“There was something to me of indescribable melancholy in that morning’s perambulation, for independent of the fact, that I was threatened by one with the stocks, as a vagabond, another, set a policeman to dog me, as a suspicious character, and a third, mistook me for, a rat-catcher; the butcher, with whom I negotiated for the quarter of mutton, came gravely up, and examined the texture of my raiment, calling in a jury of his friends to decide, if he wasn’t making a bad bargain. “Night came, and I saw myself dressed for Petrucio, the character in which I was to bring down thunders of applause, and fill the treasury to overflowing. What a conflict of feelings was mine--now rating Catherine in good round phrase, before the audience--now slipping behind the flats to witness the progress of the ‘cuisine,’ for which I longed, with the appetite of starvation,--how the potatoes split their jackets with laughing, as they bubbled up and down, in the helmet of Coriolanus, for such I grieve to say was the vessel used on the occasion; the roasting mutton was presided over by ‘a gentleman of Padua,’ and Christopher Sly was employed in concocting some punch, which, true to his name, he tasted so frequently, it was impossible to awake him, towards the last act. “It was in the first scene of the fourth act, in which, with the feelings of a famished wolf, I was obliged to assist at a mock supper on the stage, with wooden beef, parchment fowls, wax pomegranates, and gilt goblets, in which only the air prevented a vacuum. Just as I came to the passage-- ‘Come, Kate, sit down--I know you have a stomach, Will you give thanks, sweet Kate, or else shall I? What is this--mutton? “At that very moment, as I flung the ‘pine-saddle,’ from one end of the stage to the other, a savoury odour reached my nose; the clatter of knives, the crash of plates, the sounds of laughter and merriment, fell upon my ears--the wretches were at supper! Even the ‘first servant,’ who should have responded to my wrath, bolted from the stage like a shot, leaving his place without a moment’s warning; and ‘Catherine, the sweetest Kate in Christendom, my dainty Kate,’ assured me with her mouth full, ‘the meat was well, if I were so contented.’ Determined to satisfy myself on the point--regardless of every thing but my hunger, I rushed off the stage, and descended like a vulture, in the midst of the supper party; threats, denunciations, entreaties, were of no use, I wouldn’t go back; and let the house storm and rage, I had helped myself to a slice of the joint, and cared for nobody. It was in vain they told me, that the revenue officer and his family were outrageous with passion; and as to the apothecary in the stage box, he had paid for six tickets in ‘senna mixture;’ but heaven knows, I wasn’t a case for such a regimen.