and calling for brandy-and-water, in imitation of the
remainder of the company, seated themselves at the table. 'Now sir,'
said Mr. Pickwick, 'will you oblige us by proceeding with what you were
going to relate?'

The dismal individual took a dirty roll of paper from his pocket, and
turning to Mr. Snodgrass, who had just taken out his note-book, said in
a hollow voice, perfectly in keeping with his outward man--'Are you the
poet?'

'I--I do a little in that way,' replied Mr. Snodgrass, rather taken
aback by the abruptness of the question. 'Ah! poetry makes life what
light and music do the stage--strip the one of the false embellishments,
and the other of its illusions, and what is there real in either to live
or care for?'

'Very true, Sir,' replied Mr. Snodgrass.

'To be before the footlights,' continued the dismal man, 'is like
sitting at a grand court show, and admiring the silken dresses of
the gaudy throng; to be behind them is to be the people who make that
finery, uncared for and unknown, and left to sink or swim, to starve or
live, as fortune wills it.'

'Certainly,' said Mr. Snodgrass: for the sunken eye of the dismal man
rested on him, and he felt it necessary to say something.

'Go on, Jemmy,' said the Spanish traveller, 'like black-eyed Susan--all
in the Downs--no croaking--speak out--look lively.' 'Will you make
another glass before you begin, Sir?' said Mr. Pickwick.

The dismal man took the hint, and having mixed a glass of
brandy-and-water, and slowly swallowed half of it, opened the roll of
paper and proceeded, partly to read, and partly to relate, the following
incident, which we find recorded on the Transactions of the Club as 'The
Stroller's Tale.'

THE STROLLER'S TALE

'There is nothing of the marvellous in what I am going to relate,' said
the dismal man; 'there is nothing even uncommon in it. Want and sickness
are too common in many stations of life to deserve more notice than is
usually bestowed on the most ordinary vicissitudes of human nature. I
have thrown these few notes together, because the subject of them was
well known to me for many years. I traced his progress downwards, step
by step, until at last he reached that excess of destitution from which
he never rose again.

'The man of whom I speak was a low pantomime actor; and, like many
people of his class, an habitual drunkard. In his better days, before
he had become enfeebled by dissipation and emaciated by disease, he h