I READ in a Colonial paper that Mr. Tom B. is paying a visit to England. I should like to meet Mr. Tom B. When I knew him a good many years ago there was no mister in front of his name, but the whirligig of time has put Tom on his feet, otherwise his,name would.not figure in the list of Colonial personalities who are, at the present time, dodging the east wind round the corridors of the fashionable hotels. Tom B was a regular attendant at Mike's billiard saloon in the De Kaap Valley in the old days. When Mike raffled his billiard table Tom was the lucky winner, but as he did not possess Mike's wonderful business acumen, and gave credit to all who wanted it, the table did not pay. Then a bit of hard luck happened, the tent caught fire, and the table which had been practically ruined long before this was utterly spoilt by the time the tent had been pulled off it. "My luck's clean out," said Tom. "Here's out of it," and he made for the colony, but he came back with the second "rush" and started an hotel and billiard room very near the site of his former under taking. He promoted handicaps and gave good prizes, and got together a very decent clientele in this way, and was on the high road towards making a very decent pile when the new laws were put into force, as regards gambling, and the prize-giving had to be discontinued, and the customers began to fall off and take to attending the new room near by where everything of the latest, according to the De Kaap view of the matter, was to be found. Then Tom gave up the task of trying to compete with his rival, sold out, and went in for speculating and did as well as, mine out of every ten who went in for this did - "got broke to the world." Tom could play a bit and he went in for playing exhibition games on his arrival in the colony and did fairly well at this for a time, but tiring of it, went up to the Free State and started in as a "law agent," he was an old 'Varsity man and had been intended for the law, but fate decided otherwise. The law agency did not pay, there was a real lawyer in the place, and though the law prohibiting "agents" practising was not then in force, still, people.naturally preferred going to a man who was qualified rather than one who was not, so Tom came 'back. Then I lost sight of him until the day before I sailed from Cape Town when I came across him driving a sand cart.near the docks. "It was a rotten billet," he said, as we had a drink together later on, but he was holding on to it until something turned up. And now that something has arrived.