What Will He Do With It, Complete

pens with a descriptio

s of the English Peop

stivity.-Characters to

nd graphically portra

nal suggestions as

and callings, with ot

less dialogue after t

istory (mot

ed the attractive forms of the Mermaid, the Norfolk Giant; the Pig-faced Lady, the Spotted Boy, and the Calf with Two Heads; while high over even these edifices, and occupying the most conspicuous vantage-ground, a lofty stage promised to rural playgoers the "Grand Melodramatic Performance

re they stretched, in lengthened ridges of gold and purple, like the border-land between earth and sky. The tall elms on the green were still, save, near the great

e provoked from the rustic wits,-jokes which they took with amused good-humour, and sometimes retaliated with a zest which had already made them very popular personages. Indeed, there was that abo

s yet ruddy and clear; his hazel eyes were lively and keen; his hair, which escaped in loose clusters from a jean shooting-cap set jauntily on a well-shaped head, was of that deep sunny auburn rarely seen but in persons of vigorous and hardy temperament. He was good-looking on the whole, and would have deserved the more flattering epithet of handsome, but for his nose, which was what the French call "a nose in

he mud so long as he foll

rarer in England than they have been since the Siege of Sebastopol); and yet left you perfectly convinced that he was an

ning to curl, and singularly soft and silken in its texture. His large, clear, dark-blue, happy eyes were fringed with long ebon lashes, and set under brows which already wore the expression of intellectual power, and, better still, of frank courage and open loyalty. His complexion was fair, and somewhat pale, and his lips in laughing showed teeth exquisitely white and even. But though his profile was clearly cut, it was far from the Greek ideal; and he wanted the height of stature which is usually considered essential to the

miliarly in vogue at fairs, which are designed to impress upon the victim to w

a year or two younger than himself. "Found in the act, sentenced, punished," cried he, snatchin

while his elder and wiser friend looked at him with grave, compassionate rebuke, and grumbled out,-"Dr. Franklin tells us that once in his life he paid to

s who wished for ribbons, and were possessed of scratch-backs,

s; and if you follow us farther, you are devoured!" So saying, he expanded his jaws to a width so preternaturally large, and exhibited a row of grinders so formidable, that the girls fell back in consternation. The friends turned down a narrow alley

e interest the motley figures ranged in front of the curtain as the Drumatis Persona, he said, "You seem attracted, sir; you have probably already witnessed the performanc

e, friend. Summers, and suns, stupid old watering-places, and pretty young women, `are n't what they were a w

out of the common way. "You speaks truly and cleverly, sir. But if old folks do always say that things are worse than they were, ben't there always summat

id the boy Lionel; "

e is a Rad,-that's pink! And, what is more to

h much interest; "more to

sture of a man about to ratiocinate or demonstrate, as Quintilian, in his remarks on the ora

trade, I take it, has ideas as belong to it. Butchers don't see life as bakers do; and if you talk to a dozen

the jean cap, admiringly; "your remark

hers, and is always a-talking with 'em, and a-reading the news; therefore he thinks, as his fellows do, smart and sharp, bang up to the day, but nothing 'riginal and all his own, like. But a

ectfully,-"a tailor is gregarious, a cobbler solitary. The gregarious go with the futur

o is a poet,-or discovers marvellous things in a crystal,-whereas a tailor, sir" (spoke

lemnity. "Poor little thing!" said Lionel. "Poor little thing!" said the Cobbler. And had you been there, my reader, ten to one but you would have said the same. And yet she was attired in white satin, with spangled flounces and a tinsel jacket; and she wore a wreath of flowers (to be sure, the flowers were not real) on her long fair curls, with gaudy bracelets (to be sure, the stones were mock) on her slender arms. Still there was s

e Cobbler: "she plays uncommon. But if you had

o's

ap you have heard

h to sa

down now, anyhow. But she takes care of him, little darling: God bless thee!" and the Cobbler here exc

the elder of the young men, "before I am man

!" cried the C

re a poet,-I a painter. Y

r her, he'd starve. He fed them all once: he can feed them no longer; he'd starve. That's the world: they use up a genus, and when it fall

hark ye, Vance, we'll toss up which shall be

smile that would have become Correggio if a tyro had offe