158 WHISPERS FROM FAIRYLAND. pee

 

that Simon was exposed to no further requests in
the same direction.

By this time, however, he had already begun to
weary of his new existence and actually to doubt
whether he had been wise in so readily following the
advice of the sapient Muggins. It was not only the

late hours and the tiresome speeches of which he had
to complain, but the innumerable letters which were
addressed to him by that large class of persons who
think that as soonas a man has been enabled to write
M.P. after his name, they have aright to communicate
with him upon every conceivable object under the sun
and several more into the bargain. Simon Ricketts was
pestered with applications for subscriptions, and with
so many other requests that he lost all patience with
his correspondence, and at last took to the use of
strong language whenever a new batch of these trouble-
some letters was delivered.

Now Simon was not a man habitually given to the
use of hard words, and it was only under the pressure
of the troubles caused by his new phase of life that he
had acquired the habit. But the increase of corre-
spondence and the whirl into which his brain got at last
through the multiplicity of changes which had befallen
him had really quite confused and bewildered him
altogether, and he became liable to fits of rage to
which he had never before been accustomed. Several
times he wished the letters and their writers all kinds
of bad wishes, and this generally occurred when he
was seated in his den, into which the letters were
always brought.

On one occasion, after having given vent to a