GOING INTO SOCIETY.
At one period of its reverses, the House to Let fell into the occupation of a showman. He was found registered as its occupier, on the parish books of the time when he rented the house, and there was therefore no need of any clew to his name. But he himself was less easy to be found; for he had led a wanderings life, and settled people had lost sight of him, and people who plumed themselves on being respectable were shy of admitting that they had ever known anything of him. At last, among the marsh lands near the river's level, that he about Deptford and the neighboring market-gardens, a grizzled personage in velveteen, with a face so cut up by varieties of weather that he looked as if he had been tattooed, was found smoking a pipe at the door of a wooden house on wheels. The wooden house was laid up in ordinary for the winter near the mouth of a muddy creek; and everything near it, the foggy river, the misty marshes, and the steaming market-gardens, smoked in company with the grizzled man. In the midst of this smoking party, the funnel-chimney of the wooden house on wheels was not remiss, but took its pipe with the rest in a companionable manner.
On being asked if it were lie who had once rented the house to let. Grizzled Velveteen looked surprised, and said yes. Then his name was Magsman? That was it, Toby Magsman—which lawfully christened Robert; but called in the line from a infant, Toby. There was nothing agin Toby Magsman, he believed? If there was suspicion of such, mention it!
There was no suspicion of such, he might rest assured. But some inquiries were making about that house, and would he object to say why he left it;
Not at all; why should he? He left it along of a dwarf.
Along of a dwarf?
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