Just as he came to this resolution, the boy returned with a brown-paper parcel, addressed to Mr. James Triplet. Triplet weighed it in his hand; it was heavy. “How is this?” cried he. “Oh, I see,” said he, “these are the tragedies. He sends them to me for some trifling alterations; managers always do.” Triplet then determined to adopt these alterations, if judicious; for, argued he, sensibly enough: “Managers are practical men; and we, in the heat of composition, sometimes _(sic?)_ say more than is necessary, and become tedious.” With that he opened the parcel, and looked for Mr. Rich's communication; it was not in sight. He had to look between the leaves of the manuscripts for it; it was not there. He shook them; it did not fall out. He shook them as a dog shakes a rabbit; nothing! The tragedies were returned without a word. It took him some time to realize the full weight of the blow; but at last he saw that the manager of the Theater Royal, Covent Garden, declined to take a tragedy by Triplet into consideration or bare examination. He turned dizzy for a moment. Something between a sigh and a cry escaped him, and he sank upon a covered bench that ran along the wall. His poor tragedies fell here and there upon the ground, and his head went down upon his hands, which rested on Mrs. Woffington's picture. His anguish was so sharp, it choked his breath; when he recovered it, his eye bent down upon the picture. “Ah, Jane,” he groaned, “you know this villainous world better than I!” He placed the picture gently on the seat (that picture must now be turned into bread), and slowly stooped for his tragedies; they had fallen hither and thither; he had to crawl about for them; he was an emblem of all the humiliations letters endure. As he went after them on all-fours, more than one tear pattered on the dusty floor. Poor fellow! he was Triplet, and could not have died without tingeing the death-rattle with some absurdity; but, after all, he was a father driven to despair; a castle-builder, with his work rudely scattered; an artist, brutally crushed and insulted by a greater dunce than himself. Faint, sick, and dark, he sat a moment on the seat before he could find strength to go home and destroy all the hopes he had raised. While Triplet sat collapsed on the bench, fate sent into the room all in one moment, as if to insult his sorrow, a creature that seemed the goddess of gayety, impervious to a care. She swept in with a bold, free step, for she was rehearsing a man's part, and thundered without rant, but with a spirit and fire, and pace, beyond the conception of our poor tame actresses of 1852, these lines: “Now, by the joys Which my soul still has uncontrolled pursued, I would not turn aside from my least pleasure, Though all thy force were armed to bar my way; But, like the birds, great Nature's happy commoners, Rifle the sweets--”