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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78181 ***
+
+
+     “_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+
+
+                            HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
+                           A WEEKLY JOURNAL.
+
+
+                     CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+
+      N^{o.} 16.]      SATURDAY, JULY 13, 1850.      [PRICE 2_d._
+
+
+
+
+                       A DAY IN A PAUPER PALACE.
+
+
+In some states of English existence Ruin is the road to Fortune.
+Falstaff threatened to make a commodity of his wounds; the well attested
+disaster of a begging letter writer confers upon him an income; the
+misfortune of a thief—that of being captured—occasionally ends in a
+colonial estate, and a carriage and pair; both the better assured if he
+can tell a good story of misfortunes, and is hypocrite enough to
+commence as a Pentonville “model.” In Manchester the high road to
+fortune is to be born a pauper; should especially orphanhood, either by
+death or desertion, ensue.
+
+At the easy distance of five miles from the great Cotton Capital, on the
+road to the great Cotton Port, through shady lanes and across verdant
+meadows, is the village of Swinton. At its entrance, on a pleasing
+elevation, stands a building which is generally mistaken for a wealthy
+nobleman’s residence. The structure is not only elegant but extensive;
+it is in the Tudor style of architecture, with a frontage of four
+hundred and fifty feet. It is studded with more than a hundred windows,
+each tier so differing in shape and size from the others as to prevent
+monotonous uniformity. Two winding flights of steps in the centre lead
+to a handsome entrance hall, above which rise two lofty turrets to break
+the outline of the extensive roof. The depth of the edifice is great—its
+whole proportions massive. Pleasure-gardens and play-grounds surround
+it. In front an acre and a half of flower-beds and grass-plots are
+intersected by broad gravel-walks and a carriage-drive. Some more of the
+land is laid out for vegetables. Beyond is a meadow, and the whole
+domain is about twenty-two acres in extent; all in good, some in
+picturesque, cultivation.
+
+The stranger gazing upon the splendid brick edifice, with its
+surrounding territory, is surprised when he is told that it is not the
+seat of an ancient Dukedom; but that it is a modern palace for pauper
+children. He is _not_ surprised when he heard that it cost 60,000_l._
+
+The contemplation of sumptuous arrangements of this nature for the
+benefit of helpless penury, naturally engenders an argument:—is it quite
+fair to the industrious poor that the offspring of paupers should be
+placed in a better position than that of his own?—that these should have
+better instruction, be better fed, and better clothed?—that a premium
+should thus be put upon the neglect of their children by vicious
+parents; while, there is no helping hand held out to the industrious and
+virtuous for the proper training of _their_ children: so that the care
+of their offspring by the latter is, by comparison, a misfortune; while
+desertion or neglect by the former is a blessing to theirs, to whom
+Garrick’s paradox can be justly applied, that Their Ruin is the Making
+of them.
+
+That is one side of the argument. The other stands thus; ought the
+misdeeds of parents to be visited on their innocent children? should
+pauper and outcast infants be neglected so as to become pests to
+Society, or shall they be so trained as to escape the pauper-spirit, and
+make amends to Society for the bad citizenship of their parents, by
+their own persevering industry, economy, and prudence in mature life?
+Common sense asks, does the State desire good citizens or bad? If good
+ones, let her manufacture them; and if she can do so by the agency of
+such establishments as that of Swinton, at not too great a cost, let us
+not be too critical as to her choice of the raw material.
+
+In order to see whether the Swinton establishment fulfils this mission
+we solicited a gentleman qualified for the task to visit it; and from
+his information we have drawn up the following account:—
+
+Having, he says, passed through the entrance hall, we chatted for a time
+with the chaplain, who is at the head of the establishment. From him we
+learnt that there are in the institution six hundred and thirty
+children, of whom three hundred and five are orphans, and one hundred
+and twenty-four deserted by their parents. Besides the chaplain there is
+a head master, a medical officer, a Roman Catholic priest, a governor
+and matron, six schoolmasters and four schoolmistresses, with a numerous
+staff of subordinate officials, male and female, including six nurses,
+and teachers of divers trades. The salaries and wages of the various
+officers and servants amount to about 1800_l._ a year, exclusive of the
+cost of their board which the greater number enjoy also.
+
+We went into the play-ground of the junior department, where more than a
+hundred and fifty children were assembled. Some were enjoying themselves
+in the sunshine, some were playing at marbles, others were frisking
+cheerfully. These children ranged from four to seven years of age. There
+are some as young as a year and a half in the school. The greater number
+were congregated at one end of the yard, earnestly watching the
+proceedings of the master who was giving fresh water to three starlings
+in cages that stood on the ground. One very young bird was enjoying an
+airing on the gravel. Two others were perched on a cask. The master
+informed us it was a part of his system to instruct his charges in
+kindness to animals by example. He found that the interest which the
+children took in the animals and in his proceedings towards them, was of
+service in impressing lessons of benevolence among them towards each
+other. The practical lessons taught by the master’s personal attention
+to his feathered favourites, outweighed, he thought, the theoretic
+inconsistency of confining birds in cages.
+
+The play-ground is a training school in another particular. On two sides
+grew several currant trees, on which the fruit is allowed to ripen
+without any protection. Though some of the scholars are very young,
+there do not occur above two or three cases of unlawful plucking per
+annum. The appropriate punishment of delinquents is for them to sit and
+see the rest of their school-fellows enjoy, on a day appointed, a treat
+of fresh ripe fruit, whilst they are debarred from all participation.
+
+The personal appearance of the pupils was not prepossessing. Close
+cropping the hair may be necessary at the first admission of a boy, but
+surely is not needed after children have been for some time trained in
+the establishment, in habits of cleanliness. The tailors of the
+establishment (its elder inmates), are evidently no respecters of
+persons. Measuring is utterly repudiated, and the style in vogue is the
+comic or incongruous. The backs of the boys seemed to be Dutch-built;
+their legs seemed cased after Turkish patterns; while the front view was
+of Falstaffian proportions, some of the trousers are too short for the
+legs, and some of the legs too short for the trousers. The girls are
+better dressed. Amongst them are some of prepossessing faces,
+intelligent appearance, and pleasing manners. Here and there may be
+discerned, however, vacancy of look, and inaptness to learn. Among the
+boys, sometimes, occurs a face not quite clean enough, and a shirt
+collar that seems to have suffered too long a divorce from the wash-tub.
+
+During the time we spent in the play-ground, sundry chubby urchins came
+up to the master with small articles which they had found; it being the
+practice to impress on each, that nothing found belongs to the finder
+unless, after due inquiry, no owner can be discovered. One brought
+something looking like liquorice; another produced a halfpenny, which
+the master appropriated. Perhaps, the master had dropped the halfpenny
+to test the honesty of some of his pupils. One little fellow was made
+happy by permission to keep a marble which he had picked up.
+
+The children obeyed the summons to school with pleasing alacrity. This
+is owing partly to the agreeable mode of tuition adopted, and in some
+measure to the fact that the lessons are not allowed to become tedious
+and oppressive. As soon as any parties give unequivocal signs of
+weariness, either there is some playful relaxation introduced, or such
+children are sent into the play-ground. On the present occasion, as soon
+as the master applied his mouth to a whistle, away trooped the children
+in glad groups to an ante-room. Here, arranged in five or six rows, boys
+and girls intermixed stood with eyes fixed on the master, awaiting his
+signals. At the word of command, each alternate row faced to the right,
+the others to the left, and filed off, accompanying their march with a
+suitable tune; their young voices blending in cheerful harmony, while
+they kept time by clapping their hands, and by an occasional emphatic
+stamp of the foot.
+
+To enliven the routine of school duties, the master’s cur takes part in
+them. He is a humorous dog, with an expressive countenance, and a
+significant wag of the tail. In the intervals of lessons, his duty—which
+is also his pleasure—consists in jumping over the benches or threading
+the labyrinths of little legs under them. Now he darts with wild glee
+into a spelling class; now he rushes among an alphabet group, and snarls
+a playful “r-r-r-r,” as if to teach the true pronunciation of the canine
+letter; now he climbs up behind a seated urchin, puts his forepaws on
+the favourite’s shoulders, and, with a knowing look towards the master,
+recommends his friend for promotion to a monitorship.
+
+It was surprising to find that the pupils took not the slightest notice
+of the antics of the master’s dog. They heeded nothing but their
+lessons; but we learned that the dog was a part of the discipline. He
+accustomed the children to startling eccentricities and unexpected
+sounds: he presented a small, extraneous, but wholesome difficulty in
+the pursuit of Knowledge. He, and the currant bush, the pretty
+treasure-troves, and other contrivances, were intentional temptations
+which the children were trained to resist. We beg very pointedly to
+recommend the study of these facts to the attention of the inventors and
+advocates of the Pentonville Model system. They involve an important
+principle,—and a principle equally applicable to adults as to children.
+The morals of the young, or the penitence of the criminal, which result
+from a system depriving the pupil of every possible temptation to do
+otherwise than right, will assuredly lapse into vice when incentives to
+it are presented. Evil exists very plentifully in this world, and it
+must be recognised and dealt with; it is not by concealing it from the
+young but by teaching him to resist it that we do wise. It must at the
+same time be admitted that the principle can be carried too far; and if
+the master _did_ intentionally drop the halfpenny, it was exactly there
+that he pushed his excellent principle too far.
+
+The teaching of the juniors is conducted mainly _vivâ voce_; for the
+mass of them are under six years of age. The class was opened thus:
+
+“What day is this?”
+
+“Monday.”
+
+“What sort of a day is it?”
+
+“Very fine.”
+
+“Why is it a fine day?”
+
+“Because the sun shines, and it does not rain.”
+
+“Is rain a bad thing, then?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“What is it useful for?”
+
+“To make the flowers and the fruit grow.”
+
+“Who sends rain and sunshine?”
+
+“God.”
+
+“What ought we to do in return for his goodness?”
+
+“Praise him!”
+
+“Let us praise him, then,” added the master. And the children, all
+together, repeated and then sung a part of the 149th Psalm.—A lesson on
+morals succeeded, which evidently interested the children. It was partly
+in the form of a tale told by the master. A gentleman who was kind to
+the poor, went to visit in gaol a boy imprisoned for crime. The
+restraint of the gaol, and the shame of the boy, were so described, as
+to impress the children with strong interest. Then the boy’s crime was
+traced to disobedience, and the excellence of obedience to teachers and
+parents was shown. The fact that punishment comes out of, and follows
+our own actions was enforced by another little story.
+
+By this time some of the very young children showed symptoms of
+lassitude. One fat little mortal had fallen asleep; and this class was
+consequently marshalled for dismissal, and as usual marched out singing,
+to play for a quarter of an hour.
+
+A lesson in reading was now administered to a class of older children.
+For facilitating this achievement, generally so difficult, the master
+has introduced the phonic system, in some degree according to a mode of
+his own, by which means even the youngest children make remarkable
+progress. We need not discuss it here.
+
+The scene the schoolroom, during the reading lesson, presented, was
+remarkable. Groups of four or five little fellows were gathered in
+various parts of the room before a reading-card, one acting as monitor;
+who was sometimes a girl. It was a pleasing sight to see half-a-dozen
+children seated or kneeling in a circle round the same book, their heads
+almost meeting in the centre, in their earnestness to see and hear,
+while the monitor pointed quickly with the finger to the word which each
+in succession was to pronounce. All seemed alert, and the eyes of the
+monitors kindled with intelligence. Meanwhile the master was busied in
+passing from one class to another, listening to the manner in which the
+pronunciation was caught, or the correctness with which the rapid
+combination of letters and syllables was made. Sometimes he stayed a few
+minutes with a class to give aid, then proceeded to another; and
+occasionally, on finding by a few trials, that a boy was quite familiar
+with the work of his class, he would remove him to another more
+advanced. These transfers were frequent.
+
+In an adjoining room were assembled, under the care of the
+schoolmaster’s wife, some of the more advanced scholars. One class in
+this room was particularly interesting—a class composed of the monitors
+who receive extra instruction in order to fit them for their duties.
+
+After an interval the whole attended a class for general knowledge: in
+this the mutual instruction system was adopted. A pupil stood out on a
+platform—the observed of all observers—to be questioned and
+cross-questioned by his or her schoolfellow, like a witness in a
+difficult law case, until supplanted by a pupil who could answer better.
+A degree of piquancy was thus imparted to the proceeding, which caused
+the attention of the pupils not to flag for a moment. One girl, with red
+hair and bright eyes, weathered a storm of questions bravely. A sample
+of the queries put by these young inquisitors, will show the range of
+subjects necessary to be known about. What are the months of spring?
+What animal cuts down a tree, and where does it live? Which are the
+Cinque Ports? What planet is nearest the sun? What is the distance from
+Manchester to Lancaster? How high is St. Paul’s Cathedral? What are the
+names of the common metals? What causes water to rise and become clouds?
+
+One urchin who could scarcely be seen over the head of another, and who
+was evidently of a meteorological turn of mind, bawled out in a
+peculiarly sedate and measured manner,
+
+“What does the wind do?”
+
+To have answered the question fully would have taken a day, but a single
+answer satisfied the querist, and was of a sanitary character.
+
+“The wind,” replied the female Rufus, “cools us in summer and blows away
+the bad air.” An agreeable enough answer as we sat in the middle of the
+schoolroom on a hot day, when the thermometer was seventy-one degrees in
+the shade, and a pleasant breeze stealing through the open windows
+occasionally fanned our warm cheeks. This concluded our visit to the
+junior department.
+
+Meanwhile, the education of the elder children was proceeding in other
+parts of the building. The lessons of the senior sections are conducted
+in a much quieter manner than those of the junior classes; even in a way
+which some persons would consider tame and uninteresting. This quietude
+was, however, more than balanced by another department. As we passed to
+the elder boys’ court-yard, the chaplain threw open the door of a room,
+where a small music class was practising the fife and the drum. The
+class consisted of eight youths, who had not learnt long, but performed
+the “Troubadour” in creditable style. When they marched out, they headed
+about two hundred boys, who were drawn up in line; the music-master
+acting as drill-sergeant and commander-in-chief. After passing through
+some drill-exercises, they marched off, drums beating and colours
+flying, to dinner.
+
+We need say no more of this pleasing ceremony than that it was heartily
+performed. The viands were relished in strong illustration of Dr.
+Johnson’s emphatic remark, “Sir, I like to dine.”
