336 THE MAN OF TWO LIVES. 



to record the blush of Singe while he performed the act when I 

 state that, after a few day's further trial, he opened the glass-case, 

 the shrine in which it was contained, and, withdrawing the outrage 

 upon human nature, *' hid his diminished head " in the wood-hole. 



It is a mournful fact, but the reader will not be surprised at it 

 when he reflects upon the attraction of novelty and new faces, that the 

 business of Singe fell off rapidly, and that the practice of his rival 

 gained daily and extensive ground. Noses, that once had been 

 turned up inside his shop with amiable resignation to the will of the 

 shaving-brush, were now turned up outside of it, as their owners 

 crossed over the path (which Frizzle took care to have swept every 

 morning) and entered the opposite concern. Mr. Uppercrust the 

 mayor no longer extended his patronage ; Ichneumon the attorney 

 withdrew his juvenile host ; and, of the gentry, the bald and glossy 

 scull of Furlong alone shone upon him in his distress. 



" In nature there is nothing melancholy," 



says Coleridge ; but here was an unnatural state of affairs, and Singe- 

 was so, and with reason. Good, kind, and charitable individual as 

 he was, how he hated Frizzle ! He hated, I say, the bloated rascal 

 who was fattening upon his own proper spoils. He hated to see the 

 name stick over the door. The two vile zig-zag Z's were infinitely 

 insulting. He hated the very utterance of the name. " Frizzle 

 Frizzle,'' he was constantly muttering to himself, and he cursed the 

 offensive eggs-and-bacon sound of the word. He began to hate the 

 very town (the spot of his nativity) upon which Frizzle had so sud- 

 denly come down like a wolf on the fold ; in a word, he was sick to 

 death of the ungrateful, vile, filthy, capricious, Frizzle-ridden place. 



The ill-fated Singe had, it is true, hoarded a small sum of money. 

 Like a prudent and provident man he had lain by for a rainy day ; 

 but what financial umbrella could withstand the tempest that was now 

 raging about his ears ' Little by little, accompanied by groans and 

 inward wrestlings, it melted away. Nor did it appear likely that 

 any speedy or even remote chances would present themselves of 

 enabling him to recruit his exhaused budget. Besides his own jaws, 

 which he shaved twice a day to keep his hand in, no human visage 

 offered itself to his operations. He was his own, he was his only, 

 customer. Existence, to be so, must be supported. Man, "nor woman 

 either," can live without food; and certain corkscrew rumblings of the 

 inward man spoke eloquently of duties which he owed to himself. And 

 now he felt that he also owed to others. He had been compelled to 

 strain his restricted credit to the utmost. He had run up several 

 debts. Run up ! the phrase suits not he had walked up, sauntered 

 up, crawled up debts, for the recovery of which threats of appeal to 

 the County Court had been levelled at him. 



Let no one hastily condemn our unfortunate barber, when I ac- 

 knowledge that often in secret converse with his wife he urged the 

 expediency of retreating from the accursed place. If, however, some 

 lax unscrupulous moralist should demand why he did not pack up his 

 alls and be off without beat of drum, I answer 



" For this plain reason man is not a fly," 



