'Well, 'tis time to tell you how I am getting on. _Imprimis_, I have _not_ set the Thames ablaze, and, honestly, I must admit that it was not for the lack of inflammable properties in the liquid. One may be a Triton in his own parish pond, and a very minute minnow in this huge ocean of London. The streets are not paved with gold, nor the houses roofed with rubies. The streets are more usually paved like those of another spot, but with big ambitions instead of good intentions, and as to the houses, he's a lucky dog who has one he can call his own. I have tried my hand at anything and everything not requiring a strict preliminary training--bar stone-breaking. I had aspirations towards the stage, but I never got beyond the front door--that is to say, I was hired as a check-taker at the Vaudeville once. I thought I would write a melodrama--an Irish one, of course--and I took it to one Mrs. Selby, a dear old lady, who had a house devoted to comedietta and extravaganza, legs and upholstery--how innocent of all these things I was, you may guess from this--and she kindly recommended me to cart it to the Surrey. I did. It was accepted on conditions, after sundry hums and haws. The theatre was burnt down two nights afterwards. The theatre was insured, but, alas! the manuscript of "The Terryalts" was not, and I hadn't a copy of it. I next became a cab-driver; that is, as soon as I got to have the map of the town sunk in _bas-relief_ on my cranium. A hard life, precarious, harassing, and not very profitable. The novelty of the thing kept me up for a while, but I had to give in after a course of three months. The deuce of an adventure I had but once, and that was with a distinguished member of the craft I at present honour with my patronage. It was outside Stone's, in Panton Street. A portly man, with a nose the hue of a danger-signal, hailed me. "Barnes, cabby," he said, "and look alive about it." "All right, sir," and away I rattled till I got to Barnes, a village on the south bank of the river, between Putney and Mortlake. I opened the spy-hole at the top of the hansom to ask at what house I was to stop, and, lo and behold you! there was my fare snoring the snore of the just. I got down and roused him. "Where are we?" he asked. I told him. "Drat you!" he cried, "I meant Barnes' Tavern, in the Haymarket--I wanted to borrow some tin there." I apologized. "All right, watchman," he cried, "drive on!" and dropped back again into the corner as sound asleep as a curled hedgehog. I drove to the middle of Barnes Common, tenderly lifted my customer out of the cab, and gently bedded him on his back in the shadow of a furze-bush.