What man who has been before the public at all has not heard similar wonderful anecdotes regarding himself and his own history?  In these humble essaykins I have taken leave to egotize.  I cry out about the shoes which pinch me, and, as I fancy, more naturally and pathetically than if my neighbour’s corns were trodden under foot.  I prattle about the dish which I love, the wine which I like, the talk I heard yesterday—­about Brown’s absurd airs—­Jones’s ridiculous elation when he thinks he has caught me in a blunder (a part of the fun, you see, is that Jones will read this, and will perfectly well know that I mean him, and that we shall meet and grin at each other with entire politeness).  This is not the highest kind of speculation, I confess, but it is a gossip which amuses some folks.  A brisk and honest small-beer will refresh those who do not care for the frothy outpourings of heavier taps.  A two of clubs may be a good handy little card sometimes, and able to tackle a king of diamonds, if it is a little trump.  Some philosophers get their wisdom with deep thought, and out of ponderous libraries; I pick up my small crumbs of cogitation at a dinner-table; or from Mrs. Mary and Miss Louisa, as they are prattling over their five-o’clock tea.

Well, yesterday at dinner, Jucundus was good enough to tell me a story about myself, which he had heard from a lady of his acquaintance, to whom I send my best compliments.  The tale is this.  At nine o’clock on the evening of the 31st of November last, just before sunset, I was seen leaving No. 96 Abbey Road, St. John’s Wood, leading two little children by the hand, one of them in a nankeen pelisse, and the other having a mole on the third finger of his left hand (she thinks it was the third finger, but is quite sure it was the left hand).  Thence I walked with them to Charles Boroughbridge’s, pork and sausage man, No. 29 Upper Theresa Road.  Here, whilst I left the little girl innocently eating a polony in the front shop, I and Boroughbridge retired with the boy into the back parlour, where Mrs. Boroughbridge was playing cribbage.  She put up the cards and boxes, took out a chopper and a napkin, and we cut the little boy’s little throat (which he bore with great pluck and resolution), and made him into sausage-meat by the aid of Purkis’s excellent sausage-machine.  The little girl at first could not understand her brother’s absence, but, under the pretence of taking her to see Mr. Fechter in Hamlet, I led her down to the New River at Sadler’s Wells, where a body of a child in a nankeen pelisse was subsequently found, and has never been recognized to the present day.  And this Mrs. Lynx can aver, because she saw the whole transaction with her own eyes, as she told Mr. Jucundus.