|Put out the light!" exclaimed Mr. Bonassus Bigstick, with a lugubrio-comic expression of countenance that might convulse a Trappist, to a pigeon-toed property-man and a duck-legged drummer, who were snuffing two farthing rushlights in the Proscenium.
"_Put out the light!_" and straightway he pocketed the extinguished perquisite. We were retiring from the scene of Mr. Bigstick's glory in company with two lingering chimney-sweeps, who had left their brushes and brooms at the box door, when our progress was arrested by a tap on the shoulder from Uncle Timothy.
"If you would explore the 'secrets of the prison-house,' I can gratify your curiosity, having an engagement with the great Tragedian to crush a mug of mum with him behind the scenes."
We were too happy to enjoy so novel a treat not to embrace the offer with alacrity. Mr. Big-stick welcomed us with a tragic hauteur, and carrying an inch of candle stuck at the extremity of Prospero's magic wand, lighted his party to the Green Room. As we passed along, the great Tragedian, who had the knack of looking everything into nothing, scowled an armoury of daggers at Harlequin, and Harlequin, if possible, looked more black than the Moor. On entering the sanctum sanctorum, Mr. Bigstick, striking an attitude and exclaiming "_Cara Sposa! Idol mio!_" introduced us to Teresa, the High-Dumptiness of St. Bartlemy, whom he dangled after like a note of admiration, he all mast, she all hulk; and when they parted, (with a Dolly Bull curtsy exquisitely fussy and fumy the Tumbletuzzy made her exit,) it was odd to see the steeple separated from the chancel.
"Ten thousand times ten thousand pardons, most divine bard! but having sunned myself in the optics of Teresa, my own became eclipsed to every object less refulgent. Gentlemen,"--pulling forward a pipe-flourishing, porter-swigging personage who belonged quite as much to Bagfair as to St. Bartlemy, and looked as if he lived in everlasting apprehension of sibillations technically called, "Goose"--"Mr. Pegasus Bubangrub the Bartholomew Fair Poet, who may challenge all the Toby Philpots in Christendom to leap up to the chin into a barrel of beer, drink it down to his foot, and then dance a jig upon the top of it! Mr. Bubangrub edits a penny weekly; reports queer trials; does our Caravan _libretto_; answers my challenges; roasts my rivals, puffs his pipe--and Me! At present he is a mere dab-chick of literature; but let him start a rum name, and he shall cut the genteel caper, cut, too, his sky parlour, penny-a-lining and old pals; wonder, with amiable simplicity! what 'shooting the moon' can be, and diving for a dinner; and casting off his Toady's skin for the lion's, be feasted, flattered, paragraphed--'Purge, eat cleanly, and live like a gentleman!"