er sitting upon "many waters." Then there was the collateral topic
of ankles. What an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like ourself, of
touching that nice brink, and yet never tumbling over it, of a seemingly
ever approximating something "not quite proper," while, like a skilful
posture-maker, balancing betwixt decorums and their opposites, he keeps
the line, from which a hair's-breadth deviation is destruction; hovering
in the confines of light and darkness, or where "both seem either"; a
hazy uncertain delicacy; Autolycus-like in the play, still putting off
his expectant auditory with "Whoop, do me no harm, good man!" But, above
all, that conceit arrided us most at that time, and still tickles our
midriff to remember, where, allusively to the flight of Astrae--_ultima
Coelestum terras reliquit_--we pronounced--in reference to the stockings
still--that _Modesty taking her final leave of Mortals, her last blush
was visible in her ascent to the Heavens by the tract of the glowing
instep._ This might be called the crowning conceit; and was esteemed
tolerable writing in those days.

But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes away; as did the
transient mode which had so favoured us. The ankles of our fair friends
in a few weeks began to reassume their whiteness, and left us scarce a
leg to stand upon. Other female whims followed, but none, methought, so
pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more than single
meanings.

Somebody has said that, to swallow six cross-buns daily consecutively
for a fortnight would surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to have to
furnish as many jokes daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a
long twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder
execution. "Man goeth forth to his work until the evening"--from a
reasonable hour in the morning, we presume it was meant. Now, as our
main occupation took us up from eight till five every day in the City;
and as our evening hours, at that time of life, had generally to do with
anything rather than business, it follows that the only time we could
spare for this manufactory of jokes--our supplementary livelihood, that
supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and cheese--was exactly that
part of the day which (as we have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly
denominated No Man's Time; that is, no time in which a man ought to be
up, and awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that time, of an hour,
or an hour and