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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher, by
+Mary Russell Mitford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher
+
+Author: Mary Russell Mitford
+
+Release Date: October 2, 2007 [EBook #22841]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. JOSEPH HANSON, THE HABERDASHER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. JOSEPH HANSON, THE HABERDASHER
+
+By Mary Russell Mitford
+
+
+These are good days for great heroes; so far at least as regards the
+general spread and universal diffusion of celebrity. In the matter
+of fame, indeed, that grand bill upon posterity which is to be found
+written in the page of history, and the changes of empires, Alexander
+may, for aught I know, be nearly on a par with the Duke of Wellington;
+but in point of local and temporary tributes to reputation, the great
+ancient, king though he were, must have been far behind the great
+modern. Even that comparatively recent warrior, the Duke of Marlborough,
+made but a slight approach to the popular honours paid to the conqueror
+of Napoleon. A few alehouse signs and the ballad of "Marlbrook s'en va't
+en guerre," (for we are not talking now of the titles, and pensions, and
+palaces, granted to him by the Sovereign and the Parliament,) seem to
+have been the chief if not the only popular demonstrations vouchsafed by
+friends and enemies to the hero of Blenheim.
+
+The name of Wellington, on the other hand, is necessarily in every man's
+mouth at every hour of every day. He is the universal godfather of every
+novelty, whether in art, in literature, or in science. Streets, bridges,
+places, crescents, terraces, and railways, on the land; steam-boats on
+the water; balloons in the air, are all distinguished by that honoured
+appellation. We live in Wellington squares, we travel in Wellington
+coaches, we dine in Wellington hotels, we are educated in Wellington
+establishments, and are clothed from top to toe (that is to say the male
+half of the nation) in Wellington boots, Wellington cloaks, Wellington
+hats, each of which shall have been severally purchased at a warehouse
+bearing the same distinguished title.
+
+Since every market town and almost every village in the kingdom, could
+boast a Wellington house, or a Waterloo house, emulous to catch some
+gilded ray from the blaze of their great namesake's glory, it would have
+been strange indeed if the linendrapers and haberdashers of our good
+town of Belford Regis had been so much in the rear of fashion as to
+neglect this easy method of puffing off their wares. On the contrary,
+so much did our shopkeepers rely upon the influence of an illustrious
+appellation, that they seemed to despair of success unless sheltered by
+the laurels of the great commander, and would press his name into the
+service, even after its accustomed and legitimate forms of use seemed
+exhausted. Accordingly we had not only a Wellington house and a Waterloo
+house, but a new Waterloo establishment, and a genuine and original Duke
+of Wellington warehouse.
+
+The new Waterloo establishment, a flashy dashy shop in the market-place,
+occupying a considerable extent of frontage, and "conducted (as the
+advertisements have it) by Mr. Joseph Hanson, late of London," put forth
+by far the boldest pretensions of any magazine of finery and frippery in
+the town; and it is with that magnificent _store_, and with that only,
+that I intend to deal in the present story.
+
+If the celebrated Mr. Puff, he of the Critic, who, although Sheridan
+probably borrowed the idea of that most amusing personage from the
+auctioneers and picture-dealers of Foote's admirable farces,
+first reduced to system the art of profitable lying, setting forth
+methodically (scientifically it would be called in these days) the
+different genera and species of that flourishing craft--if Mr. Puff
+himself were to revisit this mortal stage, he would lift up his hands
+and eyes in admiration and astonishment at the improvements which have
+taken place in the art from whence he took, or to which he gave, a name
+(for the fact is doubtful) the renowned art of Puffing!
+
+Talk of the progress of society, indeed! of the march of intellect, and
+the diffusion of knowledge, of infant schools and adult colleges,
+of gas-lights and rail-roads, of steam-boats and steam-coaches, of
+literature for nothing, and science for less! What are they and fifty
+other such nick-nacks compared with the vast strides made by this
+improving age in the grand art of puffing? Nay, are they not for the
+most part mere implements and accessories of that mighty engine of
+trade? What is half the march of intellect, but puffery? Why do little
+children learn their letters at school, but that they may come hereafter
+to read puffs at college? Why but for the propagation of puffs do
+honorary lecturers hold forth upon science, and gratuitous editors
+circulate literature? Are not gas-lights chiefly used for their
+illumination, and steamboats for their spread? And shall not history,
+which has given to one era the name of the age of gold, and has entitled
+another the age of silver, call this present nineteenth century the age
+of puffs?
