FUHTHEE EXPEEIEIiTCES OP MB. FEESH. 
eightpence and ninepence columns were perfectly clean, 
apparently never in use. Our practical readers of the 
present day will hardly be able to understand this, 
as the ready reckoners in present use shew quite a 
contrary appearance. If you don’t believe it, turn up 
and see ; but perhaps from want of habit, you will 
have some difficulty; in finding the columns, or has the 
publisher and printer left them out, as being now of 
little use ? They are there however, there when wanted, 
although for all the use they are, as well consign them 
to “the tomb of all the Capulets.” The floor of the 
office was not only covered, but heaped up with waste, 
useless papeis, discarded as having done, completed 
their work, so that any casual observer looking in would 
fancy ‘‘master” was sitting on a mass of waste paper ; 
blit he was not, he was seated on a rough three-legged 
stool, the legs of which, and his own also, being so 
concealed by accumulations of paper as to present this 
strange appearance. In these days none thought of, 
perhaps were ignorant of, the simple and easy plan 
of calculating the cost of the different works by deci- 
mals; they took the sum total of the check roll, thq 
total amount of labor, and the separate amount, in 
each column of the distribution, and calculated it by 
simple proportion ; all these calculations had to be kept 
in case the account did not balance, for, as a rule, 
there was sure to be always something wrong. The 
long, tedious calculations had to be gone over again, 
and the error was sure to be found in some of the last cal- 
culations, so that the time spent in revision would all 
have been saved had the last few calculations been 
overlooked, instead of commencing at the first. When 
Mr. Fresh’s fingers became stiff, or his brain confused, 
he would start up, walk into the sitting room, take 
and cut up some cavendish tobacco, with which he 
filled a pipe, and call out to the “ boy ’’ for a fire- 
stick ; but there would be no reply, for the boy had 
peeped through from behind the door, and seeing 
master was very busy, had gone away somewhere in 
order to be busy also after his own fashion. So Mr, 
Fresh went into the kitchen and poked his fingers 
into and amongst a heap of ashes on the cooking stand, 
where he with difficulty and considerable trouble ex- 
tracted a small red ember, with which he lighted his 
pipe. He then paced up and down the verandah, 
absorbed in thought, and after his smoke was finished 
re-entered his office and commenced his work with 
renewed vigour. But he had not been long seated, 
when three or four heads were seen cautiously peer- 
ing in at the side of the window, and then as suddenly 
withdrawn ; after a short time the same performance, 
would take place on the other side of the window^ 
