To describe the “exclamations of delight,” the “tornadoes of applause,” the earthquakes of rapture, or the “breathless breathing” of the entranced audience, would beat Mr. Bunn into fits, and the German company into fiddle-cases; so, like a newspaper legacy, which is the only one that never pays duty, we “leave it to our reader’s imagination.”

The die was cast.  Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk’s former avocations became intensely irksome—­if he served a writ it was no longer a “writ of right.”  Copies for “Jenkins” were consigned to “Tompkins;” “Brown” declined pleading to “Smith” and Smith declared off Brown’s declaration.  In inquiries after “solvent acceptors,” Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk was still more abroad.  In the mystification of his brains, all answers seemed to be delivered “per contra.”  Forlorn hopes on three-and sixpenny stamps were converted into the circulating medium; “good actors” were considered “good men” in the very reverse of Shylock’s acceptation of the term; and astonished indorsers succeeded in “raising the wind” upon “kites” they would have bet any odds no “wind in the world could induce to fly.”  Everything in this world must come to an end—­bills generally do in three months:  so did these, and so did Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk’s responsible and peripatetic avocations in the highly respectable firm of Messrs. Tims and Swindle, attorneys, and to their cost, through the agency of Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, bill-discounters, of Thavies’ Inn, Holborn; they, the said highly respectable firm of Tims and Swindle, handing over to Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk the sum of four and tenpence, being the balance of his quarter’s salary, which, so great was Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk’s opinion of the solvency of the said highly respectable firm, he had allowed to remain undrawn in their hands, together with a note utterly and totally declining any further service or assistance as “in” or “outdoor” or any sort of clerk at all, from Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, and amiably recommending the said Horatio to apply elsewhere for a character; the which advice Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk attended to instanter, and received, in consideration of the sum of thirty shillings, that of “Richard the Third” from the Dramatic Committee of Catherine Street.  If Hamlet was good, Richard (among the amateurs) was better; and if Richard was better, Shylock (at “one five”) was best, and Romeo and all the rest better still:  and it may be worthy of remark, that there is no person on earth looked upon by admiring managers as more certain of success than the “promising young man who PAYS for his parts.”

Now it so happened that Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk’s purse became an exceedingly “Iago"-like, “something, nothing, trashy” sort of affair—­in other words, that its owner, Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, was regularly stumped; and as the Amateur Dramatic Theatrical Committee “always go upon the no pay no play system,” Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk was about to incur the fate of Lord John Russell’s tragedy, and become regularly “shelved.”