A will meet you at the Criterion, on Wednesday, at three.

Am

going on another journey shortly, and will provide luncheonbasket.-F. M.

Any one who has travelled a distance by Midland or any other of the lines supplied with refreshments by Spiers & Pond, must have noted what a great boon to the traveller is the well-stocked basket, which can be taken in full at one station and delivered out wholly or partially empty, according as appetite serves, at another. Yet the luncheon-basket is a very small item in the revolutionisers' total. Those who have suffered under the old system of railway refreshments, will admit that Spiers & Pond fully deserve whatever credit has been given them for their efforts in the public interest. Ten years ago no man in his senses would have dreamt of applying for food or drink at a railway buffet while he could go elsewhere; now Spiers & Pond daily serve thousands who desert the old familiar taverns and crowd the bars at the various City stations. Among the many great feats in the way of providing for the hungry and the thirsty performed by this firm is one which has claims for particular notice, as it is told in an official report of a Wimbledon meeting. For the campingtime the following is the record: Of bread there were eaten 25,000 lbs. ; of butter 3 tons; of cheese 1 ton; of bacon II cwt.; of hams 3 tons; of eggs 23,350; of rolls 52,677; of flour 36 sacks; of tea 1967 lbs. ; and of coffee 2240 lbs.; 15 tons weight of meat were eaten, and 1446 fowls, with 626 ducklings, and 304 goslings. In the way of fish, the consumption of salmon reached 6200 lbs., with 1667 soles, 400 turbot, 80 brill, and 2330 lobsters. Vegetables were devoured to the amount of 12 tons, to which must be added 40,000 lettuces and 500 quarts of shelled peas. In fancy pastry 5000 pieces were made, with 1120 lbs. of biscuits, and 2460 quarts of cream and water ice. Add to these 720 baskets of strawberries, 75 lbs. of grapes, 400 pine apples, 287 tongues, 10,800 bottles of aerated waters,

896 plus 522 gallons of wine, 130 dozen and 312 gallons of spirits, 348 hogsheads of beer, 275 lbs. of tobacco, 300 boxes of cigars, 67 gallons of salad oil, 1 hogshead of vinegar, 150 lbs. of mustard, 6000 gallons of claret cup, 13 cases of lemons, 84 tons of ice brought direct from the ship's side from Norway, 33 gallons of various sauces, 120 gallons of pickles, 25,000 sandwiches, 24 tons of sugar, 30 cwt. of currants, and 25,000 lbs. of "Volunteer" plumcake. In addition to these, large quantities of wines, spirits, &c., were supplied to sutlers, messmen, and volunteers. On subsequent occasions, when, for reasons best known to themselves, the Rifle Association has provided its own commissariat, it has been discovered that the efforts of Spiers & Pond were by no means overpraised at the time, and that the laudatory notices received by the men who came from Australia to teach the mother country a profitable lesson were well deserved. Spiers & Pond have, it is true, met ample recognition from the press; yet now and again those gentlemen who consider it the whole duty of a journalist to sneer at everybody and everything have had their usual fling, and have written about pretentious eatinghouse keepers, forgetful of the fact that a dozen years or so ago they were crying their eyes out because the weary traveller in Great Britain could nowhere find the accommodation he was so anxious to pay for. We have been careful not to stray into the opposite extreme, though a long course of railway journeying under the old régime of mouldy pork-pies and stale Banbury cakes has made us feel very well disposed to a firm whose name has already passed into a proverb.

Some little interest was exhibited in the annexed, which appeared in the Times a few weeks back, and, according to the side espoused, looks like just indignation or brutal intolerance :

SHOUL

HOULD this meet the eye of the lady who got into the 12.30 train at New Cross Station on Friday, May 15, with two boys, one of whom was evidently just recovering from an illness, she may be pleased

to learn that three of the four young ladies who were in the carriage are very ill with the measles, and the health of the fourth is far from what her relations could desire.

It has been quite the fashion to say how wrong it was of the lady with the sick boys to get into a train and spread infection; and nobody seems to have thought that the poor lads wanted change of air-had perhaps been ordered it. As no special provision is made for the travelling sick-or for the matter of that, for the travelling healthy—the fault, if fault there be, lies not with the mother, who was anxious for the recovery of her children, but with the railway authorities. Judging from the tone of the advertisement, we should think that the advertiser would have resented any interference had his or her young ladies been travelling as invalids, instead of being in that state of health which is most subject to the attacks of disease. The case is hard, argued from either side, but it seems very unfair to cast the blame all one way.

The last example we shall give of this kind of advertising shows that extended space is used for "personals,” without any extension of interest, the following being but a mild kind of raving on the part of a weak-minded man after an obstinate woman. It appeared early during the present year (1874) in the Telegraph:

MARY ANN C. Do return home. You labour under an illusion.

What you wish to accuse me with does not exist. This I solemnly declare. I have at last a good position, but am so wretched that I cannot attend to my duties properly. Many happier returns of the Ist. God's blessing be with thee, and that He may tend thy heart to believe me in truth. Put six years of love and happiness against your accusation, and you must feel that you are wrong. Oh, you are very, very wrong. Do write and give me an appointment, so that happiness may be re-established. You must be very unhappy, but for God's sake do not be so strong-minded. My love and devotion are unaltered. For your own peace, my sweet, pretty, good wife, come back. When death parts it is sad enough, but to part while living, and without true cause, creates and leaves wretchedness to both. Come back to your unhappy but true-loving husband.