These are the Wants of mortal Man,- And earthly bliss, a song. My last great Want, absorbing all- A NIGHT WITH A VENTRILOQUIST.-HENRY COCKTOм THERE happened to be only four bedrooms in the house, the best, of course, was occupied by Miss Madonna, the second by Mr. Plumplee, the third by Mr. Beagle, and the fourth by the servant; but that in which Mr. Beagle slept was a double-bedded room, and Valentine had, therefore, to make his election between the spare bed and the sofa. Of course the former was preferred, and as the preference seemed highly satisfactory to Mr. Beagle himself, they passed the evening very pleasantly together, and in due time retired. Valentine, on having his bed pointed out to him, darted between the sheets in the space of a minute, for, as Mr Jonas Beagle facetiously observed, he had but to shake himself, and everything came off; when, as he did not by any means feel drowsy at the time, he fancied that he might as well amuse his companion for an hour or so as not. He therefore turned the thing seriously over in his mind while Mr. Beagle was quietly undressing, being anxious for that gentleman to extinguish the light before he commenced operations. "Now for a beautiful night's rest," observed Mr. Jonas Beagle to himself, as he put out the light with a tranquil mind, and turned in with a great degree of comfort. "Mew! Mew cried Valentine, softly, throwing his voice under the bed of Mr. Beagle. "Hish!-curse that cat!" cried Mr. Beagle. “We must have you out at all events, my lady." And Mr. Beagle at once slipped out of bed, and having opened the door, cried "hish!" again, emphatically, and threw his smalls towards the spot, as an additional inducement for the cat to "stand not on the order of her going," when, as Valentine repeated the cry, and made it appear to proceed from the stairs, Mr. Beagle thanked Heaven that she was gone, closed the door, and very carefully groped his way again into bed. Mew! mew mew!" cried Valentine just as Mr. Beagle had again comfortably composed himself. "What are you there still, madam?" inquired that gentleman, in a highly sarcastic tone; "I thought you had been turned out, madam! Do you hear this witch of a cat?" he continued, addressing Valentine, with a view of conferring upon him the honorable office of Tyler for the time being; but Valentine replied with a deep, heavy nore, and began to mew again with additional emphasis. "Well, I don't have a treat every day, it is true; but if this isn't one, why I'm out in my reckoning, that's all !" observed Mr. Jonas Beagle, slipping again out of bed "I don't much like to handle you, my lady, but if I did, I'd of course give you physic;" and he "hished!" again with consummate violence, and continued to "hish!" un til Valentine scratched the bed-post sharply, -a feat which inspired Mr. Beagle with the conviction of its being the disturber of his peace in the act of decamping,-when he threw his pillow very energetically towards the door, which he closed, and then returned to his bed in triumph. The moment, however, he had comfortably tucked himself up again, he missed the pillow, which he had converted into an instrument of vengeance, and as that was an article without which he couldn't even hope to go to sleep, he had of course to turn out again to fetch it. "How many more times, I wonder," he observed, "shall I have to get out of this blessed bed to-night? Exercise certainly is a comfort, and very conducive to health; but such exercise as this-Why, where have you got to?" he added, addressing the pillow, which, with all the sweeping action of his feet, he was for some time unable to find. "Oh, here you are, sir, are you?" and he picked up the object of his search, and gave it several severo blows, when, having reinstated himself between the sheets, be exclaimed, in a subdued tone, "Well, let's try again!" Now Mr. Jonas Beagle was a man who prided himself especially upon the evenness of his temper. His boast was, that nothing could put him in a passion; and as he had had less than most of his contemporaries to vex him, he had certainly been able, in the absence of all cause for irritation, to preserve his equanimity. As a perfectly nat ural matter, he invariably attributed the absence of such cause to the innate amiability of his disposition, and marvelled that men-men of sense and discernment-should so far forget what was justly expected of them as reasonable beings, as to suffer themselves to be tortured by excitement, seeing that, albeit human nature and difficulties are inseparable, human nature is sufficiently potent, not only to battle with those difficulties, but eventually to overcome them. If Mr. Jonas Beagle had had to contend against many of the "ills that flesh is heir to," he in all probability would have acted like the majority of his fellow men; but as he had met with very few, and those few had not been of a very serious complexion, he could afford to be deeply philosophical on the subject, and felt himself competent, of course, to frame laws by which the tempers of men, in the aggregate, should be governed. He did, however, feel, when he violently smote the pillow, that that little ebullition partook somewhat of the nature of passion, and had just commenced reproaching himself for having indulged in that little ebullition, when Valentine cried, "Meyow!