at home and abroad, and at which you must win in the long run.  I am tired and want a cab.  The fare to my house, say, is two shillings.  The cabman will naturally want half a crown.  I pull out my book.  I show him the distance is exactly three miles and fifteen hundred and ninety yards.  I offer him my card—­my winning card.  As he retires with the two shillings, blaspheming inwardly, every curse is a compliment to my skill.  I have played him and beat him; and a sixpence is my spoil and just reward.  This is a game, by the way, which women play far more cleverly than we do.  But what an interest it imparts to life!  During the whole drive home I know I shall have my game at the journey’s end; am sure of my hand, and shall beat my adversary.  Or I can play in another way.  I won’t have a cab at all, I will wait for the omnibus:  I will be one of the damp fourteen in that steaming vehicle.  I will wait about in the rain for an hour, and ’bus after ’bus shall pass, but I will not be beat.  I will have a place, and get it at length, with my boots wet through, and an umbrella dripping between my legs.  I have a rheumatism, a cold, a sore throat, a sulky evening,—­a doctor’s bill to-morrow perhaps?  Yes, but I have won my game, and am gainer of a shilling on this rubber.

If you play this game all through life it is wonderful what daily interest it has, and amusing occupation.  For instance, my wife goes to sleep after dinner over her volume of sermons.  As soon as the dear soul is sound asleep, I advance softly and puff out her candle.  Her pure dreams will be all the happier without that light; and, say she sleeps an hour, there is a penny gained.

As for clothes, parbleu! there is not much money to be saved in clothes, for the fact is, as a man advances in life—­as he becomes an Ancient Briton (mark the pleasantry)—­he goes without clothes.  When my tailor proposes something in the way of a change of raiment, I laugh in his face.  My blue coat and brass buttons will last these ten years.  It is seedy?  What then?  I don’t want to charm anybody in particular.  You say that my clothes are shabby?  What do I care?  When I wished to look well in somebody’s eyes, the matter may have been different.  But now, when I receive my bill of 10L. (let us say) at the year’s end, and contrast it with old tailors’ reckonings, I feel that I have played the game with master tailor, and beat him; and my old clothes are a token of the victory.

I do not like to give servants board-wages, though they are cheaper than household bills:  but I know they save out of board-wages, and so beat me.  This shows that it is not the money but the game which interests me.  So about wine.  I have it good and dear.  I will trouble you to tell me where to get it good and cheap.  You may as well give me the address of a shop where I can buy meat for fourpence a pound, or sovereigns for fifteen shillings apiece.  At the game of auctions, docks, shy wine-merchants, depend on it there is no winning; and I would as soon think of buying jewellery at an auction in Fleet Street as of purchasing wine from one of your dreadful needy wine-agents such as infest every man’s door.  Grudge myself good wine?  As soon grudge my horse corn.  Merci! that would be a very losing game indeed, and your humble servant has no relish for such.