"FAEM TO LET." 123 



Mercury, which was lying fresh and damp from the 

 Press, and casting a hazy pattern of itself upon the 

 polish of one of those same mahoganies, there ap- 

 peared, one Saturday morning, in the autumn of the 

 year Eighteen-hundred-and-thirty something, a short 

 dab of an advertisement in the following spasmodic 

 phraseology : 



" WETLANDSIIIRK Farm to let ; on lease. 250 

 acres. One third Meadow and Pasture. Has been 

 drained and otherwise improved in the hands of the 

 proprietor. Capital required, 10Z. to the acre. Ap- 

 plication, to Messrs. Penn and Debbitt, Bogmoor, 

 Wetlandshire." 



"I say, Mr. Bowles, have you seen this Farm 

 that 's advertised here ? " 



said a gentleman sitting in the window, to 

 another gentleman, in deep perusal at the fire-place, 

 of which he had taken sole seizin, holding it by the 

 hobs with his feet. 



" Yes : No : What is it ? " said the voice from 

 the fire-place, uninquiringly, and smothered in a 

 " leading article." 



"Why here's a Farm of two hundred and fifty 

 acres to let, 'drained and otherwise improved by 

 the proprietor.'' I wonder whose it is: that's just 