-pit!-meyow!" "Hallo!" exclaimed Mr. Jonas Beagle, "here again!" "Mew!” cried Valentine, in a somewhat higher key. "What! another come to contribute to the harmony of the evening!" Meyow!-meyow!" cried Valentine, in a key still higher. "Well, how many more of you?" inquired Mr. Beagle; "you'll be able to get up a concert by and by;" and Valentine began to spit and swear with great felicity. 66 Swear away, you beauties!" cried Mr. Jonas Beagle, as he listened to this volley of feline oaths; "I only wish that I was not so much afraid of you, for your sakes! At it again? Well, this is a blessing. Don't you hear these devils of cats?" he cried, anxious not to have all the fun to himself; but Valentine recommenced snoring very loudly. "Well, this is particularly pleasant," he continued, as be sat up in bed. "Don't you hear? What a comfort it is to be able to sleep soundly!" which remarkable observation was doubtless provoked by the no less remarkable fact, that at that particular moment the spitting and swearing became more and more desperate. "What's to be done?" he inquired very pointedly," what's to be done? My smalls are right in the midst of them. I can't get out, now; they'd tear the very flesh off my legs; and that fellow there sleeps like a top. Hallo! Do you mean to say you don't hear these cats, how they're going it?" Valentine certainly meant to say no such thing, for the whole of the time that he was not engaged in meyowing and spitting, he was diligently occupied in snoring, which. had a very good effect, and served to fill up the intervals excellently well. At length the patience of Mr. Jonas Beagle began to evaporate, for the hostile animals continued to battle ap parently with great desperation. He, therefore, threw a pillow with great violence at his companion, and shouteć so loudly that Valentine, feeling that it would be deemed perfect nonsense for him to pretend to be asleep any longer, began to yawn very naturally, and then to cry out, ་་ Who's there?" "Tis I," shouted Mr. Jonas Beagle. "Don't you hear these witches of cats?" Hish!" cried Valentine; "why, there are two of them!" "Two?" said Mr. Beagle, "more likely two and twenty! I've turned out a dozen myself. There's a swarm, & whole colony of them here, and I know no more how to strike a light than a fool." "Oh, never mind!" said Valentine; "let's go to sleep, they'll be quiet by and by." "It's all very fine to say 'Let's go to sleep,' but who's to do it?" cried Beagle, emphatically. "Curse the cats! I wish there wasn't a cat under heaven-I do, with all my soul! They're such spiteful vermin, too, when they happen to be put out; and there's one of them in a passion, I know by her spitting; confound her! I wish from the bottom of my heart it was the very last spit she had in her." While Mr. Jonas Beagle was indulging in these highly appropriate observations, Valentine was laboring with great energy in the production of the various bitter cries which are peculiarly characteristic of the feline race, and for a man who possessed but a very slight knowledge of the grammatical construction of the language of that race, it must, in justice, be said that he developed a degree of fluency which did him great credit. He purred and mewed, and cried, and spit, until the perspiration oozed from every pore, and made the sheets as wet as if they had been damped for the mangle." "Well, this is a remarkably nice position for a man to be placed in, certainly," observed Mr. Beagle. "Did you ever hear such wailing and gnashing of teeth? Are you never going to leave off, you devils?" he added, throwing the bolster with great violence under the bed, and there fore, as he fondly conceived, right amongst them. Instead, however, of striking the cats therewith, it passed under the bed with great velocity, making so singular a clatter that he began to "tut! tut!" and to scratch his head audibly. "Who's there?" demanded Plumplee, in the passage below, for he slept in the room beneath, and the noise had alarmed him! Who's there? d'ye hear? Speak, or I'll shoot you like a dog!" and on the instant the report of a pistol was heard, which in all probability had been fired with the view of convincing all whom it might concern that he had such a thing as a pistol in the house. "Who's there?" he again demanded; "you vagabonds, I'll be at you!"—an intimation that may be held to have been extremely natural under the circumstances, not only because he had not even the slightest intention of carrying so desperate a design into execution, but because he-in conse quence of having supped off cucumbers and crabs, of which he happened to be particularly fond, seeing that as they didn't agree with him and invariably made him suffer, they partook of the nature of forbidden fruit-he had singularly enough been dreaming of being attacked by a party of burglars, and of having succeeded in frightening them away by holding out a precisely similar threat. "Beagle 1" he shouted, after waiting in vain for the street door to bang. "Here!" cried Beagle, "come up here! It's nothing! I'll explain! For Heaven's sake," he added, addressing |