Every one has heard of Binney's Food for Poultry. Indeed it would be quite impossible for anybody who is able to read to be unaware of its existence, for its fame is blazoned on every hoarding in the United Kingdom. It was Peter Binney who first conceived the idea of advancing the cause of art and advertising his wares at the same time. In the early days, when the future world-famed business was just emerging from its chrysalis state of a little cornchandler's shop in the neighbourhood of the East India Docks, he was content to publish a picture of a simpering young woman in a quilted satin petticoat and dancing shoes, feeding a number of plethoric hens in a very clean farmyard. But when the shop became a factory and Mr. Binney's keen business capacity began to tell, he issued his celebrated series of "Raphael's Cartoons for the Home," across the sky of each of which ran the inscription, "Binney's Food for Poultry." After a little time he published an edition of the "Plays of Shakespeare," in which all the passages that Mr. Bowdler would have omitted were ingeniously converted by Mr. Binney into eulogies on his Food for Poultry. Poultry and taste were alike fed by Mr. Binney, and his business flourished accordingly. At the age of forty-five he found himself a rich man, with a house in Russell Square, a family tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery (tenanted at present only by his wife), and a son who was being educated at Eton. But to return to the present time and Mr. Binney's purpose. When he had let himself into the house in Russell Square, he rang the bell and inquired of the parlour-maid who answered it if Mr. Lucius was at home. Hearing that he was not, Mr. Binney seemed somewhat relieved, and went straight up into his dressing-room, where he put on the coat and trousers generally reserved for Sunday wear, and exchanged his dark tie for a brilliant red one. Then he looked at his boots, and hesitated. They were neat enough, but they had lost the sober brilliance of the morning. There was a row of similar boots freshly blacked under the dressing-table, but even these must have wanted something in Mr. Binney's eyes, for after looking at them thoughtfully he shook his head, and opening the door stole quietly out and upstairs into a room above his own. It was rather an untidy room and evidently occupied by a young man of athletic tastes, to judge by the dumb-bells and Indian clubs, cricket-bats, guncases and fishing-rods that littered the corners. There was a row of boots and shoes under the dressing-table here too, and among them a pair of shining patent leathers. Mr. Binney made his way across the room on tiptoe, and seizing the boots, trees and all, retreated with them hurriedly to his own room, where he sat down and put them on. They were a good deal too big, but an extra pair of winter socks set that right, and when Mr. Binney had buttoned them he stood up on a chair and surveyed himself in the glass with considerable satisfaction.