Miseries of Life 1

"It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery."

Miseries of Bath

(T.)
The Recommendations of a public Lodging and Boarding-house--presenting, first, the wear and tear of your nerves from hearing "Mr. (Such a one's) Sarvant!" bawled through your ears from the bottom of the stairs at every half-minute, from 7 in the morning till 12 at night;--2. the outer door of the house at all times hospitably left wide open;--3. the state of the stairs, incessantly trodden by the unscraped feet of half the town; -- 4. the motley association, at the general dinner-table, of Irish captains, English gamesters, French prisoners, Scotch physicians, &c. &c.

(T.)
In the course of your morning's saunter--walking side by side on the same pavement with the Colliers' poneys, and consequently with the Poney's colliers,--blundering against, or stumbling over the wheeled chairs of invalids--the loan of a bow (requiring prompt payment) from the Master of the Ceremonies twenty times in an hour, &c. &c.

(T.)
Toiling for hours together from one end of the Pump-room to another, amidst the contending gabble of voices, and grunt of bassoons.---if you are for the Waters, taking them at the wrong hour, (or not even that, perhaps,) in consequence of following in the rear of hundreds who have seized all the passes before you.

(T.)
At the Libraries---getting at the news of the day by scraps and snatches, from the pompous and empty harangues of the Quidnuncs around you; as to the papers themselves, who can hope for a glimpse at them, while-------- --------is devouring one, bespeaking another, transferring a third to a friend, and pinning down a fourth with his elbow.

(T.)
In a Bath whirl-wind---the nozzle of the Circus-bellows blowing you into the Crescent---Item: going up Pultney street, while the North Wind is going down.

(T.) Your hack horse knocked up on Lansdown, long before you can reach the Monument; so that the charms of the Severn, and the Welsh hills, which had acted as a spur to you (although not to your steed) are to be taken on trust.

(T.)
A gallop on Claverton down---paved, as it has been for ages, with broken bottles---the benevolent legacy of a certain farmer to all future generations of the riding gentry from Bath.

A Bath Week, taken down on the spot, during my last visit to this Town of Towns! (by Timothy Testy)

MONDAY.---Dined with the only sufferable set in the place,---and accordingly---party broken up, at the meridian of conviviality, by a Rout; or rather by a lame copy of the insipidities of London which go under that name. Made my escape (if such it could be called) to a Dress-ball---alias a public parade of finery, dullness, and etiquette. Condemned to sit out at least fifty minutes, all stalked to the same time; the gentleman (whom I need not point out) being one and individual throughout. At last, however, came the great treat of the evening---Country-dances; performed (not upon---that would have afforded some sport---but between) two ropes, half a mile long!---Lastly---as if all this were not enough---I was pressed by a party of restless Misses, two or three times in the course of the night, to take "the grand tour" with them; when I had already seen ten times more than I liked, from my own (comparatively) quiet corner.

TUESDAY.---After the usual diversity of morning enjoyments---Rout again!---Found my economy in playing a shilling-rubber severely punished by the situation of the table, viz. at the very bottom of the room;---your gradations of comfortable accommodation at a Bath party, rising or falling in the exact ration of your stake.

WEDNESDAY. The Concert.---Sat two hours in cold, silence, and darkness, by way of securing a place---i.e. an opportunity of estimating the inferiority of Bath to London, in the harmonic department. On the precious Concert-night, you must know, I had stood, almost the whole evening; till, at length, I had the good luck to find a vacant seat, immediately under a huge chandelier!---Mem: my new black coat presently turned to grey by the tears of the candles.

THURSDAY. Fancy-Ball.--- The name! if that were all.---but no---the thing was a thousand times worse still, consisting chiefly in seeing clusters of full-grown candidates for cotillons drilled into the figure for an hour at least, before the jumping began---and proving an awkward squad at last.

FRIDAY.--- Carried by mistake to a wrong party---which, I conclude, happens always, every house in every street being a fac-simile of its neighbour. N.B. Did not scent the blunder, till I had been gaping and fuming for half an hour from room to room, like a stray Chinese in the streets of London, and found myself received, on all sides, with a dumb stare, instead of a speaking smile.

SATURDAY. The Play.--- Saw a parcel of raw recruits for the stage, making the experiment (at my expense) whether they had any chance of ever being fit to be seen on the London boards.---On flinging out of the house, in the heaviest storm that ever fell---gave up one chair to this Lady, because she was old; another to that, because she was young; a third to one man, because he was weak, and ought to have it; and a fourth to another man, because he was strong, and would have it.---As to the latter gentleman, however, I pretty effectually settled his pretensions next morning, in Kings's-mead-fields, on a plan that brought our forces rather more upon the square.

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(S.)
Hearing that your lottery ticket is drawn blank, just as you have snugly tiled in your castles in the air.

(Mrs. T.)
Learning the filthy state of the streets or roads from your favourite puppy, as he jumps up upon your nice muslin dress, on his return from his rambles.

(S.)
After the first, or preclusive squall of a fractious brat, which you had taken in your arms, to please its mother---the horrible pause during which you perceive that it is collecting breath to burst out with a fresh and recruited scream that is to thrill through your marrow;---yet you know that, strange to say, if you throttle it, the law will throttle you!

(S.)
Being placed, and held, under the barrow, by a doting mother, who, first makes you look over, and praise, separately, an huge port folio of Miss or Master’s early school drawings; and then, sentences you to hear the urchin repeat all Gay’s fables.

(T.)
Hearing the same mamma recite, and extol, by the hour, the premature wit and wisdom of her baby!

(S.)
The moment of recollecting that you have sent a letter, unsealed, containing all your most profound and delicate secrets, by one who, you know, will pay himself for postage, by very freely participating in your confidence.---Or, what is still worse: While at an idle tattling country town in your neighbourhood---on searching your pockets for such a letter as the above, missing it---then, recollecting in an agony of horror, that you have, probably, just dropped it in your walk through the high street---then, rushing out in a state of desperation, to seek for it---and, finally, as you are giving it up for lost, and passing by the market place in your return homeward, espying the fatal epistle in the hands of a Goth, who is reading the last words of it, (including your signature, ) with the voice of a Stentor, to a crowded and laughing auditory of both sexes.

(T.)
Reading over the account of “Ways and Means,” when you have neither ways nor means of meeting the new taxes that pounce upon all your favourite articles of consumption; or, in other words, throwing away one sixpence for a newspaper, in order to see how many hundred more you are called upon to throw after it.

(S.)
Attending an Amateur-gardener, in the DOg-days, through all his Forcing-houses, where he detains you among his pines and melons, till you are in danger of being forced, too.

(T.)
On instituting a severe scrutiny into the state of your hair, from the sudden and alarming detection of bald spot---finding yourself at least ten years nearer to a wig, than you had at all apprehended.

