Now, gutta percha is a most admirable material, especially adapted for boats, ropes, and other commodities to be used in the Arctic regions; but, unfortunately, it has the slight drawback of softening like “hardbake” at a high temperature, and consequently it is _not particularly_ suited for firemen’s helmets, owing to its liability to run down the faces of the “brigade” like treacle, when exposed to a “terrific conflagration;” nor is it especially adapted to the manufacture of shaving-pots, seeing that the infusion of the boiling water is certain to elongate the vessel into something approximating the form and appearance of a huge German sausage; and we _have_ known candlesticks made of the treacherous “gutta” _gutter_ away with the expiring “stearine” until nothing was left of the antique candelabrum but a leathery pancake on the tablecloth; picture-frames, too, composed of the same uncertain substance have been found, in the dog-days, to suffer almost as much as aldermen from the extreme heat of the weather, and to grow as limp and bendy at the joints as an acrobat, while the cornices ran down into a series of chocolate-coloured stalactites. Nor is the soluble stuff better adapted to the formation of harness, for gutta percha traces have been occasionally seen, when the thermometer stood at 80° in the shade, to elongate like vulcanized India-rubber, and to leave the vehicle a considerable distance behind the horse which was supposed to be drawing it, while the whip which was intended for the flagellation of the animal has gone as soft as a lollipop, and of no more service than a straw; and to this catalogue of commodities unfitted to be manufactured in gutta percha still one other article must be added, and that is—as an Irishman would say—wooden legs; for though legs are intended to run as well as to walk, it is somewhat inconvenient to find them, on the least increase of temperature, run away altogether, and the limb which was meant as a crutchlike support give way, for all the world as though the wearer had become suddenly afflicted with the “rickets,” his gutta percha leg gradually bending in or bulging out, like a barley-sugar bird-cage at an evening party. Presently the tender thread of Major Oldschool’s discourse was rudely snapped asunder by a kind of echo duet performed by the captain of the “Busy Bee” in deep bass, and the call-boy in shrill treble, the burden of which was—“ease her! _ease her!_—back her! _back her!_—stop her! _stop her!_”—and then bump went the vessel against the Westminster pier, making the barge wabble on the water like a yeast dumpling in a saucepan.