_Cad._ Ay, well, it's no use, Bill--she's too late _agen_--ve're full--ALL RIGHT--GO ON! [Illustration: _An Election Squib._] "MY VOTE AND INTEREST." A COMMUNICATION FROM MR. SIMPLETON SCHEMER, OF DOLTFORD-LODGE, CROOKSLEY. Crooksley doesn't return members to Parliament--I wish it did. I'm sure I took pains enough ten years ago to procure for it--all my property being situate there--the privilege which was at that time accorded to other towns of consideration and respectability; for although the population doesn't much exceed three hundred and sixty, I took upon myself to make a return of our numbers to the then Secretary of State, which _ought_ to have prevailed in our favour; for I proved that the population amounted to within a dozen of seven thousand, merely by including the churchyard, which I well might do, as part and parcel of Crooksley itself, and adding the affectionate wives, virtuous husbands, and filial prodigies, now no more, to the estimate of the living inhabitants; also, by anticipating the returns of christenings for a few succeeding years; which was easily done by guessing, on the authority of Blandish (our medical man, with whom I was at that time friendly), what number of children extra the various increasing families within the boundaries of Crooksley were likely to be blessed with. Not the smallest notice, however, was taken of my memorial; and Crooksley to this hour does not return a single representative. I read an advertisement the other day in our county paper, of some new patent strait-waistcoats; which advertisement was headed thus:--"Worthy the attention of the Insane!" Now, if Crooksley had been enfranchised, that is the very heading which might have been affixed to an advertisement for an independent candidate to represent it at the present crisis--"_Candidate wanted--worthy the attention of the Insane!_" for a place more unlucky in its elections, more ill-omened and perverse in all its contests, more predestined to choose the wrong candidate, or more wilfully bent on self-destruction by scorning the advice of its best friends and patrons, I never lived in, since the day I sold my stock and good-will, and retired from the Old Jewry for ever. To every other place with which I am acquainted entrance is obtained by regular roads; to Crooksley, I verily believe, there is no egress whatever but by _cross_-roads. I'm thinking of selling Doltford-lodge--cheap.