To stuff him, and lots of his like, rate-collectors must put on the screw. Well, when you have done with the nipper, the question comes, what can _he_ do? Will his bag of books stand him in stead, when he ought to have tools in his bag? Are your "Standards" quite up to the mark, if they lead to the Black or Red Flag? Oh, bother your 'isms and 'ologies! Excellent things in their way; But bread-winning wants something else, and the 'isms without it won't pay. Yes--"Technical Knowledge" they call it--means practical gumption and skill, Or used to when I was a youngster; it may be a sort of a pill, But if you'll stand aside and let _me_ teach the lad something useful, my friend, Old England may yet hold her own, which some think a desirable end! * * * * * ROBERT ON LORD MAYOR'S DAY. [Illustration] DETERMINED to have a good long gaze at what I was told was to be a reglar stunning Lord Mayor's Show, such as they has in sum of the low countrys of Urope on werry high occasions, I got a old friend of mine, who's a reglar tribble Bob Major of a bell ringer at a Citty Church, to git me a ticket for a lovely seat in his boarded Church Yard, oppersite Newgate, and near the Hold Bayley, so there was plenty to cheer us hup afore the Show cum, and plenty to emuse us. Of course the best fun of all was to watch the poore chaps in the crowd below us a being scrowged and shoved and pushed about, while we sat in our bootiful crimson seats just like so many hemenent swells in the theatre, a looking down on the common fellers beneath 'em. I don't think, upon the hole, if I had my choice, that I woud choose to be a Perliceman on Lord Mare's Day. Ony to think of the diffrence betwixt them and hus! They begins hurly, we begins late; they is, aperiently, on their poor feet all day long, we merely spends a hour or two in the hevening on them useful xtremes; they has to snatch a bit of quite plane food and drink anyhows and anywheres, while we--but no! I draws a whale over the thrilling contrast; there's sum things as is best left to the emadgination, speshally such things as them things. And when at length they seeks their tired homes, what has they to console 'em for their long day's pushing and scrowging? Nothink! What have we, for our day of ministering to the luxyourious wants of the helegant and refined? Sumthink, but how much, depends upon suckemstances over which unfortnitly we haven't not no control. And I thinks that upon the hole, the libberality of mankind is not a increesing helement, more's the pitty!