band. Having completed the construction of this append-
age, he surveyed his work with great complacency, and put
his hat on again--very much over one eye, to increase the
Mournfulness of the effect. These arrangements perfected
to his entire satisfaction, he thrust his hands into his
pockets, and walked up and down the office with measured
steps.

"It has always been the same with me," said Mr.
Swiveller, "always. 'Twas ever thus--from childhood's
hour I've seen my fondest hopes decay, I never loved a
tree or flower but 'twas the first to fade away. I never
nursed a dear Gazelle, to glad me with its soft black eye,
but when it came to know me well, and love me, it was
sure to marry a market-gardener."

Overpowered by these reflections, Mr. Swiveller stopped
short at the clients' chair, and flung himself into its open
arms.

"And this," said Mr. Swiveller, with a kind of bantering
composure, "is life, I believe. Oh, certainly. Why not!
I'm quite satisfied. I shall wear," added Richard, taking
off his hat again and looking hard at it, as if he were only
deterred by pecuniary considerations from spurning it with
his foot, "I shall wear this emblem of woman's perfidy,
in remembrance of her with whom I shall never again
thread the windings of the mazy; whom I shall never more
pledge in the rosy; who, during the short remainder of my
existence, will murder the balmy. Ha, ha, ha!"

It may be necessary to observe, lest there should appear
any incongruity in the close of this soliloquy, that Mr.
Swiveller did not wind up with a cheerful hilarious laugh,
which would have been undoubtedly at variance with his
solemn reflections, but that, being in a theatrical mood, he
merely achieved that performance which is designated in
melodramas "laughing like a fiend,"--for it seems that
your fiends always laugh in syllables, and always in three
syllables, never more or less, which is a remarkable pro-
perty in such gentry, and one worthy of remembrance.

The baleful sounds had hardly died away, and Mr.
Swiveller was still sitting in a very grim state in the clients'
chair, when there came a ring--or, if we may adapt the
sound to his then humour, a knell--at the office bell. Open-
ing the door with all speed, he beheld the expressive coun-
tenance of Mr. Chuckster, between whom and himself a
fraternal greeting ensued.

-403-