(S.)
When you are half asleep---receiving, and wading through, a long, dull, obscure , illegible, ungrammatical, misspelt, illpointed, letter of business---requiring a copious answer by the bearer.

(S.)
Sitting in a chair on which you do not discover that honey has been liberally spilt, til, on rising to make your bow, you carry away the cushion.

(S.)
Those certain moments of existence, in which, without any assignable cause, Ennui so powerfully predominates over your whole system, mental and bodily, that you would joyfully submit to the cat o’ninetails, by way of a flapper to your dormant excitability.

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(T.)
Breaking a phial of asafoetida in your pocket; and then mangling, as well as poisoning your fingers, in taking out the bits of broken blass.

(S.)
Walking fast, and far, to overtake a woman, from whose shape and air, as viewed en derrière, you have decided that her face is angelic; till, on eagerly turning round, as you pass her, you are petrified by a Gorgon!

(T.)
Struggling through the curse of trying to disentangle your hair, when, by poking curiously about on board of ship, it has become matted with pitch or tar, far beyond all the powers of the comb.

(S.)
Suddenly finding, safe in your pocket, three or four letters of the most pressing consequence, entrusted to your care a week or a fortnight before, by a person hardly known to you, upon the faith of your promise to put them into the post within an hour.

(T.)
On drawing on a new boot---finding that the maker has (as usual) remembered to leave the wooden spike in the middle of the heel, there to welcome your foot as soon as it arrives.

(S.)
Suddenly missing your snuff box after dinner, in a country place, where you are leagues off from the possibility of a pinch;---then, in your longing agony, snuffing up, with your mind’s nose, the well stored cannisters of a London shop.

(T.)
Learning to ride---or, in other words, paying handsomely for the privilege of going, day after day, to be canted out of your saddle, and frightened out of your wits, in a variety of different manners, by as many different horses, all carefully broken into restiveness for the benefit of the rider!

(S.)
A perfect stranger inadvertently introduced to you while you are shaving;---a miserable mixture of suds and ceremonies!

(T.)
Learning to box, too---i.e. feeing a great rawboned fellow to thresh you as long as he can stand over you (or rather you under him) 3 or 4 times a week, because you may, some time or other, have a fancy to thresh somebody else.

(S.)
After having long hunted in vain for a missing banknote of 100l. and just as you are in the act of accusing an honest servant, on very suspicious appearances, of having made a perquisite of it---suddenly spying out the last rag of its remains in the mouth and paws of a puppy, who had slily embezzled it, for his own private recreation.

(T.)
Gulping and straining at a pill about the size of a nut; which at last, however, you succeed in getting down as low as to---the middle of your throat!

(S.)
After bathing in the river---on returning to the bank for your clothes, finding that a passing thief has taken a sudden fancy to the cut of every article of your dress!

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(Mrs. T.)
At a ball---when you have set your heart on dancing with a particular favourite---at the moment when you delightedly see him advancing towards you, being briskly accosted by a conceited simpleton at your elbow, whom you cannot endure, but who obtains, (because you know not in what manner to refuse) “the honour of your hand” for the evening.

(Mrs. T.)
Receiving the first hint that your thimble has a hole worn through it, from the needle, as it runs, head and shoulders, under the nail.

(T.)
A dozen or two hiccoughs in the same breath.

(S.)
On first going up to your looking-glass in the morning, seeing the deep red furrow, freshly ploughed in your forehead by the tight strings of your night-cap, and which---though you happen to have a pressing occasion for all the ready beauty you can raise---you too well know will remain indelible for the day.

(Mrs. T.)
After having consumed three years on a piece of tambour work, which has been the wonder of the female world, leaving it, on the very day you have finished it, in the hackney coach, in which you were exultingly carrying it to the friend, whom you intended to surprise with it as a present: afterwards, repeatedly advertising---all in vain.

(S.)
Waiting for the operation of an emetic.

(Mrs. T.)
At a ball---being asked by two or three puppies “why you don’t dance?”---and asked no more questions, by these, or any other gentlemen, on the subject: on your return home, being pestered with examinations and cross examinations, whether you danced---with whom you dances---why did you not dance, &c. &c.; the friend with whom you went, complaining, all the time, of being worried to death with solicitations to dance, the whole evening.

(T.)
Suddenly and violently scratching your ear, without recollecting to respect the feelings of an excruciating pimple, with which it is infested.

(S.) A boiled egg, including---a boiled chicken!

(T.)
Discharging the whole force of a strong fillip on your own nose, instead of on a large fly who had long been tapping and tasting it in different places, to find out where lay the best of the blood---and, having pleased himself at last, was just setting in for his carouse.

(Mrs. T.)
Being disappointed by a hair dresser, on a ball night, when you have your hair totally uncurled, in full dependence upon him: in this emergency, being obliged to accept the offered services of a kind female friend, who makes you an absolute fright; but she being much older than yourself, and of acknowledged judgment, you dare not pull it all to pieces, and if you should, you have neither time nor skill to put it to rights again.

(T.)
Having this kind of tooth drawn by installments.

(T.)
The sudden deaths which occasionally happen among your family of fingers, in a hard frost.

(Mrs. T.)
While playing on the piano forte, being obsedée by the attentions of a courteous gentleman, (quite ignorant of music) who turns over the leaf of your music book a dozen bars too soon, and in his zeal to be soon enough, pulls down the book on the keys, and one (if not both) the candles, into your lap.

(T.)
After having, with great labour, succeeded in dragging on a new and very tight-boot---receiving strong and incessant hints from a hornet at the bottom, that he does not like his confinement:---no boot jack at hand to second your anxiety to relieve him, and the poor prisoner still jerking away!

(Mrs. T.)
Working, half asleep, at a beautiful piece of fine netting, in the evening---and on returning to it in the morning, discovering you have totally ruined it.

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(S.)
Your real sensations, during the pretended indifference with which you sit to be tickled, by a celebrated tickler, in the most sensitive parts of the body.

(Mrs.T.)
A termagant cook, who suffers neither yourself nor your servants to have a moment’s peace---yet as she is an excellent cook, and your husband a great epicure, (excuse me, Mr. Testy,) you are obliged to smother your feelings, and seem both blind and deaf to all her tantrums.

(Mrs. T.)
If you are a single woman with a reasonable stock of delicacy and pride---being railled by a facetious gentleman, in a company where you are not very much known, on the subject of a husband.

(S.)
After long reclining, with every limb disposed in some peculiarly luxurious manner---to be suddenly routed from your lounge! then, endeavouring in vain to re-establish yourself in your former posture, of which you have forgotten the particulars, though you recollect the enjoyment---every new attempt leaving a certain void in your comfort, which nothing can supply:

(Mrs. T.)
A carriage which is of little or no use to you, because your coachman generally chooses either to be sick himself, or that his horses should be lame: yet you are afraid to part with him, as, unluckily, he is a careful driver, and extremely sober, and you a great coward.

