The pressure from without was, however, luckily but of temporary endurance; and Richardson was soon well to do again in the world. Fair succeeded fair, and he succeeded with all. His enterprise was great, and his gains commensurate. He rose by degrees, and at length became the most renowned of dramatic caterers for those classes who are prone to enjoy the unadulterated drama. Why, his mere outside by-play was worth fifty times more than the inside of large houses, to witness such trash as has lately usurped the stage, and pushed Tragedy from her throne, and Comedy from her stool. Of these memorabilia we can call to mind only a few instances; but they speak volumes for the powers of entertaining possessed by our hero. It was at Peckham one day,--and a day of rain and mud,--when Richardson, stepping from the steps of his booth, as Moncey, the king of the beggars, was shovelling past on _his boards_, happened to slip and fall. We shall not readily forget the good-humour with which he looked, not up, but level, upon his companion, and sweetly said, "'Faith! friend, it seems that neither you nor I can keep our feet." At Brook Green, as the fair and happy were crushing up to the pay-door, a pretty servant-girl was among the number. "I should like to _hire_ that girl," said a dandy to his comrade. "I rather guess you would like to _lower_ her," whispered Mr. R. in his ear. But she was a good lass, and not at all like the French gentleman's maid, to whom her master uttered these humiliating words: "Bah! you arre a verry bad girl, and I shall make you _no_ better." Mr. R. misliked drunkenness in his troop. "A fellow," he exclaimed to one he was rating for this vice,--"a fellow who gets tipsy every night will never be _a rising man_ in any profession." In a remote village some accident had destroyed a grotto necessary to the representation of the piece entitled "The Nymphs of the Grotto." What was to be done? There was no machinist within a hundred miles! "Is there not an _undertaker_?" exclaimed Mr. R.: "he could surely execute a little shell-work!" In an adjoining booth at Camberwell was exhibited a very old man, whom the placards declared to have reached _a hundred and five years of age_. "Here is a pretty thing to make a show of," observed R. "A wonder, indeed! Why, if my grandfather had not died, he would have been _a hundred and twenty_!" But why should we dwell on his facetiæ? Only to point the poignant grief which tells us we shall never hear them more,--shall never look upon his like again! Yes: let others mourn their Prichards, their Garricks, their Kembles, and their Keans;--our _keen_ is for thee, John Richardson, the undisputed head of thy profession, the master-spirit of them all, the glory of the mighty multitude, "Where thou wert fairest of the _Fair_."