admirable actor's performance of that exquisite practical joke,
than a new branch of our subject flashed suddenly upon us. So we
take it up again at once.

All people who have been behind the scenes, and most people who
have been before them, know, that in the representation of a
pantomime, a good many men are sent upon the stage for the express
purpose of being cheated, or knocked down, or both. Now, down to a
moment ago, we had never been able to understand for what possible
purpose a great number of odd, lazy, large-headed men, whom one is
in the habit of meeting here, and there, and everywhere, could ever
have been created. We see it all, now. They are the
supernumeraries in the pantomime of life; the men who have been
thrust into it, with no other view than to be constantly tumbling
over each other, and running their heads against all sorts of
strange things. We sat opposite to one of these men at a supper-
table, only last week. Now we think of it, he was exactly like the
gentlemen with the pasteboard heads and faces, who do the
corresponding business in the theatrical pantomimes; there was the
same broad stolid simper--the same dull leaden eye--the same
unmeaning, vacant stare; and whatever was said, or whatever was
done, he always came in at precisely the wrong place, or jostled
against something that he had not the slightest business with. We
looked at the man across the table again and again; and could not
satisfy ourselves what race of beings to class him with. How very
odd that this never occurred to us before!

We will frankly own that we have been much troubled with the
harlequin. We see harlequins of so many kinds in the real living
pantomime, that we hardly know which to select as the proper fellow