empty stomach, about five o'clock, and looked wistfully down the areas
in the west end of the town; and seen through the kitchen windows the
fires gleaming, and the joints of meat turning on the spits and
dripping with gravy; and the cook maids beating up puddings, or
trussing turkeys, and have felt for the moment that if I could but have
the run of one of those kitchens, Apollo and the muses might have the
hungry heights of Parnassus for me. Oh, sir! talk of meditations among
the tombs--they are nothing so melancholy as the meditations of a poor
devil without penny in pouch, along a line of kitchen windows towards
dinner-time.

At length, when almost reduced to famine and despair, the idea all at
once entered my head, that perhaps I was not so clever a fellow as the
village and myself had supposed. It was the salvation of me. The moment
the idea popped into my brain, it brought conviction and comfort with
it. I awoke as from a dream. I gave up immortal fame to those who could
live on air; took to writing for mere bread, and have ever since led a
very tolerable life of it. There is no man of letters so much at his
ease, sir, as he that has no character to gain or lose. I had to train
myself to it a little, however, and to clip my wings short at first, or
they would have carried me up into poetry in spite of myself. So I
determined to begin by the opposite extreme, and abandoning the higher
regions of the craft, I came plump down to the lowest, and turned
creeper.

"Creeper," interrupted I, "and pray what is that?" Oh, sir! I see you
are ignorant of the language of the craft; a creeper is one who
furnishes the newspapers with paragraphs at so much a line, one that
goes about in quest of misfortunes; attends the Bow-street office; the
courts of justice and every other den of mischief and iniquity. We are