farewell, and balmy slumbers!

[_He collects the final coins, and wheels away the piano. The
crowd disperses; the listeners in the lodging-house balconies
retire; and the Crescent is silent and deserted._

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

One of the Baron's "Merry Men All" has been reading and enjoying Mr.
BARRY PAIN's _Stories and Interludes_. The book has a wondrously weird
and heavily-lined picture in front, which is just a little too like
a "Prophetic Hieroglyphic" in _Zadkiel's Almanack_. An emaciated and
broken-winged devil is apparently carrying an engine-hose through a
churchyard, whilst a bat flits against a curious sky, which looks like
a young grainer's first attempt at imitating "birds'-eye maple." Upon
a second glance it seems possible that the "hose" is a snake, the tail
of which the devil is gnawing. The gruesome design illustrates a yet
more gruesome Interlude, entitled, "_The Bat and the Devil._" But it
gives no fair idea of the contents of the volume, some of which are
charming.

Read _White Nights_, stories within a story, told by a tragical
"Fool," of the breed of HUGO's _Rigoletto_, and POE's _Hopfrog_--with
a difference. They are told with force and grace, and with unstrained,
but moving pathos. Read "The Dog That Got Found," a brief sketch
indeed, but abundantly suggestive. Poor _Fido_--the "dog that got to
be utterly sick of conventionality," and came to such bitter grief in
his search for "life poignant and intense!" He might read a lesson