Stratford said that, at last, comfort was his task
and portion, since who could expect now
liquefication of his debts? There was plenty to
abet his heroic gay sentiments fond woman
especially. He was launched in his struggle,
I have heard him tell, by twenty pairs of slippers
in the first six weeks (some raly valuable with
bead-work). Mr. Stratford's airy scheme,
however, tending to Hymen's vista, vanished into
the fabrick of a vapour (as the Bard says). The
fair sex can be insidious enough when jealousy
and contempt point their senses; and his name
was up and to spare as too miscellanious.
Flirting and slippers can come and go and no
harm done, but the bonds of wedlock is another
pair of shoes. He was foremost to laugh at the
counterpoint which had ousted his prospects,
and ready to take up new webs of existence as
a matter of course, having no end to pick and
choose from.

First the sphere was to be singing. The voice
of a tenour was awarded to him by Nature,
and his personal heighth, though top tall, and his
populous connexion, aided the design. In the
days of prosperity Mr. Stratford had been largely
coveted by the aristocracy; and his ballads,
with a guitar, or a cornet, also Luccia's farewell
scene of frenzy, from that harrowing opera,
were quoted (as I have eye-witnessed during one
of my Lord's family) to be equal, if not
supercedent, to any frenzy on the boards of any
foreign theatre. Nay, and when he had to fall
on himself, Mr. Stratford he was still equal the
same asked out to dinner in the old haunts—-to
sing and bring his cornet, free gratis, since how
could delicacy dream of proferring an I O U to
one of themselves? But delicacy is a barren
subsistence when quarter-day scowls on the
scene. So Mr. Stratford (and his friends said
it was so manly of him) condescended in
the scale, and repaired to the managers. His
overtures were received in unison. "Yes,"
said Mr. Twumley, whose flatteries were as well
known as oil, "a lovely voice indeed, and so
thorough-bread, my Lord!" And "To be sure,"
said Mr. Blight, who spoke his mind more
illicit and outright, "a B in his chest, no doubt,
but crude,—-and the figure of figures for Lucretius
Borgia,." On such Mr. Stratford buoyed
his hopes and would begin his course, he said,
to oblige Mr. Twumley, at only seventy pounds
a week; and them as upheld him, and had not
to pay, said was it not considerate letting
himself go for an old song? But for all their
encouragement tending to foment his spirits, when
matters arrived at the scratch, other views
asserted themselves:—-and Mr. Twumley, and
Mr. Blight, and even Mr. Sparrow (whose word
is as good as his bond, which he never pays
anybody), converged that Mr. Stratford owed it to
himself to study for two years in Italy, before
any treaties could be treated. Means not
forthcoming, it became too sadly clear that a tenour
voice can be merely a gossymer read to lean on,
when the party is not up to the P's and Q's of
the gambit of music.

But what matter? The more obelisks in his
path, the more Mr. Stratford laughed. He had
other strings to his quiver.

Painting next rose on the orison as more
superior genteel. From infancy's hour, he had
shown propensious precocity. There is two
kittens in esse by him framed, so early as three
years: and every Prayer-book in the Stratford
pue was covered over and over again with
seditious quizzes of the clergyman, the clark,
and the beedle, with a hump on his back. Oils
and waters, and black-lead and chalk, all came
to him equal bold and promiscous. "Dash
away and never say die!" was his universal
scheme and motto. And others joined the
strain.

Well, when singing must be give up, Mr.
Stratford flung himself on the easle as the bark
which was to waft him to golden harbours. He
laid in coats of armour, and remniants of glass
brocade, and velvet as stood on end it was so
rich, and potteras from Cynthian tombs, and
China carpets, and all sorts of surprising
curiosities as was the rage to cost fabulous.
Dear or cheap, it was all one, since pay-day and
he (he would brag), like crabbed youth and
age, could never blend together—-as
subsequential tradesmen experienced to their bitter
cost. And he carried it off with a tune and a
spirit. Birth and parentage cheered him on his
way, while Envy shrugged and turned blue to
learn that his exit into artistic profession
commenced with nine various ladies of aristocracy
—-contentious as to which should be his first
sitter.

But though Apollo smiled on Mr. Stratford's
rush from the starting-post, the hangmen of
the Academy objected to endorse his hopes.
The Pleiad (such he called his nine ladies in one
frame—-his Pleiad of Muses) came back as it
went; and, actuated to suspicion by the rebuff,
the proprietors and relations of the fair originals
agreed in a round robin of remonstration that
the pictures, one and all, was too unlike and
audacious to occupy any spaces on ducal or
other walls of the order, and could not be took
in, did he not alter them terra firma, which is
root and branch, and finish them in accordance.
It was while bursting under the recoil of this
withering doom, yet laughing dull care away,
as if it had been a comic song, that Mr. Stratford,
as I have said, came lounging in at that
junction when Mr. Bloxome and me ruptured,
from my inability to serve his preposterous and
Bibliacal designs. And this, gentle reader, brings
my sad story to its present point.

I complied to visit Mr. Stratford, as invited,
the subsequent morning, innocent of the
thunderbolt as had thrown all them pictures of the
aristocracy back on their birthplace. I never see
him more bounding and fluent than when showing
them off.

"Mr. Stratford," says I, "I feel quite
contrite and sympathetic at a fau-paw, so great
and expensive as them nine ladies a-coming
back all at once."

"Thank you, Theodore," said he, dropping
his voice, and squeedging my hand hard, "and