for a gentleman? For twenty years I have been struggling manfully to gain an honest livelihood, and, in the course of them, have seen a deal of life, to be sure. I've sold segars and pocket handkerchiefs at the corners of streets; I've been a billiard-marker; I've been Director (in the panic year) of the Imperial British Consolidated Mangle and Drying Ground Company. I've been on the stage (for two years an actor, and about a month as a cad, when I was very low); I've been the means of giving to the police of this empire some very valuable information (about licensed victuallers, gentlemen's carts, and pawnbrokers' names); I've been very nearly an officer again—that is, an assistant to an officer of the sheriff of Middlesex: it was my last place.
On the last day of the year 1837, even that game was up. It's a thing that has very seldom happened to a gentleman, to be kicked out a spunging-house; but such was my case. Young Nabbs (who succeeded his father) drove me ignominiously from his door, because I had charged a gentleman in the coffee rooms
