"I thought you would like it. And now, to drop the subject, I want you three fellows to come up to my rooms, No. 121, third floor, Bartholomew Buildings, Broadway--you remember--and see this great work of art, early next week." "Is it nearly finished?" asked Marcus. "Yes--in my mind's eye. That is the main thing. The painting has not yet been begun. It will be a very simple matter. The canvas will be about four hundred feet long. One half of it will be a dead level of yellow paint, for desert; and the rest, perpendicular stripes of green paint, for jungle. A good artist, with a whitewash brush and two tubsful of paint, ought to do up the whole panorama in two days. The heads and tails of animated life, the two small lakes, and a few other objects of interest, such as the sun, the moon, birds flying in the air, &c., could be put in afterward by an artist of higher grade. And, by the way, now I think of it, I may as well open with a sunrise off Cape Guardafui, and a distant view of the Straits of Babel Mandel, give a passing glance at the sources of the Nile, which lie in that undiscovered region, a brief glimpse at the Mountains of the Moon, and wind up with a splendid sunset in the Bight of Benin. It--" Mr. Tiffles's observations were cut short by the sudden entrance of Miss Philomela Wilkeson. She shot rapidly into the room, but, when her eyes rested on Mr. Tiffles, she recoiled with maiden modesty, and stepped back as if to beat a retreat. Then, recovering her self-possession in a small measure, she stepped forward again, and said, in the blandest of tones, with just the least virgin coyness: "I thought perhaps I had left my scissors here this afternoon." Messrs. Wilkeson, Overtop, and Maltboy asserted, without rising from their seats, that they had not seen her scissors, and doubted very much whether the scissors were in that room. But Wesley Tiffles, who was the most polite and obliging of mortals when there was a lady in the case, rose respectfully upon her entrance, and insisted upon searching the apartment for the missing tool. Miss Wilkeson, thus being placed under obligations to Mr. Tiffles, was compelled to take personal cognizance of him, which she did with the nearest approach to a blush that she was ever known to make. "I beg, sir, that you will not trouble yourself. I--I do not think the scissors are here, after all." "That can be ascertained only by searching, miss," replied Tiffles. Then he glided about the room in his own nimble fashion, looking behind the two vases on the mantelpiece, raking over the littered burden of the table in the corner, and peering and poking into every place where there was the least likelihood of finding a stray pair of scissors; Miss Wilkeson all the while deprecating any further search.