The
picture of a man beside whom, considered physically, any English nobleman
whom I have seen would look like common clay.
Speaking of Thackeray, I cannot but wonder at his coolness in respect to
his own pathos, and compare it with my emotions, when I read the last
scene of The Scarlet Letter to my wife, just after writing it,--tried to
read it rather, for my voice swelled and heaved, as if I were tossed up
and down on an ocean as it subsides after a storm. But I was in a very
nervous state then, having gone through a great diversity of emotion,
while writing it, for many months. I think I have never overcome my own
adamant in any other instance.
Tumblers, hand-organists, puppet-showmen, bagpipers, and all such vagrant
mirth-makers, are very numerous in the streets of London. The other day,
passing through Fleet Street, I saw a crowd filling up a narrow court,
and high above their heads a tumbler, standing on his head, on the top of
a pole, that reached as high as the third story of the neighboring
Houses. Sliding down the pole head foremost, he disappeared out of my
sight. A multitude of Punches go the mounds continually. Two have
passed through Hanover Street, where we reside, this morning. The first
asked two shillings for his performance; so we sent him away. The second
demanded, in the first place, half a crown; but finally consented to take
a shilling, and gave us the show at that price, though much maimed in its
proportions.
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