do you mark me, Sir?  I wonder you can put such flim-flams upon us, Sir:  I do, I do.  It does not become you, Sir:  I say it,—­I say it.  And my father was an honest tradesman, Sir:  he dealt in malt and hops, Sir; and was a Corporation-man, Sir; and of the Church of England, Sir; and no Presbyterian, nor Ana—­Anabaptist, Sir; however you may be disposed to make honest people believe to the contrary, Sir.  Your bams are found out, Sir.  The town will be your stale puts no longer, Sir; and you must not send us jolly fellows, Sir,—­we that are comedians, Sir,—­you must not send us into groves and Charn—­Charnwoods a-moping, Sir.  Neither Charns, nor charnel-houses, Sir.  It is not our constitutions, Sir:  I tell it you,—­I tell it you.  I was a droll dog from my cradle.  I came into the world tittering, 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?