called his tobacco-pipe a gas-pipe; thought his tears were lamp-
oil; and went on with all manner of nonsense of that sort, till one
night he hung himself on a lamp-iron in Saint Martin's Lane, and
there was an end of HIM.

'Tom loved him, gentlemen, but he survived it. He shed a tear over
his grave, got very drunk, spoke a funeral oration that night in
the watch-house, and was fined five shillings for it, in the
morning. Some men are none the worse for this sort of thing. Tom
was one of 'em. He went that very afternoon on a new beat: as
clear in his head, and as free from fever as Father Mathew himself.

'Tom's new beat, gentlemen, was - I can't exactly say where, for
that he'd never tell; but I know it was in a quiet part of town,
where there were some queer old houses. I have always had it in my
head that it must have been somewhere near Canonbury Tower in
Islington, but that's a matter of opinion. Wherever it was, he
went upon it, with a bran-new ladder, a white hat, a brown holland
jacket and trousers, a blue neck-kerchief, and a sprig of full-
blown double wall-flower in his button-hole. Tom was always
genteel in his appearance, and I have heard from the best judges,
that if he had left his ladder at home that afternoon, you might
have took him for a lord.

'He was always merry, was Tom, and such a singer, that if there was
any encouragement for native talent, he'd have been at the opera.
He was on his ladder, lighting his first lamp, and singing to
himself in a manner more easily to be conceived than described,
when he hears the clock strike five, and suddenly sees an old
gentleman with a telescope in his hand, throw up a window and look