The very respectable reader probably knows as well as his humble servant, the writer, that in London there is always a social circle just a little lower than one's own which opens its doors with noble, disinterested hospitality, and is prepared to lick the blacking from any famous foot.

The following is also an excellent polish for applying to ladies' boots, instead of blacking them:

This blacking is merely applied with a piece of sponge, and the boots should not be put on until the blacking is dry und hardened.

This was much better than flying the country, by Dieppe, like D'Haussez; or by Membrolle, like Guernon-Ranville; or being captured, disguised as a footboy, and blacking the boots of Madame de Saint Fargeau, like poor Polignac!"

But now I longed for a message of another kind, and chance, if chance there is, brought it, for a man got into the carriage and began to play on a fiddle made apparently of an old blacking-box, and though I am quite unmusical the sounds filled me with the strangest emotions.

We were now getting into the big glass-roofed terminus, and the fiddler put away his old blacking-box and held out his hat for a copper, and then opened the door and was gone.

In the meanwhile, I had sent two men down to the wreckage of the masts to cut away a couple of the hempen shrouds and bring them to the camp, and they, appearing about this time, I set to work to unlay the shrouds, so that they might get out the fine white yarns which lay beneath the outer covering of tar and blacking.

While Tennyson and Browning were being educated for the life of literature, and shielded most tenderly from the hardships of the world, Dickens, a poor, obscure, and suffering child, was helping to support a shiftless family by pasting labels on blacking bottles, sleeping under a counter like a homeless cat, and once a week timidly approaching the big prison where his father was confined for debt.

At eleven years of age the boy was taken out of school and went to work in the cellar of a blacking factory.

" "He looked to me like a bulldog that had swallowed a baby's boot and didn't like the taste of the blacking on it," laughed Roy.

Searching in a cupboard full of oily rags, grimy leathers, and other filthy instruments, he found the blacking and the brushes, and presently the boots began to shine in patches here and there.

" "We don't sell much boot blacking here.

"Where is the Merchants' Bank?" asked Andy of a boy, whose blacking-box denoted his occupation.

That personage was absent from home; but we were hospitably received by his father, who also appeared to be his butler, as he was engaged in bottling off some root-beer into stone blacking-jars, when we entered.

Take this," said he, handing him a dirty tow apron, "and tie it around your neck; it will keep the blacking off your clothes, you know.

The Lord protect me from blacking the character of any honest subject of the King!" "Do you see nothing wrong, worthy and tender Joram, about the ship in the outer harbour?"

Bottles for ginger-beer, soda-water, ink, blacking, &c. are principally manufactured near Codnor Castle, in Derbyshire.

It also appears that Clarence was dragged under the sink and his face scrubbed with the blacking brushhe being still resolved to humour the lunatic at any costand that finally, in a somewhat dishevelled, chipped, and discoloured condition, he was assisted to his coat and shown out by the back door, the shopway being barred by Jennie.

P. S. I have lately got the ingenious Authors of Blacking for Shoes, Powder for colouring the Hair, Pomatum for the Hands, Cosmetick for the Face, to be your constant Customers; so that your Advertisements will as much adorn the outward Man, as your Paper does the inward.

[Footnote 2: Written in jest, but 'The Famous Spanish Blacking for Gentlemen's Shoes,' and 'The famous Bavarian Red Liquor which gives such a delightful blushing colour to the cheeks,' had long been advertised in the Spectator.]

The foreman came in, blinking at the sudden change from bright light to half twilight, and Charming Billy took the opportunity to kick a sardine can of stove-blacking under the stove where it would not be seen.

Replace the covers, and if the stove needs blacking, mix the polish, and apply it, rubbing with a dry brush until nearly dry, then light the fuel, as a little heat will facilitate the polishing.

Just when I got in I tripped over some ribs of beef lying in the doorway, and before I had time to say I preferred my beef without any boot-blacking, I fell head-first against an immense sirloin on the parlour table.

It was a ragged copy of the "Globe" Shakespeare, lacking its covers and smeared with dirt and blacking.

" Mr. Poplington's face looked as if he had poured liquid shoe-blacking on his meat, thinking it was Worcestershire sauce.