(T.)
Labouring in vain to disentangle your medicine scales, till, after fretting, twisting, and twirling, for half the morning, to no purpose, you are, at last, obliged to weigh your dose (Tartar Emetic, or James’s Powders,) as you can, with all the strings in a Gordian knot---one scale topsyturvy, and the other turvytopsy, &c.

(Mrs. T.)
If you are afflicted with the malady of blushing---to read in the complacent smile of a coxcomb who has accosted you, that he thinks you are interested in his attentions.

(T.)
Groping and stirring with a needle after a thorn in your finger, in hopes of wheedling out the peeping black atom; which, however, proves too cunning at last, for you, and your needle to help you.

(Mrs. T.)
On retiring, after dinner, without a female companion, being requested by one of the party to permit a stupid gawky boy of about 14 to accompany you: in this distress, you can neither have recourse to books, or which he knows nothing, nor to music, which he declares himself to hate: so that, after having extorted from him how many brothers and sisters he has, what school he goes to, and what are the games now in season, you are condemned to total silence, which is interrupted only by the squeaks of your favourite puppy or kitten, as he amuses himself by pinching and plaguing it during the remainder of the tete a tete.

(T.)
When in the gout---receiving the ruinous salutation of a muscular friend (a sea captain) who, seizing your hand in the first transports of a sudden meeting, affectionately crumbles your chalky knuckles with the grip of a grappling iron; and then, further confirms his regard for you, by greeting your tenderest toe with the stamp of a charger.

(Mrs. T.)
After dinner, when the ladies retire with you from a party of very pleasant men, having to entertain, as you can, half a score of empty, or formal females; then, after a decent time has elapsed, and your patience and topics are equally exhausted, ringing for the tea, &c. which you sit making in despair, for above two hours, having three or four times, sent word to the gentlemen that it is ready, and overheard your husband at the last message, answer, “Very well---another bottle of wine.” By the time that the tea and coffee are quite cold, they arrive, continuing, as they enter, and for an hour afterwards, their political disputes, occasionally suspended, on the part of the master of the house, by a reasonable complaint, to his lady, of the coldness of the coffee;---soon after, the carriages are announced, and the visitors disperse.

(Mrs. T.)
The only thimble which you ever could get to fit you exactly, rolling off the table unheeded; then---crushed to death in a moment by the splay foot of a servant.

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(S.)
Feeling your arm and elbow cold---and, on looking farther into the matter, perceiving that you have long been leaning in slop, which has dabbled you to the skin.

(T.)
At going to bed---after having toiled, scorched, and melted yourself, in raking out a large and obstinate fire, which, at last, you seem to have effected---seeing it, as you turn round at the door, burning and roaring up far more fiercely than ever.

(S.)
A standing screen which perpetually belies its name.

(T.)
The soothing, reasonable, disinterested, and respectful practice of the whole body of Cooks, to kidnap all the fine large coals for the kitchen fire, leaving you to make yourself as warm and comfortable as you can in the parlour and drawing room, with dirt and dust.

(S.)
Entering to a large company assembled at the top of a very long room, floored with highly-polished oak, in a pair of new, unchalked shoes; and, in consequence, making abundantly more and lower bows to the Ladies, as you stumble and slidder up to them at their various seats in the circle, than had at all entered into your calculation.

(T.)
Sitting on a chair with an horse-hair bottom so very steep and sloping, that as often as you venture to lounge backward, you are sent sliding down to the brink of your seat---if not over it.

(S.)
As your are sitting, late in the evening, close at your studies, and (as you fondly suppose) alone---discovering from the sudden buzz of a bee in the room, that you have company. For a time, you endeavour to conform yourself to your unhappy circumstances; but, wearied out, in the end, by the incessant wheelings and whizzings of your Chum, you devote yourself to the complicated trouble of drawing up the curtain, removing the bell, unbarring the shutters, throwing up the sash, &c. &c. for the purpose of favouring his escape; which, however, he positively declines either to make of his own accord, or to let you force upon him, continuing to lie perdue during the long period of your search after his retreat. But, no sooner have you given it over, and, in the hope that he has worried himself to sleep for the night, re-adjusted the endless window-apparatus, and so returned once more to your lucubrations, than he begins to hum you again---and again you go to work for the liberation of your cruel captive; till, after half a dozen repetitions of the same maneuvres on both sides, you are at last compelled to make your own escape, leaving your little Tormentor the acknowledged Queen of the cell.

(T.)
In attempting to throw up cinders, oversetting and scattering them far and wide, by dashing the edge of the shovel, as if with a violent determination, against the upper bar of the grate.

(S.)
Taking a step more, or a step less, than you want, in going up or down stairs.

(T.)
In a state of extreme lassitude, throwing yourself on the support of an old easy chair, before you have recollected that the arm on which you principally relied has been lately amputated at the shoulder for the cure of its infirmities, and is still under the hands of the operator; during which interval, the title of said chair remains in abeyance.

(T.)
Fumbling in vain at a rusty refractory door lock, of which the hasp flies backward, and there sticks---so that you are at last obliged to leave the door flapping and whining on its unoiled hinge, and fanning you into an ague---your own fury furnishing the fever.

(T.)
Waking, stiff and frozen, from a long sleep in your chair, by the fireside; then crouching closer and closer over the miserable embers, for want of courage to go up to bed; and so, keeping in the cold to be warm! ---when you go at last, your candle stinks out in the passage, and you are left to grope your way, blundering and breaking your shins at every step, against the bannisters;---every stair, too, creaking and groaning under your weight, though you tread as tenderly as possible, for fear of waking the house, consisting chiefly of invalids, whom you feel you are rousing, one after another, from their dozes, as you pass their several doors.

(S.)
Elbowing your candles off the table, and then setting them up in this state:---

(T.)
Driving, and boring, at an oaken, or walnut-tree wainscot, with a gimlet which had a point.

(S.)
Just as you have finished dressing yourself more nicely than usual, to receive company at dinner---creeping down into a dark, damp cellar, for wind; and unexpectedly finding, from a sudden chill about the lower part of the leg, that you are going by water.

(T.)
After pulling long and lustily at a damp, tight, crammed-up drawer, bringing away at last---not the various articles of dress, which you were in hast to take out of it, but---one or both of the handles; which you triumphantly hold up, as trophies of your vigour, in the backward tumble that instantly insues.

(S.)
Losing the keys of all your most private repositories; by which you suffer a double embarrassment---that you cannot yourself, get at what you want; and that they have, probably, fallen into the hands of others, who both can, and will.

