The dismal individual took a dirty roll of paper from his pocket, and

turning to Mr Snodgrass, who had just taken out his note-book, said

in a hollow voice, perfectly in keeping with his outward man - 'Are you

the poet?'

I - I do a little in that way,' replied Mr Snodgrass, rather taken aback

by the abruptness of the question. 'Ah! poetry makes life what light

and music do the stage - strip the one of the false embellishments,

and the other of its illusions, and what is there real in either to live or

care for?'

Very true, Sir,' replied Mr Snodgrass.

To be before the footlights,' continued the dismal man, 'is like sitting

at a grand court show, and admiring the silken dresses of the gaudy

throng; to be behind them is to be the people who make that finery,

uncared for and unknown, and left to sink or swim, to starve or live,

as fortune wills it.'

Certainly,' said Mr Snodgrass: for the sunken eye of the dismal man

rested on him, and he felt it necessary to say something.

Go on, Jemmy,' said the Spanish traveller, 'like black-eyed Susan - all

in the Downs - no croaking - speak out - look lively.' 'Will you make

another glass before you begin, Sir ?' said Mr Pickwick.

The dismal man took the hint, and having mixed a glass of brandy-

and-water, and slowly swallowed half of it, opened the roll of paper

and proceeded, partly to read, and partly to relate, the following

incident, which we find recorded on the Transactions of the Club as

The Stroller's Tale.'

THE STROLLER'S TALE

There is nothing of the marvellous in what I am going to relate,' said

the dismal man; 'there is nothing even uncommon in it. Want and

sickness are too common in many stations of life to deserve more

notice than is usually bestowed on the most ordinary vicissitudes of

human nature. I have thrown these few notes together, because the

subject of them was well known to me for many years. I traced his

progress downwards, step by step, until at last he reached that excess

of destitution from which he never rose again.

The man of whom I speak was a low pantomime actor; and, like many

people of his class, an habitual drunkard. in his better days, before he

had become enfeebled by dissipation and emaciated by disease, he

had been in the receipt of a good salary, which, if he had been careful

and prudent, he might have continued to receive for some years - not

The Pickwick Papers