Wish I could feel _Mrs. Jarley's_ pride in the whole bag o' tricks! 'Ave to _purtend_ to, of course. Can't cry creaky waxworks any more than you can stinking fish. But a more rusty, sluggish, wheezy, wobbly, jerky, uncertain, stick-fast, stodgy, unwillin' lot o' wax figgers I never did----Well, there, it tries a conscience of injy-rubber to crack 'em up and patter of 'em into poppylarity, blowed if it don't! Kim up, Dook! Dashed if 'e don't look as if 'e fancied hisself the Sleepin' Beauty, and wanted to forty-wink it for another centry. Look at the flabby flop of 'im! Jest as though 'e wouldn't move if 'is nose wos a meltin'. Large as life, and twice as nateral? Wy, a kid's Guy Fox on the fifth o' November 'ud give 'im hodds, and lick 'is 'ead orf--heasy! Bin a-ileing 'is works this ever so long, and still 'e moves as if 'is wittles wos sand-paper, and 'is drink witrol. _Kim_ up! As to the Markis, well, 'e's a bit older, but dashed if 'e don't move livelier--when 'e _is_ on the shift. At the present moment 'owever, utter confloption is a cycle-sprinter to 'im. As if a pair o' niddity-noddities in "negative" positions was likely to fetch 'em in front in _these_ days! Yah! Should like to keep the Old Show a-runnin', too,--leastways, until I can start a bran-new one of my very own. Won't run to it _yet_, I'm afraid. Oh, to boss a big booth-full all to myself! I'd show 'em! This Combination Show--old stock-in-trade of one company, and cast-offs from another--ain't the best o' bisness arter all. But I _must_ keep 'em together as a going concern till I can run a star company of my own choosing. 'Ere, 'and us that ile-can again! Talk about rust and rickets! Curting about to be rung up? Then I must get 'em in working horder somehow! 'Ang this Dook! Can't git anythink nateral out of 'im--'cept a yawn. _That_ 'e does as like as life. Kim up old nose-o'-wax and don't nod yerself into nothingness! 'Ow much _more_ ile do yer rusty old innards want to stop their clogging and creaking? Proprietors beginning to pull long faces at my _pace_? 'Int that I'll shake the machinery to smithereens by too much haction? Well, I _am_ blowed! Wy, they'd slow down a sick snail, and 'andicap a old tortus, they would! Tell yer wot it is, if they don't give me a free 'and at the crank _I shall turn the whole thing up_, so _there_! Some nameless, nidnoddy, negative old crocks 'ave bin a-earwigging 'em, that's wot's the matter. But I give 'em the straight tip, if they lend a ear to them slow-going stick-in-the-muds, _I_ shall jest resign _my_ responserble persition, and take up a hindependent one--jine the Opposition Show, or p'r'aps start one o' my own, and _then_ where will they be, I wonder?