"Your very humble Servant" "Oh! my prophetic soul-my Uncle ! An Illuminated MS. Fancy Portrait Theodore Hook THE COMIC ANNUAL. THE ROPE DANCER, AN EXTRAVAGANZA,—AFTER RABELAIS. I AM going, my masters, to tell you a strange romantic, aye nec-romantic, sort of story—and yet every monosyllable of it is as true as the Legend of Dumpsius. If you should think otherwise, I cannot help it. All I can say is, you are not experte credo, or expert at believing. You must know, then, that on a certain day, of a certain year, certain officers went on certain information, to a certain house, in a certain court, in a certain city, to take up a certain Italian for a certain B crime. What gross fools are they who say there is nothing certain in this world! However in they went, with a crash and a dash, and a grip and a grapple, and if they did not take him by the scruff of the neck, like a dog, there is no truth in St. Winifred's Well. He made no resistance, not so much as a left-hander, though he was by trade a smasher. As for any verbal defence he never so much as attempted to lay a lie, much less to hatch one. There he was, caught in the very thing, act and fact, as poor a devil as need be to be making money. He was as dead as any die he had about him as sure of a gallows and a rope, as if he had paid for them down on the nail of before-hand. Oh, ye city Croesuses, what think ye of a man having his quantum suffocate of twisted hemp for making money! For my own part, if I was to swing for saying so, I'd cry out like a Stentor, that one of God's images ought not to be made worm's meat of for only washing the King's face. 'Twould be a very hard-boiled case, and yet, 'fore Gog and Magog, so it was. For gilding a brass farthing he was to change twelve stone of good human flesh to a clod of clay; to change a jolly, laughing, smiling, grinning, crying, wondering, staring, face-making face for a mere caput mortuum; to change prime tripe, delicate cow-heel, succulent trotters, for a mouthful of dust; to change a garret for a grave; to change a neck cloth for a halter. Zounds! what a deal of change for a bad half sovereign! Well, there he was, caught like a rat, and going for a titbit to the furr'd Law-Cats, and without so much as giving a squeak for his life. The counterfeits were on him, so he had nothing to utter. I verily believe, if you had found him in twice as many melting pots, and crucibles, and dies, and white or brown gravy to boot, he could not have coined an excuse. As I said before, he was found with the mould upon him, and that, as the sexton of St. Sepulchre will tell you, is as good as a burial to you any day of your life. He was legally dead, and could not look, like other men, upon the sun as his sunin-law, so he wisely shook hands with himself, and bade good bye to himself, and did not attempt with |