THE DIFFICULTIES OF MR. BULL.

I HAVE been a good deal distressed lately by the reverses of my friend John Bull, who is one of the leading tradesmen in this town. Everybody knows his establishment. It does a very large business indeed: you can get practically everything there--coals, Lee-Metford rifles, chocolate, biscuits, steam-engines, Australian mutton, home and colonial produce of every kind, in short. My old friend is tremendously proud of his shop, which, as he says, he has made what it is by strict honesty (and really for an enterprising tradesman he is fairly honest) and attention to business principles. He has put a deal of capital into it, and spares no expense in advertising; in fact, he keeps a regular department for poetry, which is written on the premises and circulated among customers and others, and explains in the most beautiful language that the house in Britannia Road is the place to go to for everything. John, who prides himself on his literary taste, considers this to be the finest poetry ever written; and Mrs. Bull reads it out to him in the evening before he has his regular snooze after supper.

Everything was going on swimmingly until this unfortunate Hooligan trouble began. I must explain to you that Mr. Bull owns a great deal more property than the actual premises where he transacts business. Somehow or other, in course of time he has become the proprietor of bits and scraps all over the town and suburbs tenements, waste lands, eligible building sites, warehouses, and what not-the whole making up what, if it was put together, would be a very considerable estate. How it all came into John Bull's hands, nobody knows properly; indeed, I don't think he does himself. Some of it was bought, and bought pretty dear too. Some of it was left to him. A good deal of it he one doesn't like using the word, but still-well, in fact, took ; but, mind you, he always took everything for its good, and for the ultimate benefit of society, not for any selfish reasons; so that to call Mr. Bull a pirate, as Dubois does who keeps the toyshop over the way, is manifestly absurd. Anyhow, it is a very fine property, and would be bigger still if Jonathan C., a cousin

of the family, hadn't taken off a good slice which used to belong to John.

As I was saying, this property is a very large straggling affair, most of it a long way off from the shop. Its owner finds it very hard to look after every part; all the more so, because this town has no regular police, and is therefore continually troubled by gangs of roughs, who go about breaking windows and even heads, and doing damage generally. They are always giving a great deal of trouble to the Bull people; and what makes it worse is that very often they are actually tenants on the property, who ought to know better. One of these Hooligan crowds lately made a dead set against poor John; it was all the harder because to my personal knowledge he had shown himself most kind and forgiving to various members of this particular gang; and once before, when they came and broke his windows, he refused to prosecute, and simply gave them five shillings to drink Mrs. Bull's health and not do it again. That is the kind of man he is, sometimes. In spite of this indulgent and charitable treatment, they came the other day and made a raid into an outlying corner of his property and did all sorts of damage; and not content with this, they actually squatted there on land which was no more theirs than it is mine (I am thankful to say), where they insulted and even assaulted innocent passers-by, and levied blackmail on John Bull's adjacent tenants, and, in short, became the terror of the neighbourhood and a disgrace to civilisation. And when Mr. Bull's watchman (I told you there is no regular police force, and everybody has to look after himself), when Thomas Atkins, I say, came with orders to turn them out, they told him to go-I really hardly like to say where and absolutely refused to stir; quite the contrary; they hid themselves behind rubbish-heaps and hoardings and such like, and threw things at Thomas; and when he tried to catch them, they ran away and hid behind more hoardings, so that when you thought they were in one place they were always somewhere else, and the poor watchman got so knocked about with stones and brickbats that the next morning, when he came round to the shop to report progress, he had a black eye, and a cut head, and a torn coat, and a nasty bruise on one of his legs. Mrs. Bull had to patch up his coat and give him some arnica and vaseline.

Poor Mr. Atkins! He is a most respectable man, and an excellent watchman, as was his father before him. It is a tra

dition of the Atkins family that they are as brave as lions, and do not know what fear is; but unfortunately they are not always very clever, and Thomas is a little slow at learning, and does not pick up new tricks readily. His father had a tremendous hammerand-tongs battle with the Dubois' watchman once, right in the middle of the public street-thirty-six rounds or so they had of it-and licked him, as John Bull says, in true British style; and that is always Thomas's way, and the only thing that he understands properly; none of your underhand dodges like hiding behind places and throwing brickbats when one isn't looking. So that the Hooligan ways of fighting were quite too much for him at first. And although Mr. Bull spent a lot of money in buying him a new watchman's rattle and a very expensive second-hand truncheon, nearly as good as the best kind, still it was all no good, and Thomas couldn't turn the invaders out.

