Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk was a tall young man, a thinyoung man, a pale young man, and, as some of his friends asserted,a decidedly knock-kneed young man. Moreover he was a young manbelonging to and connected with the highly respectable firm ofMessrs. Tims and Swindle, attorneys and bill-discounters, ofThavies’-inn, Holborn; from the which highly respectable firmMr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk received a salary of one pound oneshilling per week, in requital for his manifold services. Thevocation in which Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk laboured partookpeculiarly of the peripatetic; for at all sorts of hours, andthrough all sorts of streets was Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunkdaily accustomed to transport his anatomy—presenting overduebills, inquiring after absent acceptors, invisible indorsers, anddeparted drawers, for his masters, and wearing out, as he Mr.Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk eloquently expressed it, “no endof boots for himself.” Such was the occupation by which Mr.Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk lived; but such was not the peculiarpath to fame for which his soul longed. No! “he had seenplays, and longed to blaze upon the stage a star oflight.”
That portion of time which was facetiously called by Messrs.Tims and Swindle “the leisure” of Mr. HoratioFitzharding Fitzfunk, being some eight hours out of thetwenty-four, was spent in poring over the glorious pages of theimmortal bard; and in the desperate enthusiasm of his heated geniuswould he, Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, suddenly burst forth insome of the most exciting passages, and with Stentorian lungs“render night hideous” to the startled inhabitant ofthe one-pair-back, adjoining the receptacle of his own truckle-bedand mortal frame.
Luck, whether good or evil, begat Mr. Horatio FitzhardingFitzfunk an introduction to some other talented young gentlemen,who had so far progressed in histrionic acquirements, that fromspouting themselves, they had taken to spouting their watches, andother stray articles of small value, to enable them to pay thecharges of a private theatre, where, as often as they could raisethe needful, they astonished and delighted their wondering friends.Among this worshipful society was Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunkadopted and enrolled as a trusty and well-beloved member; and inthe above-named private theatre, in suit of solemn black, slightlyrelieved by an enormous white handkerchief, and a well-chalkedcountenance, did Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, at or about thehour of half past eight—being precisely sixty minutes behindthe period announced, in consequence of the non-arrival of the onefiddle and ditto flute comprising, or rather that ought to havecomprised, the orchestra—made his début, and aparticularly nervous bow to the good folks there assembled,“as and for” the character “of Hamlet, the DanishPrince.”
To describe the “exclamations of delight,” the“tornadoes of applause,” the earthquakes of rapture, orthe “breathless breathing” of the entranced audience,would beat Mr. Bunn into fits, and the German company intofiddle-cases; so, like a newspaper legacy, which is the only onethat never pays duty, we “leave it to ourreader’s imagination.”
The die was cast. Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk’sformer avocations became intensely irksome—if he served awrit it was no longer a “writ of right.” Copies for“Jenkins” were consigned to “Tompkins;”“Brown” declined pleading to “Smith” andSmith declared off Brown’s declaration. In inquiries after“solvent acceptors,” Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunkwas still more abroad. In the mystification of his bra