+
+After dinner, we visited the workshops—a very active scene. The living
+tableaux were formed chiefly by young tailors and cobblers. A strict
+account is kept of all manufactured articles and of their cost; and we
+learnt that a boy’s suit of fustian (labour included) costs 4_s._
+10½_d._; a girl’s petticoat 12¾_d._; and that the average weekly cost of
+clothing worn by the children was estimated at 3½_d._ per head—making
+15_s._ 2_d._ for the wearing apparel of each child per year. This may be
+taken as a commentary on the “slop work” prices to which public
+attention has been so forcibly drawn of late.
+
+In all the industrial sections, the children are occupied alternately at
+their work and in school—labouring for one afternoon and next morning,
+and then attending their classes in school for the next afternoon and
+morning. This is a decided improvement on the Mettray system. In that
+agricultural colony, the boys only attend school once a week, and work
+at handicrafts, or on the farm, during the other five. There is,
+however, something defective in the Swinton plan, as applicable to
+advanced pupils; perhaps they are not stimulated sufficiently; but it
+happens that no pupil-teacher had ever passed a government examination;
+although last year the grant of money, by the Committee of Privy Council
+for the educational departments of the Swinton school, amounted to
+531_l._ Those among the scholars who have gone into other lines of life,
+have generally conducted themselves well; and when absorbed into the
+masses of society, have become a help and a credit instead of a bane to
+it. Indeed, having been brought up at the Pauper Palace appears a safe
+certificate with the public, who are eager for the girls of this school
+as domestic servants. Both boys and girls, on leaving the institution,
+are furnished with two complete sets of clothes, and their subsequent
+behaviour is repeatedly inquired into.
+
+As we descended the steps of the school we scanned the prospect seen
+from it. The foreground of the landscape was dotted with rural
+dwellings, interspersed with trees. In the distance rose the spires and
+tall chimneys of Manchester, brightened by the rays of the evening sun,
+while a sea of smoke hung like a pall over the great centre of
+manufacturing activity, and shut out the view beyond. It typified the
+dark cloud of pauperism which covers so large a portion of the land, and
+which it is hoped such institutions as the Swinton Industrial Schools is
+destined to dispel. The centre of manufacturing activity is also the
+centre of practical and comprehensive education. Why does this activity
+continue to revolve so near its centre? Why has it not radiated over the
+length and breadth of the land? The Swinton Institution is a practical
+illustration of what can be done with even the humblest section of the
+community; and if it have a disadvantage, that is precisely because it
+succeeds too well. It places the child-pauper above the child of the
+industrious. Narrow minds advocate the levelling of the two, by
+withdrawing the advantage from the former. Let us, however, hope that no
+effort will relax to bring out, in addition to Pauper Palaces,
+Educational Palaces for all classes and denominations.
+
+Thus ended our visit to the “Pauper Palace.” As we issued from the iron
+gate into the open road we met a long line of the elder girls,
+accompanied by a master, returning from a walk which they had taken,
+after school hours and before supper, for the benefit of their health.
+The glad smile of recognition, and the cheerful salutation with which
+they greeted us as we bade them good evening, were a touch of that
+gentle nature which “makes the whole world kin.” It refreshed us like a
+parting blessing from well-known friends.
+
+
+
+
+                     HOW WE WENT HUNTING IN CANADA.
+
+
+After his disasters in New Ireland, our friend Blungle could not be
+prevailed upon to go fishing again.[1] The sport was conducted under
+circumstances which deprived it of all attraction to him. He could
+understand fishing in the Thames,—sitting all day in a comfortable
+arm-chair in a punt, moored off Ditton, with a stock of brandy and water
+and mild Havannahs. This was true sport; but digging holes in the ice to
+catch fish was neither sportsman-like nor exciting. Under the
+circumstances, he was not to be reasoned with; so we only laughed at
+him,—Perroque advising him, on his return to St. Pancras, to try his
+luck in a parlour fishbowl. This put him on his mettle,—and to show that
+he was ready to “rough it” with any man, he challenged us to go hunting
+with him. Perroque, who was as great an adept on snow-shoes as on
+skates, gave him no time to retract, and a hunt after Moose was at once
+determined upon.
+
+Footnote 1:
+
+  See page 243.
+
+Our accoutrements consisted of snow-shoes (which, when slung over the
+shoulders, looked not unlike a pair of large wings), a rifle, an
+“Arkansas toothpick,” and a flask. We started without delay, and on the
+afternoon of the second day were once more in the township of Leeds,
+which we had fixed upon as the scene of our operations.
+
+Archibald McQuaigh was an old Highlander who had emigrated from
+Strathtoddy, and who prided himself greatly on his ancestry, and on
+having been the man who “felled the first tree in Leeds,” in 1817; since
+which time the township had made marvellous strides in advancement and
+prosperity, and McQuaigh was fond of saying that the crash of the first
+victim to the axe was still ringing in his ears. He had pushed his way
+boldly into the woods, with nothing but an axe, a set of bagpipes, a
+peck of oatmeal, and a bottle of whiskey,—the last two being the remains
+of the stock of provisions which he had taken on board with him at
+Glasgow. With this scanty outfit he began the hardy life of a
+settler,—borrowing flour and pork from his neighbours, the nearest of
+whom was fifteen miles off, until the gathering of his first crop, when
+he became an independent man. Years, although not without a fight for
+it, had produced their effect even on McQuaigh. He had shrunk somewhat
+in all his proportions, but his skin and flesh looked like plastic horn,
+which seemed to bid defiance to decay. Blungle felt qualmish, when first
+presented to him, for he had still a very fiery look, calculated to
+affect the nervous,—his hair, which was becoming grey at the tips, now
+looking like so many red-hot wires elevated to a white heat at the
+points. His manly activity had not yet forsaken him, his frame being
+still well knit and compact, and there were few in the township who
+would even then venture to wrestle with him. He had been originally a
+deer-keeper to the Marquis of Glen-Fuddle, and his early vocation gave
+him a taste for the chase which never forsook him, and it was in the
+double capacity of an enthusiastic sportsman and a hospitable man, that
+we carried letters of introduction to him.
+
+We were received with true Highland hospitality, after the old style.
+After dinner McQuaigh repeated half of “Ossian” in the original to us,
+giving us incidentally to understand that the poet belonged to a younger
+branch of his family. He spoke English as a convenience, but had great
+contempt for it as a language. Indeed, he used to call it, sneeringly,
+“a tongue,” and maintained that Gaelic was the only real language on
+earth.
+
+The next morning at breakfast, McQuaigh announced that in five minutes
+after that meal was disposed of, we should be on our way for the part of
+the forest which was to be the scene of our operations. A Moose deer is
+a great prize, which is not often secured, and the appearance of one
+makes quite a noise in a neighbourhood. For some days back a rumour had
+been rife throughout the township that one had been seen at a point
+about three miles distant from McQuaigh’s residence; and it was only on
+the evening before our arrival, that that worthy had been himself
+informed by a man who had come from a neighbouring settlement that he
+had crossed its track on the way. This accounted for a somewhat high
+state of fever in which we found him on arrival; and our appearance gave
+him great relief, by furnishing him at once with an excuse for a hunt,
+and companions in his sport.
+
+Having plentifully provided ourselves with creature comforts from
+McQuaigh’s larder and whiskey-cask, we started in a common farm sleigh,
+in which we had all to stand upright, for the point at which we were to
+push into the forest. McQuaigh had secured the attendance of a French
+Canadian named Jean Baptiste, who was a servant on an adjoining farm,
+and who was as expert a Moosehunter as any man in the province.
+
+Having gained the summit of a steep hill, the gillie was sent back with
+the sleigh, and we prepared to diverge into the bush. The snow lay fully
+five feet deep around us; and before leaving the beaten track, our first
+care was to adjust our snow-shoes, which are indispensable to Canadian
+winter sport. Each shoe is about the size of a large kite, which it also
+resembles in shape. The outer frame is made of light cedar, bent and
+bound together by two slender bars, placed about equidistant from both
+ends. The thin spaces contained between the outer frame and the bars,
+are filled up with a network composed of a substance resembling cat-gut.
+The toe is attached to the snow-shoe close to the front bar, the heel
+being left at liberty: so that when it is raised in the act of dragging
+the foot forward, the snow-shoe is not raised with it, being dragged
+horizontally upon the surface. The object of the snow-shoe is to prevent
+the pedestrian from sinking in the soft snow, which it effects by giving
+him a far broader basis to rest upon than Nature has provided him. Thus
+accoutred, a man will pass rapidly, and in safety over the deepest
+deposits—having to take much longer strides than usual, in order that
+the snow-shoes may clear one another. The exercise is somewhat
+fatiguing, and requires some practice to be perfect in it. Blungle was
+not an adept, and before he had proceeded ten paces, he was prostrate on
+his face, and fully three feet beneath the surface. His plight in
+somewhat resembled that of the boy who had let the inflated
+bladders—with the aid of which he attempted to swim—slip down to his
+feet, which they elevated to the surface, keeping his head, however,
+under water. The only thing discernible for the moment, of our
+fellow-companion, was his snow-shoes, which were moving convulsively to
+and fro, near the surface. Encumbered by them, he would never have risen
+again but for our aid; and it was some time ere he succeeded in getting
+his mouth, ears, and nose, emptied of the snow; he was more cautious
+afterwards in the management of his feet, although his inexperience
+somewhat retarded our progress.
+
+We were soon in the very depths of the forest, and lonely indeed are
+these Canadian woods in the dreary winter time. All under foot was
+enveloped in snow, from which as from a white sea, rose like so many
+colossal columns, the stately trunks of the trees, through the leafless
+boughs of which, as through an extended trellis-work, the blue sky was
+discernible over head. The undulations of the surface pleasantly
+diversified a scene which would otherwise have been monotonous; and we
+made our way merrily over hill and valley, but ever through the unbroken
+forest, in the deep dells of which we now and then crossed a streamlet,
+whose course had been arrested, and whose voice had been hushed for
+months by the relentless frost.
+
+We had been thus occupied for about three hours, when we at length came
+upon the track of the game:—a deep furrow had been made in the snow;
+bespeaking the labour which the animal must have had in ploughing his
+way through it. We stopped; and McQuaigh, giving vent to a long
+expiration, half between a whistle and a sigh, exclaimed, wiping the
+perspiration from his horny features, “We have him as sure as a gun, if
+nobody else has got scent of him; and you see,” he added, pointing to
+the untrodden snow around, “there’s not the track of a living soul after
+him.”
+
+“But what chance have we?” I asked, “seeing that it must be more than
+two days at least since the Moose passed this spot?”
+
+“Give a deer any reasonable start in the winter time,” replied McQuaigh,
+“and a man on his snow-shoes will run him down. We have only to follow
+his track, and depend on’t we’ll go over more ground than he will in a
+day.” So saying, he led off in the direction which our prey had
+evidently taken. Blungle did not like the possibility of being for a
+week on the track of one deer; but he put the best face on it, and
+laboured to keep up with us.
+
+We had not gone far, ere, like the confluence of a small with a larger
+stream, we found the track of an ordinary deer converge upon that of the
+Moose. From the point of junction, the follower, as affording him an
+easier passage through the snow, had kept to the track of his more
+powerful leader.
+
+“Let’s hurry, and we’ll have the two of them,” said McQuaigh, and he
+doubled the length of his strides. Blungle groaned, but laboured on.
+
+We thus pursued the now double track, until the shades of evening stole
+over the forest, and imparted a mysterious solemnity to the lonely
+solitudes, which we had invaded. After a hard day’s work, we looked out
+for a spot in which to rest for the night. We resolved to bivouac by a
+huge elm, whose hollow trunk rose without branch or twig to break its
+symmetry, for nearly sixty feet from the ground. We dug a hole in the
+snow, more than four feet deep, spreading our blankets on the bottom of
+it. On one side we were sheltered by the elm; on the other three by our
+snowy circumvallation. Our next care was to light a blazing fire, which
+we did in the hollow of the tree; after which we laid ourselves down to
+sleep, Jean Baptiste having orders to keep the first watch, and to awake
+any of us, whom he might find getting stiff. In five minutes Blungle was
+snoring as comfortably as if he were reposing on his own pillow in
+Bloomsbury.
+
+I was about turning the corner of consciousness, when McQuaigh, who was
+stretched beside me, and who never seemed to shut more than one eye at a
+time, started suddenly to his feet, and seizing the axe which was
+resting against the tree, raised it to his shoulder, and stood intently
+watching the hollow in which the fire was burning. He was quite a
+picture, standing out, as he did, in fine relief from the surrounding
+darkness, as the crackling flames threw their ruddy glare on his brawny
+frame and furrowed visage. But his sudden movement indisposing me for
+the artistic mood, I was at once on my feet beside him, and it was not
+till then that I heard sounds proceed from the hollow trunk, which gave
+me some clue to what had so suddenly called him into action. I had but
+brief time for consideration, for, in a moment or two afterwards, down
+came a heavy body into the fire, scattering the faggots about in all
+directions. Blungle, who was still asleep, was aroused by one of the
+blazing embers grazing his nose, and on jumping up precipitated himself
+into the embrace of a shaggy bear, which was about to treat him to a
+fatal hug, when McQuaigh’s axe descended with terrific force upon its
+skull, which it cleft in twain. The slaughtered brute fell on its side
+carrying Blungle along with it, who, when he was removed, was nearly as
+insensible as the bear.
+
+“There’s never two of them in a tree,” said McQuaigh, “so we may go to
+sleep now.” We did so, and I slept soundly for two or three hours, Jean
+Baptiste kept watch as before, employing himself, until his turn came
+for sleeping, in dressing the carcass of the bear, from which, in the
+morning, we were supplied with hot chops for breakfast. If we did not
+consider them unsavory, it was perhaps because our appetites were too
+good to be very discriminating. We could not persuade Blungle to touch
+them. He was possessed of an abstract idea that it was unchristian to
+eat a bear. At first he positively refused to accompany us any further,
+but on McQuaigh expressing a friendly hope that he would get safe out of
+the woods if he attempted to return alone, he made up his mind that the
+lesser of two evils was to stick to the party. He made a solemn vow,
+however, that should he ever live to see the Zoological Gardens again,
+he would carefully avoid even a glance at the bears.
+
+After breakfast, we resumed our course, keeping close to the track as on
+the preceding day. We had not gone far when, on descending a steep bank,
+we heard a rustling sound proceed from a thicket on the margin of a
+tolerably sized stream which lay across our path.
+
+“It’s but the little one,” said McQuaigh, whose keen eye caught a
+momentary sight of a deer, which was immediately lost again to him in
+the thicket. “Make ready for action.”
