o see Alethea Pontifex (who was then living there) on
business. It was very gracious of him to take notice of me, for if I was
a light of literature at all it was of the very lightest kind.

It is true that in the intervals of business I had written a good deal,
but my works had been almost exclusively for the stage, and for those
theatres that devoted themselves to extravaganza and burlesque. I had
written many pieces of this description, full of puns and comic songs,
and they had had a fair success, but my best piece had been a treatment
of English history during the Reformation period, in the course of which
I had introduced Cranmer, Sir Thomas More, Henry the Eighth, Catherine of
Arragon, and Thomas Cromwell (in his youth better known as the _Malleus
Monachorum_), and had made them dance a break-down. I had also
dramatised "The Pilgrim's Progress" for a Christmas Pantomime, and made
an important scene of Vanity Fair, with Mr Greatheart, Apollyon,
Christiana, Mercy, and Hopeful as the principal characters. The
orchestra played music taken from Handel's best known works, but the time
was a good deal altered, and altogether the tunes were not exactly as
Handel left them. Mr Greatheart was very stout and he had a red nose; he
wore a capacious waistcoat, and a shirt with a huge frill down the middle
of the front. Hopeful was up to as much mischief as I could give him; he
wore the costume of a young swell of the period, and had a cigar in his
mouth which was continually going out.

Christiana did not wear much of anything: indeed it was said that the
dress which the Stage Manager had originally proposed for her had been
considered inadequate even by the Lord Chamberlain, but this is not the
case. With all these delinquencies upon my mind it was natural that I
should feel convinced of sin while playing chess (which I hate) with the
great Dr Skinner of Roughborough--the historian of Athens and editor of
Demosthenes. Dr Skinner, moreover, was one of those who pride themselves
on being able to set people at their ease at once, and I had been sitting
on the edge of my chair all the evening. But I have always been very
easily overawed by a schoolmaster.

The game had been a long one, and at half-past nine, when supper came in,
we had each of us a few pieces remaining. "What will you take for
supper, Dr Skinner?" said Mrs Skinner in a silvery voice.

He made no answer for some time, but at last in a tone of almost
s