the person who defrauded him, is the identical man who
sat in the centre of the very front row of the pit last night and laughed
the most boisterously at this very same thing,--and not so well done
either. Talk of Grimaldi, we say again! Did Grimaldi, in his best days,
ever do anything in this way equal to Da Costa?

The mention of this latter justly celebrated clown reminds us of his last
piece of humour, the fraudulently obtaining certain stamped acceptances
from a young gentleman in the army. We had scarcely laid down our pen to
contemplate for a few moments this admirable actor's performance of that
exquisite practical joke, than a new branch of our subject flashed
suddenly upon us. So we take it up again at once.

All people who have been behind the scenes, and most people who have been
before them, know, that in the representation of a pantomime, a good many
men are sent upon the stage for the express purpose of being cheated, or
knocked down, or both. Now, down to a moment ago, we had never been able
to understand for what possible purpose a great number of odd, lazy,
large-headed men, whom one is in the habit of meeting here, and there,
and everywhere, could ever have been created. We see it all, now. They
are the supernumeraries in the pantomime of life; the men who have been
thrust into it, with no other view than to be constantly tumbling over
each other, and running their heads against all sorts of strange things.
We sat opposite to one of these men at a supper-table, only last week.
Now we think of it, he was exactly like the gentlemen with the pasteboard
heads and faces, who do the corresponding business in the theatrical
pantomimes; there was the same broad stolid simper--the same dull leaden
eye--the same unmeaning, vacant stare; and whatever was said, or whatever
was done, he always came in at precisely the wrong place, or jostled
against something that he had not the slightest business with. We looked
at the man across the table again and again; and could not satisfy
ourselves what race of beings to class him with. How very odd that this
never occurred to us before!

We will frankly own that we have been much troubled with the harlequin.
We see harlequins of so many kinds in the real living pantomime, that we
hardly know which to select as the proper fellow of him of the theatres.
At one time we were disposed to think that the harlequin was neither more
nor less than a young man of family and