MR.

MORTIMER'S ADVENTURE.
"_Old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast ?_"-- HAMLET All the way along the canal bank Mr.Mortimer continued to carol.
Mercurial man! Like all actors he loved applause, but unlike the most of them he was capable of supplying it when the public failed; and this knack of being his own best audience had lifted him, before now, out of quite a number of Sloughs of Despond and carried him forward singing.
He had left care behind him in Mr.Hucks's yard, and so much of noble melancholy as he kept (for the sake of artistic effect) took a tincture from the sunset bronzing the smoke-laden sky and gilding the unlovely waterway.

Like the sunset, Mr.Mortimer's mood was serene and golden.
His breast, expanding, heaved off all petty constricting worries, "like Samson his green wythes": they fell from him as he rode, and as he rode he chanted-- "The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot.

.

." Old Jubilee--if, like John Gilpin's horse, he wondered more and more-- was a philosophical beast and knew his business.