The dun hath an extraordinary sympathy with a knocker. For him, a knocker cannot be placed too high or too low, nor will his ready hand find it too heavy or too light. It is the instrument on which he most loveth to play. He can therewith simulate every man's tune; at the unobtrusive "one modest tap" of the poor cousin, the quaker-like simplicity of the postman's _appel_, the hearty rally of the intimate friend, and the prolonged thunder of the crimson-thighed lacquey, he is equally expert. The hypocrite can achieve every knock that has been or can be knocked in this knocking world. And yet, he can hardly deceive the poor tremulous debtor. Hence, since the times have become bad, and John Doe and Richard Roe have stalked through our streets triumphant, gentlemen have left off wearing certain appendages to the backs of their heads, as being too typical and too much reminiscent of "iteration" of the pertinacious foe. [Illustration] What gentleman would like to have bobbing at his back an excrescence, which, if he walked slowly, would remind him of his tailor's--if fast, of his bootmaker's summons? It would be planting an imp of importunity on his shoulders, which, like Sinbad's old man, he might shake, but could not shake off. Many are the doubts of the dun's pedigree. Some hold that he descends from one of Nimrod's illegitimates, for he is a mighty hunter by profession, as well as a tyrant by nature. A blood-hound he is, of a notable quick scent to discover his game, with a deep mouth to pursue it. His presumption is boundless; for he pretends to ape creation by attempting to squeeze something out of nothing, and raise cash from a vacuum. Etymologists have laid it down that he is called a dun, by antiphrasis, because he never will have done until he has undone you; and yet nothing is more natural and pleasant than the doing of a dun, nothing worse than his doings. Whether he repair to church or the meeting-house, he cannot be accounted a true Christian, as he never either gives or forgives, but merely lends in order to show that he has no forgiveness. He is the most persevering of all bores and the most penetrable; nothing can divert him from his persecutions; and 'tis very lucky for him that doors cannot maintain actions of assault and battery. The new penny postage is a fortunate measure for the afflicted victim of the dun. If he live so far off that he cannot be dunned three times a day, he will be punished to the amount only of what the good Samaritan gave to the wounded wayfarer; but this punishment will be daily, punctual as the day itself.