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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sketches by Boz, by Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Sketches by Boz
+       illustrative of everyday life and every-day people
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 6, 2009  [eBook #882]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKETCHES BY BOZ***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1903 Chapman and Hall edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                             SKETCHES BY BOZ
+
+
+                      Illustrative of Every-Day Life
+                           and Every-Day People
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                            By CHARLES DICKENS
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+           _With Illustrations by George Cruickshank and Phiz_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                       LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
+                    NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+                                   1903
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The whole of these Sketches were written and published, one by one, when
+I was a very young man.  They were collected and republished while I was
+still a very young man; and sent into the world with all their
+imperfections (a good many) on their heads.
+
+They comprise my first attempts at authorship--with the exception of
+certain tragedies achieved at the mature age of eight or ten, and
+represented with great applause to overflowing nurseries.  I am conscious
+of their often being extremely crude and ill-considered, and bearing
+obvious marks of haste and inexperience; particularly in that section of
+the present volume which is comprised under the general head of Tales.
+
+But as this collection is not originated now, and was very leniently and
+favourably received when it was first made, I have not felt it right
+either to remodel or expunge, beyond a few words and phrases here and
+there.
+
+
+
+
+OUR PARISH
+
+
+CHAPTER I--THE BEADLE.  THE PARISH ENGINE.  THE SCHOOLMASTER
+
+
+How much is conveyed in those two short words--'The Parish!'  And with
+how many tales of distress and misery, of broken fortune and ruined
+hopes, too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery, are
+they associated!  A poor man, with small earnings, and a large family,
+just manages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day
+to day; he has barely sufficient to satisfy the present cravings of
+nature, and can take no heed of the future.  His taxes are in arrear,
+quarter-day passes by, another quarter-day arrives: he can procure no
+more quarter for himself, and is summoned by--the parish.  His goods are
+distrained, his children are crying with cold and hunger, and the very
+bed on which his sick wife is lying, is dragged from beneath her.  What
+can he do?  To whom is he to apply for relief?  To private charity?  To
+benevolent individuals?  Certainly not--there is his parish.  There are
+the parish vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish
+officers, the parish beadle.  Excellent institutions, and gentle,
+kind-hearted men.  The woman dies--she is buried by the parish.  The
+children have no protector--they are taken care of by the parish.  The
+man first neglects, and afterwards cannot obtain, work--he is relieved by
+the parish; and when distress and drunkenness have done their work upon
+him, he is maintained, a harmless babbling idiot, in the parish asylum.
+
+The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps _the_ most, important
+member of the local administration.  He is not so well off as the
+churchwardens, certainly, nor is he so learned as the vestry-clerk, nor
+does he order things quite so much his own way as either of them.  But
+his power is very great, notwithstanding; and the dignity of his office
+is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it.
+The beadle of our parish is a splendid fellow.  It is quite delightful to
+hear him, as he explains the state of the existing poor laws to the deaf
+old women in the board-room passage on business nights; and to hear what
+he said to the senior churchwarden, and what the senior churchwarden said
+to him; and what 'we' (the beadle and the other gentlemen) came to the
+determination of doing.  A miserable-looking woman is called into the
+boardroom, and represents a case of extreme destitution, affecting
+herself--a widow, with six small children.  'Where do you live?' inquires
+one of the overseers.  'I rents a two-pair back, gentlemen, at Mrs.
+Brown's, Number 3, Little King William's-alley, which has lived there
+this fifteen year, and knows me to be very hard-working and industrious,
+and when my poor husband was alive, gentlemen, as died in the
+hospital'--'Well, well,' interrupts the overseer, taking a note of the
+address, 'I'll send Simmons, the beadle, to-morrow morning, to ascertain
+whether your story is correct; and if so, I suppose you must have an
+order into the House--Simmons, go to this woman's the first thing
+to-morrow morning, will you?'  Simmons bows assent, and ushers the woman
+out.  Her previous admiration of 'the board' (who all sit behind great
+books, and with their hats on) fades into nothing before her respect for
+her lace-trimmed conductor; and her account of what has passed inside,
+increases--if that be possible--the marks of respect, shown by the
+assembled crowd, to that solemn functionary.  As to taking out a summons,
+it's quite a hopeless case if Simmons attends it, on behalf of the
+parish.  He knows all the titles of the Lord Mayor by heart; states the
+case without a single stammer: and it is even reported that on one
+occasion he ventured to make a joke, which the Lord Mayor's head footman
+(who happened to be present) afterwards told an intimate friend,
+confidentially, was almost equal to one of Mr. Hobler's.
+
+See him again on Sunday in his state-coat and cocked-hat, with a
+large-headed staff for show in his left hand, and a small cane for use in
+his right.  How pompously he marshals the children into their places! and
+how demurely the little urchins look at him askance as he surveys them
+when they are all seated, with a glare of the eye peculiar to beadles!
+The churchwardens and overseers being duly installed in their curtained
+pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket, erected expressly for him
+at the top of the aisle, and divides his attention between his
+prayer-book and the boys.  Suddenly, just at the commencement of the
+communion service, when the whole congregation is hushed into a profound
+silence, broken only by the voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny
+is heard to ring on the stone floor of the aisle with astounding
+clearness.  Observe the generalship of the beadle.  His involuntary look
+of horror is instantly changed into one of perfect indifference, as if he
+were the only person present who had not heard the noise.  The artifice
+succeeds.  After putting forth his right leg now and then, as a feeler,
+the victim who dropped the money ventures to make one or two distinct
+dives after it; and the beadle, gliding softly round, salutes his little
+round head, when it again appears above the seat, with divers double
+knocks, administered with the cane before noticed, to the intense delight
+of three young men in an adjacent pew, who cough violently at intervals
+until the conclusion of the sermon.
+
+Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity of a parish beadle--a
+gravity which has never been disturbed in any case that has come under
+our observation, except when the services of that particularly useful
+machine, a parish fire-engine, are required: then indeed all is bustle.
+Two little boys run to the beadle as fast as their legs will carry them,
+and report from their own personal observation that some neighbouring
+chimney is on fire; the engine is hastily got out, and a plentiful supply
+of boys being obtained, and harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle
+over the pavement, the beadle, running--we do not exaggerate--running at
+the side, until they arrive at some house, smelling strongly of soot, at
+the door of which the beadle knocks with considerable gravity for
+half-an-hour.  No attention being paid to these manual applications, and
+the turn-cock having turned on the water, the engine turns off amidst the
+shouts of the boys; it pulls up once more at the work-house, and the
+beadle 'pulls up' the unfortunate householder next day, for the amount of
+his legal reward.  We never saw a parish engine at a regular fire but
+once.  It came up in gallant style--three miles and a half an hour, at
+least; there was a capital supply of water, and it was first on the spot.
+Bang went the pumps--the people cheered--the beadle perspired profusely;
+but it was unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to put the
+fire out, that nobody understood the process by which the engine was
+filled with water; and that eighteen boys, and a man, had exhausted
+themselves in pumping for twenty minutes, without producing the slightest
+effect!
+
+The personages next in importance to the beadle, are the master of the
+workhouse and the parish schoolmaster.  The vestry-clerk, as everybody
+knows, is a short, pudgy little man, in black, with a thick gold
+watch-chain of considerable length, terminating in two large seals and a
+key.  He is an attorney, and generally in a bustle; at no time more so,
+than when he is hurrying to some parochial meeting, with his gloves
+crumpled up in one hand, and a large red book under the other arm.  As to
+the churchwardens and overseers, we exclude them altogether, because all
+we know of them is, that they are usually respectable tradesmen, who wear
+hats with brims inclined to flatness, and who occasionally testify in
+gilt letters on a blue ground, in some conspicuous part of the church, to
+the important fact of a gallery having being enlarged and beautified, or
+an organ rebuilt.
+
+The master of the workhouse is not, in our parish--nor is he usually in
+any other--one of that class of men the better part of whose existence
+has passed away, and who drag out the remainder in some inferior
+situation, with just enough thought of the past, to feel degraded by, and
+discontented with the present.  We are unable to guess precisely to our
+own satisfaction what station the man can have occupied before; we should
+think he had been an inferior sort of attorney's clerk, or else the
+master of a national school--whatever he was, it is clear his present
+position is a change for the better.  His income is small certainly, as
+the rusty black coat and threadbare velvet collar demonstrate: but then
+he lives free of house-rent, has a limited allowance of coals and
+candles, and an almost unlimited allowance of authority in his petty
+kingdom.  He is a tall, thin, bony man; always wears shoes and black
+cotton stockings with his surtout; and eyes you, as you pass his
+parlour-window, as if he wished you were a pauper, just to give you a
+specimen of his power.  He is an admirable specimen of a small tyrant:
+morose, brutish, and ill-tempered; bullying to his inferiors, cringing to
+his superiors, and jealous of the influence and authority of the beadle.
+
+Our schoolmaster is just the very reverse of this amiable official.  He
+has been one of those men one occasionally hears of, on whom misfortune
+seems to have set her mark; nothing he ever did, or was concerned in,
+appears to have prospered.  A rich old relation who had brought him up,
+and openly announced his intention of providing for him, left him
+10,000_l._ in his will, and revoked the bequest in a codicil.  Thus
+unexpectedly reduced to the necessity of providing for himself, he
+procured a situation in a public office.  The young clerks below him,
+died off as if there were a plague among them; but the old fellows over
+his head, for the reversion of whose places he was anxiously waiting,
+lived on and on, as if they were immortal.  He speculated and lost.  He
+speculated again and won--but never got his money.  His talents were
+great; his disposition, easy, generous and liberal.  His friends profited
+by the one, and abused the other.  Loss succeeded loss; misfortune
+crowded on misfortune; each successive day brought him nearer the verge
+of hopeless penury, and the quondam friends who had been warmest in their
+professions, grew strangely cold and indifferent.  He had children whom
+he loved, and a wife on whom he doted.  The former turned their backs on
+him; the latter died broken-hearted.  He went with the stream--it had
+ever been his failing, and he had not courage sufficient to bear up
+against so many shocks--he had never cared for himself, and the only
+being who had cared for him, in his poverty and distress, was spared to
+him no longer.  It was at this period that he applied for parochial
+relief.  Some kind-hearted man who had known him in happier times,
+chanced to be churchwarden that year, and through his interest he was
+appointed to his present situation.
+
+He is an old man now.  Of the many who once crowded round him in all the
+hollow friendship of boon-companionship, some have died, some have fallen
+like himself, some have prospered--all have forgotten him.  Time and
+misfortune have mercifully been permitted to impair his memory, and use
+has habituated him to his present condition.  Meek, uncomplaining, and
+zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold his
+situation long beyond the usual period; and he will no doubt continue to
+hold it, until infirmity renders him incapable, or death releases him.
+As the grey-headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny side of the
+little court-yard between school hours, it would be difficult, indeed,
+for the most intimate of his former friends to recognise their once gay
+and happy associate, in the person of the Pauper Schoolmaster.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE CURATE.  THE OLD LADY.  THE HALF-PAY CAPTAIN
+
+
+We commenced our last chapter with the beadle of our parish, because we
+are deeply sensible of the importance and dignity of his office.  We will
+begin the present, with the clergyman.  Our curate is a young gentleman
+of such prepossessing appearance, and fascinating manners, that within
+one month after his first appearance in the parish, half the young-lady
+inhabitants were melancholy with religion, and the other half, desponding
+with love.  Never were so many young ladies seen in our parish church on
+Sunday before; and never had the little round angels' faces on Mr.
+Tomkins's monument in the side aisle, beheld such devotion on earth as
+they all exhibited.  He was about five-and-twenty when he first came to
+astonish the parishioners.  He parted his hair on the centre of his
+forehead in the form of a Norman arch, wore a brilliant of the first
+water on the fourth finger of his left hand (which he always applied to
+his left cheek when he read prayers), and had a deep sepulchral voice of
+unusual solemnity.  Innumerable were the calls made by prudent mammas on
+our new curate, and innumerable the invitations with which he was
+assailed, and which, to do him justice, he readily accepted.  If his
+manner in the pulpit had created an impression in his favour, the
+sensation was increased tenfold, by his appearance in private circles.
+Pews in the immediate vicinity of the pulpit or reading-desk rose in
+value; sittings in the centre aisle were at a premium: an inch of room in
+the front row of the gallery could not be procured for love or money; and
+some people even went so far as to assert, that the three Miss Browns,
+who had an obscure family pew just behind the churchwardens', were
+detected, one Sunday, in the free seats by the communion-table, actually
+lying in wait for the curate as he passed to the vestry!  He began to
+preach extempore sermons, and even grave papas caught the infection.  He
+got out of bed at half-past twelve o'clock one winter's night, to
+half-baptise a washerwoman's child in a slop-basin, and the gratitude of
+the parishioners knew no bounds--the very churchwardens grew generous,
+and insisted on the parish defraying the expense of the watch-box on
+wheels, which the new curate had ordered for himself, to perform the
+funeral service in, in wet weather.  He sent three pints of gruel and a
+quarter of a pound of tea to a poor woman who had been brought to bed of
+four small children, all at once--the parish were charmed.  He got up a
+subscription for her--the woman's fortune was made.  He spoke for one
+hour and twenty-five minutes, at an anti-slavery meeting at the Goat and
+Boots--the enthusiasm was at its height.  A proposal was set on foot for
+presenting the curate with a piece of plate, as a mark of esteem for his
+valuable services rendered to the parish.  The list of subscriptions was
+filled up in no time; the contest was, not who should escape the
+contribution, but who should be the foremost to subscribe.  A splendid
+silver inkstand was made, and engraved with an appropriate inscription;
+the curate was invited to a public breakfast, at the before-mentioned
+Goat and Boots; the inkstand was presented in a neat speech by Mr.
