MAI A. 
25 
Esquire, some five hundred pounds sterling per annum for 
his labour, had continued, with a sublime simplicity of 
economy which Mr. Hume might have envied, and admired 
afar off, to make him do his work gratis, by giving him the 
nuisances as his perquisites, and teaching him how to eat 
them. Certainly, (without going the length of the Caribs, 
who uphold cannibalism because, they say, it makes war 
cheap, and precludes entirely the need of a commissariat,) 
this cardinal virtue of cheapness ought to make Squinado 
an interesting object in the eyes of the present generation, 
especially as he was at that moment a true sanatory martyr, 
having, like many of his human fellow- workers, got into a 
fearful scrape by meddling with those existing interests and 
f vested rights which are but vested wrongs/ which have 
proved fatal already to more than one Board of Health. 
Eor last night, as he was sitting quietly under a stone in 
four fathoms water, he became aware (whether by sight, 
smell, or that mysterious sixth sense, to us unknown, which 
seems to reside in his delicate feelers) of a palpable nuisance 
somewhere in the neighbourhood ; and, like a trusty servant 
of the public, turned out of his bed instantly, and went in 
search; till he discovered, hanging among what he judged 
to be the stems of tangle {Laminaria ) , three or four large 
