re the mirror looking steadfastly at
his own image.

And, finding it not quite so interestingly curious as the fool of a
master had declared it to be, he lit some more candies, selected a mask,
and put it on.

He chose the mask of a buffoon.

*****

From that day Eustace strove consistently to live up to the reputation
given to him by a fool, who had been talking at random to please an avid
mother. Mr. Bembridge knew that the boy was no good at work, wanted
to say something nice about him, and had once noticed him playing
some absurd but very ordinary boyish prank. On this supposed hint of
character the master spoke. Mrs. Lane listened. Eustace acted. A sudden
ambition stirred within him. To be known, talked about, considered,
perhaps even wondered at--was not that a glory? Such a glory came to the
greatly talented--to the mightily industrious. Men earned it by labour,
by intensity, insensibility to fatigue, the "roughing it" of the mind.
He did not want to rough it. Nor was he greatly talented. But he was
just sharp enough to see, as he believed, a short and perhaps easy way
to a thing that his conceit desired and that his egoism felt it could
love. Being only a boy, he had never, till this time, deliberately
looked on life as anything. Now he set himself, in his, at first,
youthful way, to look on it as burlesque--to see it in caricature.
How to do that? He studied the cartoons in _Vanity Fair_, the wondrous
noses, the astounding trousers, that delight the cynical world. Were men
indeed like these? Did they assume such postures, stare with such eyes,
revel in such complexions? These were the celebrities of the time.
They all looked with one accord preposterous. Eustace jumped to the
conclusion that they were what they looked, and, going a step farther,
that they were celebrated because they were preposterous. Gifted with
a certain amount of imagination, this idea of the interest, almost the
beauty of the preposterous, took a firm hold of his mind. One day he,
too, would be in _Vanity Fair_, displaying terrific boots, amazing thin
legs, a fatuous or a frenetic countenance to the great world of the
unknown. He would stand out from the multitude if only by virtue of an
unusual eyeglass, a particular glove, the fashion of his tie or of his
temper. He would balance on the ball of peculiarity, and toe his way
up the spiral of fame, while the music-hall audience applauded and the
managers consulted as to the increase of