" But Barney's astral jokes were brought to a period by the sharp note of the bugle, as Colonel Oswald, very important under the eye of so many big-wigs, magnificently ordered the march.

"It is quite refreshing to find that a big-wig like you can talk just as much nonsense as a little-wig like me," she said; "but you don't know, for all that, what the silence and monotony of life here can be.

I may say in passing that Ann Spencer is more celebrated in our neighbourhood by virtue of her genius at frying chicken, than Aristotle or Solomon or Socrates, or indeed all the big-wigs of the past rolled into one.

Those who know the official dignity of a small British colony can well understand how his pleasantries must have shocked those worthy big-wigs who, exalted from Pump Court, Temple, or Paradise Row, Old Brompton, to places of honour and high salaries, rode their high horses with twice the exclusiveness of those 'to the manner born.'

Do you want to drop the Lodger and come out as a Householder?Now you must know that I took this house of mine at Enfield, by an obvious domiciliary fiction, in my Sister's name, to avoid the bother and trouble of parish and vestry meetings, and to escape finding myself one day an overseer or big-wig of some sort.

One can never say how these big-wigs may take things.

" "Well, I'll leave my warrant with your big-wigs, and come after my man when they've got through with him," said the New York detective, turning away.

Psychologists and all the big-wigs say they can't be,

* * "CHOCKCHAW;" OR, BIG-WIGS AT PLAY.

How the Big-Wigs doubted LX.

Chapter LIX How The Big-Wigs Doubted

Then Caldigate took the letter, and, with his mind still bewildered, made himself acquainted with the gratifying fact that all the big-wigs were very sorry for the misfortune which had befallen him.

Of course the air-rules and laws aren't wholly settled yet; but we're in a fair way of giving the big-wigs a whacking precedent to govern the future.

In the meantime, Clara Brandon is safe beyond the reach of all the judges or chancellors that ever wore horsehair, and that everlasting simpleton of a major and his harridan wife roaming the metropolis like distracted creatures; and that I take to be the real essence of the thing, whatever the big-wigs may decide about the shells!"

As to meeting these big-wigs on equal terms, that clearly was not expected.