world called the stage.  You may know by the downy state of his wardrobe that he has a place to sleep.  But where he gets his breakfast is a mystery no friend has ever yet solved for me.  Aside from taking a two shilling dinner at an oyster cellar in William Street and wiping his greasy fingers on a leather apron, he would seem to live on hopes and brandy-mixed.  He affects great admiration of Johnson and Goldsmith, compares his poverty with theirs, and attributes the present wretched condition of criticism to the disgrace brought upon the profession by Easley and other dilapidated priests.  You will frequently see this shabby man of letters standing at the corner of Nassau and Ann streets, his hands in his pockets and his head bent in meditation.  Occasionally he will pitch his post in the vicinity of the Herald office, and look up longingly at the windows, as if envying the dare devils who write for that witty journal their fat larder.  And here he will remain until some kind friend with a shilling invites him to a sling.  Truly, sir, he is starved into flattering his patrons.  If you be an ambitious author, you have only to show him the color of your coin, and for two dollars he will make you quite equal to Thackeray.  Five dollars in his palm, and, my word for it, he will have you superior to either Bulwer or Dickens.  If you be a poet, he will, for the sum of eight dollars, (which is Easley’s price,) enshrine you with the combined mantles of Homer and Shakspeare.  He applies the same scale of prices to such actors and actresses as stand in need of his services.  Notwithstanding his passion for exalting his patrons, he affects in conversation a great dislike for American literature, while at the same time he is ever ready to lavish the most indiscriminate praise upon the books of foreign authors.  He never makes both ends meet on Saturday, but will borrow a dollar to go to Coney Island on Sunday.

“And now, your honor, you have the whole mob, and you may make what you please of them.”  The general raised his glass, and was about to declare he had been highly entertained, when Mr. Tickler suddenly interrupted, by reminding him that he had just called to mind the fact, that there was a play writer critic.  “This fellow is the most congenial of them all, has a little room somewhere in North Moore Street, in which may found two or three pictures of fierce looking tragedians; a cot covered with a quilt of various colors, and looking as if it had been used for a horse blanket; a carpet the colors have long since been worn out of; a dumb clock over the dingy mantel piece; a portrait of the deceased husband of the hostess; and a table well supplied with pipes, tobacco, and French plays.  The French plays are, when slightly altered and rendered into English, for the public; the pipes and tobacco are for his friends.  And although perpetually climbing the mountain of poverty, while building no end of castles in the air, he spends what he gets to-day and has no thought for