+
+We were, of course, all excitement, and Blungle obeyed the injunction by
+deliberately levelling his rifle at Jean Baptiste, who was a little in
+advance of us, with a view to driving the deer from his hiding place.
+McQuaigh, observing this movement, with a sudden wave of his arm
+elevated the muzzle into the air, just as Blungle drew the trigger, and
+the ball went whistling through the trees, cutting off several twigs in
+its course.
+
+“To take a man when there’s venison in the way,” said McQuaigh, who
+seemed to impute Blungle’s aim solely to a want of taste, “who ever
+heard of such a thing?” Blungle could not have been more frightened, had
+he pointed his rifle against himself, and, for some time afterwards, he
+apostrophised the adverse character of his fate, in terms not the most
+suited for delicate ears. The discharge of the rifle startled the deer,
+which bounded at once in full sight from the thicket. A ball from
+Perroque wounded him in the flank, McQuaigh’s trigger was drawn in an
+instant, but his piece missed fire, much to his annoyance, and as he
+said himself, “for the first time in its life.” I fired too—but to this
+day I have not the slightest idea what became of the ball—the wounded
+animal plunged wildly towards the stream, which he endeavoured to cross.
+But it was rapid at that particular point, and the ice which was but
+imperfectly formed gave way with him. He struggled hard to keep himself
+on the surface, until a ball from McQuaigh’s rifle took effect on his
+head, and he was at once dragged under by the impetuous current. A
+little further on, the stream plunged down several rocky ledges in
+foaming rapids, which bade defiance to the frost. We gained this point
+just in time to see the body of the deer emerge from beneath the ice; it
+was immediately afterwards carried over a cataract and precipitated
+amongst masses of ice, which rose from the chasm like a cluster of
+basaltic columns and inverted stalactites.
+
+As it would have taken too much time to recover it, we left the mangled
+body of the deer in the icy crevice into which it had fallen, and
+ascending to a point above the rapids, crossed the river, where the ice
+was strong. We then recovered the track, which we followed for the rest
+of the day, passing several small settlements in the woods, all of which
+had been carefully avoided by the Moose. In the evening we bivouacked as
+before, but this time in the neighbourhood of a solid tree. Blungle
+struck it all round with the axe to assure himself that it was not
+hollow, and expressed his satisfaction that it rung sound. Next morning
+we plunged deeper and deeper into the forest wilds. About mid-day,
+Blungle, whose patience was well nigh exhausted, began to be seriously
+offended at the non-appearance of our prey, and confidentially hinted to
+Perroque and myself that wild goose rhymed to wild Moose. But, at that
+moment, Baptiste who was in advance, was observed to fling his arms into
+the air, and then to direct our attention to a point a little to the
+right of us, where we caught the first sight of the object of pursuit.
+The Moose was at some distance from us, buried to the belly in snow, and
+scraping the green bark from a young tree. Being too far off to fire
+with effect, we glided silently towards him over the snow, concealing
+ourselves as much as possible by going from tree to tree. He was a
+full-grown animal, and, for some time, was not aware of our approach;
+but, as we came within doubtful shot of him, he looked anxiously around,
+exhibiting symptoms of agitation and alarm.
+
+“Bang at him,” said McQuaigh, “or we may lose our chance.” He had
+scarcely uttered the words, when our four rifles were simultaneously
+discharged. The Moose gave a tremendous bound and plunged through the
+snow, endeavouring to escape us. We made after him at once, reloading
+our rifles as we proceeded. When we came up to the spot occupied by him,
+it was evident that he had been seriously wounded, from the extent to
+which the snow was stained with blood. We soon observed that his efforts
+to escape became fainter and fainter, and, as he was staggering and
+about to fall, a ball from McQuaigh’s rifle took effect in his heart,
+and he sank in the snow.
+
+The Moose deer’s nose is considered a great dainty by both civilised man
+and savage. Blungle, although well provided in that facial department
+himself, was almost petrified at its size. “It looked,” he said, “as if
+the animal carried a small carpet-bag in front in which to keep his
+provender.” Having cut the nose off, we confided it to the care of Jean
+Baptiste.
+
+“Look out for blazes,” said McQuaigh, as we prepared to return.
+
+“Why, what’s the matter?” asked Blungle, raising his rifle to his
+shoulder as if he expected an attack from another bear. But there was
+nothing the matter, “blazes” being the term applied to the marks left by
+the surveyors on certain trees, to denote the lines of the different
+townships, as they are cleared from the woods. By means of these marks
+the woodsman can readily direct himself to a settlement—to find which
+was now McQuaigh’s object. Dragging the body of the deer after us, we
+proceeded for about two hours guided by the blazes, and, at last, came
+to a small settlement, where we procured a couple of sleighs, one for
+Jean Baptiste and the slaughtered Moose, and the other for ourselves. At
+a late hour of the night we gained McQuaigh’s residence, considerably
+fatigued after our exertions.
+
+We spent two days more with our eccentric but warm-hearted host, after
+which he let us depart reluctantly. We reached Quebec on the following
+day, and soon regaled a party of friends on our valuable trophy, the
+Moose deer’s nose.
+
+
+
+
+                  THE MODERN SCIENCE OF THIEF-TAKING.
+
+
+If thieving be an Art (and who denies that its more subtle and delicate
+branches deserve to be ranked as one of the Fine Arts?), thief-taking is
+a Science. All the thief’s ingenuity; all his knowledge of human nature;
+all his courage; all his coolness; all his imperturbable powers of face;
+all his nice discrimination in reading the countenances of other people;
+all his manual and digital dexterity; all his fertility in expedients,
+and promptitude in acting upon them; all his Protean cleverness of
+disguise and capability of counterfeiting every sort and condition of
+distress; together with a great deal more patience, and the additional
+qualification, integrity, are demanded for the higher branches of
+thief-taking.
+
+If an urchin picks your pocket, or a bungling “artist” steals your watch
+so that you find it out in an instant, it is easy enough for any private
+in any of the seventeen divisions of London Police to obey your panting
+demand to “Stop thief!” But the tricks and contrivances of those who
+wheedle money out of your pocket rather than steal it; who cheat you
+with your eyes open; who clear every vestige of plate out of your pantry
+while your servant is on the stairs; who set up imposing warehouses, and
+ease respectable firms of large parcels of goods; who steal the
+acceptances of needy or dissipated young men;—for the detection and
+punishment of such impostors a superior order of police is requisite.
+
+To each division of the Force is attached two officers, who are
+denominated “detectives.” The staff, or head-quarters, consists of six
+sergeants and two inspectors. Thus the Detective Police, of which we
+hear so much, consists of only forty-two individuals, whose duty it is
+to wear no uniform, and to perform the most difficult operations of
+their craft. They have not only to counteract the machinations of every
+sort of rascal whose only means of existence is avowed rascality, but to
+clear up family mysteries, the investigation of which demands the utmost
+delicacy and tact.
+
+One instance will show the difference between a regular and a detective
+policeman. Your wife discovers on retiring for the night, that her
+toilette has been plundered; her drawers are void; except the ornaments
+she now wears, her beauty is as unadorned as that of a quakeress: not a
+thing is left; all the fond tokens you gave her when her prenuptial
+lover, are gone; your own miniature, with its setting of gold and
+brilliants; her late mother’s diamonds; the bracelets “dear papa”
+presented on her last birth-day; the top of every bottle in the
+dressing-case brought from Paris by Uncle John, at the risk of his life,
+in February 1848, are off—but the glasses remain. Every valuable is
+swept away with the most discriminating villainy; for no other thing in
+the chamber has been touched; not a chair has been moved; the costly
+pendule on the chimney-piece still ticks; the entire apartment is as
+neat and trim as when it had received the last finishing sweep of the
+housemaid’s duster. The entire establishment runs frantically up stairs
+and down stairs; and finally congregates in my Lady’s Chamber. Nobody
+knows anything whatever about it; yet everybody offers a suggestion,
+although they have not an idea “who ever did it.” The housemaid bursts
+into tears; the cook declares she thinks she is going into hysterics;
+and at last you suggest sending for the Police; which is taken as a
+suspicion of, and insult on the whole assembled household, and they
+descend into the lower regions of the house in the sulks.
+
+X 49 arrives. His face betrays sheepishness, combined with mystery. He
+turns his bull’s-eye into every corner, and upon every countenance
+(including that of the cat), on the premises. He examines all the locks,
+bolts, and bars, bestowing extra diligence on those which enclosed the
+stolen treasures. These he declares have been “Wiolated;” by which he
+means that there has been more than one “Rape of the Lock.” He then
+mentions about the non-disturbance of other valuables; takes you
+solemnly aside, darkens his lantern, and asks if you suspect any of your
+servants, in a mysterious whisper, which implies that _he_ does. He then
+examines the upper bedrooms, and in that of the female servants he
+discovers the least valuable of the rings, and a cast-off silver
+toothpick between the mattresses. You have every confidence in your
+maids; but what _can_ you think? You suggest their safe custody; but
+your wife intercedes, and the policeman would prefer speaking to his
+inspector before he locks anybody up.
+
+Had the whole matter remained in the hands of X 49, it is possible that
+your troubles would have lasted you till now. A train of legal
+proceedings—actions for defamation of character and suits for
+damages—would have followed, which would have cost more than the value
+of the jewels, and the entire execration of all your neighbours and
+every private friend of your domestics. But, happily, the Inspector
+promptly sends a plain, earnest-looking man, who announces himself as
+one of the two Detectives of the X division. He settles the whole matter
+in ten minutes. His examination is ended in five. As a connoisseur can
+determine the painter of a picture at the first glance, or a wine-taster
+the precise vintage of a sherry by the merest sip; so the Detective at
+once pounces upon the authors of the work of art under consideration, by
+the style of performance; if not upon the precise executant, upon the
+“school” to which he belongs. Having finished the toilette branch of the
+inquiry, he takes a short view of the parapet of your house, and makes
+an equally cursory investigation of the attic window fastenings. His
+mind is made up, and most likely he will address you in these words:—
+
+“All right, Sir. This is done by one of ‘The Dancing School!’”
+
+“Good Heavens!” exclaims your plundered partner. “Impossible, why _our_
+children go to Monsieur Pettitoes, of No. 81, and I assure you he is a
+highly respectable professor. As to his pupils, I—”
+
+The Detective smiles and interrupts. “Dancers,” he tells her, “is a name
+given to the sort of burglar by whom she had been robbed; and every
+branch of the thieving profession is divided into gangs, which are
+termed ‘Schools.’ From No. 82 to the end of the street the houses are
+unfinished. The thief made his way to the top of one of these, and
+crawled to your garret—”
+
+“But we are forty houses distant, and why did he not favour one of my
+neighbours with his visit?” you ask.
+
+“Either their uppermost stories are not so practicable, or the ladies
+have not such valuable jewels.”
+
+“But how do they know that?”
+
+“By watching and inquiry. This affair may have been in action for more
+than a month. Your house has been watched; your habits ascertained; they
+have found out when you dine—how long you remain in the dining-room. A
+day is selected; while you are busy dining, and your servants busy
+waiting on you, the thing is done. Previously, many journeys have been
+made over the roofs, to find out the best means of entering your house.
+The attic is chosen; the robber gets in, and creeps noiselessly, or
+‘dances’ into the place to be robbed.”
+
+“Is there _any_ chance of recovering our property?” you ask anxiously,
+seeing the whole matter at a glance.
+
+“I hope so. I have sent some brother officers to watch the Fences’
+houses.”
+
+“Fences?”
+
+“Fences,” explains the Detective, in reply to your innocent wife’s
+inquiry, “are purchasers of stolen goods. Your jewels will be forced out
+of their settings, and the gold melted.”
+
+The lady tries, ineffectually, to suppress a slight scream.
+
+“We shall see, if, at this unusual hour of the night, there is any
+bustle in or near any of these places; if any smoke is coming out of any
+one of their furnaces, where the melting takes place. _I_ shall go and
+seek out the precise ‘garretter’—that’s another name these plunderers
+give themselves—whom I suspect. By his trying to ‘sell’ your domestics
+by placing the ring and toothpick in their bed, I think I know the man.
+It is just in his style.”
+
+The next morning, you find all these suppositions verified. The
+Detective calls, and obliges you at breakfast—after a sleepless
+night—with a complete list of the stolen articles, and produces some of
+them for identification. In three months, your wife gets nearly every
+article back; her damsels’ innocence is fully established; and the thief
+is taken from his “school” to spend a long holiday in a penal colony.
+
+This is a mere common-place transaction, compared with the achievements
+of the staff of the little army of Detective policemen at head-quarters.
+Sometimes they are called upon to investigate robberies; so executed,
+that no human ingenuity appears to ordinary observers capable of finding
+the thief. He leaves not a trail or a trace. Every clue seems cut off;
+but the experience of a Detective guides him into tracks quite invisible
+to other eyes. Not long since, a trunk was rifled at a fashionable
+hotel. The theft was so managed, that no suspicion could rest on any
+one. The Detective sergeant who had been sent for, fairly owned, after
+making a minute examination of the case, that he could afford no hope of
+elucidating the mystery. As he was leaving the bed-room, however, in
+which the plundered portmanteau stood, he picked up an ordinary
+shirt-button from the carpet. He silently compared it with those on the
+shirts in the trunk. It did not match them. He said nothing, but hung
+about the hotel for the rest of the day. Had he been narrowly watched,
+he would have been set down for an eccentric critic of linen. He was
+looking out for a shirt-front or wristband without a button. His search
+was long and patient; but at length it was rewarded. One of the inmates
+of the house showed a deficiency in his dress, which no one but a
+Detective would have noticed. He looked as narrowly as he dared at the
+pattern of the remaining fasteners. It corresponded with that of the
+little tell-tale he had picked up. He went deeper into the subject, got
+a trace of some of the stolen property, ascertained a connexion between
+it and the suspected person, confronted him with the owner of the trunk,
+and finally succeeded in convicting him of the theft.—At another
+hotel-robbery, the blade of a knife, broken in the lock of a
+portmanteau, formed the clue. The Detective employed in that case was
+for some time indefatigable in seeking out knives with broken blades. At
+length he found one belonging to an under-waiter, who proved to have
+been the thief.
+
+The swell mob—the London branch of which is said to consist of from one
+hundred and fifty to two hundred members—demand the greatest amount of
+vigilance to detect. They hold the first place in the “profession.”
