linding you to all
external objects--on one of these blessed evenings, on my road to
Camden Town, I chanced to miss my way, and was compelled,
notwithstanding a certain shyness towards strangers, to ask my
direction of the first respectable person I should meet. Many passed
me by, but none sufficiently prepossessing; when, on turning down
some nameless street that leads to Tottenham Court-road, I chanced
to come behind a staid-looking gentleman, accoutred in a dark brown
coat, with an umbrella--the cotton of which had shrunk half-way up
the whalebone--held obliquely over his head. Hastily stepping up to
him, "Pray, sir," said I, "could you be kind enough to direct me to
---- place, Camden Town?"

The unknown, thus addressed, made the slightest possible inclination
towards me; and then, in an under tone, "I believe, sir, your name
is D----?"

I paused; a vague sort of recollection came over me. Could it
be?--no, surely not! And yet the voice--the manner--the--the--

My suspicions were soon converted into certainty, when the stranger,
with his own peculiar expression, quietly broke forth a second time
with, "Touching that little account--"

This was enough; it was more than enough--it was vexatiously
superfluous. To be dunned for a debt, at the very time when the
nerves could best dispense with the application; to be recalled back
to the vulgarities of existence, at that precise moment when the
imagination was most abstracted from all commercial common-places;
to be stopped by a tailor, (and such a tailor!) when the mind was
dreaming of a mistress--the bare idea was intolerable! So I thought;
and, without further explanation, hurried precipitately from the
spot, nor ever once paused till far removed from the husky tones of
that sepulchral voice which had once before so highly excited my
annoyance.

[The narrater then visits one of Mr. Champagne Wright's masquerades,
where he falls in love with a _fresco_ nun. He receives a
billet.]

I stood like one bewildered; but, soon recovering my self-possession,
moved direct towards the chandelier, with a view to peruse an
epistle expressive of woman's fondest love. As with glistening
eyes I proceeded to tear open the billet, a flood of transporting
thoughts swept over me. I fancied that I was on the eve of
acquaintance with ----; but, judge my astonishment, when, instead
of the expected document, the key to such transporting bliss, I
read, engraved in large German text,