41 A FLY-LEAK. 



A FLY-LEAF. 



That 



"Great events from little causes spring" 



is a truth which we have all learnt lifty times over from 

 book and from experience. Pope Adrian the 4th, under his 

 plain English name of Nicholas Breakspear, is recorded to 

 have been choked, while drinking, by a Fly, which, says old 

 Fuller, "in the large territory of St. Peter's patrimony had no 

 other place to get into." TSow since a real Fly stands thus 

 chronicled, in history, as having marred the golden fortunes of a 

 mighty prince, surely we may be permitted (in romance) to ma lo- 

 an imaginary Fly a grand agent in mending the iron luck of an 

 humble Poet. 



Our friend II had the misfortune to be cast up a poet 

 on the stream of Life, since, in this age of mechanism, it 

 has been turned into a mill-stream. Consequently, he found 

 himself held as a mere bubble in the froth or scum of societv, 



J 



and his residence accorded perfectly with such estimation. He 

 was the highest occupant of a house in a low London neighbour- 

 hood, where, nevertheless, he was looked down upon as a nobody; 

 and no wonder, for next beneath him, in descending order, a 

 dancing master demonstrated for sixpence a lesson the position, 

 that " manners make the man ; " under him, albeit above him, a 



