S/Ji TITUS SALT 149 



clerk about shipping them to South America again. One 

 day — we won't care what day it was, or even what week or 

 month it was, though things of far less consequence have 

 been chronicled to the half minute — one day a plain, 

 business-looking young man, with an intelligent face, quiet 

 manner, was walking along through these same warehouses 

 in Liverpool, when his eye fell upon some of the super- 

 annuated horse hair projecting from one of the ugly dirty 

 bales. Some lady rat, more delicate than her neighbours, 

 had found it rather coarser than usual, and had persuaded 

 her lord and master to eject the portion from her resting- 

 place. Our friend took it up, looked at it, felt at it, 

 rubbed it, pulled it about; in fact, he did all but taste it, 

 and he would have done that too if it had suited his 

 purpose, for he was "Yorkshire." Having held it up to 

 the light, and held it away from the light, and held it in 

 all sort of positions, and done all sort of cruelties to it, as 

 though it had been his most deadly enemy and he was 

 feeling quite vindictive, he placed a handful or two in his 

 pocket, and walked calmly away, evidently intending to put 

 the stuff to some excruciating private torture at home. 

 What particular experiments he tried with this fibrous sub- 

 stance I am not exactly in a position to state, nor does it 

 much signify; but the sequel was, that the same quiet, 

 business-looking young man was seen to enter the office 01 

 C. W. & F. Foozle & Co., and ask for the head of the 

 firm. When he asked that portion of the house if he would 

 accept eightpence per pound for the entire contents of the 

 three hundred and odd frowsy dirty bags of nondescript 

 wool, the authority interrogated felt so confounded that he 

 could not have told if he were the head or tail of the 



