ans more fitted to
play the Handel to a pump than an organ. But Pitskiver never lost
heart. If he failed in one he was sure to succeed in another; he saw
his name occasionally in the newspaper, by giving an invitation to one
of the literary gentlemen who enliven the public with accounts of
fearful accidents and desperate offences; had his picture at the
Exhibition in the character of the "Portrait of a gentleman," and his
bust in the same place as the semblance of the honorary Secretary to
the Poor Man's Pension and Perpetual Annuity Institution. He was a
widower, and looked dreadful things at all the widows of his
acquaintance. And it was thought that, if he succeeded in marrying off
his girls, he should himself become once more a candidate for the holy
estate; and by this wise manoeuvre--for, in fact, he made no secret of
his intention--he enlisted in his daughters' behalf all the elderly
ladies who thought they had any claims on the attentions of that
charming creature Mr Pitskiver. There were certainly no young ladies I
have ever heard of, so well supplied with assistants in the great art
of catching husbands as the two plump damsels whom we have already
seen enter the house in Harley Street, and one of whom we have
perceived placed in possession of the mysterious letter by the
skittle-minded Mr Snipe.

Miss Sophia Pitskiver, according to all ordinary ideas of romance and
true love, had no right whatever to indulge in such luxuries, being
more adapted to make pies than enter into the beauty of sonnets to the
moon. She was short, stout--shall we be pardoned for saying the
hateful word?--she was dumpy, but a perfect picture of rosy health and
hilarious good-nature. And yet, if she had been half a foot taller,
and half a yard thinner, and infinitely paler, she could not have been
one jot more sentimental. She cultivated sentiment, because it was so
pleasant, and her father approved of it because it was genteel. Her
enthusiasm was tremendous. Her ideas were all crackers, and exploded
at the slightest touch. She had a taste for every thing--poetry,
history, fine arts in general, philosophy, glory, puseyism, and,
perhaps more than all, for a certain tall young man, with an
interesting complexion, whom we have introduced to the courteous
reader by the name of the long-backed Ticket. It was this gentleman's
note she was now about to read. Sundry palpitations about the robust
regions of the heart might, to common eyes, have