So said a kind friend, who called on me once when I was in that state called _pupillaris_. He gave me the advice, and I grinned approval; he did _not_ give me a "tip," and I considered him a mean and despicable wretch, and his advice not worth listening to. Still did the words oft recur to me; and with especial force did they recur on the subsequent Saturday, when I was preparing to "avail myself of a kind invitation" to dine and sleep out, and was packing carefully up, in a crumpled piece of _Bell's Life_, (which, in the capacity of fag, I had appropriated as a perquisite from my master's store,) such necessaries as such a sojourn demanded. And the result was, that as my nose inhaled the undeniable evidence of the approach of dinner below, and I felt the pleasing conviction to an empty stomach, that, until seven, at least, _I_ should not hear the apoplectic butler assert, in voice abdominal, that dinner was on the table, I gave a long sniff, and sighed, "Well! perhaps they are!" I had got at last clear of the city. My pocket was devoid of coin--of the lowest even, else should I have called a cab, (for in those days neither Shillibeer nor G. C^k. had started a "bus.") As it was, I walked, and was just entering Piccadilly from the Circus, when a laugh in my rear made me turn rapidly, and my eyes encountered--a tall butcher's boy! He was habited in a grey frieze coat, corduroy smalls, and blue apron. His hair was well plastered down. He had no cap; but he had a pair of "aggravators" trained on either temple. His eyes were large; his cheeks beefy; and withal, he carried on his shoulder a tray, and _it_ carried--ugh!----a large piece of _liver_! _That_ I saw _then_. An indescribable awe spread through my frame--my feelings were what the wretch behind me would have called "offal." I knew, as though by instinct, that I had in Piccadilly seen, what Napoleon saw at Acre--the man who should mar my destiny! Abstractedly, there is nothing absolutely and inherently vicious in a butcher's boy; on the contrary, he may be decidedly virtuous--nay, we have in our mind's eye cases which would go far to prove that high moral integrity and humanity of sentiment are quite compatible with his most necessary trade. Is it then asked, why this individual should excite at once in my boyish bosom such lively feelings of horror--such forebodings of evil? I can give no more reason for it than did my friend Grant, (who tells such jolly stories,) for declining to show his box of silk-worms to an inquiring friend. "Grant! just let's have a look at your silk-worms--there's a good fellow!"--"No!"--"Why not, man?"--"_Because not!_" My answer must be similar in spirit, if not in letter. I _knew_ that the odious individual was destined to be my evil genius for the day.