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(T.)
Beginning your residence at the country house to which you have just removed, before the repairs are finished---with the comfort of picking your way from one ruined room to another, through fragments of pealed mortar, broken bricks, scattered axes, adzes, chisels, &c.---and at length, being invaded in the fortress of your Study, and there pursuing your meditations to the sound of hammers, files, saws, tumbling walls, &c. &c.;---not to mention the manner in which you drag on your domestic existence for a long time, before half the furniture, utensils, &c. from your late house, have arrived; to wit---bed chambers blocked up with matted trunks, bureaus, &c.---not a curtain or carpet, to cover the nakedness of the sitting rooms, &c. &c.---Then for your eating accommodations;---dinner dressed by the housemaid, with extempore spits, saucepans, &c. &c.en attendant the arrival of the bona fide cook, and her apparatus---every dish, as it is brought in, carrying a “noli me tangere” on the face of it, and, such as it is, being served up on the kitchen table, with a set out of cookery, from the same apartment---teaspoons to the saltcellars, or rather eggcups, as their proxies---a man’s white knife, to a child’s green fork, &c. &c.---no alliance, as yet formed, with the butcher, baker, carrier, &c. &c.---and lastly, when your time, with all these loads upon it, begins to hand a little heavy upon your hands---neither a clock to strike, nor book to kill it!

(T.)
In default of a turnscrew, labouring with the back, or battering edge, of a good knife, at a notch infamously wide and shallow; so that it slips out of its place an hundred times over, without moving the screw an hair’s breadth. Likewise, Hammering your own fingers, instead of a very short nail which you fumblingly hold in them---said nail, when you do hit it, curling at the point, instead of entering the wall---or losing its head, so that you cannot extract it:---likewise, the head of the hammer violently flying off, so as to break a looking glass---a friend’s skull---&c. &c.

(S.)
To be startled from a nap in your chair by a dazzling blaze of light, which, on examination proves to proceed from your candles having been each fluted down on one side by a foot and a half of lobbing wick, which having first flooded the table, and every thing upon it, in a torrent of tallow---descends in a cataract to the carpet.

(T.)
Hearing the ill-pasted paper of your apartment cracking and breaking away from the plaster, on a hot day; till in due time it swags half-way down from the ceiling, and fully indulges any curiosity you may have as to the nature of the wall behind.

(S.)
A door so tight at the bottom, that it calls for your shoulders, as well as hands, as often as you enter or leave the room---and even when you have forced it to move, insists upon the company of the carpet every inch of the way.

(T.)
Your watch key having worn itself round; so that it amuses you with spinning, by itself, upon its square pin, of which it was once so fond, as never to think of moving without it.

(S.)
The snuffers scattering their contents over the cardtable; while, in trying to remedy the affliction, you crush the black mischief into the green cloth, from which it spreads to the cards, and thence to your fingers, with the rapidity (and almost the fatality of poison)

(T.)
Dropping something when you are either too lame or too lazy, to get up for it; and almost breaking your ribs, and quite throwing yourself down, by stretching down to it over the arm of your chair, without reaching it at last.

(S.)
The interval between breaking a pane of glass, and the arrival of the glazier:---N. B. The aspect of the apartment (your constant sitting room) E. N. E. and the wind setting in full from that quarter, at this crisis of the affliction:---glazier a drunkard, living seven miles off.

(T.)
A pair of tongs, which, in opening, stick, astride, so that you cannot manage them with one hand; and even when you have forced them with the help of the other, still will not meet at the pinching part, but let slip every coal that is at all smaller than your head.

(T.)
The task of inventing a new dinner every morning devolving on you, in tle long absence of your wife.

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(T.)
Flapping an expiring fire with an asthmatic pair of bellows.

(T.)
Coffee brought in a cup without a saucer---the cup so full, that the slightest motion of the spoon spills the hot staining liquor on your new nankeens:---cream out of the question, as the cup was at first too full to hold another drop.---To crown all, you have to seem quite easy in mind and body.

(S.)
Cleansing the Augean stables;---or in other words, undertaking the labour of digesting into its proper place each of a thousand different articles, of as many different uses, sorts ,and sizes---(books---phials---papers---fiddles---mathematical instruments---drawings, and nick nacks without end---) which have been for weeks, or months, accumulating upon the tables, chairs, and shelves of your library, and which no servant is able to set to rights---so that you have been, yourself, obliged to await the tardy conjunction of activity and leisure, before you can enter upon the dreary drudgery of subduing them into arrangement.

(S.)
After dinner---dragging the table about the room for an hour over an uneven floor, in hopes of coaxing it to stand on more than two legs---the remaining two hanging in the air, so that, on the slightest touch ,the liquors are rocked and tilted out of the glasses, tumblers, &c. all over the board.---At length, when you are nearly destroyed already by the failure of all your efforts to persuade the floor and the table to make it up and be friends, suddenly giving yourself the coup de grace, by one fatal straight forward shove, which shuts in the leg on the opposite side---instantly followed by a thunder clap and earthquake, as the leaf drops---together with decanters, bumpers, fruit plates, sweet meats, strawberries and cream, &c. &c. &c. leaving you in a state of mind---but I forbear! “Homo sum; humani nihil a m alienum pato.” Let it suffice to say that,

“Loud was the noise! aghast was every guest! The women shriek’d, the men forsook the feast!” Dryd.

(S.)
Hearing and seeing the operation of shoveling cinders, performed by a hardy and indefatigable hand---every scrape upon your ears sensibly stealing an inch from your span of life.

(T.)
Attempting to light a candle, with its short wick as effectually crushed down and buried into the body of the tallow, that it cannot be set up; while, in stooping it to the flame of another candle, you only keep melting the grease in a stream over the table and carpet: when you have, at length, caught a precarious glimmer, it is extinguished as soon s you have crept to the door, or (what is worse) to the stairs, “nescius surae fallacis!” --- this, three or four times over. At last, to be sure, the wick attains its proper length;---but, fair and softly!---this advantage is purchased at the exorbitant price of seeing the well of tallow overflow its sides, and pour down a bumper into the socket.

(T.)
After putting on your clean shirt, finding that the two bottom buttons of the collar have absconded; or, that they have unfolded themselves into two or three inches of straggling unmanageable wire:---no time to change.

(S.)
Shaving after a frosty walk, (when the face is pimpled, skin tender, and hand tremulous,) with cold pump water, hard brush, ropy soap, and a blunt razor. Likewise, shaving, with a blister behind each of yours.

(S.)
While you are waiting for a fresh supply of tooth brushes---battering your teeth with the ivory, and pricking your gums with the bristles, of your old one, completely grubbed out in the middle; its few remaining hairs starting off horizontally on all sides.

(T.)
Likewise, the moment in which a misgiving comes over you, that a servant has clandestinely assisted you in wearing it out!

(T.)
After sweltering for an hour, on a hot day, in an attempt to drag on a new and tight boot, being unable to get it on, for want of size;---off, for want of a bootjack;---and so, dangling about the house, like Prince Prettyman.

(S.)
Misbuttoning your waistcoat, (undiscovered till you have gone into company)---so that the bottom seems sent to Coventry by the rest, and wrings the shoulder by the tug on that side.

