My days are drawing to their end-- I've now, alas! no end in view; I never had a real friend-- I wear a worn-out black _surtout_, My heart is darken'd o'er with woe, My trousers whiten'd at the knee, My boot forgets to hide my toe-- But I have NOT _forgotten thee_! * * * * * MATERNAL SOLICITUDE. The business habits of her gracious Majesty have long been the theme of admiration with her loving subjects. A further proof of her attention to general affairs, and consideration for the accidents of the future, has occurred lately. The lodge at Frogmore, which was, during the lifetime of Queen Charlotte, an out-of-town nursery for little highnesses, has been constructed (by command of the Queen) into a Royal Eccalleobion for a similar purpose. [Illustration: FAMILIES SUPPLIED.] * * * * * WIT WITHOUT MONEY: OR, HOW TO LIVE UPON NOTHING. BY VAMPYRE HORSELEECH, ESQ CHAPTER II. "A clever fellow, that Horseleech!" "When Vampyre is once drawn out, what a great creature it is!" These, and similar ecstatic eulogiums, have I frequently heard murmured forth from muzzy mouths into tinged and tingling ears, as I have been leaving a company of choice spirits. There never was a greater mistake. Horseleech, to be candid, far from being a clever fellow, is one of the most barren rascals on record. Vampyre, whether drawn out or held in, is a poor creature, not a great creature--opaque, not luminous--in a word, by nature, a very dull dog indeed. But you see the necessity of appearing otherwise.--Hunger may be said to be a moral Mechi, which invents a strop upon which the bluntest wits are sharpened to admiration. Believe me, by industry and perseverance--which necessity will inevitably superinduce--the most dreary dullard that ever carried timber between his shoulders in the shape of a head, may speedily convert himself into a seeming Sheridan--a substitutional Sydney Smith--a second Sam Rogers, without the drawback of having written Jacqueline. Take it for granted that no professed diner-out ever possessed a particle of native wit. His stock-in-trade, like that of Field-lane chapmen, is all plunder. Not a joke issues from his mouth, but has shaken sides long since quiescent. Whoso would be a diner-out must do likewise.