*** Applications for shares or annuities to be made to the secretary of the Provident Annuity Company, No. 1, Thieves Inn.

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AWFUL ACCIDENT.

Our reporter has just forwarded an authentic statement, in which he vouches, with every appearance of truth, that “Lord Melbourne dined at home on Wednesday last.”  The neighbourhood is in an agonising state of excitement.

FURTHER PARTICULARS.

(Particularly exclusive.)

Our readers will be horrified to learn the above is not the whole extent of this alarming event.  From a private source of the highest possible credit, we are informed that his “Lordship also took tea.”

FURTHEST PARTICULARS.

Great Heavens! when will our painful duties end?  We tremble as we write,—­may we be deceived!—­but we are compelled to announce the agonising fact—­“he also supped!”

BY EXPRESS.

(From our own reporter on the spot!)

DEAR SIR,—­“The dinner is fatally true! but, I am happy to state, there are doubts about the tea, and you may almost wholly contradict the supper.”

SECOND EXPRESS.

“I have only time to say, things are not so bad!  The tea is disproved, and the supper was a gross exaggeration.

“N.B.  My horse is dead!”

THIRD EXPRESS.

Hurrah!  Glorious news!  There is no truth in the above fearful rumour; it is false from beginning to end, and, doubtless, had its vile origin from some of the “adverse faction,” as it is clearly of such a nature as to convulse the country.  To what meanness will not these Tories stoop, for the furtherance of their barefaced schemes of oppression and pillage!  The facts they have so grossly distorted with their tortuous ingenuity and demoniac intentions, are simply these:—­A saveloy was ordered by one of the upper servants (who is on board wages, and finds his own kitchen fire), the boy entrusted with its delivery mistook the footman for his lordship.  This is very unlikely, as the man is willing to make an affidavit he had “just cleaned himself,” and therefore, it is clear the boy must have been a paid emissary.  But the public will be delighted to learn, to prevent the possibility of future mistakes—­“John” has been denuded of his whiskers—­the only features which, on a careful examination, presented the slightest resemblance to his noble master.  In fact, otherwise the fellow is remarkably good-looking.

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HINTS TO NEW MEMBERS.

BY AN OLD TRIMMER.