Talking of bets gives reminder .of;-a bet once made in a church, in which the winner lost money.. It was thus the narrator tells his story “It was up at Dusty-town. You know the place well enough. A lot of Us -had spent Saturday evening.very merrily* at Mrs |G- ——’s, and parting just ‘ayont the twal,’ one. said, ‘ We’ll meet at church to-morrow, 1 I at that time was a sedate and orthodox vestryman of St..S6-and-Sp’s Church, and it happened that it was my turn to take .up the collection. Well, the evening came and the service, and, there; seated in .a rdw near the doorway were the sprightly boon .companions of the previous night. Frank Weston, the Wizard Oil man, was there looking as demure as if he’d never ‘ dug down for a hymn,’ in his life. I, with eye severe and garb of formal cut, at the proper interval made the round with the plate, aind levied toll from this row qf sprightly sinners. Says Frank, in gentlest whisper, ‘ Bet you a shilling you don’t ante up yourself, old man.” '-‘ Done,’ said I, and so getting back to the communion table, before putting the plate down I dipped one hand in my trousers pocket for a shilling which I imagined was lurking there, and drew, to my intense disgust, a half sov. There was no help for it. The eyes of the congrega tion were on me. The Wizard Oil man, I saw, was. specially vigilant, and so were the rest,of his cronies. The coin dropped into the plate, the bet was won, and a rapid mental arith metical calculation was the result.” The;re probate who tells the story is not a vestry man now. It was not his forte, and he doesn’t often bet. • v

The Registrar-General, in his volume of Census Returns, just published in leisurely fashion, thus disposes of the Civil Service Army : —“No attempt has been made to specify in this order the total number of persons employed by the Government; such information can be obtained from other sources.” No doubt it can, Mr Registrar, by those who choose to make tedious search, but one would like to know why, in this particular respect, the returns are left “in complete. 