(T.)
The screws, nuts, pivots, and other loose appurtenances of a door-lock coming off, and dropping all about the room, as often as you turn the handle in an innocent attempt to open the door.

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(T.)
In attempting to unite the strings of your drawers, at going to bed very sleepy, dragging them into a cluster of hard knots---with your subsequent frenzy from nipping and picking at them for an hour, till your nails are sore: no knife.

(T.)
In cleaning your teeth---numerous holes full of bristles falling out at once, and clogging your jaws and throat, till you are choked; then, in endeavouring to pick away with your fingers what you cannot rince out, getting hold of only one bristle at a time.

(T.)
In brushing your own coat, finding as you get on, that every rub completely fixes in, instead of fetching out, the layer of powder with which it is covered.

(S.)
Loudly bursting three or four buttons on your tight waistcoat, the fastenings of your braces, and the strings of your pantaloons behind, in fetching a deep sigh!---dead silence in the company, at the moment of melancholy explosion.

(T.)
The two side screws of your dressing glass losing their power---(which happens in about a week after it has come home) so that, with all your twisting and twirling, you can never persuade it to remain upright; but, as you sit before it, it will keep swinging and flapping upon your nose.

(T.)
When dressing in violent haste---your braces becoming suddenly so entangled, that, after fruitless turning and winding them for half an hour in every possible direction, till you are raving mad, you are, at last, obliged to fasten them as you can, with the buckles inside outwards---straps twisted into hard knots, and girding and cutting your back and shoulders like spliced cords, &c.

(T.)
Putting on a waistcoat which you find (too late) has lost its strings behind, so that it would take in all your family; and consequently, when you button in your coat, the bottom of the waistcoat struts out like a tent.

(S.)
Using a nail brush that would serve for a wool card---its bristles being in knots and inch apart, so that only two or three prickles at a time find their way under your nails, which they rake to the quick, without disturbing a particle of the contents.

(T.)
Entering your watch at the wrong opening, when it instantly dives to your knee, where, for want of a lucky opportunity to extricate it, you continue to wear it.

(T.)
The feelings or your teeth and gums, when you have insulted them by an over proportion of vitriol in a tooth powder.

(T.)
In lathering the face, before shaving, very early in the morning, while still half asleep---gaping so suddenly as to slap the full brush into your mouth;---so much for the benefits of an early rising!

(T.)
Seeing the beauty of your coat, whilst yet in its prime, daily yielding to those confounded spots which come you know not how, nor when, and which no degree of care can prevent multiplying without mercy, till it is disfigured beyond all hope of recovery.

(T.)
Dressing for a ball by an ill cast looking glass, (not knowing it to be so at the time,) and so mourning over your own unseasonable ugliness.

(T.)
Sleeping in an ill roofed attic story, while torrents of rain are falling all night---the leaky ceiling refreshing you, as you lie, with a shower bath, filtered through the tester of your bed:--- “Quam---juvat somnos, imbre juvante, sequi!” Then, on rising, quite braced, in the morning, finding your stockings, neckcloth, &c. afloat.

(T.)
Waking in the middle of the night, in a state of raging thirst; eagerly blundering in the dark, to the washing stand; and there, after preparing, with a firm grasp, to raise a large full water decanter to your mouth---finding it fly up in your hand, as light as emptiness can make it!

(S.)
Finding the broad mouthed pitcher, which you lift to your lips on the same occasion, so full that, besides amply satisfying your thirst, it, at the same time, keeps cooling your heated body, and purifying your linen, with the overplus!

(S.)
The hypochondriacal impression, under which you fancy, as you lie in bed, that your fingers are, each, as large as a woolsack---legs of the size of church pillars---pillow bigger than the bed of Ware, &c. &c.---and all this affair seeming to grow worse and worse every moment!

(T.)
Finding that you have far---very far---very far indeed---from enough bed clothes, as you get into bed, in a brandy freezing night:---Housemaids all dead asleep hours ago.

(T.)
Being driven from one corner of the bed to another by the sharp points of feathers, which stand up to receive you, on which ever side you turn.

(T.)
Waking with the pain of finding that you are doing your best to bite your own tongue off.

(T.)
While you are confined to your bed by sickness---the humours of a hired Nurse; who, among other attractions, likes “a drap of comfort”---leaves your door wide open---stamps about the chamber like a horse in a boat---slops you, as you lie, with scalding possets---attacks the fire, instead of courting it---falls into a dead sleep the moment before you want her, and then snores you down when you call to her---wakes you at the wrong hour, to take your physic, and then gives you a dose of aquafortis for a composing draught! &c. &c. &c.

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(T.)
The cock or the tea-urn misunderstanding, or disregarding, your signal, long after you have motioned it to stop.

(S.)
On entering the attic chamber, alloted for you at a friend's house, and eagerly running up to the pictures which caught your eye at the door---finding them, on a closer view, to be the banished wall-eyed portraits, in mildewed crayons, and in cramped sizes, of the unheard-of fore-fathers and fore-mothers of your host's family, all pinched and puckered up in the incredible costumes of their several centuries---pictures, or tather painted Pedigrees, for which their Originals once sat for their sins, and which you now contemplate for yours.

(T.) Attempting to open the stiff blade of a rusty knife at a well-worn knotch, with a short thumb-nail.

(S.)
A clock posted within a yard of your pillow---which, besides confidentially clicking every second in you ear, as long as your eyes are open, regularly wakes you with mentioning the hour.

(T.)
Sleeping aslant---or, lying in a bed so made that you feel yourself all night long going down a hill, with a precipiece at the end of it.

(S.)
A call, at the most unseasonable of all hours, from the most unwelcome of all visitors---namely, in the middle of the night, from one who takes his walking exercise in his sleep!

(T.)
Starting out of your sleep on a wardrobe bedstead, at the sudden desertion of the temporary posts at the bottom;---with the consequences.

(T.)
The state of your feelings in putting on a cold shirt, for the first time after throwing off the under flannel waistcoat with which you have long kept the peace between your skin and your linen.

(S.)
In trying on a parcel of hose sent to you from London by a careless hosier---either tugging and tearing through one stocking which would have pinched the calf of poor Suett, or leaping into another which would hang about the heels of Stephen Kemble.

(T.)
A pair of pantaloons so constructed with regard to what taylors call the stride, as to limit you to 2 or 4 inches per step. In these streights, having to keep pace in walking with a tall friend---all fork!---who stalks along like one's evening shadow on a wall.

(S.)
Wearing on your little finger a ring which would just fit your great toe;---or putting on another, which refuses to be put off again without the assistance of a saw.

(T.)
A leak in a waistcoat-pocket in which you carry all your money---not detected till, on looking into your expences, you find that you have spilt more than you have spent.

(S.)
After the farce of dressing yourself in women's clothes, the tragedy of undressing; an operation in which female assistance is alike desirable and unattainable---so that you e'en fret and blunder on by yourself, bursting a passage through gauzes and muslins---tripping yourself up with your dropping petticoats---half choked by your necklace in tugging it off---fingers pricked by ends of pins without beginnings, &c. &c.

