As for hollyoaks at the cottage doors, and honeysuckles and jasmines, you may go and whistle; But the Tailor’s front garden grow two cabbages, a dock, a ha’porth of pennyroyal, two dandelions, and a thistle. There are three small orchards--Mr. Busby’s the schoolmaster’s is the chief-- With two pear-trees that don’t bear; one plum and an apple, that every year is stripped by a thief. There’s another small day-school too, kept by the respectable Mrs. Gaby; A select establishment, for six little boys and one big, and four little girls and a baby. There’s a rectory, with pointed gables and strange odd chimneys that never smokes, For the rector don’t live on his living like other Christian sort of folks; There’s a barber’s, once a-week well filled with rough black-bearded shock-headed churls, And a window with two feminine men’s heads, and two masculine ladies in false curls; There’s a butcher’s and a carpenter’s and a plumber’s and a small green-grocer’s, and a baker, But he won’t bake on a Sunday, and there’s a sexton that’s a coal-merchant besides, and an undertaker; And a toy-shop, but not a whole one, for a village can’t compare with the London shops; One window sells drums, dolls, kites, carts, bats, Clout’s balls, and the other sells malt and hops. And Mrs. Brown, in domestic economy not to be a bit behind her betters, Lets her house to a milliner, a watchmaker, a rat-catcher, a cobbler, lives in it herself, and it’s the post-office for letters. Now I’ve gone through all the village--ay, from end to end, save and except one more house, But I haven’t come to that--and I hope I never shall--and that’s the Village Poor-House! [Illustration: AN UNFORTUNATE BEE-ING.] THE SCRAPE-BOOK. “Luck’s all!” Some men seem born to be lucky. Happier than kings, Fortune’s wheel has for them no revolutions. Whatever they touch turns to gold,--their path is paved with the philosopher’s stone. At games of chance they have no chance; but what is better, a certainty. They hold four suits of trumps. They get windfalls, without a breath stirring--as legacies. Prizes turn up for them in lotteries. On the turf, their horse--an outsider--always wins. They enjoy a whole season of benefits. At the very worst, in trying to drown themselves, they dive on some treasure undiscovered since the Spanish Armada; or tie their halter to a hook, that unseals a hoard in the ceiling. That’s their luck. There is another kind of fortune, called ill-luck; so ill, that you hope it will die;--but it don’t. That’s my luck.