endless discourse, and he angrily closes the book which he had but just opened. The present editor, indeed, of the wonderful tale of Master Flea, thinks this beginning a very good beginning, not to say the best for every history, on which account the most excellent story-tellers that are, namely, nurses, old women, &c. have at all times made use of it; but as every author writes chiefly to be read, he,—that is, the aforesaid editor,—will not at any rate deprive the kind reader of the pleasure of actually being his reader. He tells him therefore at once, without more circumlocution, that this same Peregrine Tyss, of whose strange adventures this history is to treat, had never, on any Christmas evening, felt his heart so throb with anxious joyful expectation, as precisely on that with which begins the narration of his adventures.
Peregrine was in a dark chamber, next the show-room in which he was wont to receive his Christmas-box. There he crept gently up and down, listened a little at the door, and then seated himself quietly in a corner, and with