+
+Their cleverness consists in evading the law; the most expert are seldom
+taken. One “swell,” named Mo. Clark, had an iniquitous career of a
+quarter of a century, and never was captured during that time. He died a
+“prosperous gentleman” at Boulogne, whither he had retired to live on
+his “savings,” which he had invested in house property. An old hand
+named White lived unharmed to the age of eighty; but he had not been
+prudent, and existed on the contributions of the “mob,” till his old
+acquaintances were taken away, either by transportation or death, and
+the new race did not recognise his claims to their bounty. Hence he died
+in a workhouse. The average run of liberty which one of this class
+counts upon is four years.
+
+The gains of some of the swell mob are great. They can always command
+capital to execute any especial scheme. Their travelling expenses are
+large; for their harvests are great public occasions, whether in town or
+country. As an example of their profits, the exploits of four of them at
+the Liverpool Cattle Show some seven years ago, may be mentioned. The
+London Detective Police did not attend, but one of them waylaid the
+rogues at the Euston Station. After an attendance of four days, the
+gentlemen he was looking for appeared, handsomely attired, the occupants
+of first-class carriages. The Detective, in the quietest manner
+possible, stopped their luggage; they entreated him to treat them like
+“gentlemen.” He did so, and took them into a private room, where they
+were so good as to offer him fifty pounds to let them go. He declined,
+and over-hauled their booty; it consisted of several gold pins, watches,
+(some of great value,) chains and rings, silver snuffboxes, and
+bank-notes of the value of one hundred pounds! Eventually, however, as
+owners could not be found for some of the property, and some others
+would not prosecute, they escaped with a light punishment.
+
+In order to counteract the plans of the swell mob, two of the sergeants
+of the Detective Police make it their business to know every one of them
+personally. The consequence is, that the appearance of either of these
+officers upon any scene of operations is a bar to anything or anybody
+being “done.” This is an excellent characteristic of the Detectives, for
+they thus become as well a Preventive Police. We will give an
+illustration:—
+
+You are at the Oxford commemoration. As you descend the broad stairs of
+the Roebuck to dine, you overtake on the landing a gentleman of foreign
+aspect and elegant attire. The variegated pattern of his vest, the jetty
+gloss of his boots, and the exceeding whiteness of his gloves—one of
+which he crushes in his somewhat delicate hand—convince you that he is
+going to the grand ball, to be given that evening at Merton. The glance
+he gives you while passing, is sharp, but comprehensive; and if his eye
+does rest upon any one part of your person and its accessories more than
+another, it is upon the gold watch which you have just taken out to see
+if dinner be “due.” As you step aside to make room for him, he
+acknowledges the courtesy with “Par-r-r-don,” in the richest Parisian
+_gros parle_, and a smile so full of intelligence and courtesy, that you
+hope he speaks English, for you set him down as an agreeable fellow, and
+mentally determine that if he dines in the Coffee-room, you will make
+his acquaintance.
+
+On the mat at the stair-foot there stands a man. A plain, honest-looking
+fellow, with nothing formidable in his appearance, or dreadful in his
+countenance; but the effect his apparition takes on your friend in
+perspective, is remarkable. The poor little fellow raises himself on his
+toes, as if he had been suddenly overbalanced by a bullet; his cheek
+pales, and his lip quivers, as he endeavours ineffectually to suppress
+the word “_coquin!_” He knows it is too late to turn back (he evidently
+would, if he could), for the man’s eye is upon him. There is no help for
+it, and he speaks first; but in a whisper. He takes the new comer aside,
+and all you can overhear is spoken by the latter, who says he insists on
+Monsieur withdrawing his “School” by the seven o’clock train.
+
+You imagine him to be some poor wretch of a schoolmaster in
+difficulties; captured, alas, by a bailiff. They leave the inn together,
+perhaps for a sponging house. So acute is your pity, that you think of
+rushing after them, and offering bail. You are, however, very hungry,
+and, at this moment, the waiter announces that dinner is on table.
+
+In the opposite box there are covers for four, but only three convives.
+They seem quiet men—not gentlemen, decidedly, but well enough behaved.
+
+“What has become of Monsieur?” asks one. None of them can divine.
+
+“Shall we wait any longer for him?”
+
+“Oh, no—Waiter—Dinner!”
+
+By their manner, you imagine that the style of the Roebuck is a “cut
+above them.” They have not been much used to plate. The silver forks are
+so curiously heavy, that one of the guests, in a dallying sort of way,
+balances a prong across his fingers, while the chasing of the castors
+engages the attention of a second. This is all done while they talk.
+When the fish is brought, the third casts a careless glance or two at
+the dish cover, and when the waiter has gone for the sauce, he taps it
+with his nails, and says enquiringly to his friend across the table,
+“Silver?”
+
+The other shakes his head, and intimates a hint that it is _only_
+plated. The waiter brings the cold punch, and the party begin to enjoy
+themselves. They do not drink much, but they mix their drinks rather
+injudiciously. They take sherry upon cold punch, and champagne upon
+that, dashing in a little port and bottled stout between. They are
+getting merry, not to say jolly, but not at all inebriated. The amateur
+of silver dish-covers has told a capital story, and his friends are
+revelling in the heartiest of laughs, when an apparition appears at the
+end of the table. You never saw such a change as his presence causes,
+when he places his knuckles on the edge of the table and looks at the
+diners _seriatim_; the courtiers of the sleeping beauty suddenly struck
+somniferous were nothing to this change. As if by magic, the loud laugh
+is turned to silent consternation. You now, most impressively,
+understand the meaning of the term “dumbfoundered.” The mysterious
+stranger makes some enquiry about “any cash?”
+
+The answer is “Plenty.”
+
+“All square with the landlord, then?” asks the same inflexible voice
+as—to my astonishment—that which put the Frenchman to the torture.
+
+“To a penny,” the reply.
+
+“_Quite_ square?” continues the querist, taking with his busy eye a
+rapid inventory of the plate.
+
+“S’ help me——”
+
+“Hush!” interrupts the dinner spoiler, holding up his hand in a
+cautionary manner. “Have you done anything to-day?”
+
+“Not a thing.”
+
+Then there is some more in a low tone; but you again distinguish the
+word “school,” and “seven o’clock train.” They are too old to be the
+Frenchman’s pupils; perhaps they are his assistants. Surely they are not
+all the victims of the same _capias_ and the same officer!
+
+By this time the landlord, looking very nervous, arrives with his bill:
+then comes the head waiter, who clears the table; carefully counting the
+forks. The reckoning is paid, and the trio steal out of the room with
+the man of mystery behind them,—like sheep driven to the shambles.
+
+You follow to the Railway station, and there you see the Frenchman, who
+complains bitterly of being “sold for noting” by his enemy. The other
+three utter a confirmative groan. In spite of the evident omnipotence of
+their persevering follower, your curiosity impels you to address him.
+You take a turn on the platform together, and he explains the whole
+mystery. “The fact is,” he begins, “I am Sergeant Witchem, of the
+Detective police.”
+
+“And your four victims are?”—
+
+“Members of a crack school of swell mobsmen.”
+
+“What do you mean by ‘school?’”
+
+“Gang. There is a variety of gangs—that is to say, of men who ‘work’
+together, who play into one another’s hands. These gentlemen hold the
+first rank, both for skill and enterprise, and had they been allowed to
+remain would have brought back a considerable booty. Their chief is the
+Frenchman.”
+
+“Why do they obey your orders so passively?”
+
+“Because they are sure that if I were to take them into custody, which I
+could do, knowing what they are, and present them before a magistrate,
+they would all be committed to prison for a month, as rogues and
+vagabonds.”
+
+“They prefer then to have lost no inconsiderable capital in dress and
+dinner, to being laid up in jail.”
+
+“Exactly so.”
+
+The bell rings, and all five go off into the same carriage to London.
+
+This is a circumstance that actually occurred; and a similar one
+happened when the Queen went to Dublin. The mere appearance of one of
+the Detective officers before a “school” which had transported itself in
+the Royal train, spoilt their speculation; for they all found it more
+advantageous to return to England in the same steamer with the officer,
+than to remain with the certainty of being put in prison for fourteen or
+twenty-eight days as rogues and vagabonds.
+
+So thoroughly well acquainted with these men are the Detective officers
+we speak of, that they frequently tell what they have been about by the
+expression of their eyes and their general manner. This process is aptly
+termed “reckoning them up.” Some days ago, two skilful officers, whose
+personal acquaintance with the swell mob is complete, were walking along
+the Strand on other business, when they saw two of the best dressed and
+best mannered of the gang enter a jeweller’s shop. They waited till they
+came out, and, on scrutinising them, were convinced, by a certain
+conscious look which they betrayed, that they had stolen something. They
+followed them, and in a few minutes something was passed from one to the
+other. The officers were convinced, challenged them with the theft, and
+succeeded in eventually convicting them of stealing two gold
+eye-glasses, and several jewelled rings. “The eye,” said our informant,
+“is the great detector. We can tell in a crowd what a swell-mobsman is
+about by the expression of his eye.”
+
+It is supposed that the number of persons who make a trade of thieving
+in London is not more than six thousand; of these, nearly two hundred
+are first-class thieves or swell mobsmen; six hundred “macemen,” and
+trade swindlers, bill-swindlers, dog-stealers, &c.; About forty
+burglars, “dancers,” “garretteers,” and other adepts with the
+skeleton-keys. The rest are pickpockets, “gonophs—” mostly young thieves
+who sneak into areas, and rob tills—and other pilferers.
+
+To detect and circumvent this fraternity, is the science of
+thief-taking. Here, it is, however, impossible to give even an imperfect
+notion of the high amount of skill, intelligence, and knowledge,
+concentrated in the character of a clever Detective Policeman. We shall
+therefore furnish the sketch in another paper.
+
+
+
+
+                     THE BALLAD OF RICHARD BURNELL.
+
+
+              From his bed rose Richard Burnell
+                At the early dawn of day,
+              Ere the bells of London City
+                Welcomed in the morn of May.
+
+              Early on that bright May morning
+                Rose the young man from his bed,
+              He, the happiest man in London,—
+                And blithely to himself he said:
+
+              “‘When the men and maids are dancing,
+                And the folk are mad with glee,
+              In the Temple’s shady gardens
+                Let me walk and talk with thee!’
+
+              “Thus my Alice spake last even,
+                Thus with trembling lips she spake,
+              And those blissful words have kept me
+                Through the live-long night awake.
+
+              “’Tis a joy beyond expression,
+                When we first, in truth, perceive
+              That the love we long have cherished
+                Will not our fond hearts deceive!
+
+              “Never dared I to confess it,
+                Deeds of homage spoke instead;
+              True love is its own revealer,
+                She must know it! oft, I said.
+
+              “All my words, and all my actions,
+                But one meaning could impart;
+              Love can love’s least sign interpret,
+                And she reads my inmost heart.
+
+              “And her good, old merchant father,
+                —Father he has been to me—
+              Saw the love growing up between us,
+                Saw—and was well-pleased to see.
+
+              “Seven years I truly served him,
+                Now my time is at an end—
+              Master is he now no longer,
+                Father will be—has been friend.
+
+              “I was left betimes an orphan,
+                Heir unto great merchant-wealth,
+              But the iron rule of kinsfolk
+                Dimmed my youth, and sapped my health.
+
+              “Death had been my early portion
+                Had not my good guardian come;
+              He, the father of my Alice,
+                And conveyed me to his home.
+
+              “Here began a new existence,
+                —Then how new the love of friends!
+              And for all the child’s afflictions,
+                Each one strove to make amends.
+
+              “Late my spring-time came, but quickly
+                Youth’s rejoicing currents run,
+              And my inner life unfolded
+               Like a flower before the sun.
+
+              “Hopes, and aims, and aspirations,
+                Grew within the growing boy;
+              Life had new interpretation;
+                Manhood brought increase of joy.
+
+              “In and over all was Alice,
+                Life-infusing, like the spring;
+              My soul’s soul! even joy without her
+                Was a poor and barren thing!
+
+              “And she spoke last eve at parting,
+                ‘When the folk are mad with glee,
+              In the Temple’s pleasant gardens
+                Let me walk and talk with thee!’
+
+              “As she spoke, her sweet voice trembled—
+                Love such tender tones can teach!
+              And those words have kept me waking,
+                And the manner of her speech!
+
+              “For such manner has deep meaning,”
+                Said young Burnell, blithe and gay;—
+              And the bells of London City
+                Pealed a welcome to the May.
+
+                     ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
+
+              Whilst the folk were mad with pleasure,
+                ’Neath the elm-tree’s vernal shade,
+              In the Temple’s quiet gardens
+                Walked the young man and the maid.
+
+              On his arm her hand was resting,
+                And her eyes were on the ground;
+              She was speaking, he was silent;
+                Not a word his tongue had found.
+
+              “Friend beloved,” she thus addressed him,
+                “I have faith, and hope in thee!
+              Thou canst do what no one else can—
+                Thou canst be a friend to me!
+
+              “Richard, we have lived together
+                All these years of happy youth;
+              Have, as sister and as brother,
+                Lived in confidence and truth.
+
+              “Thou from me hast hid no feelings,
+                Thy whole heart to me is known;
+              I—I only have kept from thee
+                One dear, little thought alone.
+
+              “Have I wronged thee in so doing,
+                Then forgive me! but give ear,
+              ’Tis to bare my heart before thee
+                That I now am with thee here.
+
+              “Well thou know’st my father loves thee;
+                ’Tis his wish that we should wed,—
+              I shame not to speak thus frankly—
+                Wish, or _will_ more justly said.
+
+              “But this cannot be, my brother,
+                Cannot be—’twere nature’s wrong!—
+              I have said so to my father,—
+                But thou know’st his will is strong.”
+
+              Not a word spake Richard Burnell;
+                Not a word came to his lips;
+              Like one tranced he stood and listened;
+                Life to him was in eclipse.
+
+              In a lower tone she murmured,
+                Murmured like a brooding dove,
+              “Know thou,—Leonard Woodvil loves me,—
+                And—that he has won my love.”
+
+              —Came a pause. The words she uttered
+                Seemed to turn him into stone,
+              Pale he stood and mute beside her,
+                And with blushes she went on.
+
+              “This is known unto my father;—
+                Leonard is well known to thee,
+              Thou hast praised him, praised him often—
+                Oh, how dear such praise to me!
+
+              “But my father, stern and stedfast,
+                Will not list to Leonard’s prayer;—
+              And ’tis only thou canst move him,—
+                Only thou so much canst dare.
+
+              “Tell my father firmly, freely,
+                That we only love each other—
+              ’Tis the truth, thou know’st it, Richard,
+                As a sister and a brother!
+
+              “Tell my father, if we wedded,
+                Thou and I, it would be guilt!—
+              Thus it is that thou canst aid us,—
+                And thou wilt—I know thou wilt!