+Gubbins, the ex-churchwarden, and acknowledged by the curate in terms
+which drew tears into the eyes of all present--the very waiters were
+melted.
+
+One would have supposed that, by this time, the theme of universal
+admiration was lifted to the very pinnacle of popularity.  No such thing.
+The curate began to cough; four fits of coughing one morning between the
+Litany and the Epistle, and five in the afternoon service.  Here was a
+discovery--the curate was consumptive.  How interestingly melancholy!  If
+the young ladies were energetic before, their sympathy and solicitude now
+knew no bounds.  Such a man as the curate--such a dear--such a perfect
+love--to be consumptive!  It was too much.  Anonymous presents of
+black-currant jam, and lozenges, elastic waistcoats, bosom friends, and
+warm stockings, poured in upon the curate until he was as completely
+fitted out with winter clothing, as if he were on the verge of an
+expedition to the North Pole: verbal bulletins of the state of his health
+were circulated throughout the parish half-a-dozen times a day; and the
+curate was in the very zenith of his popularity.
+
+About this period, a change came over the spirit of the parish.  A very
+quiet, respectable, dozing old gentleman, who had officiated in our
+chapel-of-ease for twelve years previously, died one fine morning,
+without having given any notice whatever of his intention.  This
+circumstance gave rise to counter-sensation the first; and the arrival of
+his successor occasioned counter-sensation the second.  He was a pale,
+thin, cadaverous man, with large black eyes, and long straggling black
+hair: his dress was slovenly in the extreme, his manner ungainly, his
+doctrines startling; in short, he was in every respect the antipodes of
+the curate.  Crowds of our female parishioners flocked to hear him; at
+first, because he was _so_ odd-looking, then because his face was _so_
+expressive, then because he preached _so_ well; and at last, because they
+really thought that, after all, there was something about him which it
+was quite impossible to describe.  As to the curate, he was all very
+well; but certainly, after all, there was no denying that--that--in
+short, the curate wasn't a novelty, and the other clergyman was.  The
+inconstancy of public opinion is proverbial: the congregation migrated
+one by one.  The curate coughed till he was black in the face--it was in
+vain.  He respired with difficulty--it was equally ineffectual in
+awakening sympathy.  Seats are once again to be had in any part of our
+parish church, and the chapel-of-ease is going to be enlarged, as it is
+crowded to suffocation every Sunday!
+
+The best known and most respected among our parishioners, is an old lady,
+who resided in our parish long before our name was registered in the list
+of baptisms.  Our parish is a suburban one, and the old lady lives in a
+neat row of houses in the most airy and pleasant part of it.  The house
+is her own; and it, and everything about it, except the old lady herself,
+who looks a little older than she did ten years ago, is in just the same
+state as when the old gentleman was living.  The little front parlour,
+which is the old lady's ordinary sitting-room, is a perfect picture of
+quiet neatness; the carpet is covered with brown Holland, the glass and
+picture-frames are carefully enveloped in yellow muslin; the table-covers
+are never taken off, except when the leaves are turpentined and
+bees'-waxed, an operation which is regularly commenced every other
+morning at half-past nine o'clock--and the little nicknacks are always
+arranged in precisely the same manner.  The greater part of these are
+presents from little girls whose parents live in the same row; but some
+of them, such as the two old-fashioned watches (which never keep the same
+time, one being always a quarter of an hour too slow, and the other a
+quarter of an hour too fast), the little picture of the Princess
+Charlotte and Prince Leopold as they appeared in the Royal Box at Drury
+Lane Theatre, and others of the same class, have been in the old lady's
+possession for many years.  Here the old lady sits with her spectacles
+on, busily engaged in needlework--near the window in summer time; and if
+she sees you coming up the steps, and you happen to be a favourite, she
+trots out to open the street-door for you before you knock, and as you
+must be fatigued after that hot walk, insists on your swallowing two
+glasses of sherry before you exert yourself by talking.  If you call in
+the evening you will find her cheerful, but rather more serious than
+usual, with an open Bible on the table, before her, of which 'Sarah,' who
+is just as neat and methodical as her mistress, regularly reads two or
+three chapters in the parlour aloud.
+
+The old lady sees scarcely any company, except the little girls before
+noticed, each of whom has always a regular fixed day for a periodical
+tea-drinking with her, to which the child looks forward as the greatest
+treat of its existence.  She seldom visits at a greater distance than the
+next door but one on either side; and when she drinks tea here, Sarah
+runs out first and knocks a double-knock, to prevent the possibility of
+her 'Missis's' catching cold by having to wait at the door.  She is very
+scrupulous in returning these little invitations, and when she asks Mr.
+and Mrs. So-and-so, to meet Mr. and Mrs. Somebody-else, Sarah and she
+dust the urn, and the best china tea-service, and the Pope Joan board;
+and the visitors are received in the drawing-room in great state.  She
+has but few relations, and they are scattered about in different parts of
+the country, and she seldom sees them.  She has a son in India, whom she
+always describes to you as a fine, handsome fellow--so like the profile
+of his poor dear father over the sideboard, but the old lady adds, with a
+mournful shake of the head, that he has always been one of her greatest
+trials; and that indeed he once almost broke her heart; but it pleased
+God to enable her to get the better of it, and she would prefer your
+never mentioning the subject to her again.  She has a great number of
+pensioners: and on Saturday, after she comes back from market, there is a
+regular levee of old men and women in the passage, waiting for their
+weekly gratuity.  Her name always heads the list of any benevolent
+subscriptions, and hers are always the most liberal donations to the
+Winter Coal and Soup Distribution Society.  She subscribed twenty pounds
+towards the erection of an organ in our parish church, and was so
+overcome the first Sunday the children sang to it, that she was obliged
+to be carried out by the pew-opener.  Her entrance into church on Sunday
+is always the signal for a little bustle in the side aisle, occasioned by
+a general rise among the poor people, who bow and curtsey until the
+pew-opener has ushered the old lady into her accustomed seat, dropped a
+respectful curtsey, and shut the door: and the same ceremony is repeated
+on her leaving church, when she walks home with the family next door but
+one, and talks about the sermon all the way, invariably opening the
+conversation by asking the youngest boy where the text was.
+
+Thus, with the annual variation of a trip to some quiet place on the
+sea-coast, passes the old lady's life.  It has rolled on in the same
+unvarying and benevolent course for many years now, and must at no
+distant period be brought to its final close.  She looks forward to its
+termination, with calmness and without apprehension.  She has everything
+to hope and nothing to fear.
+
+A very different personage, but one who has rendered himself very
+conspicuous in our parish, is one of the old lady's next-door neighbours.
+He is an old naval officer on half-pay, and his bluff and unceremonious
+behaviour disturbs the old lady's domestic economy, not a little.  In the
+first place, he _will_ smoke cigars in the front court, and when he wants
+something to drink with them--which is by no means an uncommon
+circumstance--he lifts up the old lady's knocker with his walking-stick,
+and demands to have a glass of table ale, handed over the rails.  In
+addition to this cool proceeding, he is a bit of a Jack of all trades, or
+to use his own words, 'a regular Robinson Crusoe;' and nothing delights
+him better than to experimentalise on the old lady's property.  One
+morning he got up early, and planted three or four roots of full-grown
+marigolds in every bed of her front garden, to the inconceivable
+astonishment of the old lady, who actually thought when she got up and
+looked out of the window, that it was some strange eruption which had
+come out in the night.  Another time he took to pieces the eight-day
+clock on the front landing, under pretence of cleaning the works, which
+he put together again, by some undiscovered process, in so wonderful a
+manner, that the large hand has done nothing but trip up the little one
+ever since.  Then he took to breeding silk-worms, which he _would_ bring
+in two or three times a day, in little paper boxes, to show the old lady,
+generally dropping a worm or two at every visit.  The consequence was,
+that one morning a very stout silk-worm was discovered in the act of
+walking up-stairs--probably with the view of inquiring after his friends,
+for, on further inspection, it appeared that some of his companions had
+already found their way to every room in the house.  The old lady went to
+the seaside in despair, and during her absence he completely effaced the
+name from her brass door-plate, in his attempts to polish it with
+aqua-fortis.
+
+But all this is nothing to his seditious conduct in public life.  He
+attends every vestry meeting that is held; always opposes the constituted
+authorities of the parish, denounces the profligacy of the churchwardens,
+contests legal points against the vestry-clerk, will make the
+tax-gatherer call for his money till he won't call any longer, and then
+he sends it: finds fault with the sermon every Sunday, says that the
+organist ought to be ashamed of himself, offers to back himself for any
+amount to sing the psalms better than all the children put together, male
+and female; and, in short, conducts himself in the most turbulent and
+uproarious manner.  The worst of it is, that having a high regard for the
+old lady, he wants to make her a convert to his views, and therefore
+walks into her little parlour with his newspaper in his hand, and talks
+violent politics by the hour.  He is a charitable, open-hearted old
+fellow at bottom, after all; so, although he puts the old lady a little
+out occasionally, they agree very well in the main, and she laughs as
+much at each feat of his handiwork when it is all over, as anybody else.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--THE FOUR SISTERS
+
+
+The row of houses in which the old lady and her troublesome neighbour
+reside, comprises, beyond all doubt, a greater number of characters
+within its circumscribed limits, than all the rest of the parish put
+together.  As we cannot, consistently with our present plan, however,
+extend the number of our parochial sketches beyond six, it will be better
+perhaps, to select the most peculiar, and to introduce them at once
+without further preface.
+
+The four Miss Willises, then, settled in our parish thirteen years ago.
+It is a melancholy reflection that the old adage, 'time and tide wait for
+no man,' applies with equal force to the fairer portion of the creation;
+and willingly would we conceal the fact, that even thirteen years ago the
+Miss Willises were far from juvenile.  Our duty as faithful parochial
+chroniclers, however, is paramount to every other consideration, and we
+are bound to state, that thirteen years since, the authorities in
+matrimonial cases, considered the youngest Miss Willis in a very
+precarious state, while the eldest sister was positively given over, as
+being far beyond all human hope.  Well, the Miss Willises took a lease of
+the house; it was fresh painted and papered from top to bottom: the paint
+inside was all wainscoted, the marble all cleaned, the old grates taken
+down, and register-stoves, you could see to dress by, put up; four trees
+were planted in the back garden, several small baskets of gravel
+sprinkled over the front one, vans of elegant furniture arrived, spring
+blinds were fitted to the windows, carpenters who had been employed in
+the various preparations, alterations, and repairs, made confidential
+statements to the different maid-servants in the row, relative to the
+magnificent scale on which the Miss Willises were commencing; the
+maid-servants told their 'Missises,' the Missises told their friends, and
+vague rumours were circulated throughout the parish, that No. 25, in
+Gordon-place, had been taken by four maiden ladies of immense property.
+
+At last, the Miss Willises moved in; and then the 'calling' began.  The
+house was the perfection of neatness--so were the four Miss Willises.
+Everything was formal, stiff, and cold--so were the four Miss Willises.
+Not a single chair of the whole set was ever seen out of its place--not a
+single Miss Willis of the whole four was ever seen out of hers.  There
+they always sat, in the same places, doing precisely the same things at
+the same hour.  The eldest Miss Willis used to knit, the second to draw,
+the two others to play duets on the piano.  They seemed to have no
+separate existence, but to have made up their minds just to winter
+through life together.  They were three long graces in drapery, with the
+addition, like a school-dinner, of another long grace afterwards--the
+three fates with another sister--the Siamese twins multiplied by two.
+The eldest Miss Willis grew bilious--the four Miss Willises grew bilious
+immediately.  The eldest Miss Willis grew ill-tempered and religious--the
+four Miss Willises were ill-tempered and religious directly.  Whatever
+the eldest did, the others did, and whatever anybody else did, they all
+disapproved of; and thus they vegetated--living in Polar harmony among
+themselves, and, as they sometimes went out, or saw company 'in a
+quiet-way' at home, occasionally icing the neighbours.  Three years
+passed over in this way, when an unlooked for and extraordinary
+phenomenon occurred.  The Miss Willises showed symptoms of summer, the
+frost gradually broke up; a complete thaw took place.  Was it possible?
+one of the four Miss Willises was going to be married!
+
+Now, where on earth the husband came from, by what feelings the poor man
+could have been actuated, or by what process of reasoning the four Miss
+Willises succeeded in persuading themselves that it was possible for a
+man to marry one of them, without marrying them all, are questions too
+profound for us to resolve: certain it is, however, that the visits of
+Mr. Robinson (a gentleman in a public office, with a good salary and a
+little property of his own, besides) were received--that the four Miss
+Willises were courted in due form by the said Mr Robinson--that the
+neighbours were perfectly frantic in their anxiety to discover which of
+the four Miss Willises was the fortunate fair, and that the difficulty
+they experienced in solving the problem was not at all lessened by the
+announcement of the eldest Miss Willis,--'_We_ are going to marry Mr.
+Robinson.'
+
+It was very extraordinary.  They were so completely identified, the one
+with the other, that the curiosity of the whole row--even of the old lady
+herself--was roused almost beyond endurance.  The subject was discussed
+at every little card-table and tea-drinking.  The old gentleman of
+silk-worm notoriety did not hesitate to express his decided opinion that
+Mr. Robinson was of Eastern descent, and contemplated marrying the whole
+family at once; and the row, generally, shook their heads with
+considerable gravity, and declared the business to be very mysterious.
+They hoped it might all end well;--it certainly had a very singular
+appearance, but still it would be uncharitable to express any opinion
+without good grounds to go upon, and certainly the Miss Willises were
+_quite_ old enough to judge for themselves, and to be sure people ought
+to know their own business best, and so forth.
