SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

NICHOLAS IN THE DUMPS.

"Back!"-SHAKESPEARE.

MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND -Misfortune jolly soon oozes out, and you will see as my Gentleman of the Press have already turned against me, he only providing me with a single word for a motto out of old SHAKESPEARE, and which it is all very well for poets to say "Back," but suppose you have backed, and the luck have gone against you, and your credit beginning to be shy? There is no knowing how human affairs will turn out, and the Prophet may yet pull himself square on coming events; but, my dear young man, I will not disguise it from you that NICHOLAS have lost, and heavily.

It says in a daily paper, where I daresay it was put in by some of my individuous detractors: "The Newmarket Handicap, following in the groove of the other Spring events" (though NICHOLAS do not quite see how a handicap can follow in a groove) "resulted in the veriest outsider in the betting winning anyhow. Such a season of reverses to backers, and floorers to prophets, has surely never been known, and what will become of both of these ill-used classes of the Sporting Community if their bad luck continues is a melancholy conjecture." Oh, it's a "melancholy conjecture," is it? Very good, my daily paper; I am glad ye think so. Speaking personally, I do not consider it as a matter of conjecture," it seems to me a certainty-in point of fact, "a moral." The course of NICHOLAS, thank goodness, is tolerably clear. If fortune should again declare against him, he will be quite willing to go over to Paris for you, my dear young Friend, and continue in your employment by writing of Art-Criticisms for you on the Exhibition, he knowing quite as much about it as some which are employed at home by your serious contempories. The Prophet thinks that a series of light and humorous articles on "Eating Horseflesh: by One who knows better than for to do so," might be quite a feature, Sir, in your otherwise well-conducted journal. Or, I might see, perhaps, whether I happen to have left the MS. of my "Knurr and Spell" behind me during one of my passing visits to the gay capital of our lively neighbours. In any case, Sir, I trust as you will remember former services, and not turn a poor, ruinous old man out on the streets, which I am nobody's enemy but my own, and have been known to keep steady for weeks together. Besides, Sir, I am no worse than my prophetic rivals, which have all been let in the hole this season; and I am still confident, Gentlemen, as my luck will come back when the weather gets a little warmer, NICHOLAS being firmly of opinion that hitherto the East wind have got into his head. Rally round the old adviser, NICHOLAS! Who sent you the Derby winner of 1865? Who sent you the Derby winner of 1866? Who sent you the absolute first, second, and third for the '67 St. Leger? Trust to the Prophet! Rally round him!! And all will yet be joy!!! NICHOLAS.

P.S.-I have ventured to draw on you for a few weeks' salary in advance, and got it cashed in the City.

P.S. 2.-I do not think it necessary to send my present address.

A WEDDED WALTONIAN.

I LOVE beside some quiet brook
With rod in hand to dangle;
Away from home I gladly hook,
And there I go and angle.

To make a basket's not my wish,
Because, as safe as churches,

I always have to buy my fish-
I never get my perches.

I want no sport, upon my life-
It is support I'm courting;
To help me to support a wife

That there is no supporting.
So, with a hook content I roam,
Though not a fish will snatch it.
I know I've only to go home,
To be quite sure to catch it!

Getting the Whip-hand.

A JOURNAL for cabmen, 'bus-drivers, and conductors is shortly to appear, entitled The Whip. We understand it is to come out in a crack, and that it will have plenty of cuts. We suppose it will be Hansom-ly printed and fare-ly conducted. If so, it may take its rank with periodicals of long standing. At any rate, it should have a good circulation if the police regulations touching the cabs are attended tothat is, if every one takes its number first.

PEN AND INK.

Он! pas and mas, with "heirs and hopes,"
For whom you're casting horoscopes,
And whom with anxious care
You're watching as they daily grow,
And guarding 'gainst all grief and woe,
Of this one risk beware!
Permit the child to play with fire,
Or keen-edged knives, should he desire;
And do not feebly shrink
From giving fireworks-powder-guns!
With one and all entrust your sons,

But not with pen and ink!

FROM OUR STALL.