+
+Take up the first thing upon your table, the newspaper for instance, or
+the magazine, the decorated drawing-box, the Bramah pen, and twenty to
+one but a puff more or less direct shall lurk in the patent of the one,
+while a whole congeries of puffs shall swarm in bare and undisguised
+effrontery between the pages of the other.
+
+Walk into the streets;--and what meet you there? Puffs! puffs! puffs!
+From the dead walls, chalked over with recommendations to purchase
+Mr. Such-an-one's blacking, to the walking placard insinuating the
+excellences of Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's Cream Gin*--from the bright
+resplendent brass-knob, garnished with the significant words "Office
+Bell," beside the door of an obscure surveyor, to the spruce carriage
+of a newly arrived physician driving empty up and down the street,
+everything whether movable or stationary is a puff.
+
+     * He was a genius in his line (I had almost written an evil
+     genius) who invented that rare epithet, that singular
+     combination of the sweetest and purest of all luxuries, the
+     most healthful and innocent of dainties, redolent of
+     association so rural and poetical, with the vilest
+     abominations of great cities, the impure and disgusting
+     source of misery and crime. Cream Gin! The union of such
+     words is really a desecration of one of nature's most genial
+     gifts, as well as a burlesque on the charming old pastoral
+     poets; a flagrant offence against morals, and against that
+     which in its highest sense may almost be considered a branch
+     of morality--taste.
+
+But shops form, of course, the chief locality of the craft of puffing.
+The getting off of goods is its grand aim and object. And of all shops
+those which are devoted to the thousand and one articles of female
+decoration, the few things which women do, and the many which they do
+not want, stand pre-eminent in this great art of the nineteenth century.
+
+Not to enter upon the grand manoeuvres of the London establishments, the
+doors for carriages to set down and the doors for carriages to take
+up, indicating an affluence of customers, a degree of crowd and
+inconvenience equal to the King's Theatre, on a Saturday night, or the
+queen's drawing-room on a birthday, and attracting the whole female
+world by that which in a fashionable cause the whole female world loves
+so dearly, confusion, pressure, heat and noise;--to say nothing of those
+bold schemes which require the multitudes of the metropolis to afford
+them the slightest chance of success, we in our good borough of Belford
+Regis, simple as it stands, had, as I have said, as pretty a show of
+speculating haberdashers as any country town of its inches could well
+desire; the most eminent of whom was beyond all question or competition,
+the proprietor of the New Waterloo Establishment, Mr. Joseph Hanson,
+late of London.
+
+His shop displayed, as I have already intimated, one of the largest and
+showiest frontages in the market-place, and had been distinguished by a
+greater number of occupants and a more rapid succession of failures in
+the same line than any other in the town.
+
+The last tenant, save one, of that celebrated warehouse--the penultimate
+bankrupt--had followed the beaten road of puffing, and announced his
+goods as the cheapest ever manufactured. According to himself, his
+handbills, and his advertisements, everything contained in that shop was
+so very much under prime cost, that the more he sold the sooner he must
+be ruined. To hear him, you would expect not only that he should give
+his ribbons and muslins for nothing, but that he should offer you
+a premium for consenting to accept of them. Gloves, handkerchiefs,
+nightcaps, gown-pieces, every article at the door and in the window was
+covered with tickets, each nearly as large as itself, tickets that might
+be read across the market-place; and townspeople and country-people came
+flocking round about, some to stare and some to buy. The starers were,
+however, it is to be presumed, more numerous than the buyers, for
+notwithstanding his tickets, his handbills, and his advertisements, in
+less than six months the advertiser had failed, and that stock never, as
+it's luckless owner used to say, approached for cheapness, was sold off
+at half its original price.