(T.)
A beaver hat so limber and flimsy a texture as to lose all shape (or rather take 50 shapes) every time you doff it to a passing acquaintance.

(T.)
Home-brewed pomata.

(T.)
After dropping a wash-ball out of your frozen fingers, bestirring yourself to run it down, by following its doublings, as it rapidly rolls about the room, till at length it takes sanctuary under a chest of drawers; whence if it be ever extricated, it presents itself under an impenetrable disguise of dust, hairs, and feathers.

(T.)
Hot curling-irons in the hand of an operator who, when he has twirled them up to your skull, there keeps them---obsequiously waiting every time for your roar, as his warrant for untwisting them.

(T.)
Patent shoe-buckles---of which the peculiar merit seems to lie in the firm purchase obtained by their inverted points in your instep.

(T.)
Your shoes blackened with so impartial an hand, that they are anointed with equal profusion within and without---as the colour of your stockings can testify.

(T.)
In a house full of male visitors---your shoes shuffled by a rascally servant into the general heap; and two others---perfect strangers to you, as well as to each other---brought in their room.

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(S.)
When you are harmlessly reading, or writing, in a room which fronts the street, being compelled, during the whole morning, to undergo that savage jargon of yells, brays, and screams, familiarly, but feebly, termed, “the Cries of London”--dustmen, beggars, muffin mongers, knife grinders, and news carriers included.--- “Bombalio, clangor, stridor, tarantantare, murmur”!--- you, having all the while, no interest whatever in the uproar, except in the simple character of a sufferer: or, should you chance to have a wish for what is in the baskets, or barrows, of these sharkmouthed barkers, being necessitated to let them pass unstopped, from your utter incapability of ever arriving at the slightest smattering in any of the infernal dialects in which their goods are uttered, and which they have palpably invented for the sole purpose of guarding against the smallest risk of being, by any accident understood;---and thus is a new Misery, struck out for you, from your own indignation at their distorted ingenuity in devising stratagems for their own ruin--which must obviously be the direct consequence of their unintelligibility.

(S.)
On taking shelter from a storm, under a gate-way---finding yourself exactly vis-à-vis to the person from whom you had long been concealing, by all possible stratagems, the fact of your being in town.

(T.)
Stumbling through London streets, in pumps, over hills of filthy snow, in the beginning of a great thaw, and occasionally passing over a wide, floated crossing, on a tottering plank, closely accompanied by a hopping sweeper, who vociferously begs at you all the way, and keeps thrusting his greasy hat against your clothes:---no halfpenny.

(S.)
As you walk forth, freshly and sprucely dressed--receiving in full, at a sharp turning, the filthy flirtings of a well-twirled mop.

(T.)
As you are hastening down the Strand, on a matter of life and death, encountering, at an archway, the head of the first of twelve or fourteen horses, who, you know, must successively strain up with an overloaded coal waggon, before you can hope to stir and inch---unless you prefer bedevilling your white stockings, and clean shoes, by scampering and crawling, among, and under, coaches, scavengers, carts, &c. &c. in the middle of the street.

(S.)
On returning to your house very late at night, or rather early in the morning, discovering that, in the act of rapping at the door, you are rocking the cradle of a natural child, very unnaturally suspended at your knocker.

(T.)
On May-day---Your eyes and ears put in subjection, all day long, to the Majesty of the People, in the persons of what George Selwyn is said to have called "the Princes of the Blood"---to wit, young Chimney-sweepers, in all the regalia of gilt paper, paste-board crowns, and shovel-sceptres, defiling you with their close approaches, and clattering you into madness with their wooden insignia.

(S.)
Living next door to a large Ladies' Boarding-school---your private apartment being immediately contiguous to the Dancing-room, so that not a single screech of the eternal kit is lost upon you.

(T.)
The 5th of November, or the Anniversary of squalling petitions to "remember Guy Faux," alias "Poor Guy,"---whom you would most willingly forget for ever, and whose "Plot" you now consider as by much the most venial part of his misconduct.

(S.)
Walking, side by side, half over London, with a cart containing a million of iron bars, which you must outbray, if you can, in order to make your companion hear a word you have further to say upon the subject you were earnestly discussing, before you were joined by this infernal article of commerce.

(T.)
In your walk to the city, with a morning full of pressing business on your hands,---to be blockaded by the endless files of Charity children (3 or 4 schools in the lump), or Volunteers,---a fresh-caught thief, attended by his Posse Comitatus---the Bank-Guard---a Body of Firemen in their new dresses,---&c. &c. who either pin you up to the wall, if you keep the pavement, or compel you to escape them by grovelling through the mud..

(S.)
While on short visit to London---the hurry and ferment---the crossing and jostling---the missing and marring---which incessantly happen among all your engagements, purposes, and promises, both of business and pleasure---at home and abroad---from morning till midnight;---obstacles, equally perverse, unexpected, unaccountable, innumerable, and intolerable, springing up like mushrooms through every step of your progress. Then, (when you are at last leaving London,) on asking yourself the question whether any thing has been neglected, or forgotten, receiving for answer---”Almost every thing!”

(S.)
As you are walking with your charmer---meeting a drunken sailor, who, as he staggers by you, ejects his reserve of tobacco against the lady’s drapery.

(S.)
Dressing at a coffee-house, in a great hurry, to dine out, and on your arrival at your friend’s house, suddenly finding that you have nothing in any of your pockets;---then, the flash of horror that runs through you, as you recollect that you have involuntarily confided your watch, pocket book, love letters, and uncounted cash and notes to the care of the public, by leaving them on the table of the coffee room in which you hastily changed your coat and waistcoat.

(S.)
On your entrance at a formal dinner party---in reaching up your hat to a high peg in the hall, bursting your coat, from the arm hole to the pocket.

(T.)
On leaving the house, at which you have been visiting, finding that rascal has taken your new hat, and left you his old one; which on the one hand, either cuts your scull, if you press it down, or barely perches on the tip of your head if you do not---or, on the other hand, wabbles over your eyes and ears, and keeps bobbing on your nose;---to say nothing of wearing another man’s hat, even if it is fitted like a glove.

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(S.)
At night---after having long lain awake, nervous and unwell, with an ardent desire to know the hour, and the state of the weather, being, at last, delighted by hearing the watchman begin his cry---from which however, he allows you to extract no more information than “past.......clock......morning!”---Then, after impatiently lingering through another hour for the sound of your own clock, (which had before been roared down by the watchman) being roused to listen by its preparatory click, and purr, followed by one stroke---which you are to make the most of---the rest being cut short by a violent fit coughing, with which you are seized at the instant.

(S.)
In attempting to pay money in the street---emptying your purse into the kennel---the wind taking care of all the paper money.