+
+              “Yes, ’tis thus that thou must aid us,
+                And thou wilt!—I say no more!—
+              We’ve been friends, but this will make us
+                Better friends than heretofore!”
+
+              Yet some moments he was silent;
+                His good heart was well nigh broke;
+              She was blinded to his anguish;—
+                And “I will!” at length he spoke.
+
+                     ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
+
+              They were wedded. ’Twas a wedding
+                That had far and nigh renown,
+              And from morning until even
+                Rang the bells of London town.
+
+              Time went on: the good, old merchant
+                Wore a cloud upon his brow:
+              “Wherefore this?” his friends addressed him,
+                “No man should be blithe as thou!”
+
+              “In my old age I am lonely,”
+                Said the merchant; “she is gone;—
+              And young Burnell, he I nurtured,
+                He who was to me a son;
+
+              “He has left me!—I’m deserted—
+                E’en an old man feels such woe!
+              ’Twas but natural _she_ should marry,
+                But _he_ should not have served me so?
+
+              “’Twas not that which I expected!—
+                He was very dear to me,—
+              And I thought no London merchant
+                Would have stood as high as he!
+
+              “He grew very strange and moody,
+                What the cause I cannot say;—
+              And he left me when my daughter,
+                My poor Alice went away!
+
+              “This I felt a sore unkindness;—
+                Youth thinks little, feels still less!—
+              Burnell should have stayed beside me,
+                Stayed to cheer my loneliness!
+
+              “I had been a father to him,
+                He to me was like a son;
+              Young folks should have more reflection,—
+                ’Twas what _I_ could not have done!
+
+              “True, he writes me duteous letters;
+                Calls me father, tells me all
+              That in foreign parts are doing:—
+                But young people write so small,
+
+              “That I’m often forced to leave them,
+                Pleasant letters though they be,
+              Until Alice comes from Richmond,
+                Then she reads them out to me.
+
+              “Alice fain would have me with her;
+                Leonard well deserves my praise—
+              But he’s not my Richard Burnell,
+                Knows not my old wants and ways!
+
+              “No, my friends, I’ll not deny it,
+                It has cut me to the heart,
+              That the son of my adoption
+                Thus has played a cruel part!”
+
+              So the merchant mourned and murmured;
+                And all foreign charms unheeding,
+              Dwelt the lonely Richard Burnell,
+                With his bruiséd heart still bleeding.
+
+                     ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
+
+              Time went on, and in the spring-tide,
+                When the birds begun to build,
+              And the heart of all creation
+                With a vast delight was filled.
+
+              Came a letter unto Alice—
+                Then a babe lay on her breast—
+              ’Twas the first which Richard Burnell
+                Unto Alice had addressed.
+
+              Few the words which it contained,
+                But each word was like a sigh;
+              “I am sick and very lonely;—
+                Let me see thee ere I die!
+
+              “In this time of tribulation
+                Thou wilt be a friend to me:
+              Therefore in the Temple Gardens
+                Let me once more speak with thee.”
+
+              Once more in the Temple Gardens
+                Sat they ’neath the bright blue sky,
+              With the leafage thick around them,
+                And the river rolling by.
+
+              Pale and weak was Richard Burnell,
+                Gone all merely outward grace,
+              Yet the stamp of meek endurance
+                Gave sad beauty to his face.
+
+              Silent by his side sat Alice,
+                Now no word her tongue could speak,
+              All her soul was steeped in pity,
+                And large tears were on her cheek.
+
+              Burnell spake; “Within these Gardens
+                Thy commands on me were laid,
+              And although my heart was breaking
+                Yet were those commands obeyed.
+
+              “What I suffered no one knoweth,
+                Nor shall know, I proudly said,
+              And, when grew the grief too mighty,
+                Then—there was no help—I fled.
+
+              “Yes, I loved thee, long had loved thee,
+                And alone the God above,
+              He, who at that time sustained me,
+                Knows the measure of my love!
+
+              “Do not let these words displease thee;
+                Life’s sore battle will soon cease;
+              I have fallen amid the conflict,
+                But within my soul is peace.
+
+              “It has been a fiery trial,
+                But the fiercest pang is past;
+              Once more I am come amongst you—
+                Oh, stand by me at the last!
+
+              “Leonard will at times come to me,
+                And thy father, I will try
+              To be cheerful in his presence,
+                As I was in days gone by.
+
+              “Bitter had it been to leave him,
+                But in all my heart’s distress,
+              The great anguish which consumed me,
+                Seemed to swallow up the less.
+
+              “Let me go! my soul is wearied,
+                No fond heart of me has need,
+              Life has no more duties for me;—
+                I am but a broken reed!
+
+              “Let me go, ere courage faileth,
+                Gazing, gazing thus on thee!—
+              But in life’s last awful moment,
+                Alice! thou wilt stand by me!”
+
+              From her seat rose Alice Woodvil,
+                And in stedfast tones began,
+              Like a strong yet mourning angel,
+                To address the dying man.
+
+              “Not in death alone, my brother,
+                Would I aid thee in the strife,
+              I would fain be thy sustainer,
+                In the fiercer fight of life.
+
+              “With the help of God, thy spirit
+                Shall not sink an easy prey.
+              Oh, my friend, prayer is a weapon
+                Which can turn whole hosts away!
+
+              “God will aid thee! We will hold thee
+                By our love!—thou shalt not go!—
+              And from out thy wounded spirit,
+                We will pluck the thorns of woe.
+
+              “Say not life has no more duties
+                Which can claim thee! where are then,
+              All the sinners; the neglected;
+                All the weeping sons of men?
+
+              “Ah, my friend, hast thou forgotten
+                All our dreams of early days?
+              How we would instruct poor children,
+                How we would the fallen raise!
+
+              “God has not to me permitted,
+                Such great work of human love,
+              He has marked me out a lower
+                Path of duty where to move.
+
+              “But to thee, His chosen servant,
+                Is this higher lot allowed;
+              He has brought thee through deep waters,
+                Through the furnace, through the cloud;
+
+              “He has made of thee, a mourner
+                Like the Christ, that thou may’st rise,
+              To a purer height of glory,
+                Through the pangs of sacrifice!
+
+              “’Tis alone of his appointing,
+                That thy feet on thorns have trod;
+              Suffering, woe, renunciation,
+                Only bring us nearer God.
+
+              “And when nearest Him then largest
+                The enfranchised heart’s embrace:—
+              It was Christ, the man rejected,
+                Who redeemed the human race.
+
+              “Say not then thou hast no duties;—
+                Friendless outcasts on thee call,
+              And the sick and the afflicted,
+                And the children, more than all.
+
+              “Oh, my friend, rise up and follow,
+                Where the hand of God shall lead;
+              He has brought thee through affliction,
+                But to fit thee for his need!”
+
+              —Thus she spoke, and as from midnight,
+                Springs the opal-tinted morn,
+              So, within his dreary spirit,
+                A new day of life was born.
+
+              Strength sublime may rise from weakness,
+                Groans be turned to songs of praise,
+              Nor are life’s divinest labours,
+                Only told by length of days.
+
+              Young he died: but deeds of mercy,
+                Beautified his life’s short span,
+              And he left his worldly substance,
+                To complete what he began.
+
+
+
+
+                      A FEW FACTS ABOUT MATRIMONY.
+
+
+Modern science is invading all the old realms of whims and fancies,
+charms and witchcrafts, prejudices and superstitions. No kind of
+ignorance seems sacred from attack. The wise men of our generation are
+evidently bent beyond recall on finding out all things that may by
+possibility be discoverable, no matter what pains the search may impose.
+Not content with making lightning run messages, chemistry polish boots,
+and steam deliver parcels and passengers, the _savants_ are superseding
+the astrologers of old days, and the gipsies and wise women of modern
+ones, by finding out and revealing the hitherto hidden laws which rule
+that charming mystery of mysteries—that lode star of young maidens and
+gay bachelors—matrimony.
+
+In our fourteenth number we gave a description of the facts made out by
+the returns of the Registrar-General on the subject of life and death in
+London and the Country. The office of that official has some other
+duties, however, beyond that of chronicling the business of mortality
+and birth in this land of ours. There is a third great heading in his
+tables, under which there are long lists of serious looking figures, and
+they tell, not in units, or in _fews_, like the back page of a
+newspaper, but in tens of thousands, how many marriages take place in
+England. And besides the mere number of these interesting events, these
+figures reveal what are found to be the laws regulating their frequency
+and other circumstances connected with them, such as how many couples
+are joined by the costly and unusual mode of special license; how many
+by ordinary license; how many (and they are the great majority) by the
+old English fashion of “out-asking” by banns; how many by the new
+systems introduced for the union of various classes of dissenters, at
+Registrars’ offices, in registered places of worship; how many between
+Quakers and between Jews; and, beyond all these particulars, how many
+young folks, hot of heart and full of courage, take the awful plunge
+into matrimony whilst “not of full age;” how many men reject the advice
+of Sir Roger de Coverley, and marry widows; and how many widows, like
+the wife of Bath, love matrimony so well that when once released from
+its bonds they tie themselves up in them again. The history of this
+registration of marriages is soon told. This plan of recording the
+matrimonial engagements of the country commenced in 1745, when the
+marriage act came into operation. Before that date marriages were
+performed clandestinely, and by such extraordinary persons that any
+correct record of their number was impossible. “Fleet marriages” are
+thus noticed by Smollett:—“There was a band of profligate miscreants,
+the refuse of the clergy, dead to every sentiment of virtue, abandoned
+to all sense of decency and decorum, for the most part prisoners for
+debt or delinquency, and indeed the very outcasts of human society, who
+hovered about the verge of the Fleet Prison to intercept customers,
+plying like porters for employment, and performed the ceremony of
+marriage without license or question, in cellars, garrets, or alehouses,
+to the scandal of religion, and the disgrace of that order which they
+professed. The ease with which this ecclesiastical sanction was
+obtained, and the vicious disposition of those wretches open to the
+practices of fraud and corruption, were productive of polygamy,
+indigence, conjugal infidelity, prostitution, and every curse that could
+embitter the married state. A remarkable case of this nature having
+fallen under the cognizance of the Peers (in 1753) in an appeal from an
+inferior tribunal, that House ordered the judges to prepare a new Bill
+for preventing such abuses; and one was accordingly framed, under the
+auspices of Lord Hardwick, at that time Lord High Chancellor of
+England.”
+
+“It underwent a great number of alterations and amendments, which were
+not effected without violent contest and altercation; at length,
+however, it was floated through both houses on the tide of a great
+majority, and steered into the safe harbour of royal approbation.”
+
+For seventy-seven years after the passing of this bill the number of
+marriages was collected with tolerable accuracy, and published in the
+Parish Register Abstracts. No other country has so valuable an abstract
+of tables. Since that time the Registrar-General’s office has made this
+branch of our national statistics almost accurate.
+
+Premising that the documents from which our statements are derived are
+the Annual Reports of the Registrar-General, of Births, Deaths, and
+Marriages, in England, issued—not for a short term, but during the last
+six years—that the observations extend over a still longer period—we may
+proceed to cull out what appear to be the economical laws regulating
+matrimony, with any peculiarities characterising their operation amongst
+us. We would say the _general_ laws—for individual peculiarities will,
+of course, influence individual matches. One young lady will secure the
+youth of her choice by force of beauty, or by mere weight of purse;
+managing mothers will get husbands for their girls, whatever wind may
+blow, or however trade or politics may influence the less fortunate or
+less clever world. The great beauty, the great talents, and the great
+wealth are the exceptions in the lottery of life. In speaking of
+matrimonial prospects we, like the Registrar-General, mean the prospects
+of the great family of twenty millions of souls that make up the
+population of this land we live in.
+
+About a century ago, the marriages in London were under six thousand a
+year—they are now four times as many. In all the country, the increase
+has been most remarkable in the Metropolis and in Manchester. In
+particular localities the proportion is found to differ. Thus Yorkshire,
+the seat of the Woollen manufactures and of prosperous agriculturists,
+appears to be the most marrying district of all England; Lancashire and
+Cheshire, the Cotton districts, coming next; and London third.
+Staffordshire and Worcestershire, Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire
+stand next, followed by other counties more or less blessed by the
+presence of Hymen, but descending gradually till we reach the
+matrimonial zero which is found in the agricultural parts of Middlesex.
+The average annual number of weddings is about one hundred and
+twenty-three thousand. It would help a winter night’s amusement to
+decide how many pounds weight of Californian produce must be wanted for
+the rings? How many garlands of orange blossoms for the hair and bonnets
+of the brides? The probabilities of marriage, of course, vary; but the
+rule seems to hold, that about one in seventeen unmarried women, between
+the ages of fifteen and forty-five, are married in a year throughout the
+country. Marriages have their seasons. They are least numerous in
+winter, and most numerous after harvest in the December quarter; the
+births and deaths, on the contrary, are most numerous in the winter
+quarter ending in March, and least numerous in the summer quarter ending
+September. War diminishes marriages by taking great numbers of
+marriageable men away from their homes; whilst a return of peace
+increases marriages, when soldiers and sailors with small pensions are
+discharged. Trade and manufactures have also become more active in
+England on the cessation of wars, and the employment and wages thus
+induced, have contributed still more to add to the numbers of those
+entering the married state. The establishment of new, or the extension
+of old, employments promotes marriages: the cotton manufactures, the
+canals of the last century, the railways of the present day, are
+examples. Indeed, an increase of their incomes, is taken by the
+generality of the people for the beginning of perennial prosperity, and
+is followed by a multitude of marriages. There are only about fifteen
+persons married annually, for the first time, out of a thousand living.
+There are about five children born in wedlock to every marriage. The
+births now exceed the deaths in England, in about the proportion of
+three to two—three young subjects present themselves for Queen Victoria,
+in place of every two that pass away. “The number of marriages in a
+nation,” says the Registrar, “perhaps fluctuates independently of
+external causes; but it is a fair deduction from the facts, that the
+marriage returns in England point to periods of prosperity, little less
+distinctly than the funds measure the hopes and fears of the money
+market. If the one is the barometer of credit, the other is the
+barometer of prosperity—a prosperity partly in possession, and still
+more in hope.” The year 1845 was a great matrimonial year, the
+proportion of persons married being more than had been known in England
+for ninety years before. It was a season of great speculation, activity,
+and temporary prosperity. Three years before, in 1842, on the contrary,
+there was a great diminution in the number of weddings. It was a year of
+difficulty and high prices. Rather more than ten per cent. of the
+persons married in 1845, had been married more than once. When food is
+dear, as in 1839, marriages are few; as food becomes cheap, as in 1845,
+marriages are many. When a cheap food year indicates a year of “marrying
+and giving in marriage,” another sign is generally found; the price of
+consols indicates a condition of national affairs much more conducive to
+matrimonial arrangements, than young ladies would imagine. In what may
+be called the great English matrimonial period, the three per cents.
