and then the firmament of blooming faces and blue eyes that would be turned towards me as I was playing antics on the stage; all these set my young blood, and my poetical vein, in full flow.  In short, I played my character to the life, and became desperately enamored of Columbine.  She was a trim, well-made, tempting girl, with a rougish, dimpling face, and fine chestnut hair clustering all about it.  The moment I got fairly smitten, there was an end to all playing.  I was such a creature of fancy and feeling that I could not put on a pretended, when I was powerfully affected by a real emotion.  I could not sport with a fiction that came so near to the fact.  I became too natural in my acting to succeed.  And then, what a situation for a lover!  I was a mere stripling, and she played with my passion; for girls soon grow more adroit and knowing in these than your awkward youngsters.  What agonies had I to suffer.  Every time that she danced in front of the booth and made such liberal displays of her charms, I was in torment.  To complete my misery, I had a real rival in Harlequin; an active, vigorous, knowing varlet of six-and-twenty.  What had a raw, inexperienced youngster like me to hope from such a competition?

I had still, however, some advantages in my favor.  In spite of my change of life, I retained that indescribable something which always distinguishes the gentleman; that something which dwells in a man’s air and deportment, and not in his clothes; and which it is as difficult for a gentleman to put off as for a vulgar fellow to put on.  The company generally felt it, and used to call me little gentleman Jack.  The girl felt it too; and in spite of her predilection for my powerful rival, she liked to flirt with me.  This only aggravated my troubles, by increasing my passion, and awakening the jealousy of her parti-colored lover.

Alas! think what I suffered, at being obliged to keep up an ineffectual chase after my Columbine through whole pantomimes; to see her carried off in the vigorous arms of the happy Harlequin; and to be obliged, instead of snatching her from him, to tumble sprawling with Pantaloon and the clown; and bear the infernal and degrading thwacks of my rival’s weapon of lath; which, may heaven confound him! (excuse my passion) the villain laid on with a malicious good-will; nay, I could absolutely hear him chuckle and laugh beneath his accursed mask—­I beg pardon for growing a little warm in my narration.  I wish to be cool, but these recollections will sometimes agitate me.  I have heard and read of many desperate and deplorable situations of lovers; but none, I think, in which true love was ever exposed to so severe and peculiar a trial.

This could not last long.  Flesh and blood, at least such flesh and blood as mine, could not bear it.  I had repeated heartburnings and quarrels with my rival, in which he treated me with the mortifying forbearance of a man towards a child.  Had he quarrelled outright with me, I could have stomached it; at least I should have known what part to take; but to be humored and treated as a child in the presence of my mistress, when I felt all the bantam spirit of a little man swelling within me—­gods, it was insufferable!