+
+Warned by his predecessor's fate, the next comer adopted a newer and a
+nobler style of attracting public attention. He called himself a steady
+trader of the old school, abjured cheapness as synonymous with cheating,
+disclaimed everything that savoured of a puff, denounced handbills and
+advertisements, and had not a ticket in his whole shop. He cited the
+high price of his articles as proofs of their goodness, and would have
+held himself disgraced for ever if he had been detected in selling
+a reasonable piece of goods. "He could not," he observed, "expect to
+attract the rabble by such a mode of transacting business; his aim was
+to secure a select body of customers amongst the nobility and gentry,
+persons who looked to quality and durability in their purchases, and
+were capable of estimating the solid advantages of dealing with a
+tradesman who despised the trumpery artifices of the day."
+
+So high-minded a declaration, enforced too by much solemnity of
+utterance and appearance--the speaker being a solid, substantial,
+middle-aged man, equipped in a full suit of black, with a head nicely
+powdered, and a pen stuck behind his ear--such a declaration from so
+important a personage ought to have succeeded; but somehow or other
+it did not. His customers, gentle and simple, were more select than
+numerous, and in another six months the high-price man failed just as
+the low-price man had failed before him.
+
+Their successor, Mr. Joseph Hanson, claimed to unite in his own person
+the several merits of both his antecedents. Cheaper than the cheapest,
+better, finer, more durable, than the best, nothing at all approaching
+his assortment of linendrapery had, as he swore, and his head shopman,
+Mr. Thomas Long, asseverated, ever been seen before in the streets of
+Belford Regis; and the oaths of the master and the asseverations of
+the man, together with a very grand display of fashions and finery, did
+really seem, in the first instance at least, to attract more customers
+than had of late visited those unfortunate premises.
+
+Mr. Joseph Hanson and Mr. Thomas Long were a pair admirably suited
+to the concern, and to one another. Each possessed pre-eminently the
+various requisites and qualifications in which the other happened to
+be deficient. Tall, slender, elderly, with a fine bald head, a mild
+countenance, a most insinuating address, and a general air of
+faded gentility, Mr. Thomas Long was exactly the foreman to give
+respectability to his employer; whilst bold, fluent, rapid, loud,
+dashing in aspect and manner, with a great fund of animal spirits, and
+a prodigious stock of assurance and conceit, respectability was, to
+say the truth, the precise qualification which Mr. Joseph Hanson most
+needed.
+
+Then the good town of Belford being divided, like most other country
+towns, into two prevailing factions, theological and political, the
+worthies whom I am attempting to describe prudently endeavoured to catch
+all parties by embracing different sides; Mr. Joseph Hanson being a
+tory and high-churchman of the very first water, who showed his loyalty
+according to the most approved faction, by abusing his Majesty's
+ministers as revolutionary, thwarting the town-council, getting tipsy
+at conservative dinners, and riding twenty miles to attend an eminent
+preacher who wielded in a neighbouring county all the thunders of
+orthodoxy; whilst the soft-spoken Mr. Thomas Long was a Dissenter and a
+radical, who proved his allegiance to the House of Brunswick (for both
+claimed to be amongst the best wishers to the present dynasty and
+the reigning sovereign) by denouncing the government as weak and
+aristocratic, advocating the abolition of the peerage, getting up an
+operative reform club, and going to chapel three times every Sunday.
+
+These measures succeeded so well, that the allotted six months (the
+general period of failure in that concern) elapsed, and still found
+Mr. Joseph Hanson as flourishing as ever in manner, and apparently
+flourishing in trade; they stood him, too, in no small stead, in a
+matter which promised to be still more conducive to his prosperity
+than buying and selling feminine gear,--in the grand matter (for Joseph
+jocosely professed to be a forlorn bachelor upon the lookout for a wife)
+of a wealthy marriage.
+
+One of the most thrifty and thriving tradesmen in the town of Belford,
+was old John Parsons, the tinman. His spacious shop, crowded with its
+glittering and rattling commodities, pots, pans, kettles, meat-covers,
+in a word, the whole _batterie de cuisine_, was situate in the narrow,
+inconvenient lane called Oriel Street, which I have already done myself
+the honour of introducing to the courteous reader, standing betwixt a
+great chemist on one side, his windows filled with coloured jars, red,
+blue, and green, looking like painted glass, or like the fruit made of
+gems in Aladdin's garden, (I am as much taken myself with those jars
+in a chemist's window as ever was Miss Edgeworth's Rosamond,) and an
+eminent china warehouse on the other; our tinman having the honour to be
+next-door neighbour to no less a lady than Mrs. Philadelphia Tyler. Many
+a thriving tradesman might be found in Oriel Street, and many a blooming
+damsel amongst the tradesmen's daughters; but if the town gossip might
+be believed, the richest of all the rich shopkeepers was old John
+Parsons, and the prettiest girl (even without reference to her father's
+moneybags) was his fair daughter Harriet.