THE author of Society and Ours has now given the stage a more perfect work of art than either of those very successful comedies. The story of Society hovered a little too fondly about the borders of Bohemia for a good many tastes, and the plot of Ours sacrificed something to act. But in Caste we have little or no fault to find with either the probability for the sake of bringing the characters together in the last materials or the way in which they are employed. The story turns upon that often-discussed question of social economy-unequal matches, and its interest is unflagging as far as the middle of the third act. From that point forward, however, there is nothing except the merit piece who deserves to be made happy has been made so some time of the dialogue to retain the audience's attention, for everybody in the before the fall of the curtain. But MR. T. W. ROBERTSON writes with the sake of excellence in talk. Taking Caste from a literary point of so much point and gusto that we can forgive deficiency in action for view, we think it one of the cleverest pieces produced since DOUGLAS JERROLD Wrote his best comedies. Looked at in a dramatic light, it exhibits a thorough knowledge of stage requirements. The perform ance of Caste is admirable throughout. MR. HARE's portrait of the British workman is a gem; and MR. F. YOUNGE is quiet and artistic in a gentlemanly and rather sentimental part. The tone of MR. HONEY'S humour is at present a trifle too broad for the Prince of Wales's stage, but he will no doubt get rid in time of his tendency to exaggerate. MISS LYDIA FOOTE plays with charming tenderness and pathos; and MISS MARIE WILTON is brimful of archness and vivacity. of our acquaintance could represent it. A little cutting is the only MISS LARKIN represents an aristocratic elderly lady as no other actress thing needed to qualify Caste for a long and brilliant career: especially recommend for excision a couple of puns which sadly shocked our susceptibilities on the first night.

we may

MRS. SCOTT SIDDONS has a very intellectual face and a neat figure; but, in spite of these advantages, her performance of Rosalind is unsatisfactory. The lady often puts herself into ungraceful attitudes, and her voice is sharp and, to our thinking, unsympathetic. She was applauded to the echo on her first appearance at the Haymarket. The company at this theatre seems out of its element in SHAKESPeare, but the performance of As You Like It was inoffensive. The Forest of Arden should not be represented with a trim gravel walk and carefullyrolled lawn in the background.

Weather Forecasts.

Ir it looks likely to rain, you had better not go out without your umbrella, or you may get a soaking. If it does not look likely to rain, you had better not go out without your umbrella. Our climate's uncertain, and you may just as well carry an umbrella as a stick, especially as you may get wet through if you don't.

LINES

Dedicated to the Composers of Fashionable Songs, who may set them to Music
if they can.
Fashion's stupidity
Is an avidity
For the flaccidity,
Senseless fluidity,
Hopeless turgidity,
Dreary aridity,
Densest fumidity

Of the "Drawing-room song," which by Fux is a chid ditty-
Tooral lal, looral lal, looral lal, liddity!

True to the Last.

WE understand that MR. WHALLEY declines to visit the Irish Orangemen on the plea that it would be against his principles to cross the Channel.

Bah

SOME OLD BACHELORS.

ND it's "Oh! kafoozlum, kafoozlum, kafoozlum, it's Oh! kafoozlum, the Daughter of the Baba!" She's a Pal o'mine, my dear boys!

This incoherent raving represents pretty accurately the state of the C. P.'s mind as he sits down to write this chapter. Organs again, after three-quarters of an hour of church-bellringing because it's

Tuesday! The C. P.

bachelorhood, maidens, and now is your time, if you are anxious that he should not sink into irreclaimable fogeydom.

No. 1 is the sort of old bachelor that he will become if this sort of thing goes on much longer. He sees it coming. He will be as bald as an egg, and as round as one. He will fall into the habit of wearing shabby clothes and double neck-cloths, with high collars. He will establish friendly relations with the waiters at SIMPSON's, and he will learn all their Christian names. He will get to know the peculiarities of every distinct bin in SIMPSON's cellars. He will gradually become not at all unlike a head waiter, as is the way with old bachelors who customarily dine at favourite taverns. His tastes will become the chosen study of the gentleman who carves, and the gentleman who carves will be able to spot the C. P.'s favourite cut in any joint you like to mention. He will not have to ask for his glass of curaçoa after dinner-it will be brought to him as a matter of course, and his oyster sauce will be as populous as a St. Giles's lodging-house. This is the bright side of his cloud; but there is another way of looking at it, and it is when he thinks of the long, long, solitary evenings in furnished lodgings, the intervals of dreary illness with loving tenderness at so much a week to wait on him; friendless old age, and Death in Apartments, with only a SIMPSON'S waiter to say, "Dear! dear!" when he makes his second and last appearance in the first column of the Times-it is when he thinks of

i would be looked upon as a social martyr if MR. PHELPS were to insist on reciting passages from Manfred to him for two hours and a half every morning while the philosopher was at work. MR. PHELPS would not dare to attempt it. The C. P. would be accounted an object of pity if (say) LORD JOHN MANNERS were to insist upon pouring water into the philosopher's trousers pockets every day from 11 to 1. But it would never occur to LORD JOHN MANNERS to avail himself of such a privilege if he possessed it. The exercise of such a privilege would be regarded (and rightly so) as a social outrage. But when SIGNOR SCAMPIANO FILTHINI takes upon himself to pour dislocated "Trovatore," or intermittent "Champagne Charlie" into the philosopher's ears every forenoon of the week, the philosopher is looked upon as an unfeeling brute if he gives FILTHINI into custody. The indignation of society against MR. PHELPS would be unbridled. The contempt for LORD JOHN MANNERS Would be universal. But SCAMPIANO FILTHINI is an object of pity and of sympathy, and the C. P.'s next door neighbour (the clergyman who orders bells to be rung because it's Tuesday) throws halfpence to him, and beckons him into the front garden. His organ isn't loud enough in the roadway!

