swimmingly. I will therefore, for the present, sink the shop, that my
master may rise in the estimation of the reader, when I describe his
person and his qualifications.

Mr Phineas Cophagus might have been about forty-five years of age when I
first had the honour of an introduction to him in the receiving room of
the Foundling Hospital. He was of the middle height, his face was thin,
his nose very much hooked, his eyes small and peering, with a
good-humoured twinkle in them, his mouth large, and drawn down at one
corner. He was stout in his body, and carried a considerable
protuberance before him, which he was in the habit of patting with his
left hand very complacently; but although stout in his body, his legs
were mere spindles, so that, in his appearance, he reminded you of some
bird of the crane genus. Indeed, I may say, that his whole figure gave
you just such an impression as an orange might do, had it taken to
itself a couple of pieces of tobacco pipes as vehicles of locomotion. He
was dressed in a black coat and waistcoat, white cravat and high collar
to his shirt, blue cotton net pantaloons and Hessian boots, both fitting
so tight, that it appeared as if he was proud of his spindle shanks. His
hat was broad-brimmed and low, and he carried a stout black cane with a
gold top in his right hand, almost always raising the gold top to his
nose when he spoke, just as we see doctors represented at a consultation
in the caricature prints. But if his figure was strange, his language
and manners were still more so. He spoke, as some birds fly, in jerks,
intermixing his words, for he never completed a whole sentence, with
_um--um--_and ending it with "_so on,_" leaving his hearers to supply
the context from the heads of his discourse. Almost always in motion, he
generally changed his position as soon as he had finished speaking,
walking to any other part of the room, with his cane to his nose, and
his head cocked on one side, with a self-sufficient tiptoe gait. When I