+
+At last, one fine morning, at a quarter before eight o'clock, A.M., two
+glass-coaches drove up to the Miss Willises' door, at which Mr. Robinson
+had arrived in a cab ten minutes before, dressed in a light-blue coat and
+double-milled kersey pantaloons, white neckerchief, pumps, and
+dress-gloves, his manner denoting, as appeared from the evidence of the
+housemaid at No. 23, who was sweeping the door-steps at the time, a
+considerable degree of nervous excitement.  It was also hastily reported
+on the same testimony, that the cook who opened the door, wore a large
+white bow of unusual dimensions, in a much smarter head-dress than the
+regulation cap to which the Miss Willises invariably restricted the
+somewhat excursive tastes of female servants in general.
+
+The intelligence spread rapidly from house to house.  It was quite clear
+that the eventful morning had at length arrived; the whole row stationed
+themselves behind their first and second floor blinds, and waited the
+result in breathless expectation.
+
+At last the Miss Willises' door opened; the door of the first glass-coach
+did the same.  Two gentlemen, and a pair of ladies to correspond--friends
+of the family, no doubt; up went the steps, bang went the door, off went
+the first class-coach, and up came the second.
+
+The street door opened again; the excitement of the whole row
+increased--Mr. Robinson and the eldest Miss Willis.  'I thought so,' said
+the lady at No. 19; 'I always said it was _Miss_ Willis!'--'Well, I
+never!' ejaculated the young lady at No. 18 to the young lady at No.
+17.--'Did you ever, dear!' responded the young lady at No. 17 to the
+young lady at No. 18.  'It's too ridiculous!' exclaimed a spinster of an
+_un_certain age, at No. 16, joining in the conversation.  But who shall
+portray the astonishment of Gordon-place, when Mr. Robinson handed in
+_all_ the Miss Willises, one after the other, and then squeezed himself
+into an acute angle of the glass-coach, which forthwith proceeded at a
+brisk pace, after the other glass-coach, which other glass-coach had
+itself proceeded, at a brisk pace, in the direction of the parish church!
+Who shall depict the perplexity of the clergyman, when _all_ the Miss
+Willises knelt down at the communion-table, and repeated the responses
+incidental to the marriage service in an audible voice--or who shall
+describe the confusion which prevailed, when--even after the difficulties
+thus occasioned had been adjusted--_all_ the Miss Willises went into
+hysterics at the conclusion of the ceremony, until the sacred edifice
+resounded with their united wailings!
+
+As the four sisters and Mr. Robinson continued to occupy the same house
+after this memorable occasion, and as the married sister, whoever she
+was, never appeared in public without the other three, we are not quite
+clear that the neighbours ever would have discovered the real Mrs.
+Robinson, but for a circumstance of the most gratifying description,
+which _will_ happen occasionally in the best-regulated families.  Three
+quarter-days elapsed, and the row, on whom a new light appeared to have
+been bursting for some time, began to speak with a sort of implied
+confidence on the subject, and to wonder how Mrs. Robinson--the youngest
+Miss Willis that was--got on; and servants might be seen running up the
+steps, about nine or ten o'clock every morning, with 'Missis's
+compliments, and wishes to know how Mrs. Robinson finds herself this
+morning?'  And the answer always was, 'Mrs. Robinson's compliments, and
+she's in very good spirits, and doesn't find herself any worse.'  The
+piano was heard no longer, the knitting-needles were laid aside, drawing
+was neglected, and mantua-making and millinery, on the smallest scale
+imaginable, appeared to have become the favourite amusement of the whole
+family.  The parlour wasn't quite as tidy as it used to be, and if you
+called in the morning, you would see lying on a table, with an old
+newspaper carelessly thrown over them, two or three particularly small
+caps, rather larger than if they had been made for a moderate-sized doll,
+with a small piece of lace, in the shape of a horse-shoe, let in behind:
+or perhaps a white robe, not very large in circumference, but very much
+out of proportion in point of length, with a little tucker round the top,
+and a frill round the bottom; and once when we called, we saw a long
+white roller, with a kind of blue margin down each side, the probable use
+of which, we were at a loss to conjecture.  Then we fancied that Dr.
+Dawson, the surgeon, &c., who displays a large lamp with a different
+colour in every pane of glass, at the corner of the row, began to be
+knocked up at night oftener than he used to be; and once we were very
+much alarmed by hearing a hackney-coach stop at Mrs. Robinson's door, at
+half-past two o'clock in the morning, out of which there emerged a fat
+old woman, in a cloak and night-cap, with a bundle in one hand, and a
+pair of pattens in the other, who looked as if she had been suddenly
+knocked up out of bed for some very special purpose.
+
+When we got up in the morning we saw that the knocker was tied up in an
+old white kid glove; and we, in our innocence (we were in a state of
+bachelorship then), wondered what on earth it all meant, until we heard
+the eldest Miss Willis, _in propria persona_ say, with great dignity, in
+answer to the next inquiry, '_My_ compliments, and Mrs. Robinson's doing
+as well as can be expected, and the little girl thrives wonderfully.'
+And then, in common with the rest of the row, our curiosity was
+satisfied, and we began to wonder it had never occurred to us what the
+matter was, before.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--THE ELECTION FOR BEADLE
+
+
+A great event has recently occurred in our parish.  A contest of
+paramount interest has just terminated; a parochial convulsion has taken
+place.  It has been succeeded by a glorious triumph, which the
+country--or at least the parish--it is all the same--will long remember.
+We have had an election; an election for beadle.  The supporters of the
+old beadle system have been defeated in their stronghold, and the
+advocates of the great new beadle principles have achieved a proud
+victory.
+
+Our parish, which, like all other parishes, is a little world of its own,
+has long been divided into two parties, whose contentions, slumbering for
+a while, have never failed to burst forth with unabated vigour, on any
+occasion on which they could by possibility be renewed.  Watching-rates,
+lighting-rates, paving-rates, sewer's-rates, church-rates,
+poor's-rates--all sorts of rates, have been in their turns the subjects
+of a grand struggle; and as to questions of patronage, the asperity and
+determination with which they have been contested is scarcely credible.
+
+The leader of the official party--the steady advocate of the
+churchwardens, and the unflinching supporter of the overseers--is an old
+gentleman who lives in our row.  He owns some half a dozen houses in it,
+and always walks on the opposite side of the way, so that he may be able
+to take in a view of the whole of his property at once.  He is a tall,
+thin, bony man, with an interrogative nose, and little restless perking
+eyes, which appear to have been given him for the sole purpose of peeping
+into other people's affairs with.  He is deeply impressed with the
+importance of our parish business, and prides himself, not a little, on
+his style of addressing the parishioners in vestry assembled.  His views
+are rather confined than extensive; his principles more narrow than
+liberal.  He has been heard to declaim very loudly in favour of the
+liberty of the press, and advocates the repeal of the stamp duty on
+newspapers, because the daily journals who now have a monopoly of the
+public, never give _verbatim_ reports of vestry meetings.  He would not
+appear egotistical for the world, but at the same time he must say, that
+there are _speeches_--that celebrated speech of his own, on the
+emoluments of the sexton, and the duties of the office, for
+instance--which might be communicated to the public, greatly to their
+improvement and advantage.
+
+His great opponent in public life is Captain Purday, the old naval
+officer on half-pay, to whom we have already introduced our readers.  The
+captain being a determined opponent of the constituted authorities,
+whoever they may chance to be, and our other friend being their steady
+supporter, with an equal disregard of their individual merits, it will
+readily be supposed, that occasions for their coming into direct
+collision are neither few nor far between.  They divided the vestry
+fourteen times on a motion for heating the church with warm water instead
+of coals: and made speeches about liberty and expenditure, and
+prodigality and hot water, which threw the whole parish into a state of
+excitement.  Then the captain, when he was on the visiting committee, and
+his opponent overseer, brought forward certain distinct and specific
+charges relative to the management of the workhouse, boldly expressed his
+total want of confidence in the existing authorities, and moved for 'a
+copy of the recipe by which the paupers' soup was prepared, together with
+any documents relating thereto.'  This the overseer steadily resisted; he
+fortified himself by precedent, appealed to the established usage, and
+declined to produce the papers, on the ground of the injury that would be
+done to the public service, if documents of a strictly private nature,
+passing between the master of the workhouse and the cook, were to be thus
+dragged to light on the motion of any individual member of the vestry.
+The motion was lost by a majority of two; and then the captain, who never
+allows himself to be defeated, moved for a committee of inquiry into the
+whole subject.  The affair grew serious: the question was discussed at
+meeting after meeting, and vestry after vestry; speeches were made,
+attacks repudiated, personal defiances exchanged, explanations received,
+and the greatest excitement prevailed, until at last, just as the
+question was going to be finally decided, the vestry found that somehow
+or other, they had become entangled in a point of form, from which it was
+impossible to escape with propriety.  So, the motion was dropped, and
+everybody looked extremely important, and seemed quite satisfied with the
+meritorious nature of the whole proceeding.
+
+This was the state of affairs in our parish a week or two since, when
+Simmons, the beadle, suddenly died.  The lamented deceased had
+over-exerted himself, a day or two previously, in conveying an aged
+female, highly intoxicated, to the strong room of the work-house.  The
+excitement thus occasioned, added to a severe cold, which this
+indefatigable officer had caught in his capacity of director of the
+parish engine, by inadvertently playing over himself instead of a fire,
+proved too much for a constitution already enfeebled by age; and the
+intelligence was conveyed to the Board one evening that Simmons had died,
+and left his respects.
+
+The breath was scarcely out of the body of the deceased functionary, when
+the field was filled with competitors for the vacant office, each of whom
+rested his claims to public support, entirely on the number and extent of
+his family, as if the office of beadle were originally instituted as an
+encouragement for the propagation of the human species.  'Bung for
+Beadle.  Five small children!'--'Hopkins for Beadle.  Seven small
+children!!'--'Timkins for Beadle.  Nine small children!!!'  Such were the
+placards in large black letters on a white ground, which were plentifully
+pasted on the walls, and posted in the windows of the principal shops.
+Timkins's success was considered certain: several mothers of families
+half promised their votes, and the nine small children would have run
+over the course, but for the production of another placard, announcing
+the appearance of a still more meritorious candidate.  'Spruggins for
+Beadle.  Ten small children (two of them twins), and a wife!!!'  There
+was no resisting this; ten small children would have been almost
+irresistible in themselves, without the twins, but the touching
+parenthesis about that interesting production of nature, and the still
+more touching allusion to Mrs. Spruggins, must ensure success.  Spruggins
+was the favourite at once, and the appearance of his lady, as she went
+about to solicit votes (which encouraged confident hopes of a still
+further addition to the house of Spruggins at no remote period),
+increased the general prepossession in his favour.  The other candidates,
+Bung alone excepted, resigned in despair.  The day of election was fixed;
+and the canvass proceeded with briskness and perseverance on both sides.
+
+The members of the vestry could not be supposed to escape the contagious
+excitement inseparable from the occasion.  The majority of the lady
+inhabitants of the parish declared at once for Spruggins; and the
+_quondam_ overseer took the same side, on the ground that men with large
+families always had been elected to the office, and that although he must
+admit, that, in other respects, Spruggins was the least qualified
+candidate of the two, still it was an old practice, and he saw no reason
+why an old practice should be departed from.  This was enough for the
+captain.  He immediately sided with Bung, canvassed for him personally in
+all directions, wrote squibs on Spruggins, and got his butcher to skewer
+them up on conspicuous joints in his shop-front; frightened his
+neighbour, the old lady, into a palpitation of the heart, by his awful
+denunciations of Spruggins's party; and bounced in and out, and up and
+down, and backwards and forwards, until all the sober inhabitants of the
+parish thought it inevitable that he must die of a brain fever, long
+before the election began.
+
+The day of election arrived.  It was no longer an individual struggle,
+but a party contest between the ins and outs.  The question was, whether
+the withering influence of the overseers, the domination of the
+churchwardens, and the blighting despotism of the vestry-clerk, should be
+allowed to render the election of beadle a form--a nullity: whether they
+should impose a vestry-elected beadle on the parish, to do their bidding
+and forward their views, or whether the parishioners, fearlessly
+asserting their undoubted rights, should elect an independent beadle of
+their own.
+
+The nomination was fixed to take place in the vestry, but so great was
+the throng of anxious spectators, that it was found necessary to adjourn
+to the church, where the ceremony commenced with due solemnity.  The
+appearance of the churchwardens and overseers, and the ex-churchwardens
+and ex-overseers, with Spruggins in the rear, excited general attention.
+Spruggins was a little thin man, in rusty black, with a long pale face,
+and a countenance expressive of care and fatigue, which might either be
+attributed to the extent of his family or the anxiety of his feelings.
+His opponent appeared in a cast-off coat of the captain's--a blue coat
+with bright buttons; white trousers, and that description of shoes
+familiarly known by the appellation of 'high-lows.'  There was a serenity
+in the open countenance of Bung--a kind of moral dignity in his confident
+air--an 'I wish you may get it' sort of expression in his eye--which
+infused animation into his supporters, and evidently dispirited his
+opponents.
+
+The ex-churchwarden rose to propose Thomas Spruggins for beadle.  He had
+known him long.  He had had his eye upon him closely for years; he had
+watched him with twofold vigilance for months.  (A parishioner here
+suggested that this might be termed 'taking a double sight,' but the
+observation was drowned in loud cries of 'Order!')  He would repeat that
+he had had his eye upon him for years, and this he would say, that a more
+well-conducted, a more well-behaved, a more sober, a more quiet man, with
+a more well-regulated mind, he had never met with.  A man with a larger
+family he had never known (cheers).  The parish required a man who could
+be depended on ('Hear!' from the Spruggins side, answered by ironical
+cheers from the Bung party).  Such a man he now proposed ('No,' 'Yes').
