I think my readers must be by this time sufficiently acquainted with the fact that I am endowed with a very nervous temperament. Indeed, were I to say that I start at my own shadow, that I do fear each bush an officer, that I am continually in terror of Sudden Death, that I would rather not go upstairs in the dark, and that (which is not at all incompatible with a nervous organisation) in circumstances of real moment, in imminent life-peril, in a storm, in a balloon, in a tumult, and in a pestilence, I am perfectly master of myself, and, with a complete Trust and Reliance, am quite contented and happy in my mind: when I state this, I don’t think I need blush to own that I am as mortally afraid now of the boys in the street as in the old days when they pelted me with sharp stones because I preferred going to school quietly instead of playing fly-the-garter in the gutter. I am afraid of my last schoolmaster (he is quite bankrupt and broken, and pays me visits to borrow small silver occasionally), and yet call him reverentially, “Sir.” I am afraid of ladies—not of the married ones, in whom I take great delight, talking Buchan’s “Medicine,” Acton’s “Cookery,” and Mrs. Ellis with them, very gravely, till they think me a harmless fogey, hopelessly celibate, but sensible; not of the innocent young girls, with their charming _naïveté_ and pretty sauciness; but of the “young ladies,” who are “out,” and play the piano, and sing Italian songs—of which, Lord bless them! they know no more than I do of crochet-work—and who fling themselves, their accomplishments, and their low-necked dresses, at men’s heads. I am afraid of policemen, lest in an evanescent fit of ill temper they should take me up, and with their facile notions of the obligations of an oath, swear that I was lurking about with intent to commit a felon; and, transcendentally, I am afraid of waiters. I watch them—him—the Waiter, with great awe and trembling. Does he know, I ask myself, as he fills my tumbler with iced champagne, that half-and-half is a liquid to which I am more accustomed? Does he know that, sumptuously as I dine to-day, I didn’t dine at all yesterday? Is he aware that Mr. Threadpaper is dunning me for that dress-coat with the watered-silk facings? Can he see under the table that the soles of my boots are no better than they should be? Is it within his cognizance that I have not come to the Albion, or the London Tavern, or the Freemasons’, as a guest, but simply to report the dinner for the “Morning Meteor?” Does he consider the shilling I give him as insufficient? Shilling! He has many more shillings than I have, I trow. He pulls four pounds in silver from his pocket to change one a crown-piece. To-day he is Charles or James; but to-morrow he will be the proprietor of a magnificent West-end restaurant, rivalling Messrs. Simpson and Dawes at the Divan, or Mr. Sawyer at the London. So I am respectful to the waiter, and fee