Charles Dickens, and even W. M. Thackeray, for all his knowledge of the world, were poor things compared with Anon. It was a real misfortune that the part of the July number of _Brown's Magazine_ which was missing contained an installment of "The Adventures," but there was no help for it. Moreover, having realized the fact, the gift of the gods, Aladdin's lamp, came to the assistance of the Sailor. With the help of the magic talisman it was quite easy to fill in the missing part which contained the adventures of poor George when marooned, not on the Island of San Pedro, but on an island in the southern seas. There would certainly be serpents, and for that reason he would have to keep out of the trees; and although the July number was not able to supply the facts, once you had Aladdin's lamp it was a very simple matter to make good the omission. One thing leads to another. "The Adventures of George Gregory," imperfect as they were, fastened such a grip on the mind of Henry Harper, that one dull Monday afternoon in March, when he sat in the shop near the oil-stove waiting for an infrequent customer, a great thought came to him. Might it not be possible to improve upon George Gregory with the aid of the talisman and his own experience? It was a very daring thought, but he was sustained in it by the conclusion to which he had come: the work of Anon, exciting and ingenious as it certainly was, was not the high seas as the Sailor had once envisaged them. The color, the mystery, the discomfort, the horror were not really there. Even the marooning of poor George upon the Island of Juan Fernandez did not thrill your blood as it ought to have done. True, it could be urged that the part containing the episode was missing; but in no case would it have been possible to equal in horror and intensity the marooning of Sailor upon the Island of San Pedro with serpents in every tree around him, although with equal truth it might be urged by the skeptical that the incident never took place at all. "Never took place at all!" lisped Aladdin's lamp in magic syllables. "Pray, what do you mean? It certainly took place in your experience, and in the opinion of your learned master who is writing a history of the world in forty volumes, that is the only thing that matters." A flash of the talisman was soon to raise a bottle of ink and a quire of foolscap. Therefore one evening after supper, Mr. Rudge, still at Charles XII of Sweden, was startled painfully when "The Adventures of Dick Smith on the High Seas," by Henry Harper, Chapter One, was shown to him. It was a fall, but his master was too kind to say so. These misspent hours could have been used for a further enrichment of the mind. He might have added to his knowledge of grammar. He might have ventured upon the study of shorthand itself, a science of which Mr. Rudge never ceased to deplore his own ignorance. However, he said nothing, and went on with the great work.