All this time you must not suppose that Mr. Bull's neighbours had nothing to say about the matter. On the contrary, they were very much interested and, I am sorry to say, pleased. Dubois the Frenchman, and Müller, the man who keeps the World's Cheap Emporium, and Alexis Ivanovitch, the big cornfactor in the next street who is always maltreating his workmen, were never tired of saying nasty things about Mr. Bull and crowing over the mishaps of Mr. Atkins. Everybody knows what a terrible quarrel there was some years ago between Müller and Dubois, and how Müller went into the toyshop and thrashed the Frenchman then and there, so that poor Dubois had to go to bed for a week, and for a long time afterwards used to go about vowing vengeance. But this didn't in the least prevent the two from fraternising on the common ground of enmity to John Bull. They would meet-by accident, of course-just under his windows, and then Müller would say, very loud, to Dubois, 'Is it not ridiculous, my friend, that this once apparently so mighty Herr Bull and his watchman should again by the Hooliganish crowd have been defeated?' Or perhaps, 'This is what comes of your big businesses and your straggling premises with no one to protect them. How much better to have a small compact business (though it's not so small either, mind you) like my Emporium, by a large number of properly trained watchmen defended!' And Dubois would say, so that it annoyed the Bull household very much indeed, Behold the fruits of being a pirate and a robber. Conspuez M. Atkins! Justice for ever! À bas les

Juifs!' (he always says that now when he is angry-goodness only knows why). Indeed Dubois got so excited that he actually thought of breaking John's windows, though on reflection he decided that he wouldn't do it just yet. And John was very cross with Atkins and the shopboy, and even with Mrs. Bull and his son J. Wellington Bull, and caused it to be generally known that he would knock Dubois's head off for sixpence if he got the chance. Then Paddy Gilhooly, who is a tenant of the Bulls' in Hibernia Road-and a shocking bad tenant, too, who never pays any rent when he can help it, and keeps his premises in a disgraceful condition, with a lot of pigs and poultry running about in the front parlour-this Paddy must needs put his finger in the pie and turn against his own landlord, so that whenever Mr. Atkins came along Hibernia Road Paddy would put his head out of window and shout, 'Hooligans for iver! More power to th' inimy! Crunchy aboo!' and other similar observations, of which no one took the least notice, because it was the way with the Gilhooly family. Still, it was very ungrateful of Paddy, after all John's kindness to him; besides being painful to Mr. Atkins, who is a near cousin of the Gilhoolys and would not wish to be disgraced by the conduct of his relations. I don't know why it is, but somehow or other Mr. Bull has not the gift of making himself generally popular. Time after time he has lent Paddy money; and as for Müller and Dubois, if they want good advice on the proper conduct of their business, they know where to come for it but they don't seem to appreciate the privilege. In short, if it wasn't for that little bankrupt wine merchant Themistocles Papageorgios, whom John saved some time ago from the consequences of litigation with a Turkish firm, I doubt if my poor friend has one sincere wellwisher among all the townsmen.

However, I am glad to say that most of them have begun to change their tune lately, thanks to Mr. Bull's luck being on the mend. Thomas Atkins did not make a very good start, certainly; but as time went on he learnt a number of new tricks, and the violent exercise which he had to take put him into excellent training. Moreover, some cousins of the Bulls showed a very proper family spirit, and sent the eldest son, Larry, to help Mr. Atkins. So, what with Thomas being, so to speak, a new man, and Larry being very strong and active, and the shopboy coming out to lend a hand when required, the three between

them began to turn the tables. They caught two or three of the marauders at last, and had them locked up; and I sincerely hope and trust that they will do the same with all the rest very soon. This seems to have produced a great change in the sentiments of Mr. Bull's fellow-citizens. Müller is not nearly so contemptuous as he used to be about Atkins; and Dubois, I suppose, has remembered that he is going to have a big summer sale this year, and that it would be very embarrassing, under the circumstances, to be embroiled with an influential person like this brave M. Bull, as he calls him now. Only Ivanovitch is still very sulky and goes on using violent expressions. I am afraid there will be trouble yet between my poor friend and the corn-factor-though goodness knows the town ought to be big enough to hold both of them. But the fact is they have both got mortgages on a china shop in the suburbs which is in a very bad way financially, and it makes them as jealous of each other as possible.

Evidently this Hooligan affair is not going to last for ever; and, on the whole, if things don't get worse, Bull may congratulate himself on having done pretty well so far. But it has hit him rather hard. What with buying things for Mr. Atkins and paying him for working overtime, and having had to put up new fire-proof shutters, and sending out the shopboy away from his duties to help Atkins and Larry, he has lost a deal of money, one way and another; and besides, as he is very much afraid of this kind of thing happening again, it looks as if the whole business of the shop were going to be put on a different footing. For here is J. Wellington Bull, who was to have helped behind the counter, going out now to do watchman's duty with the others; and as likely as not the old man himself will have to take to patrolling his property instead of looking after his customers; so that, in all probability, there will be no one but Mrs. B. to see after the shop. And, as John said to me the other day, these are no times for leaving a business to be managed by old women.

He says he has seen enough of that kind of thing.

A. D. GODLEY.