+were about par, instead of being about 88, as they were in the
+unfavourable season a short time before. When employment is plenty,
+trade active, and money _easy_, Doctors Commons becomes brisk, clergymen
+have long lists of banns to declare, and the Registrar’s column of
+marriages fills up.
+
+As an instance of the influence of the price of food and want of
+employment upon the number of marriages, let us take an illustration
+from the Registrar as to the period from 1792 to 1798. The weather was
+bad, the funds low, and bread excessively dear, and upon particular
+districts a change of fashion made the burthen fall with still
+additional weight. The “Church and King” riots broke out in July, 1791,
+in Birmingham; and the mob burnt Dr. Priestley’s library, several
+houses, and some dissenting chapels; in May, 1792, they again rose, but
+the magistrates this time evinced some vigour, and put a stop to the
+outrages. A staple manufacture of Birmingham had been subject to one of
+the mutations of fashion, which caused great distress; for it is
+recorded, that, on December 21st, 1791, “several respectable
+buckle-manufacturers from Birmingham, Walsall, and Wolverhampton, waited
+upon His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, with a petition setting
+forth the distressed situation of thousands in the different branches of
+the buckle manufacture, from the fashion now, and for some time back, so
+prevalent, of wearing shoe-strings instead of buckles. His Royal
+Highness graciously promised his utmost assistance by his example and
+influence.” After the recovery of George III. from his first illness, in
+1789, an immense number of buckles were manufactured about Birmingham;
+Walsall among other places invested the greater part of its available
+wealth in the speculation. The king unfortunately went in the state
+procession to St. Paul’s without buckles: and Walsall was nearly ruined.
+Shoe-strings gradually supplied the place of straps. The effect of this
+freak of fashion and speculation on the marriages of Birmingham was to
+reduce them most seriously; and it had probably more to do with the
+licentious Birmingham riots, than the more patent political agitation of
+the day. The disuse of wigs, buckles, buttons, and leather breeches at
+the close of the eighteenth century, is supposed to have affected the
+business of a million of people. In 1765, the peace of London had been
+disturbed by the periwig-makers, who went in procession to petition the
+young king, “submitting to His Majesty’s goodness and wisdom, whether
+his own example was not the only means of rescuing them from their
+distress, as far as it was occasioned by so many people wearing their
+own hair.” When change of fashions influence unfavourably the employment
+of the people, and when, at the same time, influenced or increased by
+lack of work, their poverty increases, matrimony is at a discount. It is
+not simply the poorer classes, dependent on weekly wages for their
+support, who feel the influence of times of business activity, and allow
+it to impel them to matrimony. When the workman is busy, the trader
+makes profits, the landlord gets his rents, and all sections of the
+community feel the beneficial influence of a prosperous season. The
+number of those persons entirely removed from such social sympathies is
+very few; indeed, as a great rule, when the workmen are prosperous, all
+classes above them are thriving too: and when the one section of the
+great English family is influenced to matrimony in an unusual degree,
+the others feel the influence of the same law. When the reaction, a
+period of depression, arrives, the number of marriages declines, but
+they have never fallen back to their original numbers. A time of
+prosperity lifts up the total in a remarkable manner, and when the happy
+time ceases, the number falls—but not equal to the level from which it
+sprung. It is to a certain degree a permanent increase.
+
+As to the mode in which marriages are performed, it appears that nine
+out of ten take place according to the rites of the established church.
+The marriages by banns are about six times as numerous as those by
+license. Upon these weddings, by aid of Doctors Commons, there is, it
+seems, a vast sum of money spent; but who are the lucky men receiving
+it, does not appear very clearly, and the services they render for the
+cash is still more doubtful. There are about eighteen thousand licenses
+granted by Doctors Commons and by country surrogates every year. The
+usual cost of the license at Doctors Commons is 2_l._ 12_s._ 6_d._ There
+is 10_s._ 6_d._ additional for minors; and in the country, surrogates,
+it is said, obtain higher fees. At only 2_l._ 12_s._ 6_d._, the tax on
+eighteen thousand licenses is 47,250_l._ a year. The stamps on each
+license are 12_s._ 6_d._ Deducting this sum, the licenses to marry yield
+at least 36,000_l._ a year. The expense of granting licenses in a manner
+the most useful and convenient to the public would not be considerable;
+and it is not easy to see why the surplus revenue derivable from the
+tax, should not go into the public treasury, when a portion of the
+expenses of the registration of births, deaths, and marriages, is paid
+out of the Consolidated Fund. The aggregate amount of charges for the
+General Register Office, at which all the returns of the country are
+examined, indexed, and analysed, and the Act is administered, was
+13,794_l._ in 1846; and the six hundred and twenty-one superintendent
+registrars received 9097_l._ for examining certified copies. After
+discharging the expenses of the civil registration, defrayed by the
+Consolidated Fund, and the cost of the decennial census, a large surplus
+would be left, out of 47,250_l._ for licenses, to go to the public
+revenue of the country. And this would not interfere in the slightest
+degree with the marriage fees; which would continue to be paid to the
+officiating clergy. In the places of worship registered by Dissenters,
+there were not quite ten thousand marriages in one year; nearly four
+thousand in the same year took place in the Superintendant Registrar’s
+offices; one hundred and eighty-four according to the rites of the Jews;
+and seventy-four marriages between Quakers. The only fortuneteller who
+can henceforth be believed, is the one who answers the question, “When
+will the wedding take place?” by saying, “When trade flourishes, and
+when bread is cheap.”
+
+
+
+
+                                 CHIPS.
+
+                       FROM MR. THOMAS BOVINGTON.
+
+
+                                               Long Hornets, June, 1850.
+
+ SIR,
+
+I want to ask you a few questions, Mr. Conductor. In the first
+place—What am I to do with my beasts? Those I got back from Smithfield,
+after two months’ care and no small expense, have come round again, and
+I’ve got a few others ready for market; but _what_ market? Country
+markets don’t suit me, for I can’t get my price at them; and, as you
+know, I would rather kill the cattle myself than send them to
+Smithfield.
+
+Again,—What is the Royal Commission about? They have reported against
+Smithfield, and why don’t Government shut it up? Isn’t there Islington?
+Everything is ready there to open a market to-morrow. I can answer for
+that, for I was there yesterday and went over it. I inquired
+particularly about the drainage, for, if you remember, Brumpton told me
+they could not drain it. Well, perhaps they could not very conveniently
+when he was last there, but now they tell me that a thousand pounds
+would do the entire job. I’ll tell you how:—You see the market stands
+about fifty-one feet above the Trinity highwater mark of the Thames.
+Well, close by, in the Southgate road, there is a new sewer, that runs
+into a regular system of sewers which drain Hoxton, Spitalfields, and
+all that part down to London bridge—and the cattle market being eighteen
+feet above the level of the Southgate sewer, it will only be requisite
+to cut a culvert into it, for the entire space to be drained out and
+out.
+
+Now, my last question is this: Why don’t the people belonging to the
+Islington market make the necessary sewer at once? If they did, what
+excuse could government have for not shutting up Smithfield, and moving
+the cattle market to Islington?
+
+                                               I am, Sir,
+                                                   Yours to command,
+                                                           T. BOVINGTON.
+
+
+
+
+                        THE OLD CHURCHYARD TREE.
+
+                             A PROSE POEM.
+
+
+There is an old yew tree which stands by the wall in a dark quiet corner
+of the churchyard.
+
+And a child was at play beneath its wide-spreading branches, one fine
+day in the early spring. He had his lap full of flowers, which the
+fields and lanes had supplied him with, and he was humming a tune to
+himself as he wove them into garlands.
+
+And a little girl at play among the tombstones crept near to listen; but
+the boy was so intent upon his garland, that he did not hear the gentle
+footsteps, as they trod softly over the fresh green grass. When his work
+was finished, and all the flowers that were in his lap were woven
+together in one long wreath, he started up to measure its length upon
+the ground, and then he saw the little girl, as she stood with her eyes
+fixed upon him. He did not move or speak, but thought to himself that
+she looked very beautiful as she stood there with her flaxen ringlets
+hanging down upon her neck. The little girl was so startled by his
+sudden movement, that she let fall all the flowers she had collected in
+her apron, and ran away as fast as she could. But the boy was older and
+taller than she, and soon caught her, and coaxed her to come back and
+play with him, and help him to make more garlands; and from that time
+they saw each other nearly every day, and became great friends.
+
+Twenty years passed away. Again, he was seated beneath the old yew tree
+in the churchyard.
+
+It was summer now; bright, beautiful summer, with the birds singing, and
+the flowers covering the ground, and scenting the air with their
+perfume.
+
+But he was not alone now, nor did the little girl steal near on tiptoe,
+fearful of being heard. She was seated by his side, and his arm was
+round her, and she looked up into his face, and smiled as she whispered:
+“The first evening of our lives we were ever together was passed here:
+we will spend the first evening of our wedded life in the same quiet,
+happy place.” And he drew her closer to him as she spoke.
+
+The summer is gone; and the autumn; and twenty more summers and autumns
+have passed away since that evening, in the old churchyard.
+
+A young man, on a bright moonlight night, comes reeling through the
+little white gate, and stumbling over the graves. He shouts and he
+sings, and is presently followed by others like unto himself, or worse.
+So, they all laugh at the dark solemn head of the yew tree, and throw
+stones up at the place where the moon has silvered the boughs.
+
+Those same boughs are again silvered by the moon, and they droop over
+his mother’s grave. There is a little stone which bears this
+inscription:-
+
+                     “HER HEART BRAKE IN SILENCE.”
+
+But the silence of the churchyard is now broken by a voice—not of the
+youth—nor a voice of laughter and ribaldry.
+
+“My son!—dost thou see this grave? and dost thou read the record in
+anguish, whereof may come repentance?”
+
+“Of what should I repent?” answers the son; “and why should my young
+ambition for fame relax in its strength because my mother was old and
+weak?”
+
+“Is this indeed our son?” says the father, bending in agony over the
+grave of his beloved.
+
+“I can well believe I am not;” exclaimeth the youth. “It is well that
+you have brought me here to say so. Our natures are unlike; our courses
+must be opposite. Your way lieth here—mine yonder!”
+
+So the son left the father kneeling by the grave.
+
+Again a few years are passed. It is winter, with a roaring wind and a
+thick grey fog. The graves in the Churchyard are covered with snow, and
+there are great icicles in the Church-porch. The wind now carries a
+swathe of snow along the tops of the graves, as though the “sheeted
+dead” were at some melancholy play; and hark! the icicles fall with a
+crash and jingle, like a solemn mockery of the echo of the unseemly
+mirth of one who is now coming to his final rest.
+
+There are two graves near the old yew tree; and the grass has overgrown
+them. A third is close by; and the dark earth at each side has just been
+thrown up. The bearers come; with a heavy pace they move along; the
+coffin heaveth up and down, as they step over the intervening graves.
+
+Grief and old age had seized upon the father, and worn out his life; and
+premature decay soon seized upon the son, and gnawed away his vain
+ambition, and his useless strength, till he prayed to be borne, not the
+way yonder that was most opposite to his father and his mother, but even
+the same way they had gone—the way which leads to the Old Churchyard
+Tree.
+
+
+
+
+                            SABBATH PARIAHS.
+
+
+We are overwhelmed with “Chips” from letter-writers, letter-senders,
+letter-receivers, letter-sorters, and post-office clerks. Our own office
+has become a post-office. It would seem as if all the letters that ought
+to have been written for delivery on several previous Sundays in the
+ordinary course, and by the agency of the great establishment in St.
+Martin’s-le-Grand, have only not been indited in order that we might be
+the sufferers. Doubtless, the other channels of public information have
+equally received in the course of each week the surplus of what would
+have been, but for the Plumptre and Ashley obstruction, Sunday letters.
+The public are in arms, and every arm has a pen at the end; every pen is
+dipped in the blackest ink of indignation, or is tinged with the milder
+tint of remonstrance.
+
+Our most desperate remonstrants are provincial post-office clerks; for
+it would appear that Lord Ashley’s outcasts from Sunday society have a
+worse chance of being received into it now than ever. Their labours are
+in many cases so heavy on Saturday nights, that they are obliged to lie
+in bed during the whole of church time on Sunday, to recover from their
+fatigues.
+
+We select one from the heap, for publication. The writer gives a clear
+account of the hardships of a provincial post-office clerk before he was
+relieved from Sunday duty by the Royal mandate.
+
+  “Sir,
+
+  “For three years I was what you are pleased to call in your article on
+  the ‘Sunday Screw’ a Post-Office Pariah, at an office in a most
+  ‘corresponding’ town; my Sunday duties were as follows:—at four I
+  rose, sorted my letters and newspapers, delivered them to the
+  messengers, sorted and stamped (both sides) the letters for the
+  cross-country mails, swept out and dusted the place, then I went to my
+  room again, had a nap, rose, washed, and dressed in my best; I came
+  down to breakfast at eight, took a walk, till Church time, and amused
+  myself till five in the afternoon, when I attended at the office and
+  received letters till half-past six.
+
+  “I usually attended divine service; at eight I sorted and stamped the
+  letters and dispatched the mails; at nine I had done my work; all this
+  I did myself and never dreamed of being assisted. The rush of business
+  is now, I understand, so great on the arrival of the Saturday
+  afternoon mails, that every assistant and Post-Office clerk will wish
+  Lord Ashley safely imprisoned in the Whited Sepulchres.
+
+                                                “Your, very obediently,
+                                                            “EX-PARIAH.”
+
+Judging from the tone in which the earnest remonstrances from all kinds
+of people that pile our tables are couched, we fear that, during the
+last few Sundays, the bulk of the disappointed public in the provinces
+has benefited very little by the change in a moral point of view.
+Vexation has, we fear, taken the place of that religious, calm, and
+beneficent state of mind in which the Sabbath ought to be passed. The
+object, therefore, of the promoters of the measure—increased veneration
+for the first day of the week—has failed; for of course their whole and
+sole object in the affair has been the furtherance of the cause of
+religion, and not a desire to get quits with Mr. Rowland Hill for the
+calm, manly, triumphant manner in which he caused truth to vanquish them
+in the recent agitation on the same question.
