the ladies of which wore feathers and all the
gentlemen stars and garters, was framed and
glazed in J. Fishtail's bar; while a copy of it
in coarse wood engraving was placarded half
over London. He had been Professor Somebody
once on a time I believe; and had
squeezed up quart pots, lifted hundredweights
of iron with his little finger, and held bars of
lead in his teeth; but where Fishtail picked
him up was not known: some said in a caravan
at a fair, some sweeping a crossing, some
in a ferry steamboat at Liverpool where he
amused the company who crossed from the
landing stage to Birkenhead. He "drew"—
as the play-acting people say— rather
satisfactorily, at first, and was goaded on by J.
Fishtail to ask everybody to treat him to six-
penn'orth of brandy and water for the good
of the house— the consumption of which six-
pennorths made him maudlin drunk ; staggering
on his long legs, crying to go home to
Worcestershire (where he came from originally
I suppose), and at last falling all of a huge
heap in a corner. His admirers, however,
were soon confined to people who had half a
pint of beer and stared stupidly at him for
half an hour together; and as he was totally
useless as a barman, and broke more glasses
than he was worth, J. Fishtail soon gave him
his travelling ticket and started him.

J. Fishtail had not done enough to degrade
my old house yet. Not a bit of it. " You 'd
better have a dwarf, Fishtail," I said to him
in my quiet chaffing way (I always had a
turn for satire). " P'raps a Miss Biffin would
suit you, or a pig-faced lady for a barmaid.
What do you think of a 'What is it?' or a
spotted girl. You 'd better have a
Rumtifoozle, and put my old house on wheels, and
hang my old portrait outside for a placard,
and stand at the door yourself and cry, ' Walk
in, walk in and see the Rumtifoozle, two
thousand spots on his body, no two alike; two
thousand spots on his tail, no two alike;
grows a hinch and a half every hanimal year,
and has never yet come to his full growth;
the Rumtifoozle which the proprietor wouldn't
sell to George the Fourth: saying, 'No, George
the Fourth, you shall not have our Rumtifoozle;
for the Rumtifoozle has a foot like a warming-
pan, and a body like the keel of a vessel, and
a tail that would astonish a donkey.' Try
that, Fishtail." " Wait a bit," says he. Three
days afterwards he came out with the fat
barmaid.

Ugh! the monster. She was a lump of
suet. She was a dollop of dripping, a splodge
of grease. The poor thing was so
helplessly fat that she could neither stand nor
walk without difficulty; and all she could do
was to crouch languidly in a wide chair,
baring her horribly fat arms to the curious
customers. She drew at first a little, and
was profitable, and people turned faint
directly they saw her layers and creases of
fat and her quintuple chin, and were obliged
to have three penn'orths of brandy; but they
never came again, oh, no ! and the fat
barmaid soon followed the giant.

After this there came a bit of a lull in the
way of monsters; but J. Fishtail was not
tired. The cholera was very bad, and Leather
Lane being a nice, teeming, no-washing
neighbourhood, they just died off in it and
about it like sheep. Out comes J. Fishtail
with an infallible specific for the cholera —
brandy and something, which, took wonderfully
and paid, for it made people very ill
immediately, and compelled them to have
more brandy, without anything to set them
all right again. The cholera died away, and
Fishtail was hesitating between another
giant who could sing beautifully, and a
bearded lady, and an innocent-looking young
lady, with pink eyes and long flaxen hair like
floss silk, and was reported to have killed a
man with a chopper, and would have been a
great catch, if she would have come down to
his terms, when the Bloomer costume came
out. Straightway, Fishtail put his two
barmaids into variegated satin trowsers and
broad-brimmed hats. I rejoice to say that
this move turned out an egregious failure.
The increase of frequenters to the Bottle of
Hay was confined to blackguard boys, who
blocked up the doorways, whooping, and
performing on the bones or pieces of slate; but,
as they could see no more of the costume
than the broad-brimmed hats, they grew
disgusted, and made irreverent remarks, till the
poor girls did nothing but take refuge in the
bar-parlour and cry, and Fishtail was
compelled, sorely against his will, to allow them
to assume their proper attire.

More monsters; and such a monster this
time. James Fishtail had the audacity, the
impiety, the indecency, to engage and set up
in a Christian bar a painted savage. Whether
the wretch was a Caffre, or a Zooloo
something, or a Hottentot, or a Krooman, or an
Ashantee, it matters not; but there he was,
all dirt, and cock's feathers, and paint and
leopard skin. He was a miserable deformed
creature, with bones through his nose, and
ears, and chin, of course, and eyes which he
was instructed to roll, and teeth to chatter
continually. At first he was allowed to go
through his national performances of the
chace, war, &c., before the bar, with a hatchet,
and a bow and arrows, and a string of beads;
but he lost his temper so frequently, and tried
to bite Fishtail, and to make ferocious love
to the barmaids, that his sphere of action
was limited. So J. Fishtail had him penned
up in a corner of the bar with stools and
pots, where he subsided into a state of helpless
stupidity; but he was wont, at times, to howl
so piteously, and to make such frantic efforts
to escape, that people cried shame, and
Fishtail sent him back to the showman who
called himself his guardian, and had bought
him for two cows and a yard of red cloth
somewhere out at the Cape of Good Hope.

I was so out of patience with this last want