spite of it. In the course of your reading, however, you will be frequently brought into contact with hackney-coachmen, cabmen, lackeys, turnkeys, thieves, lawyers' clerks, medical students, and other people of that description, who are all very amusing when properly viewed, as the monkeys and such like animals at the Zoological Gardens are, when you look at them through the bars of their cage. But too great familiarity with persons of this class is sure to breed contempt, not for them and their manners, but for the usages and modes of expression adopted in parlors and drawing-rooms, that is to say, in good society. Nay, it is very likely to cause those who indulge in it to learn various tricks and eccentricities, both of behavior and speech, for "It is certain, that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another." Shakspere.
Beset thus, as you will necessarily be, by perils and dangers in your wanderings amid the fields of Comicality, you will derive great advantage from knowing before-hand what you are likely to meet with, and what it will be incumbent on you to avoid. It is to furnish you with this information that the following hints and instructions are intended.
Be careful, when you hear yourself called by name, to reply "Here I am," and not "Here you are," an error into which you are very likely to be led by the perusal of existing authors.
When you partake, if it be your habit to do so, of the beverage called porter, drink it as you would water, or any other liquid. Do not wink your eye, or nod sideways to your companion; such actions, especially when preceded by blowing away the foam which col-