+
+
+
+
+                                 DUST;
+                         OR UGLINESS REDEEMED.
+
+
+On a murky morning in November, wind north-east, a poor old woman with a
+wooden leg was seen struggling against the fitful gusts of the bitter
+breeze, along a stony zigzag road full of deep and irregular cart-ruts.
+Her ragged petticoat was blue, and so was her wretched nose. A stick was
+in her left hand, which assisted her to dig and hobble her way along;
+and in her other hand, supported also beneath her withered arm, was a
+large rusty iron sieve. Dust and fine ashes filled up all the wrinkles
+in her face; and of these there were a prodigious number, for she was
+eighty-three years old. Her name was Peg Dotting.
+
+About a quarter of a mile distant, having a long ditch and a broken-down
+fence as a foreground, there rose against the muddled-grey sky, a huge
+Dust-heap of a dirty black colour,—being, in fact, one of those immense
+mounds of cinders, ashes, and other emptyings from dust-holes and bins,
+which have conferred celebrity on certain suburban neighbourhoods of a
+great city. Towards this dusky mountain old Peg Dotting was now making
+her way.
+
+Advancing towards the Dust-heap by an opposite path, very narrow and
+just reclaimed from the mud by a thick layer of freshly broken flints,
+there came at the same time Gaffer Doubleyear, with his bone-bag slung
+over his shoulder. The rags of his coat fluttered in the east-wind,
+which also whistled keenly round his almost rimless hat, and troubled
+his one eye. The other eye, having met with an accident last week, he
+had covered neatly with an oyster-shell, which was kept in its place by
+a string at each side, fastened through a hole. He used no staff to help
+him along, though his body was nearly bent double, so that his face was
+constantly turned to the earth, like that of a four-footed creature. He
+was ninety-seven years of age.
+
+As these two patriarchal labourers approached the great Dust-heap, a
+discordant voice hallooed to them from the top of a broken wall. It was
+meant as a greeting of the morning, and proceeded from little Jem
+Clinker, a poor deformed lad whose back had been broken when a child.
+His nose and chin were much too large for the rest of his face, and he
+had lost nearly all his teeth from premature decay. But he had an eye
+gleaming with intelligence and life, and an expression at once patient
+and hopeful. He had balanced his misshapen frame on the top of the old
+wall, over which one shrivelled leg dangled, as if by the weight of a
+hob-nailed boot that covered a foot large enough for a ploughman.
+
+In addition to his first morning’s salutation of his two aged friends,
+he now shouted out in a tone of triumph and self-gratulation, in which
+he felt assured of their sympathy—“Two white skins, and a tor’shell-un.”
+
+It may be requisite to state that little Jem Clinker belonged to the
+dead-cat department of the Dust-heap, and now announced that a prize of
+three skins, in superior condition, had rewarded him for being first in
+the field. He was enjoying a seat on the wall in order to recover
+himself from the excitement of his good fortune.
+
+At the base of the great Dust-heap the two old people now met their
+young friend—a sort of great-grandson by mutual adoption—and they at
+once joined the party who had by this time assembled as usual, and were
+already busy at their several occupations.
+
+But besides all these, another individual, belonging to a very different
+class, formed a part of the scene, though appearing only on its
+outskirts. A canal ran along at the rear of the Dust-heap, and on the
+banks of its opposite side, slowly wandered by—with hands clasped and
+hanging down in front of him, and eyes bent vacantly upon his hands—the
+forlorn figure of a man in a very shabby great-coat, which had evidently
+once belonged to one in the position of a gentleman. And to a gentleman
+it still belonged—but in _what_ a position? A scholar, a man of wit, of
+high sentiment, of refinement, and a good fortune withal—now by a sudden
+“turn of law” bereft of the last only, and finding that none of the
+rest, for which (having his fortune) he had been so much admired,
+enabled him to gain a livelihood. His title-deeds had been lost or
+stolen, and so he was bereft of everything he possessed. He had talents,
+and such as would have been profitably available had he known how to use
+them for this new purpose; but he did not; he was misdirected; he made
+fruitless efforts, in his want of experience; and he was now starving.
+As he passed the great Dust-heap, he gave one vague, melancholy gaze
+that way, and then looked wistfully into the canal. And he continued to
+look into the canal as he slowly moved along, till he was out of sight.
+
+A Dust-heap of this kind is often worth thousands of pounds. The present
+one was very large and very valuable. It was in fact a large hill, and
+being in the vicinity of small suburb cottages, it rose above them like
+a great black mountain. Thistles, groundsel, and rank grass grew in
+knots on small parts which had remained for a long time undisturbed;
+crows often alighted on its top, and seemed to put on their spectacles
+and become very busy and serious; flocks of sparrows often made
+predatory descents upon it; an old goose and gander might sometimes be
+seen following each other up its side, nearly midway; pigs routed round
+its base,—and, now and then, one bolder than the rest would venture some
+way up, attracted by the mixed odours of some hidden marrow-bone
+enveloped in a decayed cabbage-leaf—a rare event, both of these articles
+being unusual oversights of the Searchers below.
+
+The principal ingredient of all these Dust-heaps is fine cinders and
+ashes; but as they are accumulated from the contents of all the
+dust-holes and bins of the vicinity, and as many more as possible, the
+fresh arrivals in their original state present very heterogeneous
+materials. We cannot better describe them, than by presenting a brief
+sketch of the different departments of the Searchers and Sorters, who
+are assembled below to busy themselves upon the mass of original matters
+which are shot out from the carts of the dustmen.
+
+The bits of coal, the pretty numerous results of accident and servants’
+carelessness, are picked out, to be sold forthwith; the largest and best
+of the cinders are also selected, by another party, who sell them to
+laundresses, or to braziers (for whose purposes coke would not do so
+well); and the next sort of cinders, called the _breeze_, because it is
+left after the wind has blown the finer cinders through an upright
+sieve, is sold to the brickmakers.
+
+Two other departments, called the “software” and the “hard-ware,” are
+very important. The former includes all vegetable and animal
+matters—everything that will decompose. These are selected and bagged at
+once, and carried off as soon as possible, to be sold as manure for
+ploughed land, wheat, barley, &c. Under this head, also, the dead cats
+are comprised. They are, generally, the perquisites of the women
+searchers. Dealers come to the wharf, or dust-field, every evening; they
+give sixpence for a white cat, fourpence for a coloured cat, and for a
+black one according to her quality. The “hard-ware” includes all broken
+pottery,—pans, crockery, earthenware, oyster-shells, &c., which are sold
+to make new roads.
+
+“The bones” are selected with care, and sold to the soap-boiler. He
+boils out the fat and marrow first, for special use, and the bones are
+then crushed and sold for manure.
+
+Of “rags,” the woollen rags are bagged and sent off for hop-manure; the
+white linen rags are washed, and sold to make paper, &c.
+
+The “tin things” are collected and put into an oven with a grating at
+the bottom, so that the solder which unites the parts melts, and runs
+through into a receiver. This is sold separately; the detached pieces of
+tin are then sold to be melted up with old iron, &c.
+
+Bits of old brass, lead, &c., are sold to be melted up separately, or in
+the mixture of ores.
+
+All broken glass vessels, as cruets, mustard-pots, tumblers,
+wine-glasses, bottles, &c., are sold to the old-glass shops.
+
+As for any articles of jewellery,—silver spoons, forks, thimbles, or
+other plate and valuables, they are pocketed off-hand by the first
+finder. Coins of gold and silver are often found, and many “coppers.”
+
+Meantime, everybody is hard at work near the base of the great
+Dust-heap. A certain number of cart-loads having been raked and searched
+for all the different things just described, the whole of it now
+undergoes the process of sifting. The men throw up the stuff, and the
+women sift it.
+
+“When I was a young girl,” said Peg Dotting—
+
+“That’s a long while ago, Peggy,” interrupted one of the sifters: but
+Peg did not hear her.
+
+“When I was quite a young thing,” continued she, addressing old John
+Doubleyear, who threw up the dust into her sieve, “it was the fashion to
+wear pink roses in the shoes, as bright as that morsel of ribbon Sally
+has just picked out of the dust; yes, and sometimes in the hair, too, on
+one side of the head, to set off the white powder and salve-stuff. I
+never wore one of these head-dresses myself—don’t throw up the dust so
+high, John—but I lived only a few doors lower down from those as _did_.
+Don’t throw up the dust so high, I tell ’ee—the wind takes it into my
+face.”
+
+“Ah! There! What’s that?” suddenly exclaimed little Jem, running, as
+fast as his poor withered legs would allow him, towards a fresh heap,
+which had just been shot down on the wharf from a dustman’s cart. He
+made a dive and a search—then another—then one deeper still. “I’m _sure_
+I saw it!” cried he, and again made a dash with both hands into a fresh
+place, and began to distribute the ashes and dust and rubbish on every
+side, to the great merriment of all the rest.
+
+“What did you see, Jemmy?” asked old Doubleyear, in a compassionate
+tone.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know,” said the boy, “only it was like a bit of something
+made of real gold!”
+
+A fresh burst of laughter from the company assembled followed this
+somewhat vague declaration, to which the dustmen added one or two
+elegant epithets, expressive of their contempt of the notion that _they_
+could have overlooked a bit of anything valuable in the process of
+emptying sundry dust-holes, and carting them away.
+
+“Ah,” said one of the sifters, “poor Jem’s always a-fancying something
+or other good—but it never comes.”
+
+“Didn’t I find three cats this morning!” cried Jem, “two on ’em white
+’uns! How you go on!”
+
+“I meant something quite different from the like o’ that,” said the
+other; “I was a-thinking of the rare sights all you three there have
+had, one time and another.”
+
+The wind having changed and the day become bright, the party at work all
+seemed disposed to be more merry than usual. The foregoing remark
+excited the curiosity of several of the sifters, who had recently joined
+the “company,” the parties alluded to were requested to favour them with
+the recital; and though the request was made with only a half-concealed
+irony, still it was all in good-natured pleasantry, and was immediately
+complied with. Old Doubleyear spoke first.
+
+“I had a bad night of it with the rats some years ago—they run’d all
+over the floor, and over the bed, and one on ’em come’d and guv a squeak
+close into my ear—so I couldn’t sleep comfortable. I wouldn’t ha’ minded
+a trifle of it; but this was too much of a good thing. So, I got up
+before sun-rise, and went out for a walk; and thinking I might as well
+be near our work-place, I slowly come’d down this way. I worked in a
+brickfield at that time, near the canal yonder. The sun was just arising
+up behind the Dust-heap as I got in sight of it; and soon it rose above,
+and was very bright; and though I had two eyes then, I was obligated to
+shut them both. When I opened them again, the sun was higher up; but in
+his haste to get over the Dust-heap, he had dropped something. You may
+laugh. I say he had dropped something. Well—I can’t say what it was, in
+course—a bit of his-self, I suppose. It was just like him—a bit on him,
+I mean—quite as bright—just the same—only not so big. And not up in the
+sky, but a-lying and sparkling all on fire upon the Dust-heap. Thinks
+I—I was a younger man then by some years than I am now—I’ll go and have
+a nearer look. Though you be a bit o’ the sun, maybe you won’t hurt a
+poor man. So, I walked towards the Dust-heap, and up I went, keeping the
+piece of sparkling fire in sight all the while. But before I got up to
+it, the sun went behind a cloud—and as he went out-like, so the young
+’un he had dropped, went out arter him. And I had my climb up the heap
+for nothing, though I had marked the place vere it lay very percizely.
+But there was no signs at all on him, and no morsel left of the light as
+had been there. I searched all about; but found nothing ’cept a bit o’
+broken glass as had got stuck in the heel of an old shoe. And that’s my
+story. But if ever a man saw anything at all, I saw a bit o’ the sun;
+and I thank God for it. It was a blessed sight for a poor ragged old man
+of three score and ten, which was my age at that time.”
+
+“Now, Peggy!” cried several voices, “tell us what you saw. Peg saw a bit
+o’ the moon.”
+
+“No,” said Mrs. Dotting, rather indignantly; “I’m no moon-raker. Not a
+sign of the moon was there, nor a spark of a star—the time I speak on.”
+
+“Well—go on, Peggy—go on.”
+
+“I don’t know as I will,” said Peggy.
+
+But being pacified by a few good-tempered, though somewhat humorous,
+compliments, she thus favoured them with her little adventure.
+
+“There was no moon, nor stars, nor comet, in the ’versal heavens, nor
+lamp nor lantern along the road, when I walked home one winter’s night
+from the cottage of Widow Pin, where I had been to tea, with her and
+Mrs. Dry, as lived in the almshouses. They wanted Davy, the son of Bill
+Davy the milkman, to see me home with the lantern, but I wouldn’t let
+him ’cause of his sore throat. Throat!—no, it wasn’t his throat as was
+rare sore—it was—no, it wasn’t—yes, it was—it was his toe as was sore.
+His big toe. A nail out of his boot had got into it. I _told_ him he’d
+be sure to have a bad toe, if he didn’t go to church more regular, but
+he wouldn’t listen; and so my words come’d true. But, as I was a-saying,
+I wouldn’t let him light me with the lantern by reason of his sore
+throat—_toe_, I mean—and as I went along, the night seemed to grow
+darker and darker. A straight road, though, and I was so used to it by
+day-time, it didn’t matter for the darkness. Hows’ever, when I come’d
+near the bottom of the Dust-heap as I had to pass, the great dark heap
+was so zackly the same as the night, you couldn’t tell one from t’other.
+So, thinks I to myself—_what_ was I thinking of at this moment?—for the
+life o’ me I can’t call it to mind; but that’s neither here nor there,
+only for this,—it was a something that led me to remember the story of
+how the devil goes about like a roaring lion. And while I was a-hoping
+he might not be out a roaring that night, what should I see rise out of
+one side of the Dust-heap, but a beautiful shining star of a violet
+colour. I stood as still—as stock-still as any I don’t-know-what! There
+it lay, as beautiful as a new-born babe, all a-shining in the dust! By
+degrees I got courage to go a little nearer—and then a little nearer
+still—for, says I to myself, I’m a sinful woman, I know, but I have
+repented, and do repent constantly of all the sins of my youth, and the
+backslidings of my age—which have been numerous; and once I had a very
+heavy back-sliding—but that’s neither here nor there. So, as I was
+a-saying, having collected all my sinfulness of life, and humbleness
+before heaven, into a goodish bit of courage, forward I steps—a little
+furder—and a leetle furder more—_un_-til I come’d just up to the
+beautiful shining star lying upon the dust. Well, it was a long time I
+stood a-looking down at it, before I ventured to do, what I arterwards
+did. But _at_ last I did stoop down with both hands slowly—in case it
+might burn, or bite—and gathering up a good scoop of ashes as my hands
+went along, I took it up, and began a-carrying it home, all shining
+before me, and with a soft blue mist rising up round about it. Heaven
+forgive me!—I was punished for meddling with what Providence had sent
+for some better purpose than to be carried home by an old woman like me,
+whom it has pleased heaven to afflict with the loss of one leg, and the
+pain, expanse, and inconvenience of a wooden one. Well—I _was_ punished;
+covetousness had its reward; for, presently, the violet light got very
+pale, and then went out; and when I reached home, still holding in both
+hands all I had gathered up, and when I took it to the candle, it had
+turned into the red shell of a lobsky’s head, and its two black eyes
+poked up at me with a long stare,—and I may say, a strong smell,
+too,—enough to knock a poor body down.”