*

Bab

No. 1.

Baby

No. 5.

all these possibilities that he feels tempted to exclaim, "Now, maidens, NOW is your time!"

By the way, this same SIMPSON's affords an admirable opportunity for the study of prosperous old-bachelorhood. No. 2 shows two specimens who have dined at the C. P.'s table every day during the last two years. The taller one of the two was once (the C. P. thinks) a proctor, and he is now a solicitor. The C. P. does not think he is a sharp sort of solicitor, because he is always a long time in making up his mind on any point that may arise in conversation. He settles nothing without looking at it from every point of view, and whenever his opinion is asked on any question, professional or otherwise, he goes through a sort of "personation entertainment of Trial by Jury, in which he represents, alternately, counsel for prosecution, witnesses, counsel for defence, witnesses, judge summing up, jury deliberating, and foreman announcing verdict. The shorter gentleman, a bank cashier, is rather a jolly form of old bachelor. He is a wag in his way, and he is especially a wag at a dinner-table. He has jokes for the waiter, good things to say to the carver, and a little professional chaff for the money-taker.

The C. P. feels that before he can go on he must get up and break a plaster cast of BYRON. Phew! Better now! "Some Old Bachelors." Well, well, it's rather a painful subject with the C. P., maidens. He must be permitted to play around it, dance up to it, sniff at it, turn to something else, revert to it once more, and dally coyly with it before he can make up his mind fairly to embrace it. His head of hair is not what it was, and his limbs have not kept pace with his-well, waist, in the matter of filling out. He sleeps after dinner on his club sofas, he begins to find that evening parties bore him; and he is becoming critical in the matter of female beauty. He sees the hollowness of most things; and he wears slippers, a dressing-gown, and no collar, whenever he has a chance. He finds it necessary to select the elements of his dinner with discrimination; and he goes about with his hands in his pockets. He cannot disguise from himself that Bal these signs are premonitions of old

No. 2.

No. 3 is an old bachelor who don't regret his old bachelorhood. He is probably a commercial traveller of the old school, who knows every town in the United Kingdom by heart. He is familiar with all barmaids, and is on

Bab

No. 6.

chin-chucking terms with every chambermaid in Great Britain and Ireland, to say nothing of our Colonies and other Dependencies. He is in his glory when sitting as chairman at a convivial meeting; and, indeed, he always contrives to impart something of a harmonic air to every assemblage at which he happens to be present. If he goes to the theatre, he says, "Hear, hear!" and he can't sit down to a chop with a friend without voting his friend or himself "into the chair."

No. 4 is an old bachelor who does regret his old bachelorhood. He is an old "SIMPSON's" habitué, too. A barrister well-to-do, but, somehow, disappointed in his dearest aspiration-to have a home, a wife, and a family. He will grow old, leave his profession, and finish up as a discontented old nuisance at a Brighton boarding-house.

No. 5 is a very tiresome form of old bachelor, that is common enough at all places of public entertainment. He is an old bachelor with a grievance. Everything is wrong. If he is at dinner, his fish is a studied insult, and his meat a deliberate outrage. He is always reporting somebody, and the general impression concerning him is, that he is not a man to be trifled with. He is supposed to be the mysterious creature who writes all those letters to the Times and other morning papers every day. For years the C. P. wondered who in the world the people were who took the trouble to do these things for nothing, and as soon as he made the acquaintance of his friend over the way, his doubts were set at rest.

No. 6 is another fine crusted old bachelor. He is a poor old peer, living in lodgings in Sloane-street, on three hundred a year. He went wrong in his youth, spent every penny he could realize, and he is now enjoying a friendless and rather disreputable old age. He is very touchy, very haughty, very penniless, and very much involved in debt. The C. P. believes that the Nobility of Great Britain have established a species of Friendly Society to prevent any member of their body coming to utter and unmistakeable grief, and that it is on an allowance from this society that the poor old gentleman contrives to exist. If the C. P. is misinformed as to the existence of such a society, he begs to recommend such a scheme to the consideration of all noblemen who have the credit of their order at heart.

Bab

No 7 is the Boulogne old bachelor. He is not particularly old, nor is he particularly a bachelor, for he has a wife, but the wives of Boulogne old bachelors don't count. He thrashed his wife till she ran away from him with a waiter from the établissement, and as this was precisely what he was aiming at when he thrashed her, he didn't take it much to heart. He is, of course, a captain, and he plays at billiards a good deal. In the initial are two old men belonging to the worst form of old bachelorhood. They speak for themselves the C. P. declines to have anything whatever to say about them.

