As a public man, James Million, Esquire, M.P. for Brewingham, felt it necessary to his position to spend two or three hours in his study every morning, and to 'make-believe' to be busy. Had you asked James Million what he was, he would not have told you that he was a brewer or a capitalist, but would have replied briefly and emphatically, 'A public man, sir.' Now, to be a public man, you must have a shuttlecock; and whether it was that Mr. Million had a real sympathy for the institution known as the working man, or because the working man drank large quantities of Million's Entire and Million's Treble X, it is certain that he set up the working man as his shuttlecock; and it is quite as certain that he set it up without in the least understanding it, being, indeed, a most unskilful player at any game in which his own interests were not directly involved. The game of battledoor and shuttlecock is a popular one with us from childhood upwards, but I am not aware that any close observer and noter of curious things has ever calculated how many shuttlecocks an ordinary battledoor will outlast. Popular as the game is with children, it is more popular with public men, who, battledoor in hand, are apt (in their enthusiasm and love for the game) to run into exceedingly wild, extremes when a new shuttlecock, with spick and span new feathers, is cast among them. Such a superabundance of energy do they in their zeal impart into the game that they often sorely bruise the poor shuttlecock, and so knock it out of all shape and proportion that the members of its family find it impossible to recognise it. How many a poor shuttlecock have you and I seen on its last legs, as one might say, in a desperate condition from being much hit and much missed and much trodden into the mud, and with feathers that would rival those of a roupy old hen in the last stage of dissolution! and looking upon it in melancholy mood, may we not be excused for dwelling sadly upon the time (but yesterday!) when its feathers were new and crimson-tipped, and when it proudly took its first flight in the air?