I have been reading about the harvest festivals with which the country has been lately teeming. They are all made on one pattern. The interior of the building is very tastefully adorned with fruit and foliage, supplied by friends connected with the church and others. The subject of one reverend gentleman's discourse in the morning is, "Put in the sickle." In the afternoon another reverend gentleman discourses on "A stroll through a corn-field," and in the evening a third clergyman poses his congregation with the question, "What shall be done with the tares?" Thank-offerings in aid of the church funds are then taken, the choir sings special harvest hymns, and somebody invariably "presides" at the organ.

The temptations of the fruit are sometimes, I am sorry to say, irresistible. I have seen an absent-minded landed proprietor steadily pluck and eat his way through a whole bunch of grapes, while the preacher held forth on the symbolic meaning attached to fruit. The attention of the congregation, I need hardly say, was breathlessly concentrated not on the preacher, but on the devourer of the grapes. At a festival I attended last year, the fruits of the earth were represented by dead rabbits on the window-sills of the church.

By the way, why does one always "preside" at the organ? At the first blush there would not seem to be anything peculiarly presidential about the playing of the instrument, but then I may be dull. For instance, I have never yet understood why young tobacconists are always alluded to as "commencing." Other traders are content to begin or to start, but a tobacconist must apparently "commence" or be eternally disgraced.

Mr. Henry Blackburn has been visiting Manchester and Liverpool, and has confided his impressions of these great cities to the editor of the Manchester Guardian. He admires Manchester for "its admirable tramway, street police, and other traffic arrangements," but there is an amari aliquid in the shape of the Manchester street Arab. Mr. Blackburn has all an artist's tolerance; but, as might be expected of a black and white artist, he feels bound to draw the line, and he draws it before street Arabs. He thinks it worth while to mention—

"A pedestrian's experience of his, generally, free fight with the street gamin culminating on Saturday afternoon last at 2.15 by being tripped up and thrown down in the middle of the road near the Central Station, and only saved from further contact with the said tramcars by rolling quickly round and round into the gutter. This rapid act was witnessed, doubtless, by several of your readers, two of whom rendered timely assistance. I am aware that it is the rule in any household or community for a guest to conform to its ways for the time being, and not to complain of any contretemps; but, having had a second encounter (of less consequence) on the very steps of the entrance to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, on the same afternoon, I venture to think that the juvenile—and in some respects perfectly delightful—street vendors of matches, flowers, and football newspapers have a little too much of a free run in both these cities."

At Last.—Mr. Lane, the Magistrate, appealed to by an Indian gentleman as to whether he—the I. G.—might "turn round upon" rude street-boys, who called him "Lulali," and asked whether he—the Magistrate—would like it himself, replied that he had lived too long in the world to care about such matters. This imperturbable "Beak" is evidently then—at last—the often-talked-of "Long Lane that has no turning."