mlet.' Thackeray had found a small phial on the mantel-shelf and
out of it he proceeded to pour the imaginary 'juice of cursed
hebenon' into the imaginary porches of somebody's ears. The whole
thing was inimitably done, and I hoped nobody saw it but myself;
but years afterwards a ponderous fat-witted young man put the
question squarely to me: 'What _was_ the matter with Mr. Thackeray
that night the club met at M----'s house?'"

Thackeray's playfulness was indeed a marked peculiarity, and innumerable
stories are told of his dancing pirouettes, singing impromptu songs, and
rhyming a whole company to their infinite amusement. Each one of his
personal friends, in talking of him, says, "But if you could only have
heard him" at such a time; but of course no one can repeat such
unpremeditated jests, and the flavor is gone from them when any one
tries to do so. He was the life of the clubs he frequented, and spent
much time in them and at theatres, of which he was passionately fond.
His duties as a man of fashion took much of his time, and his friends
were always wondering when he wrote his books. Much of the jollity and
boyish hilarity of his life in society was a rebound from the strain of
these books. He was wont to live much, as did Dickens, in the creations
of his fancy, and sometimes his emotional nature became overwrought in
his work. Mr. Underwood tells us:--

"One day while the great novel of 'The Newcomes' was in course of
publication, Lowell, who was then in London, met Thackeray on the
street. The novelist was serious in manner, and his looks and voice
told of weariness and affliction. He saw the kindly inquiry in the
poet's eyes, and said, 'Come into Evans's and I'll tell you all
about it. _I have killed the Colonel!_' So they walked in and took
a table in a remote corner; and then Thackeray, drawing the fresh
manuscript from his breast-pocket, read through that exquisitely
touching chapter which records the death of Colonel Newcome. When
he came to the final _Adsum_, the tears which had been swelling his
lids for some time trickled down his face, and the last word was
almost an inarticulate sob."

Thackeray's sensibility was really extreme, and he could not read
anything pathetic without actual discomfort,--never could get through
"The Bride of Lammermoor," for instance,--and would not listen to any
sad tales of suffering i