A CASE of some interest to Self-made Men, the conviction of a boy fined half-a-crown for playing, with some other boys, the game of "brag," occasioned Mr. SHIEL, on the Southwark Bench, to observe that "Gambling was the first step towards crime. Boys who began with gambling, very often ended by being thieves." Too often, perhaps, but, it may be hoped, not always. The boy who begins by playing at pitch-and-toss, surely doesn't always grow up to be a man who actually commits manslaughter. He may possibly stop short of larceny, burglary, or housebreaking, and do nothing worse than getting a useless, but not absolutely criminal livelihood, by betting on the Derby and the St. Leger, or speculating on the Stock Exchange. * * * * * [Illustration: FORM. _Public School Boy (to General Sir George, G.C.B., G.S.I., V.C., &c. &c. &c.)_ "I SAY, GRANDPAPA,--A--WOULD YOU MIND JUST PUTTING ON YOUR HAT _A LITTLE STRAIGHTER?_ HERE COMES _CODGERS_--HE'S AWFULLY PARTICULAR--AND HE'S THE _CAPTAIN OF OUR ELEVEN, YOU KNOW!_"] * * * * * WORDS IN SEASON. NEWS are by no means wanting in the newspapers. A surprising telegram from Vienna announces that:-- "A large shark has been captured close to the harbour of Fiume. It is four and a half mètres long, and weighs 1,460 kilogrammes. The stomach contained a pair of human feet with the boots on." The shark with two feet, and boots inside of it to boot, beats JERROLD'S "San Domingo Billy," in _Black Eyed Susan_, with a watch in his maw--whereby hung a yarn. Provincial journals, please copy, and report a jack that was so big as to have swallowed jack-boots. You may calculate that they will go down with some of your readers too. Nothing like leather. The gooseberry season is over, but if this were the height of it, the prodigious fruit of that family would be unmentionable to any scientific assembly. Nevertheless, Dr. C. FALBERG read a paper to an audience at the British Association upon "Saccharine, the New Sweet Product of Coal Tar," which, in connection with the John Hopkins' University (U.S.) he discovered in 1879. Coal tar has been brought to a pretty pitch. He averred this saccharine to be 250 times sweeter than sugar. Must have used nice means to calculate that quantity of the quality of sweetness. Said it had become an article of commerce--had a large sale in Germany, was perfectly harmless, he had himself used it for nine years, and it produced no injurious effect upon him. Apparently, then, he used to eat it, and if he didn't might have invited his hearers likewise to eat him. This "Saccharine" bears a somewhat long name, which, as it is a commercial article, might perhaps be compendiously replaced with "Sugarine."