Pondering such discursive philosophy as this in my mind, I stood still on my three-penny eminence until the crowd had sufficiently cleared away to allow me to retrace my steps as far as Ludgate-hill without inconvenience. Then, having no great relish for the cadaverous jocularity which generally characterizes the scene of an execution during the removal of the body of the malefactor, I descended and turned my back upon the ignominious spectacle, with a feeling of disgust for the multitude of my fellows who could find recreation in the elements of cruelty and horror, and with anger and vexation at myself for having added one to their number. WHAT TO DO IN THE MEAN TIME? It has been frequently remarked by a philosopher of our acquaintance, whose only fault is impracticability, that in life there is but one real difficulty: this is simply—what to do in the mean time? The thesis requires no demonstration. It comes home to the experience of every man who hears it uttered. From the chimney-pots to the cellars of society, great and small, scholars and clowns, all classes of struggling humanity are painfully alive to its truth. The men to whom the question is pre-eminently embarrassing are those who have either pecuniary expectancies, or possess talents of some particular kind, on whose recognition by others their material prosperity depends. It may be laid down as a general axiom in such cases, that the worst thing a man can do is to _wait_, and the best thing he can do is to _work_; that is to say, that in nine cases out of ten, doing something has a great advantage over doing nothing. Such an assertion would appear a mere obvious truism, and one requiring neither proof nor illustration, were it not grievously palpable to the student of the great book of life—the unwritten biographical dictionary—of the world—that an opposite system is too often preferred and adopted by the unfortunate victims of this “condition-of-every-body question,” so clearly proposed, and in countless instances so inefficiently and indefinitely answered.