stating that he should start for the race-course early in the morning.
Rugge himself set out to the racecourse to kill two birds with one
stone,--catch Mr. Losely, examine the blind man himself.

He did catch Mr. Losely, and very nearly caught something else; for that
gentleman was in a ring of noisy horsemen, mounted on a hired hack, and
loud as the noisiest. When Rugge came up to his stirrup, and began his
harangue, Losely turned his hack round with so sudden an appliance of
bit and spur, that the animal lashed out, and its heel went within an
inch of the manager's cheek-bone. Before Rugge could recover, Losely was
in a hand-gallop. But the blind man! Of course Rugge did not find him?
You are mistaken: he did. The blind man was there, dog and all. The
manager spoke to him, and did not know him from Adam.

Nor have you or I, my venerated readers, any right whatsoever to doubt
whether Mr. Rugge could be so stolidly obtuse. Granting that blind
sailor to be the veritable William Waife, William Waife was a man of
genius, taking pains to appear an ordinary mortal. And the anecdotes of
Munden, or of Bamfylde Moore Carew, suffice to tell us how Protean is
the power of transformation in a man whose genius is mimetic. But how
often does it happen to us, venerated readers, not to recognize a man
of genius, even when he takes no particular pains to escape detection! A
man of genius may be for ten years our next-door neighbour; he may dine
in company with us twice a week; his face may be as familiar to our
eyes as our armchair; his voice to our ears as the click of our
parlour-clock: yet we are never more astonished than when all of a
sudden, some bright day, it is discovered that our next-door neighbour
is--a man of genius. Did you ever hear tell of the life of a man of
genius but what there were numerous witnesses who deposed to the fact,
that until, perfidious dissembler! he flared up and set the Thames on
fire they had never seen anything in him; an odd creature, perhaps a
good creature,--probably a poor creature,--but a MAN of GENIUS! They
would as soon have suspected him of being the Khann of Tartary! Nay,
candid readers, are there not some of you who refuse to the last to
recognize the maa of genius, till he has paid his penny to Charon, and
his passport to immortality has been duly examined by the customhouse
officers of Styx! When one half the world drag forth that same next-door
neighbour, place him on a pedestal, and h