+He would not allude to individuals (the ex-churchwarden continued, in the
+celebrated negative style adopted by great speakers).  He would not
+advert to a gentleman who had once held a high rank in the service of his
+majesty; he would not say, that that gentleman was no gentleman; he would
+not assert, that that man was no man; he would not say, that he was a
+turbulent parishioner; he would not say, that he had grossly misbehaved
+himself, not only on this, but on all former occasions; he would not say,
+that he was one of those discontented and treasonable spirits, who
+carried confusion and disorder wherever they went; he would not say, that
+he harboured in his heart envy, and hatred, and malice, and all
+uncharitableness.  No!  He wished to have everything comfortable and
+pleasant, and therefore, he would say--nothing about him (cheers).
+
+The captain replied in a similar parliamentary style.  He would not say,
+he was astonished at the speech they had just heard; he would not say, he
+was disgusted (cheers).  He would not retort the epithets which had been
+hurled against him (renewed cheering); he would not allude to men once in
+office, but now happily out of it, who had mismanaged the workhouse,
+ground the paupers, diluted the beer, slack-baked the bread, boned the
+meat, heightened the work, and lowered the soup (tremendous cheers).  He
+would not ask what such men deserved (a voice, 'Nothing a-day, and find
+themselves!').  He would not say, that one burst of general indignation
+should drive them from the parish they polluted with their presence
+('Give it him!').  He would not allude to the unfortunate man who had
+been proposed--he would not say, as the vestry's tool, but as Beadle.  He
+would not advert to that individual's family; he would not say, that nine
+children, twins, and a wife, were very bad examples for pauper imitation
+(loud cheers).  He would not advert in detail to the qualifications of
+Bung.  The man stood before him, and he would not say in his presence,
+what he might be disposed to say of him, if he were absent.  (Here Mr.
+Bung telegraphed to a friend near him, under cover of his hat, by
+contracting his left eye, and applying his right thumb to the tip of his
+nose).  It had been objected to Bung that he had only five children
+('Hear, hear!' from the opposition).  Well; he had yet to learn that the
+legislature had affixed any precise amount of infantine qualification to
+the office of beadle; but taking it for granted that an extensive family
+were a great requisite, he entreated them to look to facts, and compare
+_data_, about which there could be no mistake.  Bung was 35 years of age.
+Spruggins--of whom he wished to speak with all possible respect--was 50.
+Was it not more than possible--was it not very probable--that by the time
+Bung attained the latter age, he might see around him a family, even
+exceeding in number and extent, that to which Spruggins at present laid
+claim (deafening cheers and waving of handkerchiefs)?  The captain
+concluded, amidst loud applause, by calling upon the parishioners to
+sound the tocsin, rush to the poll, free themselves from dictation, or be
+slaves for ever.
+
+On the following day the polling began, and we never have had such a
+bustle in our parish since we got up our famous anti-slavery petition,
+which was such an important one, that the House of Commons ordered it to
+be printed, on the motion of the member for the district.  The captain
+engaged two hackney-coaches and a cab for Bung's people--the cab for the
+drunken voters, and the two coaches for the old ladies, the greater
+portion of whom, owing to the captain's impetuosity, were driven up to
+the poll and home again, before they recovered from their flurry
+sufficiently to know, with any degree of clearness, what they had been
+doing.  The opposite party wholly neglected these precautions, and the
+consequence was, that a great many ladies who were walking leisurely up
+to the church--for it was a very hot day--to vote for Spruggins, were
+artfully decoyed into the coaches, and voted for Bung.  The captain's
+arguments, too, had produced considerable effect: the attempted influence
+of the vestry produced a greater.  A threat of exclusive dealing was
+clearly established against the vestry-clerk--a case of heartless and
+profligate atrocity.  It appeared that the delinquent had been in the
+habit of purchasing six penn'orth of muffins, weekly, from an old woman
+who rents a small house in the parish, and resides among the original
+settlers; on her last weekly visit, a message was conveyed to her through
+the medium of the cook, couched in mysterious terms, but indicating with
+sufficient clearness, that the vestry-clerk's appetite for muffins, in
+future, depended entirely on her vote on the beadleship.  This was
+sufficient: the stream had been turning previously, and the impulse thus
+administered directed its final course.  The Bung party ordered one
+shilling's-worth of muffins weekly for the remainder of the old woman's
+natural life; the parishioners were loud in their exclamations; and the
+fate of Spruggins was sealed.
+
+It was in vain that the twins were exhibited in dresses of the same
+pattern, and night-caps, to match, at the church door: the boy in Mrs.
+Spruggins's right arm, and the girl in her left--even Mrs. Spruggins
+herself failed to be an object of sympathy any longer.  The majority
+attained by Bung on the gross poll was four hundred and twenty-eight, and
+the cause of the parishioners triumphed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--THE BROKER'S MAN
+
+
+The excitement of the late election has subsided, and our parish being
+once again restored to a state of comparative tranquillity, we are
+enabled to devote our attention to those parishioners who take little
+share in our party contests or in the turmoil and bustle of public life.
+And we feel sincere pleasure in acknowledging here, that in collecting
+materials for this task we have been greatly assisted by Mr. Bung
+himself, who has imposed on us a debt of obligation which we fear we can
+never repay.  The life of this gentleman has been one of a very chequered
+description: he has undergone transitions--not from grave to gay, for he
+never was grave--not from lively to severe, for severity forms no part of
+his disposition; his fluctuations have been between poverty in the
+extreme, and poverty modified, or, to use his own emphatic language,
+'between nothing to eat and just half enough.'  He is not, as he forcibly
+remarks, 'one of those fortunate men who, if they were to dive under one
+side of a barge stark-naked, would come up on the other with a new suit
+of clothes on, and a ticket for soup in the waistcoat-pocket:' neither is
+he one of those, whose spirit has been broken beyond redemption by
+misfortune and want.  He is just one of the careless, good-for-nothing,
+happy fellows, who float, cork-like, on the surface, for the world to
+play at hockey with: knocked here, and there, and everywhere: now to the
+right, then to the left, again up in the air, and anon to the bottom, but
+always reappearing and bounding with the stream buoyantly and merrily
+along.  Some few months before he was prevailed upon to stand a contested
+election for the office of beadle, necessity attached him to the service
+of a broker; and on the opportunities he here acquired of ascertaining
+the condition of most of the poorer inhabitants of the parish, his
+patron, the captain, first grounded his claims to public support.  Chance
+threw the man in our way a short time since.  We were, in the first
+instance, attracted by his prepossessing impudence at the election; we
+were not surprised, on further acquaintance, to find him a shrewd,
+knowing fellow, with no inconsiderable power of observation; and, after
+conversing with him a little, were somewhat struck (as we dare say our
+readers have frequently been in other cases) with the power some men seem
+to have, not only of sympathising with, but to all appearance of
+understanding feelings to which they themselves are entire strangers.  We
+had been expressing to the new functionary our surprise that he should
+ever have served in the capacity to which we have just adverted, when we
+gradually led him into one or two professional anecdotes.  As we are
+induced to think, on reflection, that they will tell better in nearly his
+own words, than with any attempted embellishments of ours, we will at
+once entitle them.
+
+                           MR BUNG'S NARRATIVE
+
+'It's very true, as you say, sir,' Mr. Bung commenced, 'that a broker's
+man's is not a life to be envied; and in course you know as well as I do,
+though you don't say it, that people hate and scout 'em because they're
+the ministers of wretchedness, like, to poor people.  But what could I
+do, sir?  The thing was no worse because I did it, instead of somebody
+else; and if putting me in possession of a house would put me in
+possession of three and sixpence a day, and levying a distress on another
+man's goods would relieve my distress and that of my family, it can't be
+expected but what I'd take the job and go through with it.  I never liked
+it, God knows; I always looked out for something else, and the moment I
+got other work to do, I left it.  If there is anything wrong in being the
+agent in such matters--not the principal, mind you--I'm sure the
+business, to a beginner like I was, at all events, carries its own
+punishment along with it.  I wished again and again that the people would
+only blow me up, or pitch into me--that I wouldn't have minded, it's all
+in my way; but it's the being shut up by yourself in one room for five
+days, without so much as an old newspaper to look at, or anything to see
+out o' the winder but the roofs and chimneys at the back of the house, or
+anything to listen to, but the ticking, perhaps, of an old Dutch clock,
+the sobbing of the missis, now and then, the low talking of friends in
+the next room, who speak in whispers, lest "the man" should overhear
+them, or perhaps the occasional opening of the door, as a child peeps in
+to look at you, and then runs half-frightened away--it's all this, that
+makes you feel sneaking somehow, and ashamed of yourself; and then, if
+it's wintertime, they just give you fire enough to make you think you'd
+like more, and bring in your grub as if they wished it 'ud choke you--as
+I dare say they do, for the matter of that, most heartily.  If they're
+very civil, they make you up a bed in the room at night, and if they
+don't, your master sends one in for you; but there you are, without being
+washed or shaved all the time, shunned by everybody, and spoken to by no
+one, unless some one comes in at dinner-time, and asks you whether you
+want any more, in a tone as much to say, "I hope you don't," or, in the
+evening, to inquire whether you wouldn't rather have a candle, after
+you've been sitting in the dark half the night.  When I was left in this
+way, I used to sit, think, think, thinking, till I felt as lonesome as a
+kitten in a wash-house copper with the lid on; but I believe the old
+brokers' men who are regularly trained to it, never think at all.  I have
+heard some on 'em say, indeed, that they don't know how!
+
+'I put in a good many distresses in my time (continued Mr. Bung), and in
+course I wasn't long in finding, that some people are not as much to be
+pitied as others are, and that people with good incomes who get into
+difficulties, which they keep patching up day after day and week after
+week, get so used to these sort of things in time, that at last they come
+scarcely to feel them at all.  I remember the very first place I was put
+in possession of, was a gentleman's house in this parish here, that
+everybody would suppose couldn't help having money if he tried.  I went
+with old Fixem, my old master, 'bout half arter eight in the morning;
+rang the area-bell; servant in livery opened the door: "Governor at
+home?"--"Yes, he is," says the man; "but he's breakfasting just now."
+"Never mind," says Fixem, "just you tell him there's a gentleman here, as
+wants to speak to him partickler."  So the servant he opens his eyes, and
+stares about him all ways--looking for the gentleman, as it struck me,
+for I don't think anybody but a man as was stone-blind would mistake
+Fixem for one; and as for me, I was as seedy as a cheap cowcumber.
+Hows'ever, he turns round, and goes to the breakfast-parlour, which was a
+little snug sort of room at the end of the passage, and Fixem (as we
+always did in that profession), without waiting to be announced, walks in
+arter him, and before the servant could get out, "Please, sir, here's a
+man as wants to speak to you," looks in at the door as familiar and
+pleasant as may be.  "Who the devil are you, and how dare you walk into a
+gentleman's house without leave?" says the master, as fierce as a bull in
+fits.  "My name," says Fixem, winking to the master to send the servant
+away, and putting the warrant into his hands folded up like a note, "My
+name's Smith," says he, "and I called from Johnson's about that business
+of Thompson's."--"Oh," says the other, quite down on him directly, "How
+_is_ Thompson?" says he; "Pray sit down, Mr. Smith: John, leave the
+room."  Out went the servant; and the gentleman and Fixem looked at one
+another till they couldn't look any longer, and then they varied the
+amusements by looking at me, who had been standing on the mat all this
+time.  "Hundred and fifty pounds, I see," said the gentleman at last.
+"Hundred and fifty pound," said Fixem, "besides cost of levy, sheriff's
+poundage, and all other incidental expenses."--"Um," says the gentleman,
+"I shan't be able to settle this before to-morrow afternoon."--"Very
+sorry; but I shall be obliged to leave my man here till then," replies
+Fixem, pretending to look very miserable over it.  "That's very
+unfort'nate," says the gentleman, "for I have got a large party here
+to-night, and I'm ruined if those fellows of mine get an inkling of the
+matter--just step here, Mr. Smith," says he, after a short pause.  So
+Fixem walks with him up to the window, and after a good deal of
+whispering, and a little chinking of suverins, and looking at me, he
+comes back and says, "Bung, you're a handy fellow, and very honest I
+know.  This gentleman wants an assistant to clean the plate and wait at
+table to-day, and if you're not particularly engaged," says old Fixem,
+grinning like mad, and shoving a couple of suverins into my hand, "he'll
+be very glad to avail himself of your services."  Well, I laughed: and
+the gentleman laughed, and we all laughed; and I went home and cleaned
+myself, leaving Fixem there, and when I went back, Fixem went away, and I
+polished up the plate, and waited at table, and gammoned the servants,
+and nobody had the least idea I was in possession, though it very nearly
+came out after all; for one of the last gentlemen who remained, came
+down-stairs into the hall where I was sitting pretty late at night, and
+putting half-a-crown into my hand, says, "Here, my man," says he, "run
+and get me a coach, will you?"  I thought it was a do, to get me out of
+the house, and was just going to say so, sulkily enough, when the
+gentleman (who was up to everything) came running down-stairs, as if he
+was in great anxiety.  "Bung," says he, pretending to be in a consuming
+passion.  "Sir," says I.  "Why the devil an't you looking after that
+plate?"--"I was just going to send him for a coach for me," says the
+other gentleman.  "And I was just a-going to say," says I--"Anybody else,
+my dear fellow," interrupts the master of the house, pushing me down the
+passage to get out of the way--"anybody else; but I have put this man in
+possession of all the plate and valuables, and I cannot allow him on any
+consideration whatever, to leave the house.  Bung, you scoundrel, go and
+count those forks in the breakfast-parlour instantly."  You may be sure I
+went laughing pretty hearty when I found it was all right.  The money was
+paid next day, with the addition of something else for myself, and that
+was the best job that I (and I suspect old Fixem too) ever got in that
+line.
+
+'But this is the bright side of the picture, sir, after all,' resumed Mr.
