[ 144 [Fes. 
DICK DEWLAP. 
Taxrne a stroll, the other morning, in the Regent’s Park, with the 
intention of visiting the grounds of the Zoological Society, whom should 
I espy, sitting disconsolately on a bench not far from the entrance te 
that interesting emporium, but my old friend Dick Dewlap, whom I had 
not been able to meet, either at home or abroad, for the previous six 
weeks. Dick’s taste for solitude arises from a circumstance serious 
enough to himself, but also sufficiently comic to every body else. Poor 
Dewlap, in short, though no glutton, is troubled with an unlucky ten- 
dency to corpulence, which he finds exceedingly difficult to be a 
within tolerable bounds, as he is simultaneously plagued with an excel- 
lent appetite, which punctually reminds him of meal times, and, like 
the hungry demon of Poor Tom, often “ croaks in his belly for the 
white herring,” or for some other digestible plaything at least equally 
substantial. 
Dewlap is thus placed in a pitiable predicament. He has a lurking 
notion that there is a natural dignity in fat (which indeed seems to be 
an instinctive feeling in all men); moreover, he does not at all relish 
the attempt, either to starve out the oily devil, or to eject him by perse- 
vering and violent exercise ; but at the same time, he no less deprecates 
the “ thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,” particularly the 
aptitude of obesity to make its victim look older than he actually is— 
no trifling annoyance toa bachelor of five and thirty, who would still 
fain pass in the world for a young and interesting sentimentalist. 
Beyond all other calamities, however, Dick execrates his office of butt 
to every witling and joker, friend or foe, wherever and whenever he 
becomes visible to human ken: so large a mark the most stupid archer 
cannot miss, and Dick thinks that even his acquaintance sometimes shoot 
with poisoned arrows ; but he generally suffers in patient acquiescence, 
and sometimes (probably with the view of deprecating hostility) even 
volunteers a watery joke on the subject himself; albeit, by no meaus 
inclined to triumph, like Falstaff, in the consciousness that “ men of all 
sorts take a delight to gird at him,” and that, on this theme, “ he is 
not only witty in himself, but the cause of wit in others.” Indeed, 
he has a sort of settled spleen towards his male acquaintance generally 
on this particular account, and luxuriates in the gentler society ot 
females, under whose soothing influence he has gradually become as 
plump and tender as a pet rabbit, and usually takes his walk solus, 
unless triumphantly caracolling as the escort of some genteely-shaped 
damsel ; for he does not care to have a Venus of the Hottentot school, 
as amemento at his elbow. When thus honoured, Dick always, with 
great gallantry, gets to windward in cold weather, and effectually pro- 
tects his charmer from the ruder breezes of Boreas; he is, however, 
exceedingly tenacious of allowing the like privilege to male applicants ; 
and confessed to me that he was never so shocked at his own enormity 
as once (going over Blackfriar’s Bridge in a storm of wind and rain) 
when a little shrivelled dwarf of a fellow got under his lee, and whatever 
pace Dick went, would follow him up, and use his overshadowing 
figure as a penthouse. 
But although my fat friend is too indolent to make any regular or 
scientific effort to shake off the enemy who sticks so perseveringly to 
every part of his person, he yet confesses to making a modest attempt to 
a 
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