re all driven from his mind; for he beheld that
approaching, which is the greatest peril and disaster known to social
man. He saw a bore coming into the room!

In a wild thirst for novelty, Pomander had once penetrated to Goodman's
Fields Theater; there he had unguardedly put a question to a carpenter
behind the scene; a seedy-black poet instantly pushed the carpenter away
(down a trap, it is thought), and answered it in seven pages, and in
continuation was so vaguely communicative, that he drove Sir Charles
back into the far west.

Sir Charles knew him again in a moment, and at sight of him bolted. They
met at the door. "Ah! Mr. Triplet!" said the fugitive, "enchanted--to
wish you good-morning!" and he plunged into the hiding-places of the
theater.

"That is a very polite gentleman!" thought Triplet. He was followed
by the call-boy, to whom he was explaining that his avocations, though
numerous, would not prevent his paying Mr. Rich the compliment of
waiting all day in his green-room, sooner than go without an answer
to three important propositions, in which the town and the arts were
concerned.

"What is your name?" said the boy of business to the man of words.

"Mr. Triplet," said Triplet.

"Triplet? There is something for you in the hall," said the urchin, and
went off to fetch it.

"I knew it," said Triplet to himself; "they are accepted. There's a note
in the hall to fix the reading." He then derided his own absurdity in
having ever for a moment desponded. "Master of three arts, by each of
which men grow fat, how was it possible he should starve all his days!"

He enjoyed a natural vanity for a few moments, and then came more
generous feelings. What sparkling eyes there would be in Lambeth to-day!
The butcher, at sight of Mr. Rich's handwriting, would give him credit.
Jane should have a new gown.

But when his tragedies were played, and he paid! El Dorado! His children
should be the neatest in the street. Lysimachus and Roxalana should
learn the English language, cost what it might; sausages should be
diurnal; and he himself would not be puffed up, fat, lazy. No! he would
work all the harder, be affable as ever, and, above all, never swamp
the father, husband, and honest man in the poet and the blackguard of
sentiment.

Next his reflections took a business turn.

"These tragedies--the scenery? Oh, I shall have to paint it myself. The
heroes? Well, they have nobody who will play them as I should. (Thi