eatly to
have attracted him--the career of the traveling showman,
with its oddities, its careless Bohemianism, and its
happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth existence.

In "Chops the Dwarf," humor and pathos are reinforced by a
touch of satire, which is directed against the emptiness and
the restraints of fashionable life. For some reason or other
this tale has been overlooked by many of the students and
editors of Dickens. It is not contained in some of the
editions of his works which profess to be complete, and
several of the standard reference-books do not mention it.

At one period of its reverses, the House to Let fell into the hands of a
showman. He was found registered as its occupier, on the parish books of
the time when he rented the House; there was therefore no need of any clew
to his name. But he himself was less easy to find, for he had led a
wandering life, and settled people had lost sight of him, and people who
plumed themselves on being respectable were shy of admitting that they had
ever known him.

At last among the marsh lands near the river's level, that lie about
Deptford and the neighboring market-gardens, a grizzled personage in
velveteen, with a face so cut up by varieties of weather that he looked as
if he had been tattooed, was found smoking a pipe at the door of a wooden
house on wheels.

The wooden house was laid up in ordinary for the winter near the mouth of
a muddy creek; and everything near it--the foggy river, the misty marshes,
and the steaming market-gardens--smoked in company with the grizzled man.
In the midst of the smoking party, the funnel-chimney of the wooden house
on wheels was not remiss, but took its pipe with the rest in a
companionable manner.

On being asked if it were he who had once rented the House to Let,
Grizzled Velveteen looked surprised, and said yes. Then his name was
Magsman. That was it, Toby Magsman--which was lawfully christened Robert;
but called in the line, from an infant, Toby. There was nothing agin Toby
Magsman, he believed? If there was suspicion of such, mention it!

There was no suspicion of such, he might rest assured. But some inquiries
were making about that house, and would he object to say why he left it?

Not at all; why should he? He left it along of a dwarf.

Along of a dwarf?

Mr. Magsman repeated, deliberately and emphatically, "Along of a dwarf."

Might it be compatible with Mr. Magsman's inclina