“ART AND ARTFUL.—One day last week a young lady brought a painting to a fine art depository in the West-end, and asked the proprietor to buy it for two pounds. He looked at it, and declared the price ridiculously high, inquiring, with a sneer, where she got such a lofty estimate of her own talents. She replied that she was in most urgent need of two pounds, and felt sure that the picture was worth the money. He told her to take her picture and clear out if she had no more sense than that. Then she asked him what he would give her for it; and he replied that he would pay her eighteen shillings. With trembling lips she said eighteen shillings would not be enough, she must have more; would he not make it twenty-five? No, he replied, not a penny more than eighteen shillings. Eventually, she left it on sale or return, and was to call again in two or three days. It was an exquisite little gem, and before the day was ended it was sold. A gentleman bought it for ten guineas. Two days later, the artist called again and saw the proprietor. Was her picture sold? Oh yes, it was sold, and there was the money for it—eighteen shillings. The poor girl began hysterically to beg for more, and to ask in agony, what should she do? The dealer in art ordered her to leave his premises, and not make a scene, or it would become unpleasant for her; and after vainly trying to melt the heart of stone of the art man, she went away cursing him. But he is a much respected churchwarden of St. Ronald’s. Could a wronged girl’s curse touch _him?_” “GOING SHARES.—A gentleman had in his employment a skilled workman to whom he paid thirty-five shillings a week, which is about the usual wages for the sort of work he did. Ten years ago the workman saw how, by a slight alteration in a machine, the work might be done much more advantageously, and he told his master. ‘A very good idea, Smith,’ he said; ‘can you manage to set it down in writing and make a drawing of it?’ Smith did so, and the master had it patented. He has just died, leaving a fortune of sixty thousand pounds, made chiefly, as all the world knows, by that improved machine. Did he go shares with Smith? Oh, yes! This is how he went shares: he gave him a pound for his idea; and before he died Mr. Jones made things still more right by leaving two hundred pounds to the hospital in which Smith is ending his days!”