A LASTING IMPRESSION.

We met; and on my heart she made
So vivid an impression,

My heart before her feet I laid
In humble intercession.

But I am poor and she is rich!
She's lofty-and I'm humble!
A diff'rence of position, which
Procured my love a tumble.

I would my heart were Bostonite,
Since we are doomed to sever,
That I might the impression quite
Obliterate for ever!

Brummagem, Ware!

No. 7.

A BIRMINGHAM paper, alluding to a new form of fork, combining the qualities of both fork and spoon, produced by MESSES. ELKINGTON, winds up in this way :

"There is every pro-pect of its becoming popular, since the inventor, through his design, like so many others, is of a simple character," etc. If the inventor is of a simple character, it is not difficult to guess the origin of the spoony suggestion.

Will it Wash?

A HINT OF SPRING.

WARM weather has come-at one spring,
Let's hope that it's bound to remain now-
The lambkin, poor innocent thing,
Indulges in springs on the plain now.

The blossoms are springing as well

The first welcome vanguard of flowers, And, hark, what soft murmurs there swell From the springs, reinforced by the showers.

They suggest an idea which suits

To honour sweet Spring, the new-comer:
I must order a pair of new boots-
With side-springs, for croquet in summer.

Vaticination.

THE ancients were right in using but one word for "poet" and "prophet." The poet is indeed a seer. Our readers have probably read the plea of the agricultural labourers on strike in Buckinghamshire-a county, by the way, which is represented by that friend of the labouring classes, the RT. HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI-So we may presume their condition is more happy than that of labourers in districts less fortunate. One portion of the plea runs thus :

Where are we labourers with our industry? Why, on the verge of pauperism. We ask that we may live-not as paupers, but by our own industry. We are willing to work, that our families may live.

We wonder if these poor fellows knew when they penned these sentences, that a poet had anticipated their words in "the Lay of the Labourer," whose

Only claim is this,

With labour stiff and stark,
By lawful turn his living to earn
Between the light and dark;
His daily bread, and nightly bed,

His bacon and drop of beer

But all from the hand that holds the land,

And none from the overseer!"

Answers to Correspondents.

[We cannot return rejected MSS. or sketches unless they are accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope.]

H. A. C., New Cross.-That "A-merry-cur" joke has gone to the dogs long since. Other correspondents are

OXONIENSIS.-We do not require acrostics.

requested to accept this intimation-C. F., Notting Hill, and Cornubia, among others.

NAMELESS.-An aimless joke.

B. B.-Apply to our advertising department.

T. C., Doughty-street.-However did you come to hit out that new and brilliant idea about Pat-riots ?

ANON.-If you can't be clever, try to be original.
THETA.-Phi!

F., Cambridge, is recommended to abandon the career of writing bad comic copy, or he will end by doing a burlesque !

J. T. S., Maida-vale.-Perhaps he did. He certainly has not made

a joke.

G. C., Leeds.-Not quite up to the mark.

W. A. observes "if the following piece strikes us we may throw it into our paper." Even if it did strike us we should compel him to keep the

peace. DOT. Clearly in his dot-age.

ZAMIEL has got worked into a naughty temper by frequent rejection_of (to borrow his expressions and spelling) his "villanous doggerel." Poor Z.! When it comes to casting the charmed bullets, we know whence he will be able to get the lead.

M. E. B.-We really cannot undertake to answer such queries.
H. E.-Perhaps.

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS will find, if he consults our back numbers, that his acrostic was rejected.

Declined with thanks-J. P., Thames-street; J. J., Sunderland; M. H., Furnival's-inn; J. N. O.; J. H. H., New Brighton; A. B., Perthshire; C. W., Torquay; E. L. W., Exeter; T. G. K., Plymouth; C. F. B.; Fact; E. A. B., Savile-row; C. J. R.; Brassey Fitz-Windell; Psyche; G. D. S., New Wandsworth; W. F. Battey: M. A. J., South Hackney; C. E. Burton Crescent; Memento Mori; Pollie- ; A Horrid Creature; W. L.; A Weasel; R. F.; O. W.; J. M., Reading; H. W. B., Mildmay-park; S. B.; A. J.; J. L. L., Bristol; A Constant Reader; D. J. John o'Groat's; Asmodeus; W. H. S. A., Penge; G. E. P; F.; H. J. T.; Latiger; R. G. Westminster; Philopægmon; T. H. H.; E. T. Stockwell F. E. B., Bury St. Edmunds; K., Bayswater; E. T., Hulme; M. W. C.; E. W. Chard; G. P.; G. C. N.; F. K., Borough; K., Putney; H. J. C., Colchester; Random Riddle; Curiosity; D. P., Liverpool; T. N., Windsor; T. T., Hackney; Lindley Murray; "Absolom;" Litton; E. C., Ipswich; F.; Anti-Cat.