ittering, and the
midwife tittered, and the gossips spilt their caudle with tittering; and
when I was brought to the font, the parson could not christen me for
tittering. So I was never more than half baptized. And when I was little
Joey, I made 'em all titter; there was not a melancholy face to be seen
in Pogis. Pure nature, Sir. I was born a comedian. Old Screwup, the
undertaker, could tell you, Sir, if he were living. Why, I was obliged
to be locked up every time there was to be a funeral at Pogis. I was, I
was, Sir. I used to _grimace_ at the mutes, as he called it, and put 'em
out with my mops and my mows, till they couldn't stand at a door for me.
And when I was locked up, with nothing but a cat in my company, I
followed my bent with trying to make her laugh; and sometimes she would,
and sometimes she would not. And my schoolmaster could make nothing of
me: I had only to thrust my tongue in my cheek,--in my cheek, Sir,--and
the rod dropped from his fingers; and so my education was limited, Sir.
And I grew up a young fellow, and it was thought convenient to enter me
upon some course of life that should make me serious; but it wouldn't
do, Sir. And I articled to a dry-salter. My father gave forty pounds
premium with me, Sir. I can show the indent--dent--dentures, Sir. But I
was born to be a comedian, Sir: so I ran away, and listed with the
players, Sir; and I topt my parts at Amersham and Gerrard's Cross, and
played my own father to his face, in his own town of Pogis, in the part
of Gripe, when I was not full seventeen years of age; and he did not
know me again, but he knew me afterwards; and then he laughed, and I
laughed, and, what is better, the dry-salter laughed, and gave me up my
articles for the joke's sake: so that I came into court afterwards with
clean hands,--with clean hands; do you see, Sir?

[Here the manuscript becomes illegible for two or three sheets onwards,
which we presume to be occasioned by the absence of Mr. Munden, jun.,
who clearly transcribed it for the press thus far. The rest (with the
exception of the concluding paragraph, which seemingly is resumed in the
first handwriting) appears to contain a confused account of some lawsuit
in which the elder Munden was engaged; with a circumstantial history of
the proceedings on a case of breach of promise of marriage, made to or
by (we cannot pick out which) Jemima Munden, spinster, probably the
comedian's cousin, for it does not appear he had any s