+Bung, laying aside the knowing look and flash air, with which he had
+repeated the previous anecdote--'and I'm sorry to say, it's the side one
+sees very, very seldom, in comparison with the dark one.  The civility
+which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none; and
+there's a consolation even in being able to patch up one difficulty, to
+make way for another, to which very poor people are strangers.  I was
+once put into a house down George's-yard--that little dirty court at the
+back of the gas-works; and I never shall forget the misery of them
+people, dear me!  It was a distress for half a year's rent--two pound
+ten, I think.  There was only two rooms in the house, and as there was no
+passage, the lodgers up-stairs always went through the room of the people
+of the house, as they passed in and out; and every time they did
+so--which, on the average, was about four times every quarter of an
+hour--they blowed up quite frightful: for their things had been seized
+too, and included in the inventory.  There was a little piece of enclosed
+dust in front of the house, with a cinder-path leading up to the door,
+and an open rain-water butt on one side.  A dirty striped curtain, on a
+very slack string, hung in the window, and a little triangular bit of
+broken looking-glass rested on the sill inside.  I suppose it was meant
+for the people's use, but their appearance was so wretched, and so
+miserable, that I'm certain they never could have plucked up courage to
+look themselves in the face a second time, if they survived the fright of
+doing so once.  There was two or three chairs, that might have been
+worth, in their best days, from eightpence to a shilling a-piece; a small
+deal table, an old corner cupboard with nothing in it, and one of those
+bedsteads which turn up half way, and leave the bottom legs sticking out
+for you to knock your head against, or hang your hat upon; no bed, no
+bedding.  There was an old sack, by way of rug, before the fireplace, and
+four or five children were grovelling about, among the sand on the floor.
+The execution was only put in, to get 'em out of the house, for there was
+nothing to take to pay the expenses; and here I stopped for three days,
+though that was a mere form too: for, in course, I knew, and we all knew,
+they could never pay the money.  In one of the chairs, by the side of the
+place where the fire ought to have been, was an old 'ooman--the ugliest
+and dirtiest I ever see--who sat rocking herself backwards and forwards,
+backwards and forwards, without once stopping, except for an instant now
+and then, to clasp together the withered hands which, with these
+exceptions, she kept constantly rubbing upon her knees, just raising and
+depressing her fingers convulsively, in time to the rocking of the chair.
+On the other side sat the mother with an infant in her arms, which cried
+till it cried itself to sleep, and when it 'woke, cried till it cried
+itself off again.  The old 'ooman's voice I never heard: she seemed
+completely stupefied; and as to the mother's, it would have been better
+if she had been so too, for misery had changed her to a devil.  If you
+had heard how she cursed the little naked children as was rolling on the
+floor, and seen how savagely she struck the infant when it cried with
+hunger, you'd have shuddered as much as I did.  There they remained all
+the time: the children ate a morsel of bread once or twice, and I gave
+'em best part of the dinners my missis brought me, but the woman ate
+nothing; they never even laid on the bedstead, nor was the room swept or
+cleaned all the time.  The neighbours were all too poor themselves to
+take any notice of 'em, but from what I could make out from the abuse of
+the woman up-stairs, it seemed the husband had been transported a few
+weeks before.  When the time was up, the landlord and old Fixem too, got
+rather frightened about the family, and so they made a stir about it, and
+had 'em taken to the workhouse.  They sent the sick couch for the old
+'ooman, and Simmons took the children away at night.  The old 'ooman went
+into the infirmary, and very soon died.  The children are all in the
+house to this day, and very comfortable they are in comparison.  As to
+the mother, there was no taming her at all.  She had been a quiet,
+hard-working woman, I believe, but her misery had actually drove her
+wild; so after she had been sent to the house of correction half-a-dozen
+times, for throwing inkstands at the overseers, blaspheming the
+churchwardens, and smashing everybody as come near her, she burst a
+blood-vessel one mornin', and died too; and a happy release it was, both
+for herself and the old paupers, male and female, which she used to tip
+over in all directions, as if they were so many skittles, and she the
+ball.
+
+'Now this was bad enough,' resumed Mr. Bung, taking a half-step towards
+the door, as if to intimate that he had nearly concluded.  'This was bad
+enough, but there was a sort of quiet misery--if you understand what I
+mean by that, sir--about a lady at one house I was put into, as touched
+me a good deal more.  It doesn't matter where it was exactly: indeed, I'd
+rather not say, but it was the same sort o' job.  I went with Fixem in
+the usual way--there was a year's rent in arrear; a very small
+servant-girl opened the door, and three or four fine-looking little
+children was in the front parlour we were shown into, which was very
+clean, but very scantily furnished, much like the children themselves.
+"Bung," says Fixem to me, in a low voice, when we were left alone for a
+minute, "I know something about this here family, and my opinion is, it's
+no go."  "Do you think they can't settle?" says I, quite anxiously; for I
+liked the looks of them children.  Fixem shook his head, and was just
+about to reply, when the door opened, and in come a lady, as white as
+ever I see any one in my days, except about the eyes, which were red with
+crying.  She walked in, as firm as I could have done; shut the door
+carefully after her, and sat herself down with a face as composed as if
+it was made of stone.  "What is the matter, gentlemen?" says she, in a
+surprisin' steady voice.  "_Is_ this an execution?"  "It is, mum," says
+Fixem.  The lady looked at him as steady as ever: she didn't seem to have
+understood him.  "It is, mum," says Fixem again; "this is my warrant of
+distress, mum," says he, handing it over as polite as if it was a
+newspaper which had been bespoke arter the next gentleman.
+
+'The lady's lip trembled as she took the printed paper.  She cast her eye
+over it, and old Fixem began to explain the form, but saw she wasn't
+reading it, plain enough, poor thing.  "Oh, my God!" says she, suddenly
+a-bursting out crying, letting the warrant fall, and hiding her face in
+her hands.  "Oh, my God! what will become of us!"  The noise she made,
+brought in a young lady of about nineteen or twenty, who, I suppose, had
+been a-listening at the door, and who had got a little boy in her arms:
+she sat him down in the lady's lap, without speaking, and she hugged the
+poor little fellow to her bosom, and cried over him, till even old Fixem
+put on his blue spectacles to hide the two tears, that was a-trickling
+down, one on each side of his dirty face.  "Now, dear ma," says the young
+lady, "you know how much you have borne.  For all our sakes--for pa's
+sake," says she, "don't give way to this!"--"No, no, I won't!" says the
+lady, gathering herself up, hastily, and drying her eyes; "I am very
+foolish, but I'm better now--much better."  And then she roused herself
+up, went with us into every room while we took the inventory, opened all
+the drawers of her own accord, sorted the children's little clothes to
+make the work easier; and, except doing everything in a strange sort of
+hurry, seemed as calm and composed as if nothing had happened.  When we
+came down-stairs again, she hesitated a minute or two, and at last says,
+"Gentlemen," says she, "I am afraid I have done wrong, and perhaps it may
+bring you into trouble.  I secreted just now," she says, "the only
+trinket I have left in the world--here it is."  So she lays down on the
+table a little miniature mounted in gold.  "It's a miniature," she says,
+"of my poor dear father!  I little thought once, that I should ever thank
+God for depriving me of the original, but I do, and have done for years
+back, most fervently.  Take it away, sir," she says, "it's a face that
+never turned from me in sickness and distress, and I can hardly bear to
+turn from it now, when, God knows, I suffer both in no ordinary degree."
+I couldn't say nothing, but I raised my head from the inventory which I
+was filling up, and looked at Fixem; the old fellow nodded to me
+significantly, so I ran my pen through the "_Mini_" I had just written,
+and left the miniature on the table.
+
+'Well, sir, to make short of a long story, I was left in possession, and
+in possession I remained; and though I was an ignorant man, and the
+master of the house a clever one, I saw what he never did, but what he
+would give worlds now (if he had 'em) to have seen in time.  I saw, sir,
+that his wife was wasting away, beneath cares of which she never
+complained, and griefs she never told.  I saw that she was dying before
+his eyes; I knew that one exertion from him might have saved her, but he
+never made it.  I don't blame him: I don't think he _could_ rouse
+himself.  She had so long anticipated all his wishes, and acted for him,
+that he was a lost man when left to himself.  I used to think when I
+caught sight of her, in the clothes she used to wear, which looked shabby
+even upon her, and would have been scarcely decent on any one else, that
+if I was a gentleman it would wring my very heart to see the woman that
+was a smart and merry girl when I courted her, so altered through her
+love for me.  Bitter cold and damp weather it was, yet, though her dress
+was thin, and her shoes none of the best, during the whole three days,
+from morning to night, she was out of doors running about to try and
+raise the money.  The money _was_ raised and the execution was paid out.
+The whole family crowded into the room where I was, when the money
+arrived.  The father was quite happy as the inconvenience was removed--I
+dare say he didn't know how; the children looked merry and cheerful
+again; the eldest girl was bustling about, making preparations for the
+first comfortable meal they had had since the distress was put in; and
+the mother looked pleased to see them all so.  But if ever I saw death in
+a woman's face, I saw it in hers that night.
+
+'I was right, sir,' continued Mr. Bung, hurriedly passing his coat-sleeve
+over his face; 'the family grew more prosperous, and good fortune
+arrived.  But it was too late.  Those children are motherless now, and
+their father would give up all he has since gained--house, home, goods,
+money: all that he has, or ever can have, to restore the wife he has
+lost.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--THE LADIES' SOCIETIES
+
+
+Our Parish is very prolific in ladies' charitable institutions.  In
+winter, when wet feet are common, and colds not scarce, we have the
+ladies' soup distribution society, the ladies' coal distribution society,
+and the ladies' blanket distribution society; in summer, when stone
+fruits flourish and stomach aches prevail, we have the ladies'
+dispensary, and the ladies' sick visitation committee; and all the year
+round we have the ladies' child's examination society, the ladies' bible
+and prayer-book circulation society, and the ladies' childbed-linen
+monthly loan society.  The two latter are decidedly the most important;
+whether they are productive of more benefit than the rest, it is not for
+us to say, but we can take upon ourselves to affirm, with the utmost
+solemnity, that they create a greater stir and more bustle, than all the
+others put together.
+
+We should be disposed to affirm, on the first blush of the matter, that
+the bible and prayer-book society is not so popular as the childbed-linen
+society; the bible and prayer-book society has, however, considerably
+increased in importance within the last year or two, having derived some
+adventitious aid from the factious opposition of the child's examination
+society; which factious opposition originated in manner following:--When
+the young curate was popular, and all the unmarried ladies in the parish
+took a serious turn, the charity children all at once became objects of
+peculiar and especial interest.  The three Miss Browns (enthusiastic
+admirers of the curate) taught, and exercised, and examined, and
+re-examined the unfortunate children, until the boys grew pale, and the
+girls consumptive with study and fatigue.  The three Miss Browns stood it
+out very well, because they relieved each other; but the children, having
+no relief at all, exhibited decided symptoms of weariness and care.  The
+unthinking part of the parishioners laughed at all this, but the more
+reflective portion of the inhabitants abstained from expressing any
+opinion on the subject until that of the curate had been clearly
+ascertained.
+
+The opportunity was not long wanting.  The curate preached a charity
+sermon on behalf of the charity school, and in the charity sermon
+aforesaid, expatiated in glowing terms on the praiseworthy and
+indefatigable exertions of certain estimable individuals.  Sobs were
+heard to issue from the three Miss Browns' pew; the pew-opener of the
+division was seen to hurry down the centre aisle to the vestry door, and
+to return immediately, bearing a glass of water in her hand.  A low
+moaning ensued; two more pew-openers rushed to the spot, and the three
+Miss Browns, each supported by a pew-opener, were led out of the church,
+and led in again after the lapse of five minutes with white
+pocket-handkerchiefs to their eyes, as if they had been attending a
+funeral in the churchyard adjoining.  If any doubt had for a moment
+existed, as to whom the allusion was intended to apply, it was at once
+removed.  The wish to enlighten the charity children became universal,
+and the three Miss Browns were unanimously besought to divide the school
+into classes, and to assign each class to the superintendence of two
+young ladies.
+
+A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little patronage is more
+so; the three Miss Browns appointed all the old maids, and carefully
+excluded the young ones.  Maiden aunts triumphed, mammas were reduced to
+the lowest depths of despair, and there is no telling in what act of
+violence the general indignation against the three Miss Browns might have
+vented itself, had not a perfectly providential occurrence changed the
+tide of public feeling.  Mrs. Johnson Parker, the mother of seven
+extremely fine girls--all unmarried--hastily reported to several other
+mammas of several other unmarried families, that five old men, six old
+women, and children innumerable, in the free seats near her pew, were in
+the habit of coming to church every Sunday, without either bible or
+prayer-book.  Was this to be borne in a civilised country?  Could such
+things be tolerated in a Christian land?  Never!  A ladies' bible and
+prayer-book distribution society was instantly formed: president, Mrs.
+Johnson Parker; treasurers, auditors, and secretary, the Misses Johnson
+Parker: subscriptions were entered into, books were bought, all the
+free-seat people provided therewith, and when the first lesson was given
+out, on the first Sunday succeeding these events, there was such a
+dropping of books, and rustling of leaves, that it was morally impossible
+to hear one word of the service for five minutes afterwards.
+
+The three Miss Browns, and their party, saw the approaching danger, and
+endeavoured to avert it by ridicule and sarcasm.  Neither the old men nor
+the old women could read their books, now they had got them, said the
+three Miss Browns.  Never mind; they could learn, replied Mrs. Johnson
+Parker.  The children couldn't read either, suggested the three Miss
+Browns.  No matter; they could be taught, retorted Mrs. Johnson Parker.
+A balance of parties took place.  The Miss Browns publicly
+examined--popular feeling inclined to the child's examination society.
