shyness in admitting that human nature when at
leisure has any desire whatever to be relieved
and diverted; and a furtive sliding in of any
poor make-weight piece of amusement, shame-
facedly and edgewise. Thus, I observed that it
was necessary for the members to be knocked
on the head with Gas, Air, Water, Food, the
Solar System, the Geological periods, Criticism
on Milton, the Steam-engine, John Bunyan, and
Arrow-Headed Inscriptions, before they might be
tickled by those unaccountable choristers, the
negro singers in the court costume of the reign
of George the Second. Likewise, that they must
lie stunned by a weighty inquiry whether there
was internal evidence in SHAKESPEARE'S works, to
prove that his uncle by the mother's side lived
for some years at Stoke Newington, before they
were brought-to by a Miscellaneous Concert.
But indeed the masking of entertainment, and
pretending it was something else—as people mask
bedsteads when they are obliged to have them in
sitting-rooms, and makebelievethat they are book-
cases, sofas, chests of drawers, anything rather
than bedsteads—was manifest even in the pretence
of dreariness that the unfortunate entertainers
themselves felt obliged in decency to put forth
when they came here. One very agreeable
professional singer who travelled with two
professional ladies, knew better than to introduce
either of those ladies to sing the ballad "Comin'
through the Rye" without prefacing it himself,
with some general remarks on wheat and clover;
and even then, he dared not for his life call the
song, a song, but disguised it in the bill as an
"Illustration." In the library, also—fitted
with shelves for three thousand books, and
containing upwards of one hundred and seventy
(presented copies mostly) seething their edges
in damp plaster—there was such a painfully
apologetic return of 62 offenders who had read
Travels, Popular Biography, and mere Fiction
descriptive of the aspirations of the hearts and
souls of mere human creatures like themselves;
and such an elaborate parade of 2 bright
examples who had had down Euclid after the
day's occupation and confinement; and 3 who
had had down Metaphysics after ditto; and 1 who
had had down Theology after ditto; and 4 who
had worried Grammar, Political Economy,
Botany, and Logarithms all at once after ditto;
that I suspected the boasted class to be one man,
who had been hired to do it.

Emerging from the Mechanics' Institution and
continuing my walk about the town, I still
noticed everywhere the prevalence, to an extra-
ordinary degree, of this custom of putting the
natural demand for amusement out of sight, as
some untidy housekeepers put dust, and
pretending that it was swept away. And yet it was
ministered to, in a dull and abortive manner,
by all who made this feint. Looking in at what
is called in Dullborough "the serious book-
seller's," where, in my childhood, I had studied
the faces of numbers of gentlemen depicted in
rostrums with a gaslight on each side of them,
and casting my eyes over the open pages of
certain printed discourses there, I found a vast
deal of aiming at jocosity and dramatic effect,
even in them—yes, verily, even on the part of one
very wrathful expounder who bitterly
anathematised a poor little Circus. Similarly, in the
reading provided for the young people enrolled
in the Lasso of Love, and other excellent
unions, I found the writers generally under a
distressing sense that they must start (at all
events) like story-tellers, and delude the young
persons into the belief that they were going to be
interesting. As I looked in at this window for
twenty minutes by the clock, I am in a position
to offer a friendly remonstrance—not bearing on
this particular point—to the designers and
engravers of the pictures in those publications.
Have they considered the awful consequences
likely to flow from their representations of
Virtue? Have they asked themselves the question,
whether the terrific prospect of acquiring
that fearful chubbiness of head, unwieldiness of
arm, feeble dislocation of leg, crispness of hair,
and enormity of shirt-collar, which they represent
as inseparable from Goodness, may not tend
to confirm sensitive waverers, in Evil? A most
impressive example (if I had believed it) of what
a Dustman and a Sailor may come to, when they
mend their ways, was presented to me in this
same shop-window. When they were leaning
(they were intimate friends) against a post,
drunk and reckless, with surpassingly bad hats
on, and their hair over their foreheads, they were
rather picturesque, and looked as if they might
be agreeable men if they would not be beasts.
But when they had got over their bad propensities,
and when, as a consequence, their heads had
swelled alarmingly, their hair had got so curly
that it lifted their blown-out cheeks up, their
coat-cuffs were so long that they never could
do any work, and their eyes were so wide open
that they never could do any sleep, they
presented a spectacle calculated to plunge a timid
nature into the depths of Infamy.

But, the clock that had so degenerated since I
saw it last, admonished me that I had stayed
here long enough; and I resumed my walk
again.

I had not gone fifty paces along the street
when I was suddenly brought up by the sight of
a man who got out of a little phaeton at the
doctor's door, and went into the doctor's house.
Immediately, the air was filled with the scent of
trodden grass, and the perspective of years
opened, and at the end of it was a little likeness
of this man keeping a wicket, and I said, "God
bless my soul! Joe Specks!"

Through many changes and much work, I had
preserved a tenderness for the memory of Joe,
forasmuch as we had made flie acquaintance of
Roderick Random together, and had believed
him to be no ruffian, but an ingenuous and
engaging hero. Scorning to ask the boy left in
the phaeton whether it was really Joe, and scorning
even to read the brass plate on the door—so
sure was I—I rang the bell and informed the
servant maid that a stranger sought audience of
Mr. Specks. Into a room, half surgery, half
study, I was shown to await his coming, and I