+
+John Parsons was one of those loud, violent, blustering, boisterous
+personages who always put me in mind of the description so often
+appended to characters of that sort in the dramatis personae of Beaumont
+and Fletcher's plays, where one constantly meets with Ernulpho
+or Bertoldo, or some such Italianised appellation, "an old angry
+gentleman." The "old angry gentleman" of the fine old dramatists
+generally keeps the promise of the play-bill. He storms and rails during
+the whole five acts, scolding those the most whom he loves the best,
+making all around him uncomfortable, and yet meaning fully to do right,
+and firmly convinced that he is himself the injured party; and after
+quarrelling with cause or without to the end of the comedy, makes
+friends all round at the conclusion;--a sort of person whose good
+intentions everybody appreciates, but from whose violence everybody that
+can is sure to get away.
+
+Now such men are just as common in the real workaday world as in the old
+drama; and precisely such a man was John Parsons.
+
+His daughter was exactly the sort of creature that such training was
+calculated to produce; gentle, timid, shrinking, fond of her father, who
+indeed doated upon her, and would have sacrificed his whole substance,
+his right arm, his life, anything except his will or his humour, to give
+her a moment's pleasure; gratefully fond of her father, but yet more
+afraid than fond.
+
+The youngest and only surviving child of a large family, and brought
+up without a mother's care, since Mrs. Parsons had died in her
+infancy, there was a delicacy and fragility, a slenderness of form and
+transparency of complexion, which, added to her gentleness and modesty,
+gave an unexpected elegance to the tinman's daughter. A soft appealing
+voice, dove-like eyes, a smile rather sweet than gay, a constant desire
+to please, and a total unconsciousness of her own attractions, were
+amongst her chief characteristics. Some persons hold the theory that
+dissimilarity answers best in matrimony, and such persons would have
+found a most satisfactory contrast of appearance, mind, and manner,
+between the fair Harriet and her dashing suitor.
+
+Besides his one great and distinguishing quality of assurance and vulgar
+pretension, which it is difficult to describe, by any word short of
+impudence, Mr. Joseph Hanson was by no means calculated to please
+the eye of a damsel of seventeen, an age at which a man who owned to
+five-and-thirty, and who looked and most probably was at least ten years
+farther advanced on the journey of life, would not fail to be set down
+as a confirmed old bachelor. He had, too, a large mouth, full of large
+irregular teeth, a head of hair which bore a great resemblance to a wig,
+and a suspicion of a squint, (for it did not quite amount to that odious
+deformity,) which added a most sinister expression to his countenance.
+Harriet Parsons could not abide him; and I verily believe she would have
+disliked him just as much though a certain Frederick Mallet had never
+been in existence.
+
+How her father, a dissenter, a radical, and a steady tradesman of the
+old school, who hated puffs and puffery, and finery and fashion, came to
+be taken in by a man opposed to him in religion and politics, in action
+and in speech, was a riddle that puzzled half the gossips in Belford. It
+happened through a mutual enmity, often (to tell an unpalatable truth of
+poor human nature) a stronger bond of union than a mutual affection.
+
+Thus it fell out.
+
+Amongst the reforms carried into effect by the town-council, whereof
+John Parsons was a leading member, was the establishment of an efficient
+new police to replace the incapable old watchmen, who had hitherto been
+the sole guardians of life and property in our ancient borough. As far
+as the principle went, the liberal party were united and triumphant.
