merry vagabonds in a showman's wagon, where they and I had sheltered
ourselves during a summer shower. The project was not more
extravagant than most which a young man forms. Stranger ones are
executed every day; and, not to mention my prototypes in the East,
and the wandering orators and poets whom my own ears have heard, I
had the example of one illustrious itinerant in the other
hemisphere,--of Goldsmith, who planned and performed his travels
through France and Italy on a less promising scheme than mine. I
took credit to myself for various qualifications, mental and
personal, suited to the undertaking. Besides, my mind had latterly
tormented me for employment, keeping up an irregular activity even
in sleep, and making me conscious that I must toil, if it were but
in catching butterflies. But my chief motives were, discontent with
home and a bitter grudge against Parson Thumpcushion, who would
rather have laid me in my father's tomb than seen me either a
novelist or an actor, two characters which I thus hit upon a method
of uniting. After all, it was not half so foolish as if I had
written romances instead of reciting them.

The following pages will contain a picture of my vagrant life,
intermixed with specimens, generally brief and slight, of that great
mass of fiction to which I gave existence, and which has vanished
like cloud-shapes. Besides the occasions when I sought a pecuniary
reward, I was accustomed to exercise my narrative faculty wherever
chance had collected a little audience idle enough to listen. These
rehearsals were useful in testing the strong points of my stories;
and, indeed, the flow of fancy soon came upon me so abundantly that
its indulgence was its own reward, though the hope of praise also
became a powerful incitement. Since I shall never feel the warm
gush of new thought as I did then, let me beseech the reader to