avour with the juries; and mark me, that grin of his will enable
him to beat the other in the long run. We all know what all barrister
coves looks forward to--a seat on the hop sack. Well, I'll bet a bull to
fivepence, that the grinner gets upon it, and the snarler doesn't; at any
rate, that he gets there first. I calls my cove--for he is my cove--a
snarler; because your first-rates at matthew mattocks are called
snarlers, and for no other reason; for the chap, though with a high
front, is a good chap, and once drank a glass of ale with me, after
buying an animal out of my stable. I have often thought it a pity that
he wasn't born with a grin on his face, like the son of Ugly _Moses_. It
is true he would scarcely then have been an out and outer at Latin and
matthew mattocks, but what need of either to a chap born with a grin?
Talk of being born with a silver spoon in one's mouth; give me a cove
born with a grin on his face--a much better endowment.

'I will now shorten my history as much as I can, for we have talked as
much as folks do during a whole night in the Commons' House, though, of
course, not with so much learning, or so much to the purpose,
because--why? They are in the House of Commons, and we in a public room
of an inn at Horncastle. The goodness of the ale do you see, never
depending on what it is made of, oh, no! but on the fashion and
appearance of the jug in which it is served up. After being turned out
of the firm, I got my living in two or three honest ways, which I shall
not trouble you with describing. I did not like any of them, however, as
they did not exactly suit my humour; at last I found one which did. One
Saturday forenoon I chanced to be in the cattle-market of a place about
eighty miles from here; there I won the favour of an old gentleman who
sold dickeys. He had a very shabby squad of animals, without soul or
spirit; nobody would buy them, till I leaped upon their hinder ends, and
by merely wriggling in a particular manner, made them caper and bound so
to people's liking, that in a few hours every one of them was sold at
very sufficient prices. The old gentleman was so pleased with my skill,
that he took me home with him, and in a very little time into
partnership. It's a good thing to have a gift, but yet better to have
two. I might have got a very decent livelihood by throwing stones, but I
much question whether I should ever have attained to the position in
society which I