Mr. and Mrs. Sparkler. 15 1 



subject of local interest, such as the painting by night, in 

 broad red and yellow stripes, of his worship the mayor's 

 front door, by some irreverent wag, or wags, of cheerful 

 temperament ; or the stoppage of the clock at the Town 

 Hall. Then come a couple of columns or so devoted to 

 police news, and two more to the goings on at the 

 villages round about, such as penny readings, rows at 

 vestry meetings, between the vicar and his churchwardens 

 (the latter, of course, headed '' Disgraceful Scene in a 

 Church "), or some such exciting items. Then there 

 are letters to the editor (usually on the subject of 

 drains). There is a ''poet's corner," and there is a whole 

 column headed " Wit and Humour," which possibly might 

 be found amusing, if the reader had not already been 

 made familiar with most of the bon mots contained therein, 

 through the medium of one Joseph Miller. The editor 

 has still plenty of space, and this he fills up in the way 

 we have described, viz., with cuttings from the different 

 society journals. 



There was no one probably in the whole of Buttercup- 

 shire with whose views this little arrangement on his 

 part fell in with better, than our friend Mrs. Gapeseed 

 That estimable lady, besides being an ardent lover of 

 gossip, for gossip's sake — life, indeed, would not have been 

 worth having without it, in her opinion — was still better 

 pleased at getting it on the cheap as it were. It gave it a 

 sort of extra relish, getting for a penny what she would 

 have otherwise had to give eighteen pence or two shillings 

 for ; for the editor of the B utter cupshire Gazette did not 

 confine himself to extracts from one journal, but went 

 boldly in for all the sixpennies, the whole bilin\ in fact. 



Every Saturday morning then Mrs. Gapeseed, after her 