+The Miss Johnson Parkers publicly distributed--a reaction took place in
+favour of the prayer-book distribution.  A feather would have turned the
+scale, and a feather did turn it.  A missionary returned from the West
+Indies; he was to be presented to the Dissenters' Missionary Society on
+his marriage with a wealthy widow.  Overtures were made to the Dissenters
+by the Johnson Parkers.  Their object was the same, and why not have a
+joint meeting of the two societies?  The proposition was accepted.  The
+meeting was duly heralded by public announcement, and the room was
+crowded to suffocation.  The Missionary appeared on the platform; he was
+hailed with enthusiasm.  He repeated a dialogue he had heard between two
+negroes, behind a hedge, on the subject of distribution societies; the
+approbation was tumultuous.  He gave an imitation of the two negroes in
+broken English; the roof was rent with applause.  From that period we
+date (with one trifling exception) a daily increase in the popularity of
+the distribution society, and an increase of popularity, which the feeble
+and impotent opposition of the examination party, has only tended to
+augment.
+
+Now, the great points about the childbed-linen monthly loan society are,
+that it is less dependent on the fluctuations of public opinion than
+either the distribution or the child's examination; and that, come what
+may, there is never any lack of objects on which to exercise its
+benevolence.  Our parish is a very populous one, and, if anything,
+contributes, we should be disposed to say, rather more than its due share
+to the aggregate amount of births in the metropolis and its environs.
+The consequence is, that the monthly loan society flourishes, and invests
+its members with a most enviable amount of bustling patronage.  The
+society (whose only notion of dividing time, would appear to be its
+allotment into months) holds monthly tea-drinkings, at which the monthly
+report is received, a secretary elected for the month ensuing, and such
+of the monthly boxes as may not happen to be out on loan for the month,
+carefully examined.
+
+We were never present at one of these meetings, from all of which it is
+scarcely necessary to say, gentlemen are carefully excluded; but Mr. Bung
+has been called before the board once or twice, and we have his authority
+for stating, that its proceedings are conducted with great order and
+regularity: not more than four members being allowed to speak at one time
+on any pretence whatever.  The regular committee is composed exclusively
+of married ladies, but a vast number of young unmarried ladies of from
+eighteen to twenty-five years of age, respectively, are admitted as
+honorary members, partly because they are very useful in replenishing the
+boxes, and visiting the confined; partly because it is highly desirable
+that they should be initiated, at an early period, into the more serious
+and matronly duties of after-life; and partly, because prudent mammas
+have not unfrequently been known to turn this circumstance to wonderfully
+good account in matrimonial speculations.
+
+In addition to the loan of the monthly boxes (which are always painted
+blue, with the name of the society in large white letters on the lid),
+the society dispense occasional grants of beef-tea, and a composition of
+warm beer, spice, eggs, and sugar, commonly known by the name of
+'candle,' to its patients.  And here again the services of the honorary
+members are called into requisition, and most cheerfully conceded.
+Deputations of twos or threes are sent out to visit the patients, and on
+these occasions there is such a tasting of candle and beef-tea, such a
+stirring about of little messes in tiny saucepans on the hob, such a
+dressing and undressing of infants, such a tying, and folding, and
+pinning; such a nursing and warming of little legs and feet before the
+fire, such a delightful confusion of talking and cooking, bustle,
+importance, and officiousness, as never can be enjoyed in its full extent
+but on similar occasions.
+
+In rivalry of these two institutions, and as a last expiring effort to
+acquire parochial popularity, the child's examination people determined,
+the other day, on having a grand public examination of the pupils; and
+the large school-room of the national seminary was, by and with the
+consent of the parish authorities, devoted to the purpose.  Invitation
+circulars were forwarded to all the principal parishioners, including, of
+course, the heads of the other two societies, for whose especial behoof
+and edification the display was intended; and a large audience was
+confidently anticipated on the occasion.  The floor was carefully
+scrubbed the day before, under the immediate superintendence of the three
+Miss Browns; forms were placed across the room for the accommodation of
+the visitors, specimens in writing were carefully selected, and as
+carefully patched and touched up, until they astonished the children who
+had written them, rather more than the company who read them; sums in
+compound addition were rehearsed and re-rehearsed until all the children
+had the totals by heart; and the preparations altogether were on the most
+laborious and most comprehensive scale.  The morning arrived: the
+children were yellow-soaped and flannelled, and towelled, till their
+faces shone again; every pupil's hair was carefully combed into his or
+her eyes, as the case might be; the girls were adorned with snow-white
+tippets, and caps bound round the head by a single purple ribbon: the
+necks of the elder boys were fixed into collars of startling dimensions.
+
+The doors were thrown open, and the Misses Brown and Co. were discovered
+in plain white muslin dresses, and caps of the same--the child's
+examination uniform.  The room filled: the greetings of the company were
+loud and cordial.  The distributionists trembled, for their popularity
+was at stake.  The eldest boy fell forward, and delivered a propitiatory
+address from behind his collar.  It was from the pen of Mr. Henry Brown;
+the applause was universal, and the Johnson Parkers were aghast.  The
+examination proceeded with success, and terminated in triumph.  The
+child's examination society gained a momentary victory, and the Johnson
+Parkers retreated in despair.
+
+A secret council of the distributionists was held that night, with Mrs.
+Johnson Parker in the chair, to consider of the best means of recovering
+the ground they had lost in the favour of the parish.  What could be
+done?  Another meeting!  Alas! who was to attend it?  The Missionary
+would not do twice; and the slaves were emancipated.  A bold step must be
+taken.  The parish must be astonished in some way or other; but no one
+was able to suggest what the step should be.  At length, a very old lady
+was heard to mumble, in indistinct tones, 'Exeter Hall.'  A sudden light
+broke in upon the meeting.  It was unanimously resolved, that a
+deputation of old ladies should wait upon a celebrated orator, imploring
+his assistance, and the favour of a speech; and the deputation should
+also wait on two or three other imbecile old women, not resident in the
+parish, and entreat their attendance.  The application was successful,
+the meeting was held; the orator (an Irishman) came.  He talked of green
+isles--other shores--vast Atlantic--bosom of the deep--Christian
+charity--blood and extermination--mercy in hearts--arms in hands--altars
+and homes--household gods.  He wiped his eyes, he blew his nose, and he
+quoted Latin.  The effect was tremendous--the Latin was a decided hit.
+Nobody knew exactly what it was about, but everybody knew it must be
+affecting, because even the orator was overcome.  The popularity of the
+distribution society among the ladies of our parish is unprecedented; and
+the child's examination is going fast to decay.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR
+
+
+We are very fond of speculating as we walk through a street, on the
+character and pursuits of the people who inhabit it; and nothing so
+materially assists us in these speculations as the appearance of the
+house doors.  The various expressions of the human countenance afford a
+beautiful and interesting study; but there is something in the
+physiognomy of street-door knockers, almost as characteristic, and nearly
+as infallible.  Whenever we visit a man for the first time, we
+contemplate the features of his knocker with the greatest curiosity, for
+we well know, that between the man and his knocker, there will inevitably
+be a greater or less degree of resemblance and sympathy.
+
+For instance, there is one description of knocker that used to be common
+enough, but which is fast passing away--a large round one, with the jolly
+face of a convivial lion smiling blandly at you, as you twist the sides
+of your hair into a curl or pull up your shirt-collar while you are
+waiting for the door to be opened; we never saw that knocker on the door
+of a churlish man--so far as our experience is concerned, it invariably
+bespoke hospitality and another bottle.
+
+No man ever saw this knocker on the door of a small attorney or
+bill-broker; they always patronise the other lion; a heavy
+ferocious-looking fellow, with a countenance expressive of savage
+stupidity--a sort of grand master among the knockers, and a great
+favourite with the selfish and brutal.
+
+Then there is a little pert Egyptian knocker, with a long thin face, a
+pinched-up nose, and a very sharp chin; he is most in vogue with your
+government-office people, in light drabs and starched cravats; little
+spare, priggish men, who are perfectly satisfied with their own opinions,
+and consider themselves of paramount importance.
+
+We were greatly troubled a few years ago, by the innovation of a new kind
+of knocker, without any face at all, composed of a wreath depending from
+a hand or small truncheon.  A little trouble and attention, however,
+enabled us to overcome this difficulty, and to reconcile the new system
+to our favourite theory.  You will invariably find this knocker on the
+doors of cold and formal people, who always ask you why you _don't_ come,
+and never say _do_.
+
+Everybody knows the brass knocker is common to suburban villas, and
+extensive boarding-schools; and having noticed this genus we have
+recapitulated all the most prominent and strongly-defined species.
+
+Some phrenologists affirm, that the agitation of a man's brain by
+different passions, produces corresponding developments in the form of
+his skull.  Do not let us be understood as pushing our theory to the full
+length of asserting, that any alteration in a man's disposition would
+produce a visible effect on the feature of his knocker.  Our position
+merely is, that in such a case, the magnetism which must exist between a
+man and his knocker, would induce the man to remove, and seek some
+knocker more congenial to his altered feelings.  If you ever find a man
+changing his habitation without any reasonable pretext, depend upon it,
+that, although he may not be aware of the fact himself, it is because he
+and his knocker are at variance.  This is a new theory, but we venture to
+launch it, nevertheless, as being quite as ingenious and infallible as
+many thousands of the learned speculations which are daily broached for
+public good and private fortune-making.
+
+Entertaining these feelings on the subject of knockers, it will be
+readily imagined with what consternation we viewed the entire removal of
+the knocker from the door of the next house to the one we lived in, some
+time ago, and the substitution of a bell.  This was a calamity we had
+never anticipated.  The bare idea of anybody being able to exist without
+a knocker, appeared so wild and visionary, that it had never for one
+instant entered our imagination.
+
+We sauntered moodily from the spot, and bent our steps towards
+Eaton-square, then just building.  What was our astonishment and
+indignation to find that bells were fast becoming the rule, and knockers
+the exception!  Our theory trembled beneath the shock.  We hastened home;
+and fancying we foresaw in the swift progress of events, its entire
+abolition, resolved from that day forward to vent our speculations on our
+next-door neighbours in person.  The house adjoining ours on the left
+hand was uninhabited, and we had, therefore, plenty of leisure to observe
+our next-door neighbours on the other side.
+
+The house without the knocker was in the occupation of a city clerk, and
+there was a neatly-written bill in the parlour window intimating that
+lodgings for a single gentleman were to be let within.
+
+It was a neat, dull little house, on the shady side of the way, with new,
+narrow floorcloth in the passage, and new, narrow stair-carpets up to the
+first floor.  The paper was new, and the paint was new, and the furniture
+was new; and all three, paper, paint, and furniture, bespoke the limited
+means of the tenant.  There was a little red and black carpet in the
+drawing-room, with a border of flooring all the way round; a few stained
+chairs and a pembroke table.  A pink shell was displayed on each of the
+little sideboards, which, with the addition of a tea-tray and caddy, a
+few more shells on the mantelpiece, and three peacock's feathers
+tastefully arranged above them, completed the decorative furniture of the
+apartment.
+
+This was the room destined for the reception of the single gentleman
+during the day, and a little back room on the same floor was assigned as
+his sleeping apartment by night.
+
+The bill had not been long in the window, when a stout, good-humoured
+looking gentleman, of about five-and-thirty, appeared as a candidate for
+the tenancy.  Terms were soon arranged, for the bill was taken down
+immediately after his first visit.  In a day or two the single gentleman
+came in, and shortly afterwards his real character came out.
+
+First of all, he displayed a most extraordinary partiality for sitting up
+till three or four o'clock in the morning, drinking whiskey-and-water,
+and smoking cigars; then he invited friends home, who used to come at ten
+o'clock, and begin to get happy about the small hours, when they evinced
+their perfect contentment by singing songs with half-a-dozen verses of
+two lines each, and a chorus of ten, which chorus used to be shouted
+forth by the whole strength of the company, in the most enthusiastic and
+vociferous manner, to the great annoyance of the neighbours, and the
+special discomfort of another single gentleman overhead.
+
+Now, this was bad enough, occurring as it did three times a week on the
+average, but this was not all; for when the company _did_ go away,
+instead of walking quietly down the street, as anybody else's company
+would have done, they amused themselves by making alarming and frightful
+noises, and counterfeiting the shrieks of females in distress; and one
+night, a red-faced gentleman in a white hat knocked in the most urgent
+manner at the door of the powdered-headed old gentleman at No. 3, and
+when the powdered-headed old gentleman, who thought one of his married
+daughters must have been taken ill prematurely, had groped down-stairs,
+and after a great deal of unbolting and key-turning, opened the street
+door, the red-faced man in the white hat said he hoped he'd excuse his
+giving him so much trouble, but he'd feel obliged if he'd favour him with
+a glass of cold spring water, and the loan of a shilling for a cab to
+take him home, on which the old gentleman slammed the door and went
+up-stairs, and threw the contents of his water jug out of window--very
+straight, only it went over the wrong man; and the whole street was
+involved in confusion.
+
+A joke's a joke; and even practical jests are very capital in their way,
+if you can only get the other party to see the fun of them; but the
+population of our street were so dull of apprehension, as to be quite
+lost to a sense of the drollery of this proceeding: and the consequence
+was, that our next-door neighbour was obliged to tell the single
+gentleman, that unless he gave up entertaining his friends at home, he
+really must be compelled to part with him.
+
+The single gentleman received the remonstrance with great good-humour,
+and promised from that time forward, to spend his evenings at a
+coffee-house--a determination which afforded general and unmixed
+satisfaction.
+
+The next night passed off very well, everybody being delighted with the
+change; but on the next, the noises were renewed with greater spirit than
+ever.  The single gentleman's friends being unable to see him in his own
+house every alternate night, had come to the determination of seeing him
+home every night; and what with the discordant greetings of the friends
+at parting, and the noise created by the single gentleman in his passage
+up-stairs, and his subsequent struggles to get his boots off, the evil
+was not to be borne.  So, our next-door neighbour gave the single
+gentleman, who was a very good lodger in other respects, notice to quit;
+and the single gentleman went away, and entertained his friends in other
+lodgings.
