MR.

BENJAMIN BUCKRAM Having dressed and sufficiently described our hero to enable our readers to form a general idea of the man, we have now to request them to return to the day of our introduction.

Mr.Sponge had gone along Oxford Street at a somewhat improved pace to his usual wont--had paused for a shorter period in the ''bus' perplexed 'Circus,' and pulled up seldomer than usual between the Circus and the limits of his stroll.

Behold him now at the Edgeware Road end, eyeing the 'buses with a wanting-a-ride like air, instead of the contemptuous sneer he generally adopts towards those uncouth productions.
Red, green blue, drab, cinnamon-colour, passed and crossed, and jostled, and stopped, and blocked, and the cads telegraphed, and winked, and nodded, and smiled, and slanged, but Mr.Sponge regarded them not.

He had a sort of ''bus' panorama in his head, knew the run of them all, whence they started, where they stopped, where they watered, where they changed, and, wonderful to relate, had never been entrapped into a sixpenny fare when he meant to take a threepenny one.