+
+Great applause, and no little laughter, followed the conclusion of old
+Peggy’s story, but she did not join in the merriment. She said it was
+all very well for young folks to laugh, but at her age she had enough to
+do to pray; and she had never said so many prayers, nor with so much
+fervency, as she had done since she received the blessed sight of the
+blue star on the Dust-heap, and the chastising rod of the lobster’s head
+at home.
+
+Little Jem’s turn now came; the poor lad was, however, so excited by the
+recollection of what his companions called “Jem’s Ghost,” that he was
+unable to describe it in any coherent language. To his imagination it
+had been a lovely vision,—the one “bright consummate flower” of his
+life, which he treasured up as the most sacred image in his heart. He
+endeavoured, in wild and hasty words, to set forth, how that he had been
+bred a chimney-sweep; that one Sunday afternoon he had left a set of
+companions, most on ’em sweeps, who were all playing at marbles in the
+churchyard, and he had wandered to the Dust-heap, where he had fallen
+asleep; that he was awoke by a sweet voice in the air, which said
+something about some one having lost her way!—that he, being now wide
+awake, looked up, and saw with his own eyes a young Angel, with fair
+hair and rosy cheeks, and large white wings at her shoulders, floating
+about like bright clouds, rise out of the Dust! She had on a garment of
+shining crimson, which changed as he looked upon her to shining gold,
+then to purple and gold. She then exclaimed, with a joyful smile, “I see
+the right way!” and the next moment the Angel was gone!
+
+As the sun was just now very bright and warm for the time of year, and
+shining full upon the Dust-heap in its setting, one of the men
+endeavoured to raise a laugh at the deformed lad, by asking him if he
+didn’t expect to see just such another angel at this minute, who had
+lost her way in the field on the other side of the heap; but his jest
+failed. The earnestness and devout emotion of the boy to the vision of
+reality which his imagination, aided by the hues of sunset, had thus
+exalted, were too much for the gross spirit of banter, and the speaker
+shrunk back into his dust-shovel, and affected to be very assiduous in
+his work as the day was drawing to a close.
+
+Before the day’s work was ended, however, little Jem again had a glimpse
+of the prize which had escaped him on the previous occasion. He
+instantly darted, hands and head foremost into the mass of cinders and
+rubbish, and brought up a black mash of half-burnt parchment, entwined
+with vegetable refuse, from which he speedily disengaged an oval frame
+of gold, containing a miniature, still protected by its glass, but half
+covered with mildew from the damp. He was in ecstasies at the prize.
+Even the white cat-skins paled before it. In all probability some of the
+men would have taken it from him “to try and find the owner,” but for
+the presence and interference of his friends Peg Dotting and old
+Doubleyear, whose great age, even among the present company, gave them a
+certain position of respect and consideration. So all the rest now went
+their way, leaving the three to examine and speculate on the prize.
+
+These Dust-heaps are a wonderful compound of things. A banker’s cheque
+for a considerable sum was found in one of them. It was on Herries and
+Farquhar, in 1847. But banker’s cheques, or gold and silver articles,
+are the least valuable of their ingredients. Among other things, a
+variety of useful chemicals are extracted. Their chief value, however,
+is for the making of bricks. The fine cinder-dust and ashes are used in
+the clay of the bricks, both for the red and grey stacks. Ashes are also
+used as fuel between the layers of the clump of bricks, which could not
+be burned in that position without them. The ashes burn away, and keep
+the bricks open. Enormous quantities are used. In the brickfields at
+Uxbridge, near the Drayton Station, one of the brickmakers alone will
+frequently contract for fifteen or sixteen thousand chaldron of this
+cinder-dust, in one order. Fine coke or coke-dust, affects the market at
+times as a rival; but fine coal, or coal-dust, never, because it would
+spoil the bricks.
+
+As one of the heroes of our tale had been originally—before his
+promotion—a chimney-sweeper, it may be only appropriate to offer a
+passing word on the genial subject of soot. Without speculating on its
+origin and parentage, whether derived from the cooking of a Christmas
+dinner, or the production of the beautiful colours and odours of exotic
+plants in a conservatory, it can briefly be shown to possess many
+qualities both useful and ornamental.
+
+When soot is first collected, it is called “rough soot,” which, being
+sifted, is then called “fine soot,” and is sold to farmers for manuring
+and preserving wheat and turnips. This is more especially used in
+Herefordshire, Bedfordshire, Essex, &c. It is rather a costly article,
+being fivepence per bushel. One contractor sells annually as much as
+three thousand bushels; and he gives it as his opinion, that there must
+be at least one hundred and fifty times this quantity (four hundred and
+fifty thousand bushels per annum) sold in London. Farmer Smutwise, of
+Bradford, distinctly asserts that the price of the soot he uses on his
+land is returned to him in the straw, with improvement also to the
+grain. And we believe him. Lime is used to dilute soot when employed as
+a manure. Using it pure will keep off snails, slugs, and caterpillars,
+from peas and various other vegetables, as also from dahlias just
+shooting up, and other flowers; but we regret to add that we have
+sometimes known it kill, or burn up, the things it was intended to
+preserve from unlawful eating. In short, it is by no means so safe to
+use for any purpose of garden manure, as fine cinders and wood-ashes,
+which are good for almost any kind of produce, whether turnips or roses.
+Indeed, we should like to have one fourth or fifth part of our
+garden-beds composed of excellent stuff of this kind. From all that has
+been said, it will have become very intelligible why these Dust-heaps
+are so valuable. Their worth, however, varies not only with their
+magnitude (the quality of all of them is much the same), but with the
+demand. About the year 1820, the Marylebone Dust-heap produced between
+four thousand and five thousand pounds. In 1832, St. George’s paid Mr.
+Stapleton five hundred pounds a year, not to leave the Heap standing,
+but to carry it away. Of course he was only too glad to be paid highly
+for selling his Dust.
+
+But to return. The three friends having settled to their satisfaction
+the amount of money they should probably obtain by the sale of the
+golden miniature-frame, and finished the castles which they had built
+with it in the air, the frame was again enfolded in the sound part of
+the parchment, the rags and rottenness of the law were cast away, and up
+they rose to bend their steps homeward to the little hovel where Peggy
+lived, she having invited the others to tea that they might talk yet
+more fully over the wonderful good luck that had befallen them.
+
+“Why, if there isn’t a man’s head in the canal!” suddenly cried little
+Jem. “Looky there!—isn’t that a man’s head?—Yes; it’s a drowndedd man?”
+
+“A drowndedd man, as I live!” ejaculated old Doubleyear.
+
+“Let’s get him out, and see!” cried Peggy. “Perhaps the poor soul’s not
+quite gone.”
+
+Little Jem scuttled off to the edge of the canal, followed by the two
+old people. As soon as the body had floated nearer, Jem got down into
+the water, and stood breast-high, vainly measuring his distance with one
+arm out, to see if he could reach some part of the body as it was
+passing. As the attempt was evidently without a chance, old Doubleyear
+managed to get down into the water behind him, and holding him by one
+hand, the boy was thus enabled to make a plunge forward as the body was
+floating by. He succeeded in reaching it; but the jerk was too much for
+the weakness of his aged companion, who was pulled forwards into the
+canal. A loud cry burst from both of them, which was yet more loudly
+echoed by Peggy on the bank. Doubleyear and the boy were now struggling
+almost in the middle of the canal with the body of the man swirling
+about between them. They would inevitably have been drowned, had not old
+Peggy caught up a long dust-rake that was close at hand—scrambled down
+up to her knees in the canal—clawed hold of the struggling group with
+the teeth of the rake, and fairly brought the whole to land. Jem was
+first up the bank, and helped up his two heroic companions; after which,
+with no small difficulty, they contrived to haul the body of the
+stranger out of the water. Jem at once recognised in him the forlorn
+figure of the man who had passed by in the morning, looking so sadly
+into the canal, as he walked along.
+
+It is a fact well known to those who work in the vicinity of these great
+Dust-heaps, that when the ashes have been warmed by the sun, cats and
+kittens that have been taken out of the canal and buried a few inches
+beneath the surface, have usually revived; and the same has often
+occurred in the case of men. Accordingly the three, without a moment’s
+hesitation, dragged the body along to the Dust-heap, where they made a
+deep trench, in which they placed it, covering it all over up to the
+neck.
+
+“There now,” ejaculated Peggy, sitting down with a long puff to recover
+her breath, “he’ll lie very comfortable, whether or no.”
+
+“Couldn’t lie better,” said old Doubleyear, “even if he knew it.”
+
+The three now seated themselves close by, to await the result.
+
+“I thought I’d a lost him,” said Jem, “and myself too; and when I pulled
+Daddy in arter me, I guv us all three up for this world.”
+
+“Yes,” said Doubleyear, “it must have gone queer with us if Peggy had
+not come in with the rake. How d’ yee feel, old girl; for you’ve had a
+narrow escape too. I wonder we were not too heavy for you, and so pulled
+you in to go with us.”
+
+“The Lord be praised!” fervently ejaculated Peggy, pointing towards the
+pallid face that lay surrounded with ashes. A convulsive twitching
+passed over the features, the lips trembled, the ashes over the breast
+heaved, and a low moaning sound, which might have come from the bottom
+of the canal, was heard. Again the moaning sound, and then the eyes
+opened, but closed almost immediately. “Poor dear soul!” whispered
+Peggy, “how he suffers in surviving. Lift him up a little. Softly. Don’t
+be afeared. We’re only your good angels, like—only poor
+cinder-sifters—don’tee be afeared.”
+
+By various kindly attentions and manœuvres such as these poor people had
+been accustomed to practise on those who were taken out of the canal,
+the unfortunate gentleman was gradually brought to his senses. He gazed
+about him, as well he might—now looking in the anxious, though begrimed,
+faces of the three strange objects, all in their “weeds” and dust—and
+then up at the huge Dust-heap, over which the moon was now slowly
+rising.
+
+“Land of quiet Death!” murmured he, faintly, “or land of Life, as dark
+and still—I have passed from one into the other; but which of ye I am
+now in, seems doubtful to my senses.”
+
+“Here we are, poor gentleman,” cried Peggy, “here we are, all friends
+about you. How did ’ee tumble into the canal?”
+
+“The Earth, then, once more!” said the stranger, with a deep sigh. “I
+know where I am, now. I remember this great dark hill of ashes—like
+Death’s kingdom, full of all sorts of strange things, and put to many
+uses.”
+
+“Where do you live?” asked Old Doubleyear; “shall we try and take you
+home, Sir?”
+
+The stranger shook his head mournfully. All this time, little Jem had
+been assiduously employed in rubbing his feet and then his hands; in
+doing which the piece of dirty parchment, with the miniature-frame,
+dropped out of his breast-pocket. A good thought instantly struck Peggy.
+
+“Run, Jemmy dear—run with that golden thing to Mr. Spikechin, the
+pawnbroker’s—get something upon it directly, and buy some nice
+brandy—and some Godfrey’s cordial—and a blanket, Jemmy—and call a coach,
+and get up outside on it, and make the coachee drive back here as fast
+as you can.”
+
+But before Jemmy could attend to this, Mr. Waterhouse, the stranger
+whose life they had preserved, raised himself on one elbow, and extended
+his hand to the miniature-frame. Directly he looked at it, he raised
+himself higher up—turned it about once or twice—then caught up the piece
+of parchment, and uttering an ejaculation, which no one could have
+distinguished either as of joy or of pain, sank back fainting.
+
+In brief, this parchment was a portion of the title-deeds he had lost;
+and though it did not prove sufficient to enable him to recover his
+fortune, it brought his opponent to a composition, which gave him an
+annuity for life. Small as this was, he determined that these poor
+people, who had so generously saved his life at the risk of their own,
+should be sharers in it. Finding that what they most desired was to have
+a cottage in the neighbourhood of the Dust-heap, built large enough for
+all three to live together, and keep a cow, Mr. Waterhouse paid a visit
+to Manchester Square, where the owner of the property resided. He told
+his story, as far as was needful, and proposed to purchase the field in
+question.
+
+The great Dust-Contractor was much amused, and his daughter—a very
+accomplished young lady—was extremely interested. So the matter was
+speedily arranged to the satisfaction and pleasure of all parties. The
+acquaintance, however, did not end here. Mr. Waterhouse renewed his
+visits very frequently, and finally made proposals for the young lady’s
+hand, she having already expressed her hopes of a propitious answer from
+her father.
+
+“Well, Sir,” said the latter, “you wish to marry my daughter, and she
+wishes to marry you. You are a gentleman and a scholar, but you have no
+money. My daughter is what you see, and she has no money. But I have;
+and therefore, as she likes you, and I like you, I’ll make you both an
+offer. I will give my daughter twenty thousand pounds,—or you shall have
+the Dust-heap. Choose!”
+
+Mr. Waterhouse was puzzled and amused, and referred the matter entirely
+to the young lady. But she was for having the money, and no trouble. She
+said the Dust-heap might be worth much, but they did not understand the
+business. “Very well,” said her father, laughing, “then, there’s the
+money.”
+
+This was the identical Dust-heap, as we know from authentic information,
+which was subsequently sold for forty thousand pounds, and was exported
+to Russia to rebuild Moscow.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+                Monthly Supplement of ‘HOUSEHOLD WORDS,’
+                     Conducted by CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+                       _Price 2d., Stamped 3d._,
+
+                        THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE
+                                   OF
+                            CURRENT EVENTS.
+
+        _The Number, containing a history of the past month, was
+                      issued with the Magazines._
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Published at the Office, No 16, Wellington Street North, Strand.
+            Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+
+ ● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
+ ● Renumbered footnotes.
+ ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
+ ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a
+     single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in
+     1^{st}).
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78181 ***