Most people know what this laconic phrase means. It is regarded as a friendly and free and easy way of giving an indiscriminate invitation to dinner or supper. "Come in whenever it suits you, you will always find a knife and fork. You need not trouble to send any word beforehand, if you don't mind taking 'pot luck.' This is the kind of way in which these two expressive words are generally employed. It means, that no preparation is to be made. It means, that the mistress of the house is not going to get a clean table-cloth, or to perpetrate any extra cookery. It means, that you must take your chance of cold beef, pig's cheek, fat bacon, bread and cheese, roast potatoes, Welsh rabbit, or lamb's fry, as the case may be. It means that the children won't be put to bed on your account, but that the hostess will preside over the veal pie, with an infant, three months old, at her breast; and that the host will carve the beef, with one foot upon the rocker of a cradle containing another infant about twelve months old; and that the table all round will be garnished by high chairs, with little sticks thrust through the arms in front to keep the unwary occupants from falling head first into the rice pudding, or the melted butter. It means, that you must be fully prepared for a choral, as well as a supper entertainment; for you may depend upon it, that five out of the six

young guests will be crying and squalling all at once, until they are supplied with a vast jorum of pudding, which they will probably try to eat while it is red hot, and will consequently cough out again all over your own plate. It means, that you must expect to see the mother poking the spoonful of farinaceous food between her own lips before giving it to the baby; or chewing bits of bread into a pulp, and then cramming them down its poor little throat with her first finger, by way of preventing the possibility of its being sick. All this, and a good deal more is meant by taking pot luck. So you will perceive, that a man who accepts an invitation upon these terms stands in need of a tolerably strong nervous and digestive system. But "pot luck" means more than this. People who have not large families often ask us to take pot luck with them. Young bachelors, in lodgings, are very fond of dropping in upon each other for this purpose. People who don't care to let their families participate in their festivities, frequently invite each other to take pot luck on neutral ground; that is, at some convenient public house "half-way between home and home," as prize fighters say. In this case, pot luck means, very little to eat and a great deal to drink. And while the husbands are taking pot luck abroad, the wives will sometimes take the same freedom with their neighbours at home. They will invite a few friends in to take a cup of tea; but finding tea-pot luck rather tame work, and a little too unprovocative of gossip, some little flat bottle will be produced, and some little flat girl be dispatched across the street to get the bottle filled, and when the flat bottle has circulated, along with the black tea-pot, for a short time, the conversation will become more general in one sense and more particular in another. All reserve will be banished, and instead of making casual remarks about society in general, the observations will advert to special members of the body corporate, and the veil of private life will be gradually lifted up, or roughly torn down. The flat bottle has produced a wonderful effect upon the

ladies in three quarters of an hour. Milk and cream are the usual ingredients with which tea is mingled, but this appears to be very exhilarating cream in comparison with that in general use. An observer might be disposed to envy the hostess in her choice of a dairyman, and calling the little flat girl aside to enquire where she went to get the little flat bottle filled, would find, that the address was the Fox and Goose, just opposite; and that the dairyman had a plate upon his door, bearing, instead of a name, the legible inscription, "jug and bottle department." Under the inspiration of the black bottle the ladies grow communicative and convivial. One imparts, as a great secret, that Mr. and Mrs. Fisticuff do not live happily together, and that "words" are often arising between them. Another has it in her power to state (in confidence, of course), that Mrs. Grundy's youngest daughter is going to run away with a journeyman baker. A third becomes humorous on the subject of Miss Nan Keen's flounces and new maize flowers, and says, she knows they are intended as parts of an artful siege-train to the heart of her own eldest son, who is earning twelve and sixpence a week at the Patent Lamp Oil Manufactory, in Madame Grisi street; but it won't do, her son is looking higher than that, and "the sooner the out-dacious hussey takes them flowers out of her ugly head the better, or she stands a good chance of having 'em dragged out in a manner which might spile their beauty." Meanwhile, as the ladies are taking pot luck, and settling the affairs of everyone but themselves, the gentlemen are passing through the various stages of "pot luck" at the Mason's Arms. They have already adjusted the American difficulty, by blowing the United States navy out of the water, bringing President Lincoln to England in chains, executing Mr. Seward in New York, and promoting Messrs. Slidell and Mason to the Order of the Garter. But, unfortunately, while all these embarrassments are becoming so satisfactorily settled, a difficulty arises between the 'cute politicians themselves, and an appeal to the ar

bitration of the landlord having failed, an appeal to arms appears to be imperative. Active preparations are forthwith made for warfare by the disputants immediately peeling off their outer coats and rolling up their shirt sleeves to the shoulder. But as an appeal to arms has to be preceded by an appeal to legs, and as the legs of the belligerents in this instance do not respond to the appeal, they both fall side by side under the table, and nothing more is heard of them but a grunt or a hiccup, or a snore at irregular intervals, as they peacefully sleep with their heads in a spittoon, or amongst the fire-irons. The ladies' party is eventually broken up by the arrival of two policemen bearing one of the husbands on a stretcher for identification, and so amidst a chorus of hysterical exclamations and hiccuping lamentations the "pot-luck" of the evening comes to an end.

And this sort of thing is called jollity; this is the notion some people have of being neighbourly, and all the rest of it. They call this good fellowship, and they never think that good fellowship has been realised, until some such disgusting consummation as this has been arrived at.

There is something in this phrase, "pot luck," which is most sadly suggestive of the prominence which some classes of people assign to the pursuit of drinking. It is made the conspicuous feature of all their social ideas; and no meeting can be a cordial one without the over-brimming bowl. Although, for my own part, I rank among these who believe in the temperate enjoyment of such things as produce intoxication through abuse, I am so fully convinced that this is the root of ninetenths of all the moral evil visible about us that I feel it a duty to speak strongly on the point, to the workmen of this great city. I can go a very long way with my total abstaining friends, and although their anonymous quacks are always teasing me with abuse for my attempts to help them in their cause, and vulgar-minded members of their body are perpetually assailing me with the stupid and libellous charge of being worse than