beard-we took to eating the kids and lambkins that before we played with. How the change began, and who took to killing first, I know not: I have only heard it wasn't tigers; and now, only know that I must sup: that this very night I must have another Vandervermin. Have you any babies in the house?"

I

"None: I assure you, my lord, not one, answered the ghost. "That's a pity," said the tiger; "for I feel it, my stomach needs something tender and succulent. However, lead on: air and exercise may tone my vitals a little. Why do you tarry, sirrah?"-and the tiger growled like a stage tyrant-"you know your destiny; lead on.'

The ghost seemed to feel the truthful force of the rebuke, and immediately led the way. As they walked on, the ghost espied a remarkably fine ox, strayed from a neighbouring farm. See, my lord; see," cried the shadow.

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'No, no;" said the tiger, a little contemptuously. "I can't do that sort of thing now having once tasted the goodness of man, I must go on with him. No; no; I thank my luck, I now know what good-living really is." And then the tiger paused, and twisting its tail gracefully about its legs, as sometimes an ingenuous maid will twist about a gown flounce, the brute observed,-" What a lovely night! How the air freshens one's spirits! What a beautiful moon-and how the stars shine-and the airs whisper among the tamarind-trees, like unseen fairies making love! You are sure, Jacob, there is not a baby in the house ?”

"Nothing like it, my lord," answered Jacob.

"What is the best you can promise me?" asked the tiger. “To-night, I'm afraid nothing better than Drusilla, my aunt," said the ghost. The tiger growled dubiously; and then said, "Well, we can but look at her. You know the safest way,-so mind what you're about."

Cautiously, stealthily, goaded by fate, did the ghost of Jacob lead the tiger to the mansion of Peter Vandervermin. Leaping a low wall, they gained a garden, and proceeded along a winding walk, until they came to a pretty little summer pavilion, wherein sat aunt Drusilla, as was her wont, knitting, with a large Dutch pug at her feet.

"There's your supper," said Jacob, pointing to the withered. old gentlewoman.

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Humph!" growled the tiger, and angrily twitched its tail"humph! It's against my stomach; I can't do it.'

"What think you," urged the ghost, "of the pug just for a snack?"

The tiger curled its whiskers with a look of disgust, and growling" dropsical," turned supperless away. And all the next night did the tiger fast. But sweet is the sauce of hunger; for on the third evening, the tiger rose and stretched itself, and its eyes glared with brightening flame, as it said " Come along, Jacob: I don't know that that old woman will eat badly after all."

Jacob again conducted the destroyer to the house. Again showed Drusilla, unconscious of her fate, knitting, knitting. There was a slight growl-a spring—an old woman's scream-a yap, yap from the pug-and then the wall was leapt and Peter Vandervermin was a widower.

I will not follow the tiger to its banquet. Suffice it to say, the tiger ate and slept. However, very ill and feverish did the tiger awake in the morning. "Jacob," cried the tiger, "what's the matter with me? Phew! I can hardly move. "Perhaps," said Jacob, "my lord has just a stitch in his side."

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No, no," said the tiger, "I feel 'em now; it's that abominable old woman's knitting-needles.'

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Every rose has its thorn, my lord," said the ghost, joking as a ghost may be supposed to joke. "You never find a woman without pins and needles.”

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Jacob," cried the tiger, "either you come of a very bad family, or after all, man-eating is by no means so wholesomehowever pleasant it may be as a hearty, simple meal off a buffalo, a deer, or anything of that sort.'

"Then, why my lord," urged the ghost, "why not return to the humbler diet?"

"That's all very well, Jacob. Why don't men—with red noses and no insides-turn from arrack and new rum, and drink only at the diamond spring? I begin to feel myself no better than a drunkard: yes, I fear I'm a lost tiger. It's very nicevery delicious to eat a man at night-but it's like what I 've heard of drink-what a head-ache it leaves in the morning!" "Ha," cried the beast, "I'm afraid I'm making quite a man of myself. Look at my tongue, Jacob; it's as hard and as dry, you might grind an axe upon it. Oh, that dreadful old woman!"—and the tiger closed its heavy, blood-shot eyes, and tried to sleep.

Only three days past, and then the tiger leapt up, and licking itself all over-as though it was going out to an evening party, and wished to put the very best gloss upon its coat-the creature cried" Come away, Jacob; I must have another Vandervermin.”

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Oh, my lord," cried the ghost, "think what you'll suffer in the morning."

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That for the morning," cried the tiger, whisking its tail— "I tell you, Jacob, I intend to make a night of it. Slave, lead on."