+They split, as liberals are apt to split, upon the rock of detail. It
+so happened that a turnpike, belonging to one of the roads leading into
+Belford, had been removed, by order of the commissioners, half a mile
+farther from the town;--half a mile indeed beyond the town boundary;
+and although there were only three houses, one a beer-shop, and the two
+others small tenements inhabited by labouring people, between the site
+of the old turnpike at the end of Prince's Street, and that of the new,
+at the King's Head Pond, our friend the tinman, who was nothing if not
+crotchetty, insisted with so much pertinacity upon the perambulation of
+the blue-coated officials appointed for that beat, being extended along
+the highway for the distance aforesaid, that the whole council were set
+together by the ears, and the measure had very nearly gone by the board
+in consequence. The imminence of the peril saved them. The danger of
+reinstating the ancient Dogberrys of the watch, and still worse,
+of giving a triumph to the tories, brought the reformers to their
+senses--all except the man of tin, who, becoming only the more confirmed
+in his own opinion as ally after ally fell off from him, persisted in
+dividing the council six different times, and had the gratification of
+finding himself on each of the three last divisions, in a minority of
+one. He was about to bring forward the question upon a seventh occasion,
+when a hint as to the propriety in such case of moving a vote of censure
+against him for wasting the time of the board, caused him to secede from
+the council in a fury, and to quarrel with the whole municipal body,
+from the mayor downward.
+
+Now the mayor, a respectable and intelligent attorney, heretofore John
+Parsons' most intimate friend, happened to have been brought publicly
+and privately into collision with Mr. Joseph Hanson, who, delighted to
+find an occasion on which he might at once indulge his aversion to the
+civic dignitary, and promote the interest of his love-suit, was not
+content with denouncing the corporation _de vive voiae_, but wrote three
+grandiloquent letters to the Belford Courant, in which he demonstrated
+that the welfare of the borough, and the safety of the constitution,
+depended upon the police parading regularly, by day and by night, along
+the high road to the King's Head Pond, and that none but a pettifogging
+chief magistrate, and an incapable town-council, corrupt tools of a
+corrupt administration, could have had the gratuitous audacity to cause
+the policeman to turn at the top of Prince's Street, thereby leaving
+the persons and property of his majesty's liege subjects unprotected
+and uncared for. He enlarged upon the fact of the tenements in question
+being occupied by agricultural labourers, a class over whom, as he
+observed, the demagogues now in power delighted to tyrannise; and
+concluded his flourishing appeal to the conservatives of the borough,
+the county, and the empire at large, by a threat of getting up a
+petition against the council, and bringing the whole affair before the
+two Houses of Parliament.
+
+Although this precious epistle was signed Amicus Patriae, the writer
+was far too proud of his production to entrench himself behind
+the inglorious shield of a fictitious signature, and as the mayor,
+professionally indignant at the epithet pettifogging, threatened both
+the editor of the Belford Courant and Mr. Joseph Hanson with an action
+for libel, it followed, as matter of course, that John Parsons not only
+thought the haberdasher the most able and honest man in the borough, but
+regarded him as the champion, if not the martyr, of his cause, and one
+who deserved everything that he had to bestow, even to the hand and
+portion of the pretty Harriet.
+
+Affairs were in this posture, when one fine morning the chief magistrate
+of Belford entered the tinman's shop.
+
+"Mr. Parsons," said the worthy dignitary, in a very conciliatory tone,
+"you may be as angry with me as you like, but I find from our good vicar
+that the fellow Hanson has applied to him for a licence, and I cannot
+let you throw away my little friend Harriet without giving you warning,
+that a long and bitter repentance will follow such a union. There are
+emergencies in which it becomes a duty to throw aside professional
+niceties, and to sacrifice etiquette to the interests of an old
+friendship; and I tell you, as a prudent man, that I know of my own
+knowledge that this intended son-in-law of your's will be arrested
+before the wedding-day."
+
+"I'll bail him," said John Parsons, stoutly.
+
+"He is not worth a farthing," quoth the chief magistrate.
+
+"I shall give him ten thousand pounds with my daughter," answered the
+man of pots and kettles.
+
+"I doubt if ten thousand pounds will pay his just debts," rejoined the
+mayor.
+
+"Then I'll give him twenty," responded the tinman.
+
+"He has failed in five different places within the last five years,"
+persisted the pertinacious adviser; "has run away from his creditors,
+Heaven knows how often; has taken the benefit of the Act time after
+time! You would not give your own sweet Harriet, the best and prettiest
+girl in the county, to an adventurer, the history of whose life is to
+be found in the Gazette and the Insolvent Court, and who is a high
+churchman and a tory to boot. Surely you would not fling away your
+daughter and your honest earnings upon a man of notorious bad character,
+with whom you have not an opinion or a prejudice in common? Just think
+what the other party will say!"
