They took up their abode near a pleasant town in the south of England, and for a time got on pretty well; but when at the end of the first year a sweet little boy made his appearance, and at the end of the second an equally sweet little girl, they found that nursemaids, baby-linen, doctors, and all the etceteras appertaining to the introduction and support of these baby-visitors, formed a serious item in their yearly expenditure. For a while they struggled on without falling into debt; but at length their giddy feet slipped into that vortex which has engulfed so many, and their affairs began to assume a very gloomy aspect. About this time an adventurer named Smith, with whom Captain Dutton became casually acquainted, and whose plausible manners and appearance completely imposed on the frank, unsuspecting soldier, proposed to him a plan for insuring, as he represented it, a large and rapid fortune. This was to be effected by embarking considerable capital in the manufacture of some new kind of spirit-lamps, which Smith assured the captain would, when once known, supersede the use of candles and oil-lamps throughout the kingdom. To hear him descant on the marvelous virtues and money-making qualities of his lamp, one would be inclined to take him for the lineal descendant of Aladdin, and inheritor of that scampish individual's precious heirloom. Our modern magician, however, candidly confessed that he still wanted the "slave of the lamp," or, in other words, ready money, to set the invention a-going; and he at length succeeded in persuading the unlucky captain to sell out of the army, and invest the price of his commission in this luminous venture. If Captain Dutton had refused to pay the money until he should be able to pronounce correctly the name of the invention, he would have saved his cash, at the expense probably of a semi-dislocation of his jaws; for the lamp rejoiced in an eight syllabled title, of which each vocable belonged to a different tongue--the first being Greek, the fourth Syriac, and the last taken from the aboriginal language of New Zealand; the intervening sounds believed to be respectively akin to Latin, German, Sanscrit, and Malay. Notwithstanding, however, this _prestige_ of a name, the lamp was a decided failure: its light was brilliant enough; but the odor it exhaled in burning was so overpowering, so suggestive of an evil origin, so every way abominable, that those adventurous purchasers who tried it once, seldom submitted their olfactory nerves to a second ordeal. The sale and manufacture of the lamp and its accompanying spirit were carried on by Mr. Smith alone in one of the chief commercial cities of England, he having kindly arranged to take all the trouble off his partner's hands, and only requiring him to furnish the necessary funds. For some time the accounts of the business transmitted to Captain Dutton were most flourishing, and he and his gentle wife fondly thought they