Next, after a brief call from a gentleman in a blue ribbon, who came to solicit a guinea for the Band of Hope, and who left in exchange one hundred copies of a picture of the interior of a drunkard's stomach, executed in three colours, came Beery Bill, to whom the reader has already been introduced. He had not come to talk Politics, he said, but just to have a quiet chat with one whom he hoped he could regard as a personal friend. (I got out my fountain pen.) The chat materialised presently into an intimation that the Licensed Victuallers Benevolent Something-or-Other was short of cash; and my visitor suggested that a trifle in support of the charities of that most deserving institution would come gracefully from my pocket. On handing me the receipt he informed me that the brewing trade was in a bad way, and that he looked to me to do something for it if he used his influence on my behalf at the Election. The next visitor was an eccentric but harmless old gentleman who eked out a precarious livelihood as a Herbalist--whatever that may be--in the most plebeian quarter of the town. He inhabited a small and stuffy shop up a discreet alley, suffered much from small boys, sold curious drugs and potions of his own composition, and prescribed for persons whose means or modesty precluded them from consulting an orthodox practitioner. He was threatened, it appeared, with the penalties of the law. He had sold a "love-philtre" (pronounced infallible for recalling errant _fiances_ to a sense of duty) to an amorous kitchen-maid who was seeking to rekindle the sacred flame in the bosom of an unresponsive policeman. The damozel had mingled the potion in a plate of beefsteak pudding, and had handed the same out of the scullery window to her peripatetic swain; with the sole result that that limb of the law had been immediately and violently sick, and, the moment he felt sufficiently recovered to do so, had declared the already debilitated match at an end. The kitchen-maid, rendered desperate, had told him the whole truth; and consequently my esteemed caller was now wanted by the police.