ith his utmost politeness and stoutness
express." Wrote up the Dwarf was, we are told by Mr. Magsman, as Major
Tpschoffski--"nobody couldn't pronounce the name," he adds, "and it
never was intended anybody should." Corrupted into Chopski by the
public, he gets called in the line Chops, partly for that reason,
"partly because his real name, if he ever had any real name (which was
dubious), was Stakes." Wearing a diamond ring "(or quite as good to
look at)" on his forefinger, having the run of his teeth, "and he was
a Woodpecker to eat--but all dwarfs are," receiving a good salary, and
gathering besides as his perquisites the ha'pence collected by him in a
Chaney sarser at the end of every entertainment, the Dwarf never has
any money somehow. Nevertheless, having what his admiring proprietor
considers "a fine mind, a poetic mind," Mr. Chops indulges himself in
the pleasing delusion that one of these days he is to Come Into his
Property, his ideas respecting which are never realised by him so
powerfully as when he sits upon a barrel-organ and has the handle
turned! "Arter the wibration has run through him a little time,"
says Mr. Magsman, "he screeches out, 'Toby, I feel my property
a-coming--gr-r-rind away! I feel the Mint a-jingling in me. I'm
a-swelling out into the Bank of England!' Such," reflectively observes
his proprietor, "is the influence of music on a poetic mind!" Adding,
however, immediately afterwards, "Not that he was partial to any other
music but a barrel-organ; on the contrairy, hated it." Indulging in
day-dreams about Coming Into his Property and Going Into Society, for
which he feels himself formed, and to aspire towards which is his avowed
ambition, the mystery, as to where the Dwarf's salary and ha'pence
all go, is one day cleared up by his winning a prize in the Lottery, a
half-ticket for the twenty-five thousand pounder.

Mr. Chops Comes Into his Property--twelve thousand odd hundred. Further
than that, he Goes Into Society "in a chay and four greys with silk
jackets." It was at this turning-point in the career of his large-headed
but diminutive hero that the grotesque humour of the Reader would play
upon the risible nerves of his hearers, as, according to Mr. Disraeli's
phrase, Sir Robert Peel used to play upon the House of Commons, "like
an old fiddle." Determined to Go Into Society in style, with his twelve
thousand odd hundred, Mr. Chops, we are told, "sent for a young man
he knowed, as had a ve