, add, drop by drop, a bottle of JULES MUMM’s Extra Dry, and a gill of Scotch whiskey; then take out your wooden leg, which wipe carefully and serve separately with a neat frill, which can be easily cut from the cover of Sala’s Jo——­ (Editorial blue pencil again), round the top.  The soup itself is best served in a silver tureen, or in a Dresden china punch-bowl.  The above obviously is intended neither for school-boys nor school-girls, nor is it meant for the tables of the wealthy and luxurious.  It is emphatically a Poor Man’s Dish, otherwise it would never have found a place in the cookery column of that essentially popular periodical, Sala’s Journal.  Hurrah! the Editor has gone out to “chop,” and there was no blue pencil to mar the last touching allusions.  N.B.—­Circulation, eight millions, nine hundred and thirty-three thousand, two hundred and sixty-one and a-half.  Guaranteed by five firms of Magna Chartered Accountants.

OLD ARTFUL.

* * * * *

THE NEW LEARNING.

Mr. STUART RENDEL, having stated at Llanfair-Caerecinion that “a day with Mr. GLADSTONE was a whole liberal education,” the London School Board has at last decided to alter the present system completely.  After many days’ deliberation, it has been arranged to hire the Albert Palace and Mr. GLADSTONE for a week.  It is estimated that during six days, all the children now in the London schools can, in detachments, be squeezed into the building and spend a day there with the Right Honourable Gentleman.  Seats will be provided on the platform for the Members of the Board, as this instruction would be a great benefit to many of them.  At the end of the six days the present work of the Board will be finished, and it will adjourn for ten years, when another week in the society of the Grand Old Educator will again suffice for the needs of the rising generation.  The numerous Board Schools will therefore become useless, but it is not proposed to demolish them, as experience has shown that they are sure to fall down of their own accord before long.  The sumptuous offices of the Board will be converted into a Home for Destitute Schoolmasters.

We have reason to believe that Mr. GLADSTONE, after fulfilling his engagement at the Albert Palace, will make a tour in the provinces, and later on will have classes for journalists and other literary men, whose style, in many cases, would be vastly improved by two minutes, or even less, in the same room with him.

* * * * *

THE HAUNTED HOUSE.

A DIRGE.

(ADAPTED FROM THOMAS HOOD.)

  “A jolly place,” said he, “in times of old. 
  But something ails it now:  the place is curst.”

“Hart-Leap Well,” by Wordsworth.

I.