told you yesterday, Hatchway, he was not fit
for it. Take him away, and bring another!"
He was ejected with every mark of ignominy,
and the inconstant mask was just as funny
on another man's shoulders immediately
afterwards. To the present day, I never see
a very comic pantomime-mask but I wonder
whether this wretched old man can possibly
have got behind it; and I never think of him
as dead and buried (which is far more likely),
but I make that absurd countenance a part of
his mortality, and picture it to myself as
gone the way of all the winks in the world.

Five-and-thirty more Fairies, and let them
be good ones. I saw them next day. They
ranged from an anxious woman of ten, learned
in the prices of victual and fuel, up to a
conceited young lady of five times that age,
who always persisted in standing on on leg
longer than was necessary, with the
determination (as I was informed), "to make a
Part of it." This Fairy was of long theatrical
descent—centuries, I believe—and had never
had an ancestor who was entrusted to
communicate one word to a British audience.
Yet, the whole race had lived and died with
the fixed idea of "making a Part of it"; and
she, the last of the line, was still unchangeably
resolved to go down on one leg to posterity.
Her father had fallen a victim to the family
ambition; having become in course of time
so extremely difficult to "get off," as a
villager, seaman, smuggler, or what not, that it
was at length considered unsafe to allow him
to "go on." Consequently, those neat
confidences with the public in which he had
displayed the very acmé of his art—usually
consisting of an explanatory tear, or an arch
hint in dumb show of his own personal
determination to perish in the attempt then on
foot—were regarded, as superfluous, and came
to be dispensed with, exactly at the crisis when
he himself foresaw that he would "be put into
Parts" shortly. I had the pleasure of
recognising in the character of an Evil Spirit of
the Marsh, overcome by this lady with one
(as I should else have considered purposeless)
poke of a javelin, an actor whom I had
formerly encountered in the provinces under
circumstances that had fixed him agreeably
in my remembrance. The play, represented
to a nautical audience, was Hamlet; and this
gentleman having been killed with much credit
as Polonius, reappeared in the part of Osric:
provided against recognition by the removal
of his white wig, and the adjustment round
his waist of an extremely broad belt and
buckle. He was instantly recognized,
notwithstanding these artful precautions, and a
solemn impression was made upon the
spectators for which I could not account, until a
sailor in the Pit drew a long breath, said to
himself in a deep voice, "Blowed if here a'nt
another Ghost!" and composed himself to
listen to a second communication from the tomb.
Another personage whom I recognized as
taking refuge under the wings of Pantomime
(she was not a Fairy, to be sure, but she kept
the cottage to which the Fairies came, and
lived in a neat upper bedroom, with her legs
obviously behind the street door), was a
country manager's wife—a most estimable
woman of about fifteen stone, with a larger
family than I had ever been able to count:
whom I had last seen in Lincolnshire, playing
Juliet, while her four youngest children (and
nobody else) were in the boxes—hanging out
of window, as it were, to trace with their
forefingers the pattern on the front, and
making all Verona uneasy by their imminent
peril of falling into the Pit. Indeed, I had
seen this excellent woman in the whole round
of Shakesperian beauties, and had much
admired her way of getting through the text.
If anybody made any remark to her, in
reference to which any sort of answer occurred
to her mind, she made that answer; otherwise,
as a character in the drama, she preserved
an impressive silence, and, as an individual,
was heard to murmur to the unseen person
next in order of appearance, "Come on!" I
found her, now, on good motherly terms with
the Fairies, and kindly disposed to chafe and
warm the fingers of the younger of that race.
Out of Fairy-land, I suppose that so many
shawls and bonnets of a peculiar limpness
were never assembled together. And, as to
shoes and boots, I heartily wished that "the
good people" were better shod, or were as
little liable to take cold as in the sunny days
when they were received at Court as
Godmothers to Princesses.

Twice a-year, upon an average, these
gaslight Fairies appear to us; but, who knows
what becomes of them at other times? You
are sure to see them at Christmas, and they
may be looked for hopefully at Easter; but,
where are they through the eight or nine long
intervening months? They cannot find shelter
under mushrooms, they cannot live upon dew;
unable to array themselves in supernatural
green, they must even look to Manchester for
cotton stuffs to wear. When they become
visible, you find them a traditionary people,
with a certain conventional monotony in their
proceedings which prevents their surprising
you very much, save now and then when they
appear in company with Mr. Beverley. In a
general way, they have been sliding out of the
clouds, for some years, like barrels of beer
delivering at a public-house. They sit in the
same little rattling stars, with glorious
corkscrews twirling about them and never
drawing anything, through a good many
successive seasons. They come up in the
same shells out of the same three rows of
gauze water (the little ones lying down in
front, with their heads diverse ways); and
you resign yourself to what must infallibly
take place when you see them armed with
garlands. You know all you have to
expect of them by moonlight. In the glowing
day, you are morally certain that the gentleman
with the muscular legs and the short