had each another instrument peculiar to
the Father of Waters, which may be
likened to a stringed weather-glass held
upside down. There were likewise a little
flute, and a violin. All went well for a
while, and we had had several sparkling
repartees exchanged between the performers
on the tambourine and bones, when the
black of melancholy aspect, turning to the
latter, and addressing him in a deep and
improving voice as "Bones, sir," delivered
certain grave remarks to him concerning
the juveniles present, and the season of the
year; whereon I perceived that I was in
the presence of Mr. Barlow—corked!

Another night—and this was in London
—I attended the representation of a little
comedy. As the characters were life-like
(and consequently not improving), and as
they went upon their several ways and
designs without personally addressing
themselves to me, I felt rather confident of
coming through it without being regarded
as Tommy; the more so, as we were clearly
getting close to the end. But I deceived
myself. All of a sudden, and apropos of
nothing, everybody concerned came to
a check and halt, advanced to the
footlights in a general rally to take dead aim
at me, and brought me down with a moral
homily, in which I detected the dread hand
of Barlow.

Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils
of this hunter, that on the very next night
after that, I was again entrapped, where no
vestige of a springe could have been
apprehended by the timidest. It was a burlesque
that I saw performed; an uncompromising
burlesque, where everybody concerned, but
especially the ladies, carried on at a very
considerable rate indeed. Most prominent
and active among the corps of performers
was what I took to be (and she really gave
me very fair opportunities of coming to a
right conclusion) a young lady, of a pretty
figure. She was dressed as a picturesque
young gentleman, whose pantaloons had
been cut off in their infancy, and she had
very neat knees, and very neat satin boots.
Immediately after singing a slang song and
dancing a slang dance, this engaging figure
approached the fatal lamps, and, bending
over them, delivered in a thrilling voice a
random Eulogium on, and Exhortation to
pursue, the Virtues. " Great Heaven!" was
my exclamation. " Barlow!"

There is still another aspect in which
Mr. Barlow perpetually insists on my
sustaining the character of Tommy, which is
more unendurable yet, on account of its
extreme aggressiveness. For the purposes
of a Review or newspaper, he will get up
an abstruse subject with infinite pains, will
Barlow, utterly regardless of the price of
midnight oil, and indeed of everything else,
save cramming himself to the eyes. But
mark. When Mr. Barlow blows his information
off, he is not contented with having
rammed it home and discharged it upon me,
Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he
was always in possession of it, and made
nothing of it—that he imbibed it with his
mother's milk and that I, the wretched
Tommy, am most abjectly behind-hand in
not having done the same. I ask why is
Tommy to be always the foil of Mr. Barlow
to this extent? What Mr. Barlow had
not the slightest notion of, himself, a
week ago, it surely cannot be any very
heavy backsliding in me not to have at
my fingers' ends to-day! And yet Mr.
Barlow systematically carries it over
me with a high hand, and will tauntingly
ask me in his articles whether it is
possible that I am not aware that every
schoolboy knows that the fourteenth turning
on the left in the steppes of Russia will
conduct to such-and-such a wandering
tribe? With other disparaging questions of
like nature. So, when Mr. Barlow
addresses a letter to any journal as a volunteer
correspondent (which I frequently find
him doing), he will previously have gotten
somebody to tell him some tremendous
technicality, and will write in the coolest
manner: " Now, Sir, I may assume that
every reader of your columns, possessing
average information and intelligence, knows
as well as I do that"—— say that the
draught from the touch-hole of a cannon of
such a calibre, bears such a proportion in
the nicest fractions to the draught from the
muzzle; or some equally familiar little fact.
But whatever it is, be certain that it always
tends to the exaltation of Mr. Barlow, and
the depression of his enforced and enslaved
pupil.

Mr. Barlow's knowledge of my own
pursuits, I find to be so profound, that my
own knowledge of them becomes as nothing.
Mr. Barlow (disguised and bearing a
feigned name, but detected by me) has
occasionally taught me, in a sonorous voice,
from end to end of a long dinner table,
trifles that I took the liberty of teaching
him five-and-twenty years ago. My closing
article of impeachment against Mr.
Barlow, is, that he goes out to breakfast,
goes out to dinner, goes out everywhere
high and low, and that he WILL preach to