or only the man who signs the five-pound notes.  That day six weeks, Jack had probably ‘come through the court;’ a process which he always used somehow to achieve with flying colours, behaving in such a plausible and fascinating way to the commissioner, that that functionary regularly made a speech, in which he congratulated Happy Jack on his candour, and evident desire to deal fairly with his creditors, and told him he left that court without the shadow of a stain upon his character.  In the Bench, in dreary suburban lodgings, or in the comfortable houses which they sometimes occupied, the Happy Jacks were always the Happy Jacks.  Their constitution triumphed over everything.  If anything could ruffle their serenity, it was the refusal of a tradesman to give credit.  But uno avulso non deficit alter, as Jack was accustomed, on such occasions, classically to say to his wife—­presently deviating into the corresponding vernacular of—­’Well, my dear, if one cock fights shy, try another.’

A list of Jack’s speculations would be instructive.  He once took a theatre without a penny to carry it on; and having announced Hamlet without anybody to play, boldly studied and performed the part himself, to the unextinguishable delight of the audience.  Soon after this, he formed a company for supplying the metropolis with Punches of a better class, and enacting a more moral drama than the old legitimate one—­making Punch, in fact, a virtuous and domestic character; and he drew the attention of government to the moral benefits likely to be derived to society from this dramatic reform.  Soon after, he departed for Spain in the gallant Legion; but not finding the speculation profitable, turned newspaper correspondent, and was thrice in imminent danger of being shot as a spy.  Flung back somehow to England, he suddenly turned up as a lecturer on chemistry, and then established a dancing institution and Terpsichorean Athenaeum.  Of late, Jack has found a good friend in animal magnetism, and his seances have been reasonably successful.  When performing in the country districts, Jack varied the entertainments by a lecture on the properties of guano, which he threw in for nothing, and which was highly appreciated by the agricultural interest.  Jack’s books were principally works of travel.  His Journey to the Fountains of the Niger is generally esteemed highly amusing, if not instructive:  it was knocked off at Highbury; and his Wanderings in the Mountains of the Moon, written in Little Chelsea, has been favourably reviewed by many well-informed and discriminating organs of literary intelligence, as the work of a man evidently well acquainted with the regions he professes to describe.

Where the Happy Jacks are at this moment no one can tell.  They have become invisible since the last clean out.  A deprecatory legend has indeed been in circulation, which professed that Jack was dead, and that this was the manner in which, on his deathbed, he provided for his family:—­