"All the world's a caravan! and all the gentlemen and ladies Lions and Tigresses! For if a man be neither dwarf nor giant, but an unhappy medium between the two--if he be not upon boxing terms with a whole menagerie, and will not fisty-cuff-it and roar for an engagement, dam'me! he may whistle for one!"
Mr. Bigstick paused, glared ghastly terrible and ghostly grim.
"Yes, I'm too tall for a wonderful monkey, and too good-natured for an intelligent bull-dog. I can't drink sangaree out of my father's skull, nor beat the big drum with the bones of my grandmother!"
He then, after taking a deep draught at the mum, resumed his narrative.
"I was articled to the law, and Pump Court was the pabulum where I began to qualify myself for Lord Chancellor. But fearful is the dramatic furor of attorney's clerks. My passion was not for bills of costs, but for bills of the play; I longed to draw, not leases, but audiences; as for pleas, my ambition was to please the town; and I cared nothing for Coke, while Shakspere's muse of fire warmed my imagination! Counsellor Cumming soon found his clerk going. I quitted the Court, leaving my solitary competitor the Pump to spout alone."
A personable fellow * (for whom any lady might be proud to jump into the Serpentine, the jury finding a verdict of manslaughter against my good looks, with a deodand of five shillings on my whiskers! ) 'I left my father's house, and took with me'--as much wardrobe as I could conveniently carry ow, and behind my back.
* A very different looking personage to Mr. Bigstick must have been the unhappy young gentleman, aged twenty-two, (see the "Times" 21st March, 1835,) who killed himself by poison, and left this letter upon his table:--
"I die a Catholic--I leave my mortal remains to my father and mother, regretting that they should have allowed the growth and development of a creature of so disagreeable a conformation as their son. Endowed with the most exquisite feelings, my face has always frightened the fair sex. I go to seek in Heaven a society which my aspect will not annoy; for I imagine that, freed from its carnal covering, my spirit will not dismay the inhabitants of the other world."
My first professional bow was in the Poor Gentleman, * and Raising the Wind, in a barn at Leighton Buzzard, where the Gods clambered up to the gallery by a ladder, through which many of the tippling deities could hardly see a hole!