I have often speculated since on Sarah’s deportment, when, having ushered “Mr. Grimaldi, alias Joe,” into the drawing-room, she returned to her kitchen. Of course, in the first flutter and frisk of her animal spirits, she postponed all domestic duties; or, at best, obliviously broke the eggs into the flower tub, popped the lump of butter into the oven, and secured the rolling-pin in the safe. More probably she dropped herself into the first chair that offered; and throwing her apron over her head to shut out the daylight, indulged in a lamplight vision of the drolleries of Mother Goose, or the Sleeping Beauty; when the frolics of funny Joe had cheated her for awhile of the sorrows of servitude, low wages, a crustaceous mistress, a _perfidus_ young man, and a hard place, with perhaps the bodily pains of a recent scald, a bad bruise, and tight shoes. No doubt it had been one of her wishes, born of wonder and curiosity, to see the popular Motley off the stage “in his habit as he lived;” and lo! beyond her hope, she had met him face to face without his paint, and been on speaking terms with that marvellous voice, so sparingly heard, even on the stage. For my own part, I confess to have been somewhat unsettled as well as the bewildered maid by pantomimical associations. Slowly and seriously as my visitor advanced, and with a decided stoop, I could not forget that I had seen the same personage come in with two odd eyebrows, a pair of right-and-left eyes, a wry nose, a crooked mouth, two wrong arms, two left legs, and a free and easy body without a bone in it, or apparently any centre of gravity. I was half prepared to hear that rare voice break forth smart as the smack of a waggoner’s whip, or richly stick and chuckling, like the utterance of a boy laughing, talking, and eating custard, all at once, but a short interval sufficed to dispel the pleasant illusion, and convinced me that the Grimaldi was a total wreck. “Alas! how changed from him, The life of humour, and the soul of whim.”