+
+The next applicant for the vacant first floor, was of a very different
+character from the troublesome single gentleman who had just quitted it.
+He was a tall, thin, young gentleman, with a profusion of brown hair,
+reddish whiskers, and very slightly developed moustaches.  He wore a
+braided surtout, with frogs behind, light grey trousers, and wash-leather
+gloves, and had altogether rather a military appearance.  So unlike the
+roystering single gentleman.  Such insinuating manners, and such a
+delightful address!  So seriously disposed, too!  When he first came to
+look at the lodgings, he inquired most particularly whether he was sure
+to be able to get a seat in the parish church; and when he had agreed to
+take them, he requested to have a list of the different local charities,
+as he intended to subscribe his mite to the most deserving among them.
+
+Our next-door neighbour was now perfectly happy.  He had got a lodger at
+last, of just his own way of thinking--a serious, well-disposed man, who
+abhorred gaiety, and loved retirement.  He took down the bill with a
+light heart, and pictured in imagination a long series of quiet Sundays,
+on which he and his lodger would exchange mutual civilities and Sunday
+papers.
+
+The serious man arrived, and his luggage was to arrive from the country
+next morning.  He borrowed a clean shirt, and a prayer-book, from our
+next-door neighbour, and retired to rest at an early hour, requesting
+that he might be called punctually at ten o'clock next morning--not
+before, as he was much fatigued.
+
+He _was_ called, and did not answer: he was called again, but there was
+no reply.  Our next-door neighbour became alarmed, and burst the door
+open.  The serious man had left the house mysteriously; carrying with him
+the shirt, the prayer-book, a teaspoon, and the bedclothes.
+
+Whether this occurrence, coupled with the irregularities of his former
+lodger, gave our next-door neighbour an aversion to single gentlemen, we
+know not; we only know that the next bill which made its appearance in
+the parlour window intimated generally, that there were furnished
+apartments to let on the first floor.  The bill was soon removed.  The
+new lodgers at first attracted our curiosity, and afterwards excited our
+interest.
+
+They were a young lad of eighteen or nineteen, and his mother, a lady of
+about fifty, or it might be less.  The mother wore a widow's weeds, and
+the boy was also clothed in deep mourning.  They were poor--very poor;
+for their only means of support arose from the pittance the boy earned,
+by copying writings, and translating for booksellers.
+
+They had removed from some country place and settled in London; partly
+because it afforded better chances of employment for the boy, and partly,
+perhaps, with the natural desire to leave a place where they had been in
+better circumstances, and where their poverty was known.  They were proud
+under their reverses, and above revealing their wants and privations to
+strangers.  How bitter those privations were, and how hard the boy worked
+to remove them, no one ever knew but themselves.  Night after night, two,
+three, four hours after midnight, could we hear the occasional raking up
+of the scanty fire, or the hollow and half-stifled cough, which indicated
+his being still at work; and day after day, could we see more plainly
+that nature had set that unearthly light in his plaintive face, which is
+the beacon of her worst disease.
+
+Actuated, we hope, by a higher feeling than mere curiosity, we contrived
+to establish, first an acquaintance, and then a close intimacy, with the
+poor strangers.  Our worst fears were realised; the boy was sinking fast.
+Through a part of the winter, and the whole of the following spring and
+summer, his labours were unceasingly prolonged: and the mother attempted
+to procure needle-work, embroidery--anything for bread.
+
+A few shillings now and then, were all she could earn.  The boy worked
+steadily on; dying by minutes, but never once giving utterance to
+complaint or murmur.
+
+One beautiful autumn evening we went to pay our customary visit to the
+invalid.  His little remaining strength had been decreasing rapidly for
+two or three days preceding, and he was lying on the sofa at the open
+window, gazing at the setting sun.  His mother had been reading the Bible
+to him, for she closed the book as we entered, and advanced to meet us.
+
+'I was telling William,' she said, 'that we must manage to take him into
+the country somewhere, so that he may get quite well.  He is not ill, you
+know, but he is not very strong, and has exerted himself too much
+lately.'  Poor thing!  The tears that streamed through her fingers, as
+she turned aside, as if to adjust her close widow's cap, too plainly
+showed how fruitless was the attempt to deceive herself.
+
+We sat down by the head of the sofa, but said nothing, for we saw the
+breath of life was passing gently but rapidly from the young form before
+us.  At every respiration, his heart beat more slowly.
+
+The boy placed one hand in ours, grasped his mother's arm with the other,
+drew her hastily towards him, and fervently kissed her cheek.  There was
+a pause.  He sunk back upon his pillow, and looked long and earnestly in
+his mother's face.
+
+'William, William!' murmured the mother, after a long interval, 'don't
+look at me so--speak to me, dear!'
+
+The boy smiled languidly, but an instant afterwards his features resolved
+into the same cold, solemn gaze.
+
+'William, dear William! rouse yourself; don't look at me so, love--pray
+don't!  Oh, my God! what shall I do!' cried the widow, clasping her hands
+in agony--'my dear boy! he is dying!'  The boy raised himself by a
+violent effort, and folded his hands together--'Mother! dear, dear
+mother, bury me in the open fields--anywhere but in these dreadful
+streets.  I should like to be where you can see my grave, but not in
+these close crowded streets; they have killed me; kiss me again, mother;
+put your arm round my neck--'
+
+He fell back, and a strange expression stole upon his features; not of
+pain or suffering, but an indescribable fixing of every line and muscle.
+
+The boy was dead.
+
+
+
+
+SCENES
+
+
+CHAPTER I--THE STREETS--MORNING
+
+
+The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before sunrise,
+on a summer's morning, is most striking even to the few whose unfortunate
+pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits of business,
+cause them to be well acquainted with the scene.  There is an air of
+cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets which we are
+accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and
+over the quiet, closely-shut buildings, which throughout the day are
+swarming with life and bustle, that is very impressive.
+
+The last drunken man, who shall find his way home before sunlight, has
+just staggered heavily along, roaring out the burden of the drinking song
+of the previous night: the last houseless vagrant whom penury and police
+have left in the streets, has coiled up his chilly limbs in some paved
+comer, to dream of food and warmth.  The drunken, the dissipated, and the
+wretched have disappeared; the more sober and orderly part of the
+population have not yet awakened to the labours of the day, and the
+stillness of death is over the streets; its very hue seems to be imparted
+to them, cold and lifeless as they look in the grey, sombre light of
+daybreak.  The coach-stands in the larger thoroughfares are deserted: the
+night-houses are closed; and the chosen promenades of profligate misery
+are empty.
+
+An occasional policeman may alone be seen at the street corners,
+listlessly gazing on the deserted prospect before him; and now and then a
+rakish-looking cat runs stealthily across the road and descends his own
+area with as much caution and slyness--bounding first on the water-butt,
+then on the dust-hole, and then alighting on the flag-stones--as if he
+were conscious that his character depended on his gallantry of the
+preceding night escaping public observation.  A partially opened
+bedroom-window here and there, bespeaks the heat of the weather, and the
+uneasy slumbers of its occupant; and the dim scanty flicker of the
+rushlight, through the window-blind, denotes the chamber of watching or
+sickness.  With these few exceptions, the streets present no signs of
+life, nor the houses of habitation.
+
+An hour wears away; the spires of the churches and roofs of the principal
+buildings are faintly tinged with the light of the rising sun; and the
+streets, by almost imperceptible degrees, begin to resume their bustle
+and animation.  Market-carts roll slowly along: the sleepy waggoner
+impatiently urging on his tired horses, or vainly endeavouring to awaken
+the boy, who, luxuriously stretched on the top of the fruit-baskets,
+forgets, in happy oblivion, his long-cherished curiosity to behold the
+wonders of London.
+
+Rough, sleepy-looking animals of strange appearance, something between
+ostlers and hackney-coachmen, begin to take down the shutters of early
+public-houses; and little deal tables, with the ordinary preparations for
+a street breakfast, make their appearance at the customary stations.
+Numbers of men and women (principally the latter), carrying upon their
+heads heavy baskets of fruit, toil down the park side of Piccadilly, on
+their way to Covent-garden, and, following each other in rapid
+succession, form a long straggling line from thence to the turn of the
+road at Knightsbridge.
+
+Here and there, a bricklayer's labourer, with the day's dinner tied up in
+a handkerchief, walks briskly to his work, and occasionally a little knot
+of three or four schoolboys on a stolen bathing expedition rattle merrily
+over the pavement, their boisterous mirth contrasting forcibly with the
+demeanour of the little sweep, who, having knocked and rung till his arm
+aches, and being interdicted by a merciful legislature from endangering
+his lungs by calling out, sits patiently down on the door-step, until the
+housemaid may happen to awake.
+
+Covent-garden market, and the avenues leading to it, are thronged with
+carts of all sorts, sizes, and descriptions, from the heavy lumbering
+waggon, with its four stout horses, to the jingling costermonger's cart,
+with its consumptive donkey.  The pavement is already strewed with
+decayed cabbage-leaves, broken hay-bands, and all the indescribable
+litter of a vegetable market; men are shouting, carts backing, horses
+neighing, boys fighting, basket-women talking, piemen expatiating on the
+excellence of their pastry, and donkeys braying.  These and a hundred
+other sounds form a compound discordant enough to a Londoner's ears, and
+remarkably disagreeable to those of country gentlemen who are sleeping at
+the Hummums for the first time.
+
+Another hour passes away, and the day begins in good earnest.  The
+servant of all work, who, under the plea of sleeping very soundly, has
+utterly disregarded 'Missis's' ringing for half an hour previously, is
+warned by Master (whom Missis has sent up in his drapery to the
+landing-place for that purpose), that it's half-past six, whereupon she
+awakes all of a sudden, with well-feigned astonishment, and goes
+down-stairs very sulkily, wishing, while she strikes a light, that the
+principle of spontaneous combustion would extend itself to coals and
+kitchen range.  When the fire is lighted, she opens the street-door to
+take in the milk, when, by the most singular coincidence in the world,
+she discovers that the servant next door has just taken in her milk too,
+and that Mr. Todd's young man over the way, is, by an equally
+extraordinary chance, taking down his master's shutters.  The inevitable
+consequence is, that she just steps, milk-jug in hand, as far as next
+door, just to say 'good morning' to Betsy Clark, and that Mr. Todd's
+young man just steps over the way to say 'good morning' to both of 'em;
+and as the aforesaid Mr. Todd's young man is almost as good-looking and
+fascinating as the baker himself, the conversation quickly becomes very
+interesting, and probably would become more so, if Betsy Clark's Missis,
+who always will be a-followin' her about, didn't give an angry tap at her
+bedroom window, on which Mr. Todd's young man tries to whistle coolly, as
+he goes back to his shop much faster than he came from it; and the two
+girls run back to their respective places, and shut their street-doors
+with surprising softness, each of them poking their heads out of the
+front parlour window, a minute afterwards, however, ostensibly with the
+view of looking at the mail which just then passes by, but really for the
+purpose of catching another glimpse of Mr. Todd's young man, who being
+fond of mails, but more of females, takes a short look at the mails, and
+a long look at the girls, much to the satisfaction of all parties
+concerned.
+
+The mail itself goes on to the coach-office in due course, and the
+passengers who are going out by the early coach, stare with astonishment
+at the passengers who are coming in by the early coach, who look blue and
+dismal, and are evidently under the influence of that odd feeling
+produced by travelling, which makes the events of yesterday morning seem
+as if they had happened at least six months ago, and induces people to
+wonder with considerable gravity whether the friends and relations they
+took leave of a fortnight before, have altered much since they have left
+them.  The coach-office is all alive, and the coaches which are just
+going out, are surrounded by the usual crowd of Jews and nondescripts,
+who seem to consider, Heaven knows why, that it is quite impossible any
+man can mount a coach without requiring at least sixpenny-worth of
+oranges, a penknife, a pocket-book, a last year's annual, a pencil-case,
+a piece of sponge, and a small series of caricatures.
+
+Half an hour more, and the sun darts his bright rays cheerfully down the
+still half-empty streets, and shines with sufficient force to rouse the
+dismal laziness of the apprentice, who pauses every other minute from his
+task of sweeping out the shop and watering the pavement in front of it,
+to tell another apprentice similarly employed, how hot it will be to-day,
+or to stand with his right hand shading his eyes, and his left resting on
+the broom, gazing at the 'Wonder,' or the 'Tally-ho,' or the 'Nimrod,' or
+some other fast coach, till it is out of sight, when he re-enters the
+shop, envying the passengers on the outside of the fast coach, and
+thinking of the old red brick house 'down in the country,' where he went
+to school: the miseries of the milk and water, and thick bread and
+scrapings, fading into nothing before the pleasant recollection of the
+green field the boys used to play in, and the green pond he was caned for
+presuming to fall into, and other schoolboy associations.
+
+Cabs, with trunks and band-boxes between the drivers' legs and outside
+the apron, rattle briskly up and down the streets on their way to the
+coach-offices or steam-packet wharfs; and the cab-drivers and
+hackney-coachmen who are on the stand polish up the ornamental part of
+their dingy vehicles--the former wondering how people can prefer 'them
+wild beast cariwans of homnibuses, to a riglar cab with a fast trotter,'
+and the latter admiring how people can trust their necks into one of
+'them crazy cabs, when they can have a 'spectable 'ackney cotche with a
+pair of 'orses as von't run away with no vun;' a consolation
+unquestionably founded on fact, seeing that a hackney-coach horse never
+was known to run at all, 'except,' as the smart cabman in front of the
+rank observes, 'except one, and _he_ run back'ards.'
