“My friends,” cried I, stepping into the centre of the wagon, “I am going with you to the camp-meeting at Stamford.”

“But in what capacity?” asked the old showman, after a moment’s silence.  “All of us here can get our bread in some creditable way.  Every honest man should have his livelihood.  You, sir, as I take it, are a mere strolling gentleman.”

I proceeded to inform the company that when Nature gave me a propensity to their way of life she had not left me altogether destitute of qualifications for it, though I could not deny that my talent was less respectable, and might be less profitable, than the meanest of theirs.  My design, in short, was to imitate the story-tellers of whom Oriental travellers have told us, and become an itinerant novelist, reciting my own extemporaneous fictions to such audiences as I could collect.

“Either this,” said I, “is my vocation, or I have been born in vain.”

The fortune-teller, with a sly wink to the company, proposed to take me as an apprentice to one or other of his professions, either of which undoubtedly would have given full scope to whatever inventive talent I might possess.  The bibliopolist spoke a few words in opposition to my plan—­influenced partly, I suspect, by the jealousy of authorship, and partly by an apprehension that the viva-voce practice would become general among novelists, to the infinite detriment of the book trade.

Dreading a rejection, I solicited the interest of the merry damsel.

“‘Mirth,’” cried I, most aptly appropriating the words of L’Allegro, “‘to thee I sue!  Mirth, admit me of thy crew!’”

“Let us indulge the poor youth,” said Mirth, with a kindness which made me love her dearly, though I was no such coxcomb as to misinterpret her motives.  “I have espied much promise in him.  True, a shadow sometimes flits across his brow, but the sunshine is sure to follow in a moment.  He is never guilty of a sad thought but a merry one is twin-born with it.  We will take him with us, and you shall see that he will set us all a-laughing before we reach the camp-meeting at Stamford.”  Her voice silenced the scruples of the rest and gained me admittance into the league; according to the terms of which, without a community of goods or profits, we were to lend each other all the aid and avert all the harm that might be in our power.

This affair settled, a marvellous jollity entered into the whole tribe of us, manifesting itself characteristically in each individual.  The old showman, sitting down to his barrel-organ, stirred up the souls of the pigmy people with one of the quickest tunes in the music-book; tailors, blacksmiths, gentlemen and ladies all seemed to share in the spirit of the occasion, and the Merry Andrew played his part more facetiously than ever, nodding and winking particularly at me.  The young foreigner flourished his fiddle-bow with a master’s hand, and gave an inspiring echo