subject of
theatricals is never mentioned in the Gattleton family, unless, indeed,
by Uncle Tom, who cannot refrain from sometimes expressing his surprise
and regret at finding that his nephews and nieces appear to have lost the
relish they once possessed for the beauties of Shakspeare, and quotations
from the works of that immortal bard.

CHAPTER X--A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF MR. WATKINS TOTTLE

CHAPTER THE FIRST

Matrimony is proverbially a serious undertaking. Like an over-weening
predilection for brandy-and-water, it is a misfortune into which a man
easily falls, and from which he finds it remarkably difficult to
extricate himself. It is of no use telling a man who is timorous on
these points, that it is but one plunge, and all is over. They say the
same thing at the Old Bailey, and the unfortunate victims derive as much
comfort from the assurance in the one case as in the other.

Mr. Watkins Tottle was a rather uncommon compound of strong uxorious
inclinations, and an unparalleled degree of anti-connubial timidity. He
was about fifty years of age; stood four feet six inches and
three-quarters in his socks--for he never stood in stockings at
all--plump, clean, and rosy. He looked something like a vignette to one
of Richardson's novels, and had a clean-cravatish formality of manner,
and kitchen-pokerness of carriage, which Sir Charles Grandison himself
might have envied. He lived on an annuity, which was well adapted to the
individual who received it, in one respect--it was rather small. He
received it in periodical payments on every alternate Monday; but he ran
himself out, about a day after the expiration of the first week, as
regularly as an eight-day clock; and then, to make the comparison
complete, his landlady wound him up, and he went on with a regular tick.

Mr. Watkins Tottle had long lived in a state of single blessedness, as
bachelors say, or single cursedness, as spinsters think; but the idea of
matrimony had never ceased to haunt him. Wrapt in profound reveries on
this never-failing theme, fancy transformed his small parlour in
Cecil-street, Strand, into a neat house in the suburbs; the
half-hundredweight of coals under the kitchen-stairs suddenly sprang up
into three tons of the best Walls-end; his small French bedstead was
converted into a regular matrimonial four-poster; and in the empty chair
on the opposite side of the fireplace, imagination seated a beautiful
young lady, with a v