You can see the bear's-grease not only on Tongs's head but on his hands,
which he is clapping clammily together. Remark him who is telling his
client "there is cholera in the hair;" and that lucky rogue whom
the young lady bids to cut off "a long thick piece"--for somebody,
doubtless. All these men are different, and delightfully natural and
absurd. Why should hair-dressing be an absurd profession?

The amateur will remark what an excellent part hands play in Mr. Leech's
pieces: his admirable actors use them with perfect naturalness. Look at
Betty, putting the urn down; at cook, laying her hands on the kitchen
table, whilst her policeman grumbles at the cold meat. They are cook's
and housemaid's hands without mistake, and not without a certain beauty
too. The bald old lady, who is tying her bonnet at Tongs's, has hands
which you see are trembling. Watch the fingers of the two old harridans
who are talking scandal: for what long years past they have pointed out
holes in their neighbors' dresses and mud on their flounces. "Here's a
go! I've lost my diamond ring." As the dustman utters this pathetic
cry, and looks at his hand, you burst out laughing. These are among the
little points of humor. One could indicate hundreds of such as one turns
over the pleasant pages.

There is a little snob or gent, whom we all of us know, who wears little
tufts on his little chin, outrageous pins and pantaloons, smokes cigars
on tobacconists' counters, sucks his cane in the streets, struts
about with Mrs. Snob and the baby (Mrs. S. an immense woman, whom Snob
nevertheless bullies), who is a favorite abomination of Leech, and
pursued by that savage humorist into a thousand of his haunts. There he
is, choosing waistcoats at the tailor's--such waistcoats! Yonder he
is giving a shilling to the sweeper who calls him "Capting;" now he is
offering a paletot to a huge giant who is going out in the rain. They
don't know their own pictures, very likely; if they did, they would have
a meeting, and thirty or forty of them would be deputed to thrash Mr.
Leech. One feels a pity for the poor little bucks. In a minute or two,
when we close this discourse and walk the streets, we shall see a dozen
such.

Ere we shut the desk up, just one word to point out to the
unwary specially to note the backgrounds of landscapes in Leech's
drawings--homely drawings of moor and wood, and seashore and London
street--the scenes of his little dramas. They are as excelle