I hope there were plans lying ready within me for answering rightly, nay for asking. The Petition I carried in my pocket, and in my right hand. In the left, I had a duplicate of it. My fire of spirit easily helped over the living fence of ministerial obstructions; and soon I unexpectedly found myself in the ante-chamber, among his most distinguished lackeys; persons, so far as I could see, not inclined to change flour for bran with any one. Selecting the most respectable individual of the number, I delivered him my paper request, accompanied with the verbal one that he would hand it in. He took it, but ungraciously. I waited in vain till far in the sixth hour, at which season alone the gay General can safely be applied to. At last I pitch upon another lackey, and repeat my request; he runs about seeking his runaway brother, or my Petition, to no purpose; neither of them could be found. How happy was it that in the midst of my Pontac, before shaving, I had written out the duplicate of this paper; and therefore--simply on the principle that you should always keep a second wooden leg packed into your knapsack when you have the first on your body--and out of fear, that, if the original petition chanced to drop from me in the way between the Tiger and Schabacker's, my whole journey and hope would melt into water,--and therefore, I say, having stuck the repeating work of that original paper into my pocket, I had, in any case, something to hand in, and that something truly a Ditto. I handed it in. ------------------------ 136. If you mount too high above your time, your ears (on the side of Fame) are little better off than if you sink too deep below it; in truth, Charles up in his Balloon, and Halley down in his Diving-bell, felt equally the same strange pain in their ears. ------------------------