+
+"I'll tell you what, Mr. Mallet or Mr. Mayor, if you prefer the sound of
+your new dignity," broke out John Parsons, in a fury, "I shall do what
+I like with my money and my daughter, without consulting you, or caring
+what anybody may chance to say, whether whig or tory. For my part, I
+think there's little to choose between them. One side's as bad as the
+other. Tyrants in office and patriots out. If Hanson is a conservative
+and a churchman, his foreman is a radical and a dissenter; and they
+neither of them pretend to dictate to their betters, which is more than
+I can say of some who call themselves reformers. Once for all, I tell
+you that he shall marry my Harriet, and that your nephew sha'n't: so
+now you may arrest him as soon as you like. I'm not to be managed
+here, however you and your tools may carry matters at the Town Hall. An
+Englishman's house is his castle."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Mallet, "I am going. God knows I came out of old
+friendship towards yourself, and sincere affection for the dear girl
+your daughter. As to my nephew, besides that I firmly believe the young
+people like each other, I know him to be as steady a lad as ever drew a
+conveyance; and with what his father has left him, and what I can give
+him, to say nothing of his professional prospects, he would be a fit
+match for Harriet as far as money goes. But if you are determined----"
+
+"I _am_ determined," roared John Parsons. "Before next week is out,
+Joseph Hanson shall be my son-in-law. And now, sir, I advise you to go
+and drill your police." And the tinman retired from behind the counter
+into the interior of his dwelling, (for this colloquy had taken place in
+the shop,) banging the door behind him with a violence that really shook
+the house.
+
+"Poor pretty Harriet!" thought the compassionate chief magistrate, "and
+poor Frederick too! The end of next week! This is only Monday; something
+may turn up in that time; we must make inquiries; I had feared that it
+would have been earlier. My old tetchy friend here is just the man to
+have arranged the marriage one day, and had the ceremony performed the
+next. We must look about us." And full of such cogitations, the mayor
+returned to his habitation.
+
+On the Thursday week after this conversation a coach drew up, about
+eight o'clock in the morning, at the gate of St Stephen's churchyard,
+and Mr. Joseph Hanson, in all the gloss of bridal finery, newly clad
+from top to toe, smiling and smirking at every instant, jumped down,
+followed by John Parsons, and prepared to hand out his reluctant bride
+elect, when Mr. Mallet, with a showy-looking middle-aged woman (a sort
+of feminine of Joseph himself) hanging upon his arm, accosted our friend
+the tinman.
+
+"Stop!" cried the mayor.
+
+"What for?" inquired John Parsons. "If it's a debt, I've already told
+you that I'll be his bail."
+
+"It is a debt," responded the chief magistrate; "and one that luckily he
+must pay, and not you. Three years ago he married this lady at Liverpool
+We have the certificate and all the documents."
+
+"Yes, sir," added the injured fair one; "and I find that he has another
+wife in Dublin, and a third at Manchester. I have heard, too, that he
+ran away with a young lady to Scotland; but that don't count, as he was
+under age."
+
+"Four wives!" ejaculated John Parsons, in a transport of astonishment
+and indignation. "Why the man is an absolute great Turk! But the
+thing's impossible. Come and answer for yourself, Joseph Hanson."
+
+And the tinman turned to look for his intended son-in-law; but
+frightened at the sight of the fair claimant of his hand and person, the
+bridegroom had absconded, and John Parsons and the mayor had nothing for
+it but to rejoin the pretty Harriet, smiling through her tears as she
+sate with her bride-maiden in the coach at the churchyard-gate.
+
+"Well; it's a great escape! and we're for ever obliged to you, Mr.
+Mayor. Don't cry any more, Harriet. If Frederick was but here, why, in
+spite of the policemen---- but a week hence will do as well; and I am
+beginning to be of Harriet's mind, that even if he had not had three or
+four wives, we should be well off to be fairly rid of Mr. Joseph Hanson,
+the puffing haberdasher."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher, by
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