With the exception of my Uncle Wilyim--who, as I've before stated, is a uncle by marrige only, who is a low cuss and filled his coat pockets with pies and biled eggs at his weddin breakfast, given to him by my father, and made the clergyman as united him a present of my father's new overcoat, and when my father on discoverin' it got in a rage and denounced him, Uncle Wilyim said the old man (meanin my parent) hadn't any idee of first class Humer!--with the exception of this wretched Uncle the escutchin of my fam'ly has never been stained by Games. The little harmless deceptions I resort to in my perfeshion I do not call Games. They are sacrifisses to Art. I come of a very clever fam'ly. The Wards is a very clever fam'ly indeed. I believe we are descendid from the Puritins, who nobly fled from a land of despitism to a land of freedim, where they could not only enjoy their own religion, but prevent everybody else from enjoyin HIS. As I said before, we are a very clever fam'ly. I was strolling up Regent Street the other day, thinkin what a clever fam'ly I come of, and looking at the gay shop-winders. I've got some new close since you last saw me. I saw them others wouldn't do. They carrid the observer too far back into the dim vister of the past, and I gave 'em to a Orfun Asylum. The close I wear now I bo't of Mr. Moses, in the Commercial Road. They was expressly made, Mr. Moses inforemd me, for a nobleman, but as they fitted him too muchly, partic'ly the trows'rs (which is blue, with large red and white checks) he had said: "My dear feller, make me some more, only mind--be sure you sell these to some genteel old feller." I like to saunter thro' Regent Street. The shops are pretty, and it does the old man's hart good to see the troops of fine healthy girls which one may always see there at certain hours in the afternoon, who don't spile their beauty by devourin cakes and sugar things, as too many of the American and French lasses do. It's a mistake about everybody being out of town, I guess. Regent Street is full. I'm here; and as I said before, I come of a very clever fam'ly. As I was walkin along, amoosin myself by stickin my penknife into the calves of the footmen who stood waitin by the swell-coaches (not one of whom howled with angwish), I was accosted by a man of about thirty-five summers, who said, "I have seen that face somewheres afore!" He was a little shabby in his wearin apparil. His coat was one of those black, shiny garments, which you can always tell have been burnished by adversity; but he was very gentlemanly. "Was it in the Crimea, comrade? Yes, it was. It was at the stormin of Sebastopol, where I had a narrow escape from death, that we met." I said, "No, I wasn't at Sebastopol; I escaped a fatal wound by not bein there. It was a healthy old fortress," I added. "It was. But it fell. It came down with a crash." "And plucky boys they was who brought her down," I added; "and hurrah for 'em!"