(S.)
Standing off and on in the street, for half an hour, (though in the utmost haste,) while the friend with whom you are walking talks to his friend, whom you meet, and to whose conversation you are delicately doubtful whether you ought to be a party.

(S.)
At a London breakfast---snail cream; not to mention the bread that accompanies it, which if it be dry, chalky, musty, bitter, salt, and sour, leaves you however, the consolation, that it is made “of the finest wheat flour!”

(S.)
Coming to London, from a great distance, for the sole purpose of gratifying your loyal curiosity, once before you die, with a sight of the Royal Family at the play; then, on entering the House, finding that the place kept for you is directly over their heads; so that, when you have painfully stretched yourself farther and farther over the front of the box, till you are in danger of getting a fuller view of them from the Pit, you at length succeed in catching the tip of a Princess's feather, or---if you are stil more fortunate---of a royal nose!

(S.)
The unintermitting fever into which you are thrown by being obliged to linger, the whole morning long, amongst a crew of “greasy rogues” in the outer room of a public office, from which you are called out at last---if, indeed, you are called out at all!

(S.)
Chasing your hat, (just blown off in a high wind,) through a muddy street---a fresh gust always whisking it away at the moment of seizing it;---when you have at last caught it, deliberately putting it on, with all its sins upon your head, amidst the jeers of the populace.

(S.)
Running the gauntlet through Thames-street, from Blackfriars to the Tower. Ditto through a long London market, in the dogdays---the odours of the meat acting as a thermometer to the nose.

(S.)
On a sultry day, in London---being compelled by the heat to sit with the windows of a ground room open, while an organ grinder, or ballad singer of the basest degree, are exhausting their whole stock of dissonance within two or three yards of your ill starr’d ears;---yet you cannot drive, or even fee them away, as they are paid for torturing you by some barbarians at the next door.

(S.)
Going, without a carriage, into 50 shops in different parts of the town in the course of the morning, and purchasing at each place only a few articles, which, as they are too small in size and value to be sent home for you, you successively stow into your pockets---until, at length, they are crammed into the appearance of panniers or saddlebags; so that, to hide your disgrace from the elegant world, you sneak home as fast as you can, by the vilest and most obscure passages you can discover.

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(S.)
As you walk the streets on the evening of the 5th of November---a cracker thrown into your pocket by some mischievous little rascal, who instantly runs away---then, in your hasty attempt to snatch it out, feeling it burst in your hand, after leaving your handkerchief in flames.

(S.)
In taking out your money in a hackney-coach---dropping the greatest part of it (and all the gold) in the straw; then, after grubbing and fumbling after it for an hour, finding nothing but the gaping crevices through which it must have escaped.

(T.)
As you are quietly walking along the vicinity of Smithfield, on market day, finding yourself suddenly obliged, though your dancing days have been long over, to lead outsides, cross over, foot it, and a variety of other steps and figures---with mad bulls for your partners.

(S.)
Being a compulsory spectator and auditor of a brawling and scratching match, between two drunken drabs, in consequence of the sudden influx of company, by whom you are hemmed in, an hundred yards deep, in every direction, leaving you no chance of escape, till the difference in sentiment between the Ladies is adjusted;---where you stand, you are, (that is I was) closely bounded, in front, by a barrow of cat’s meat, the unutterable contents of which employ your eyes and nose, while your ear is no less fully engaged by the Tartarean yell of its driver.

(S.)
A footman the next door learning to play upon the fife, or fiddle, and (besides other enormities on his practice) catching as you play them, all your favorite airs, which he returns to you in every possible key, and time, excepting the right---giving the Dead March in Saul as a jig: Paddy Whack as an adagio; &c. &c.

(S.)
Being accelerated in your walk by the lively application of a chairman’s pole a posteriori;--- his “by your leave” not coming till after he has taken it.

(S.)
During the endless time that you are kept waiting at a door in a carriage, while the ladies are shopping, having your impatience soothed by the setting of a saw, close at your ear.

(S.)
The meridian midnight of a thick London fog---leaving you no method of distinguishing between the pavement, and the middle of the street; much less between one street and another---the “palpable obscure” pursuing you into your parlour, and bedchamber, till you can neither see, speak nor breathe.

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(T.)
After taking a few hundred acres of land into your own hands, discovering, as you proceed, that the plan of blending the gentleman with the farmer, is perfectly compatible with loss---but not at all with gain.

(S.)
Residing in a country-town---(shall I stop there?)---next door to a quiet neighbour, whose dwelling is suddenly converted into an ale-house of the most cheerful description.

(T.)
While you are out with a walking party, after heavy rains---one shoe suddenly sucked off by the boggy clay; and then, in making a long and desperate stretch, (which fails,) with the hope of recovering it, leaving the other in the same predicament;---the second stage of ruin is that of standing, or rather tottering, in blank despair, with both feet planted, ancle deep, in quagmire.---The last (I had almost said the dying) scene of the tragedy---that of deliberately cramming first one, and then the other clogged polluted foot into its choked up shoe, after having scavengered your hands and gloves in slaving to drag up each separately, out of its deep bed, and in this state proceeding on your walk---is too dreadful for representation. The crown of the catastrophe is, that each of the party floundering in his, or her, own gulf, is utterly disabled from assisting, or being assisted, by the rest.

(S.)
While you are laughing, or talking wildly to yourself, in walking, suddenly seeing a person steal close by you, who, you are sure, must have heard it all; then in an agony of shame, making a wretched attempt to sing, in a voice as like your talk as possible, in hopes of making your hearer think that you had been only singing all the while.

(S.)
In walking out to dinner, clean and smart, becoming hot with your exercise, the consciousness of which makes you still hotter---so that, on arriving, too late to repair yourself, you are obliged to sit down to table with a large party, (each of whom is clean and fresh,) with plastered hair---red, varnished face---and black coat besilvered all over with liquid spangles of powder and pomatum.

(T.)
On a stubborn horse---coming to a no less stubborn gate, when you have either no hooked stick, or one with so gentle a curve, that it lets go its hold as soon as it has taken it; so that you must at last resolve to dismount, though well know that your horse will afterwards keep you dancing for an hour on one leg, with the other in the stirrup, before he will suffer you to remount him.

(T.)
Venturing upon a pinch of high dried Irish, in the open air; a sudden puff of wind emptying your box into your eyes, the moment you open it.

(S.)
Your Study situated in the immediate vicinity of a threshing-floor; so that unless you can learn the trick of timing your thoughts to the thump of the flail, they are broken at every bang.

(T.)
Attending a sale, from a great distance, for the sole purpose of bidding for an article, which, on your arrival, you are told has just been knocked down for nothing.

(S.)
On Christmas eve---being dunned by several parties of rural barbarians, on account of having stunned you by screaming and bellowing Christmas carols under your window.

(T.)
While on a visit in the hundreds of Essex, being under the necessity of getting dead drunk every day, to save your life.

