bjoin his own note of a less important incident of that
month which will show his quick and sure eye for any bit of acting out
of the common. The lady has since justified its closing prediction.
Describing an early dinner with Chauncy Townshend, he adds (17th of
December 1858): "I escaped at half-past seven, and went to the Strand
Theatre: having taken a stall beforehand, for it is always crammed. I
really wish you would go, between this and next Thursday, to see the
_Maid and the Magpie_ burlesque there. There is the strangest thing in
it that ever I have seen on the stage. The boy, Pippo, by Miss Wilton.
While it is astonishingly impudent (must be, or it couldn't be done at
all), it is so stupendously like a boy, and unlike a woman, that it is
perfectly free from offence. I never have seen such a thing. Priscilla
Horton, as a boy, not to be thought of beside it. She does an imitation
of the dancing of the Christy Minstrels--wonderfully clever--which, in
the audacity of its thorough-going, is surprising. A thing that you _can
not_ imagine a woman's doing at all; and yet the manner, the appearance,
the levity, impulse, and spirits of it, are so exactly like a boy that
you cannot think of anything like her sex in association with it. It
begins at 8, and is over by a quarter-past 9. I never have seen such a
curious thing, and the girl's talent is unchallengeable. I call her the
cleverest girl I have ever seen on the stage in my time, and the most
singularly original."

CHAPTER X.

ALL THE YEAR ROUND AND THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER.

1859-1861.

_All the Year Round_ started--_Household Words_
discontinued--Differences with Mr. Bentley--In
Search of a Name for New Periodical--Opening a
Story--Success of New Periodical--At Knebworth
with Bulwer Lytton--Sale of Christmas
Numbers--Commercial Travellers'
Schools--Personal References--Remedy for
Sleeplessness--"Tramp" Experiences--Reduced
Bantams--Bethnal-green Fowls--The Goldfinch and
his Friend--Offers from America--Visit of Mr.
Fields.

IN the interval before the close of the first circuit of readings,
painful personal disputes arising out of the occurrences of the previous
year were settled by the discontinuance of _Household Words_, and the
establishment in its place of _All the Year Round_. The disputes turned
upon matters of feeling exclusively, and involved no charge on