And thus for three months, conducted by the fate-enforced ghost, did the tiger continue to sup off Vandervermins. Uncles and aunts, cousins male and female, in all eight, had the tiger devoured, when one night the brute carried off the ninth and last victim in the person of Justus Vandervermin, lawyer and usurer. The tiger-strange to say-devoured every bit of him; but it was the brute's last morsel; it never could digest him: Justus Vandervermin remained, like so much india-rubber, in the vitals of the tiger. Nothing could stir the lawyer.

"Jacob," cried the brute, feeling its last hour approach; "I shall die, and your ghost will be at rest. I forgive you-but why—why didn't you tell me that Justus was a lawyer?"

And with these words the tiger died, and the ghost of Jacob Vandervermin was instantly at peace.

never

"And if all this story isn't true, Captain "-asked one of the Cat-and-Fiddle Company-" what do you get out of it? "Why true or not, this much," answered Captain Bam ; to neglect and ill-use a poor relation. For however low and help less he may seem, the day may come when he shall have about him the strength of a tiger."

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HOLIDAYS FOR THE PEOPLE.

THE BIRTHDAY OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.

To one who looks round upon England with eyes undazzled by the glitter and pomp of those who occupy its social eminences, and who endeavours to understand the true character of the deep and gloomy abysses of humanity that everywhere intervene, there is, perhaps, no fact more truly saddening than this:—the country once denominated by those who knew her best-the poets-as merry England, does not now exhibit from year's end to year's end one really national holiday; or, in other words, one day of universal spirit-stirring rejoicing. It is true enough that the shades or spectres of former festivals still mock us with their annual visits, under the old and revered names; but what has become of the healthy, spontaneous, heartfelt sense of enjoyment, with which all classes, from the very highest to the very lowest, used to greet the genuine Christmas, and Whitsuntide, and Mayday, and all the other days that were severally devoted to the honour of evangelist, apostle, saint, or martyr? Why, it is gone: absorbed, as an item unreckoned, and not worthy of reckoning into the political economist's "national wealth.” To the statue with head of gold, arms of silver, and feet of clay and iron,

"We have given our hearts away :"

and though (to continue the poet's line) the gentlemen just named may look upon them but as

"A sordid boon,"

we may surely be pardoned for valuing them ourselves, and setting to work to redeem them at the first favourable opportunity. In deep thankfulness do we say there are evidences on all sides that the work of redemption is about to begin. Not much longer will the mightiest of all the sciences be disgraced by the fantastic or dishonest vagaries of its professing disciples; not much longer will they be able to persuade us that the wise production of wealth may be usefully studied in entire forgetfulness

of the honest distribution of wealth, or that either of these branches of the subject can be rationally understood, except in connection with the production and distribution of that better wealth of the heart and the intellect; that alone raises us above the rank of the prudent insect in her cell, or the comfortable beaver in his frozen hut on the stream. The richest and most precious of all imaginable treasures that this world can show, is a happy people; assuredly that will be one of the first kinds of wealth that will be sought to be produced by every true system of political economy. And when produced, we may hope to be rewarded for this long period of darkness and privation through which we have passed. Our holidays shall be revived with tenfold splendours, and a hundred times the enjoyment, that could have distinguished them, when men generally were ill-educated, or not educated at all, and when they were dependent, not only for their daily bread, but for the safety of their property and lives upon the will of those who had all but despotic power over them. It was merry England, doubtless, in spite of all the darkness of the background here and there visible through the splendour of the picture; and merry England it must be again, being at the same time, also, free England, and (in which all she is summed up), educated and enlightened England.

The perennial springs of enjoyment, then, will flow as of yore, but swelled from a thousand fresh sources when the superincumbent rubbish shall have been cleared away, but not generally in the same channels. Christmas may grow ruddier than ever with his good cheer and his brilliant holly-leaves. May-day may again stand forth as the embodied representative of all that is young, and beautiful and promise-breathing in this apparently old world; —we can understand such holidays, and others like them. But who comes now to be reminded of the horrors of St. Bartholomew's day, or of the turbulent ambition and violent end of Beckett, by St. Thomas's day, much less to make holidays of them? And as to the political commemorations of the execution of the kingly "martyr, and the restoration of his son, we fear the sentiments of the people of England now would be anything rather than in accordance with the notions of those who established the days in question in the calendars. Besides, we want no party holidays. Then, again, St. George's day :-never again will the twenty-third of April, or any other day of the year, be made sacred by the happiness of an entire people, if it can only be founded upon the