ccording to the terms of my agreement with
the person to whom I have, I fear foolishly, entrusted the letters and
documents of a story surpassing ancient as well as modern in the
wonderment it causes, that would make the Law courts bless their hearts,
judges no less than the barristers, to have it running through them day
by day, with every particular to wrangle over, and many to serve as a
text for the pulpit. So to proceed.

It should be mentioned that the postillion Charles Dump is not
represented, and I have no conception of the reason why not, sitting on
horseback, in the portrait in the possession of the Cawthorne family. I
have not seen it, I am bound to admit. We had offended Dr. Cawthorne, by
once in an urgent case calling in another doctor, who, he would have it,
was a quack, that ought to have killed us, and we ceased to visit; but a
gentleman who was an established patient of Dr. Cawthorne's and had
frequent opportunities of judging the portrait, in the course of a
chronic malady, describes Charles Dump on his legs as a small man looking
diminished from a very much longer one by shrinkage in thickish wrinkles
from the shoulders to the shanks. His hat is enormous and very gay. He is
rather of sad countenance. An elevation of his collar behind the ears,
and pointed at the neck, gives you notions of his having dropped from
some hook. He stands with his forefinger extended, like a disused
semaphore-post, that seems tumbling and desponding on the hill by the
highroad, in his attitude while telling the tale; if standing it may be
called, where the whole figure appears imploring for a seat. That was his
natural position, as one would suppose any artist must have thought, and
a horse beneath him. But it has been suggested that the artist in
question was no painter of animals. Then why did he not get a painter of
animals to put in the horse? It is vain to ask, though it is notorious
that artists combine without bickering to do these things; and one puts
his name on the animal, the other on the human being or landscape.

My informant adds, that the prominent feature, telling a melancholy tale
of its own, is of sanguine colour, and while plainly in the act of
speaking, Charles Dump might be fancied about to drop off to sleep. He
was impressed by the dreaminess of the face; and I must say I regard him
as an interesting character. During my girlhood Napoleon Bonaparte alone
would have been his rival for filling an inn al