This is one of the pewter’s innocent uses, and they seem to have been specially cleaned and brightened up in honour of the occasion. It is the twentieth anniversary of John and Sarah Holl’s wedding-day. The guests soon begin to arrive; there are not many of them—half-a-dozen or so. In the first case, as he is a public character should be mentioned A 56. For he is a public character, and his place can by no means be termed a sinecure. Far from it, for A 56 has plenty of hard work and not over much pay in return. He must make up his mind for hard knocks, and occasionally in the discharge of his duty to be nearly killed, perhaps in the open day, with dozens of bystanders looking on, too cowardly or too indifferent to lift a finger in his defence. He will have some unpleasant duties, too, such as keeping the line all day in the rain at Chiswick Fête, and is expected to be within a few yards of every irascible gentleman who is overcharged by a cabman, or who imagines himself to be in any way aggrieved. He must make up his mind to being a pretty general object of dislike among the lower orders, and to be taunted and chaffed and groaned at on all public occasions, he being at those times considered a fair subject for sport. All this and much more must he bear with perfect equanimity and good temper, for if he should ever get a little crusty, and hit rather harder then the occasion appears to warrant, he knows that “Mentor,” and “Censor,” and “Civis,” and many others will be down upon him at once in the columns of the daily papers. But to their credit be it spoken, it is very seldom that A 56 and his brethren from A 1 to the end of the alphabet ever give an opportunity for a charge against them. Next to A 56 must be mentioned Perkins. Perkins is not a handsome man, in fact the reverse. He is rather tall and strongly built, with high cheek bones, small sunken eyes, and a broken nose. He wears a groom’s waistcoat with a heavy steel watchguard, and a gaudy scarf round his neck with a showy mosaic gold pin. From these tokens it may be at once seen that Perkins is or has been a prize-fighter. A nasty customer was Perkins in his time, and many a victory has he won, from his first appearance as Harry Parson’s novice, to the time when backing himself to fight Unknown for 200_l._ a side, he was nearly killed. It was in that celebrated conflict that his nose was broken; and he then retired from the ring, and was established by his admirers in the snug Public, known as “The Lively Stunners,” where every Wednesday evening a select harmonic meeting is held, at which good humour and fisticuffs prevail, as see “Bell’s Life.”