300 DIARY OF A JOKE-HUNTER. 



as a rule of conduct which I should find infallible. Doubted whe- 

 ther it was not quite as difficult to do one as the other. Not at all, 

 as Mrs. Fat alleged, even though I had read all the Joe Millers that 

 ever were written ; for there was still enough raw material for mirth 

 if I would but look it up. Every day had its jest ; jokes were in 

 season, and plenty of them too, all the year round ; and for her part, 

 what she wished was that engineers would not take out patents about 

 rail-roads and steam-engines, but bother their brains to some purpose, 

 and invent stay-laces that Mr. Thompson's best could not break. 



Besought further particulars as to Thomson's biography, and 

 found that he was forty, without incumbrance ; plump in person, and 

 a systematic joke-hunter. It was well known that any thing funny 

 was bread and cheese to him : he took his regular rounds, and col- 

 lected from each of his collectors for the benefit of the whole. Soli- 

 cited the arrangement of an interview with him, which Fat promised 

 to effect by means of " a jorum of giblets," and " fried tripe to fol- 

 low," inexplicable diplomatist ! at half-past nine on Monday night. 

 Paid, and strolled back to chambers. 



3rd. Sunday. Had a slight visitation from the night-mare; 

 tongue feverish, and head rather muddy on awaking, but to my 

 great delight found I had recovered nearly a quarter of a pound. 



4th. Sent out for Hood's Comic Annual, which overcame the 

 rigidity of my cachinnatory muscles in ten minutes ; and before I 

 had gone half way through it, I recovered the full faculty of laughing 

 aloud. Dressed and walked towards Pentonville ; saw the name of 

 my old and once frequent associate C. on a door in Myddleton Terrace ; 

 knocked, and had the felicity of finding him at home. The monster 

 cruelly took me into his sanctum: preliminary sketches of his 

 " scraps," which I had never seen, were chalked on the mantel- 

 piece, and they went far to deprive me of existence ! for my ribs had 

 been so long unused to violent convulsions, that having utterly lost 

 their elasticity, the lungs within them could not work, and I was in 

 the desperate situation of an excited steam-engine, having something 

 the matter with its safety-valve. Self-preservation being the first 

 law of nature, I rushed rudely out of the house, and, on my way 

 back, fancied a polony, four ounces of German sausage, and some 

 hot ham. After having furnished my principal bodily apartment 

 with these, I felt induced to draw a cork on my return to my cham- 

 bers, and D. J. dropping in, took wine with him, I found him quite 

 as facetious as he was wont to be before he became a great man. 

 Utterly forgot Thompson, Mr. and Mrs. Fat, the " jorum of giblets" 

 and " fried tripe to follow," and at half- past eleven adjourned to 

 supper with my vivacious visitor at the Mulberry club-room. 



5th. Sad head-ache, but eleven ounces heavier than yesterday. 

 Recollected nothing of last night's doings, but a vision of oysters, 

 much punch, and egregious laughter what at, it was out of my 

 power to define, except that, by the bye, S. K. the dramatist, if I 

 don't mistake, told me, about the second bowl, an anecdote of R. the 

 tall and talented tragedian (whose acquaintance I just had the plea- 

 sure of making), to the following effect : While playing the prin- 

 cipal business at Norwich, he called upon the low comedy man of the 