(S.)
After having sent from the other end of the kingdom to Hookham’s for a quantity of well chosen books, all particularly named---receiving in return, six months afterwards, a cargo of novels, of their own choice, with such titles as “Delicate Sensibility”---”Disguises of the heart”---”Errors of Tenderness,” &c. &c.---Then, if you venture, in despair, on a few pages, being edified in the margin by such pencilled commentaries as the following---”I quite agree in this sentiment.”---” How frequently do we find this to be the case in real life!”---”But why did she let him have the letter?” &c. &c. concluded by the reader’s general decision upon the merits of the book, stamped in one oracular sentence; for example, “This is a very good novel;” or (to the horror and confusion of the author, if he should ever hear of the critique )”What execrable stuff!”

(T.)
Just in that period of your walk when you are overtaken by a torrent of rain, and secretly applauding your own caution, in having provided yourself with an umbrella---said umbrella suddenly and furiously reversed by a puff of wind, and shred to ribbands in an instant.

(S.) After having arrived at home, completely exhausted by a long journey, and delightfully diffused yourself on a sofa for the rest of the evening, (as you fondly suppose,) ---being dragged out again, within a quarter of an hour, to take a long walk with a few friends, who are “obliged to to,” but who “cannot bear to part with you so soon”---the party chiefly consisting of ladies, to whom you are, on every account, ashamed to plead fatigue, as an excuse for remaining home.

(S.) In going out of London, being met and blockaded on the road, by innumerable gangs of the Carrion and Offal of the human species, swarming home, in savage jollity, from a bull baiting, a boxing match, an execution, &c. &c.

(T.)
In an August evening---windows open, and candles lighted---the incessant visits of gnats, moths, earwigs, &c. &c. without invitation; so that one half of your time passes in killing some of your guests, and the other in helping the rest to kill themselves.

(S.) Passing the worst part of a rainy winter in a country so inveterately miry as to imprison you within your own premises; so that, by way of exercise, and to keep yourself alive, you take to rolling the gravel walks, (though already quite smooth) cutting wood, (though you have more logs than enough,) working the dumb bells, or such other irrational exertions.

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(T.)
Cricket by two; so that, when in, you have to run a quarter of a mile behind the wicket after every ball you miss---your antagonist delivering it with the force of a cannon.

(T.)
When up to the ears in a game at cricket, being asked by "a fifth-form" just to come and fag behind for five minutes, till somebody arrives who is to take your place;---this indefinite "somebosy," however, never coming at all; so that you are obliged to slave out the whole "after twelve."

(T.)
To be swung in a bad swing by a worse swinger, who either jerks you out of your seat, or jolts and twists you in it; till on your crying out to him to stop, he leaves you spinning like the flyer of a jack.

(T.)
To be pressed by the crowd round a military Band, close up to the Trumpeter, including three degrees of Misery---being stunned---stunned discordantly---and every moment expecting the Performer to burst in your face!

(T.)
In skaiting---slipping in such a manner that your legs start off into this unaccommodating posture---

from which, however, you are soon relieved, by tumbling forward on your nose, or backwards on your skull.---Also learning to cut the outside edge, on skaits that have no edge to cut with:---ice very rugged.

(T.)
Angling for twelve or fourteen hours alone, without one bite, though perpetually tantalized with bobs;---or, when you have hooked a fine large jack, seeing him take French leave, at the moment when you are courteously shewing him his nearest way to the bank.

(T.)
In hunting---whilst you are leading the field, and just running in upon the fox, with the brush full in your hopes---being suddenly left in the lurch, or other words---in the ditch.

(T.)
A Flute of so unkindly a disposition, that the more breath you give it, the less sound it returns;---or one in which the note you want to catch constantly flies up into the octave over-head.

(T.)
While playing the solo part for the flute in a quartetto---to be supplied with a superfluous quantity of breath, by a sudden fit of coughing, laughing, or sneezing.

(T.)
Your fingers so clubbed at the ends, that they are not content with covering one fiddle-string at a time;--or of so concise a make, that in attempting to reach an octave on the Piano-forte, they either fail by one note, or succeed by taking a leap for it,---like Gulliver at the Brobdignag harpsichord.

(T.)
Tke dead, lumpish, tubby tones of the fourth and fifth strings of the guittar.

(T.)
Finding that your harpsichord-tuner (now 20 miles on his way home,) has left you one or two braying notes, which frighten your ear out of its wits, as often as you venture to meddle with them;---or, that some unhappy key, on the slightest touch, has fallen down in an apoplectic fit, from which you use all means to recover it---in vain!

(T.)
After wading through the task of copying a very long piece of Music, discovering, as you play it over, that two or three whole bars have thought proper to leave themselves out.

(S.)
Dining and passing the whole evening, with a party of fox hunters, after they have had what they call “glorious sport;” and, while you execrate the weary name of a hound ,being gorged with the crambe recota of one fox chase after another, till, like Miss Larolles, you “wish the country was under ground.”

(T.)
Entering into the figure of a country dance with so much spirit, as to force your leg and foot through the muslin drapery of your fair partner.

(T.)
Being compelled to shift your steps, at every instant, from jig to minuet, and from minuet to jig time, by the sleepy, ignorant, or drunken blunders of your musicians.

(S.)
After having, with great difficulty, persuaded a fair and celebrated performer on the harp to give you a sample of her skill, obtaining at last the pleasure of hearing her begin to---tune the instrument; the end of which very detailed operation exactly falls in with that of---your time.

(T.)
Going to see an air-balloon, which accordingly you do see---on the ground; as, from some fault either in the gas, the weather, or the Aeronaut,---it never rises.

(S.)
When you have imprudently cooled yourself with a glass of ice, after dancing very violently, being immediately told by a medical friend, that you have no chance for your life but by continuing the exercise with all your might;---then, the state of horror in which you suddenly cry out for “Go to the devil and shake yourself,” or any other such frolicsome tune, and the heart sinking apprehensions under which you instantly tear down the dance, and keep rousing all the rest of the couples, (who having taken no ice can afford to move with less spirit_---incessantly vociferating, as you ramp and gallop along, “Hands across, Sir, for heaven’s sake!”--”Set corners, ladies, if you have any bowels!”---”Right and left---or I’m a dead man!”---&c. &c.

(T.)
After waiting an hour for a friend’s cremona, for which you have sent your servant---seeing it at length brought in by him---in fragments.

(T.)
Black Monday made a few shades blacker, by discovering, as you count over the cash squeezed out of your father at parting, that, on measuring it against your old debts, it still leaves you a guinea or two short of being worth nothing.

(S.)
In playing whist at a house where the laws of the rubber are promptly executed upon offenders, in all their severity---perceiving that every part of your play (which you know to be vile) is undergoing the severest scrutiny by two or three Sages of the game, who are betting deeply behind your chair; your attention to your cards being not much improved by the polite murmurs around you.