+
+The shops are now completely opened, and apprentices and shopmen are
+busily engaged in cleaning and decking the windows for the day.  The
+bakers' shops in town are filled with servants and children waiting for
+the drawing of the first batch of rolls--an operation which was performed
+a full hour ago in the suburbs: for the early clerk population of Somers
+and Camden towns, Islington, and Pentonville, are fast pouring into the
+city, or directing their steps towards Chancery-lane and the Inns of
+Court.  Middle-aged men, whose salaries have by no means increased in the
+same proportion as their families, plod steadily along, apparently with
+no object in view but the counting-house; knowing by sight almost
+everybody they meet or overtake, for they have seen them every morning
+(Sunday excepted) during the last twenty years, but speaking to no one.
+If they do happen to overtake a personal acquaintance, they just exchange
+a hurried salutation, and keep walking on either by his side, or in front
+of him, as his rate of walking may chance to be.  As to stopping to shake
+hands, or to take the friend's arm, they seem to think that as it is not
+included in their salary, they have no right to do it.  Small office lads
+in large hats, who are made men before they are boys, hurry along in
+pairs, with their first coat carefully brushed, and the white trousers of
+last Sunday plentifully besmeared with dust and ink.  It evidently
+requires a considerable mental struggle to avoid investing part of the
+day's dinner-money in the purchase of the stale tarts so temptingly
+exposed in dusty tins at the pastry-cooks' doors; but a consciousness of
+their own importance and the receipt of seven shillings a-week, with the
+prospect of an early rise to eight, comes to their aid, and they
+accordingly put their hats a little more on one side, and look under the
+bonnets of all the milliners' and stay-makers' apprentices they
+meet--poor girls!--the hardest worked, the worst paid, and too often, the
+worst used class of the community.
+
+Eleven o'clock, and a new set of people fill the streets.  The goods in
+the shop-windows are invitingly arranged; the shopmen in their white
+neckerchiefs and spruce coats, look as it they couldn't clean a window if
+their lives depended on it; the carts have disappeared from
+Covent-garden; the waggoners have returned, and the costermongers
+repaired to their ordinary 'beats' in the suburbs; clerks are at their
+offices, and gigs, cabs, omnibuses, and saddle-horses, are conveying
+their masters to the same destination.  The streets are thronged with a
+vast concourse of people, gay and shabby, rich and poor, idle and
+industrious; and we come to the heat, bustle, and activity of NOON.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE STREETS--NIGHT
+
+
+But the streets of London, to be beheld in the very height of their
+glory, should be seen on a dark, dull, murky winter's night, when there
+is just enough damp gently stealing down to make the pavement greasy,
+without cleansing it of any of its impurities; and when the heavy lazy
+mist, which hangs over every object, makes the gas-lamps look brighter,
+and the brilliantly-lighted shops more splendid, from the contrast they
+present to the darkness around.  All the people who are at home on such a
+night as this, seem disposed to make themselves as snug and comfortable
+as possible; and the passengers in the streets have excellent reason to
+envy the fortunate individuals who are seated by their own firesides.
+
+In the larger and better kind of streets, dining parlour curtains are
+closely drawn, kitchen fires blaze brightly up, and savoury steams of hot
+dinners salute the nostrils of the hungry wayfarer, as he plods wearily
+by the area railings.  In the suburbs, the muffin boy rings his way down
+the little street, much more slowly than he is wont to do; for Mrs.
+Macklin, of No. 4, has no sooner opened her little street-door, and
+screamed out 'Muffins!' with all her might, than Mrs. Walker, at No. 5,
+puts her head out of the parlour-window, and screams 'Muffins!' too; and
+Mrs. Walker has scarcely got the words out of her lips, than Mrs. Peplow,
+over the way, lets loose Master Peplow, who darts down the street, with a
+velocity which nothing but buttered muffins in perspective could possibly
+inspire, and drags the boy back by main force, whereupon Mrs. Macklin and
+Mrs. Walker, just to save the boy trouble, and to say a few neighbourly
+words to Mrs. Peplow at the same time, run over the way and buy their
+muffins at Mrs. Peplow's door, when it appears from the voluntary
+statement of Mrs. Walker, that her 'kittle's jist a-biling, and the cups
+and sarsers ready laid,' and that, as it was such a wretched night out o'
+doors, she'd made up her mind to have a nice, hot, comfortable cup o'
+tea--a determination at which, by the most singular coincidence, the
+other two ladies had simultaneously arrived.
+
+After a little conversation about the wretchedness of the weather and the
+merits of tea, with a digression relative to the viciousness of boys as a
+rule, and the amiability of Master Peplow as an exception, Mrs. Walker
+sees her husband coming down the street; and as he must want his tea,
+poor man, after his dirty walk from the Docks, she instantly runs across,
+muffins in hand, and Mrs. Macklin does the same, and after a few words to
+Mrs. Walker, they all pop into their little houses, and slam their little
+street-doors, which are not opened again for the remainder of the
+evening, except to the nine o'clock 'beer,' who comes round with a
+lantern in front of his tray, and says, as he lends Mrs. Walker
+'Yesterday's 'Tiser,' that he's blessed if he can hardly hold the pot,
+much less feel the paper, for it's one of the bitterest nights he ever
+felt, 'cept the night when the man was frozen to death in the
+Brick-field.
+
+After a little prophetic conversation with the policeman at the
+street-corner, touching a probable change in the weather, and the
+setting-in of a hard frost, the nine o'clock beer returns to his master's
+house, and employs himself for the remainder of the evening, in
+assiduously stirring the tap-room fire, and deferentially taking part in
+the conversation of the worthies assembled round it.
+
+The streets in the vicinity of the Marsh-gate and Victoria Theatre
+present an appearance of dirt and discomfort on such a night, which the
+groups who lounge about them in no degree tend to diminish.  Even the
+little block-tin temple sacred to baked potatoes, surmounted by a
+splendid design in variegated lamps, looks less gay than usual, and as to
+the kidney-pie stand, its glory has quite departed.  The candle in the
+transparent lamp, manufactured of oil-paper, embellished with
+'characters,' has been blown out fifty times, so the kidney-pie merchant,
+tired with running backwards and forwards to the next wine-vaults, to get
+a light, has given up the idea of illumination in despair, and the only
+signs of his 'whereabout,' are the bright sparks, of which a long
+irregular train is whirled down the street every time he opens his
+portable oven to hand a hot kidney-pie to a customer.
+
+Flat-fish, oyster, and fruit vendors linger hopelessly in the kennel, in
+vain endeavouring to attract customers; and the ragged boys who usually
+disport themselves about the streets, stand crouched in little knots in
+some projecting doorway, or under the canvas blind of a cheesemonger's,
+where great flaring gas-lights, unshaded by any glass, display huge piles
+of blight red and pale yellow cheeses, mingled with little fivepenny dabs
+of dingy bacon, various tubs of weekly Dorset, and cloudy rolls of 'best
+fresh.'
+
+Here they amuse themselves with theatrical converse, arising out of their
+last half-price visit to the Victoria gallery, admire the terrific
+combat, which is nightly encored, and expatiate on the inimitable manner
+in which Bill Thompson can 'come the double monkey,' or go through the
+mysterious involutions of a sailor's hornpipe.
+
+It is nearly eleven o'clock, and the cold thin rain which has been
+drizzling so long, is beginning to pour down in good earnest; the
+baked-potato man has departed--the kidney-pie man has just walked away
+with his warehouse on his arm--the cheesemonger has drawn in his blind,
+and the boys have dispersed.  The constant clicking of pattens on the
+slippy and uneven pavement, and the rustling of umbrellas, as the wind
+blows against the shop-windows, bear testimony to the inclemency of the
+night; and the policeman, with his oilskin cape buttoned closely round
+him, seems as he holds his hat on his head, and turns round to avoid the
+gust of wind and rain which drives against him at the street-corner, to
+be very far from congratulating himself on the prospect before him.
+
+The little chandler's shop with the cracked bell behind the door, whose
+melancholy tinkling has been regulated by the demand for quarterns of
+sugar and half-ounces of coffee, is shutting up.  The crowds which have
+been passing to and fro during the whole day, are rapidly dwindling away;
+and the noise of shouting and quarrelling which issues from the
+public-houses, is almost the only sound that breaks the melancholy
+stillness of the night.
+
+There was another, but it has ceased.  That wretched woman with the
+infant in her arms, round whose meagre form the remnant of her own scanty
+shawl is carefully wrapped, has been attempting to sing some popular
+ballad, in the hope of wringing a few pence from the compassionate
+passer-by.  A brutal laugh at her weak voice is all she has gained.  The
+tears fall thick and fast down her own pale face; the child is cold and
+hungry, and its low half-stifled wailing adds to the misery of its
+wretched mother, as she moans aloud, and sinks despairingly down, on a
+cold damp door-step.
+
+Singing!  How few of those who pass such a miserable creature as this,
+think of the anguish of heart, the sinking of soul and spirit, which the
+very effort of singing produces.  Bitter mockery!  Disease, neglect, and
+starvation, faintly articulating the words of the joyous ditty, that has
+enlivened your hours of feasting and merriment, God knows how often!  It
+is no subject of jeering.  The weak tremulous voice tells a fearful tale
+of want and famishing; and the feeble singer of this roaring song may
+turn away, only to die of cold and hunger.
+
+One o'clock!  Parties returning from the different theatres foot it
+through the muddy streets; cabs, hackney-coaches, carriages, and theatre
+omnibuses, roll swiftly by; watermen with dim dirty lanterns in their
+hands, and large brass plates upon their breasts, who have been shouting
+and rushing about for the last two hours, retire to their
+watering-houses, to solace themselves with the creature comforts of pipes
+and purl; the half-price pit and box frequenters of the theatres throng
+to the different houses of refreshment; and chops, kidneys, rabbits,
+oysters, stout, cigars, and 'goes' innumerable, are served up amidst a
+noise and confusion of smoking, running, knife-clattering, and
+waiter-chattering, perfectly indescribable.
+
+The more musical portion of the play-going community betake themselves to
+some harmonic meeting.  As a matter of curiosity let us follow them
+thither for a few moments.
+
+In a lofty room of spacious dimensions, are seated some eighty or a
+hundred guests knocking little pewter measures on the tables, and
+hammering away, with the handles of their knives, as if they were so many
+trunk-makers.  They are applauding a glee, which has just been executed
+by the three 'professional gentlemen' at the top of the centre table, one
+of whom is in the chair--the little pompous man with the bald head just
+emerging from the collar of his green coat.  The others are seated on
+either side of him--the stout man with the small voice, and the
+thin-faced dark man in black.  The little man in the chair is a most
+amusing personage,--such condescending grandeur, and _such_ a voice!
+
+'Bass!' as the young gentleman near us with the blue stock forcibly
+remarks to his companion, 'bass!  I b'lieve you; he can go down lower
+than any man: so low sometimes that you can't hear him.'  And so he does.
+To hear him growling away, gradually lower and lower down, till he can't
+get back again, is the most delightful thing in the world, and it is
+quite impossible to witness unmoved the impressive solemnity with which
+he pours forth his soul in 'My 'art's in the 'ighlands,' or 'The brave
+old Hoak.'  The stout man is also addicted to sentimentality, and warbles
+'Fly, fly from the world, my Bessy, with me,' or some such song, with
+lady-like sweetness, and in the most seductive tones imaginable.
+
+'Pray give your orders, gen'l'm'n--pray give your orders,'--says the
+pale-faced man with the red head; and demands for 'goes' of gin and
+'goes' of brandy, and pints of stout, and cigars of peculiar mildness,
+are vociferously made from all parts of the room.  The 'professional
+gentlemen' are in the very height of their glory, and bestow
+condescending nods, or even a word or two of recognition, on the
+better-known frequenters of the room, in the most bland and patronising
+manner possible.
+
+The little round-faced man, with the small brown surtout, white stockings
+and shoes, is in the comic line; the mixed air of self-denial, and mental
+consciousness of his own powers, with which he acknowledges the call of
+the chair, is particularly gratifying.  'Gen'l'men,' says the little
+pompous man, accompanying the word with a knock of the president's hammer
+on the table--'Gen'l'men, allow me to claim your attention--our friend,
+Mr. Smuggins, will oblige.'--'Bravo!' shout the company; and Smuggins,
+after a considerable quantity of coughing by way of symphony, and a most
+facetious sniff or two, which afford general delight, sings a comic song,
+with a fal-de-ral--tol-de-ral chorus at the end of every verse, much
+longer than the verse itself.  It is received with unbounded applause,
+and after some aspiring genius has volunteered a recitation, and failed
+dismally therein, the little pompous man gives another knock, and says
+'Gen'l'men, we will attempt a glee, if you please.'  This announcement
+calls forth tumultuous applause, and the more energetic spirits express
+the unqualified approbation it affords them, by knocking one or two stout
+glasses off their legs--a humorous device; but one which frequently
+occasions some slight altercation when the form of paying the damage is
+proposed to be gone through by the waiter.
+
+Scenes like these are continued until three or four o'clock in the
+morning; and even when they close, fresh ones open to the inquisitive
+novice.  But as a description of all of them, however slight, would
+require a volume, the contents of which, however instructive, would be by
+no means pleasing, we make our bow, and drop the curtain.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--SHOPS AND THEIR TENANTS
+
+
+What inexhaustible food for speculation, do the streets of London afford!
+We never were able to agree with Sterne in pitying the man who could
+travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say that all was barren; we have not
+the slightest commiseration for the man who can take up his hat and
+stick, and walk from Covent-garden to St. Paul's Churchyard, and back
+into the bargain, without deriving some amusement--we had almost said
+instruction--from his perambulation.  And yet there are such beings: we
+meet them every day.  Large black stocks and light waistcoats, jet canes
+and discontented countenances, are the characteristics of the race; other
+people brush quickly by you, steadily plodding on to business, or
+cheerfully running after pleasure.  These men linger listlessly past,
+looking as happy and animated as a policeman on duty.  Nothing seems to
+make an impression on their minds: nothing short of being knocked down by
+a porter, or run over by a cab, will disturb their equanimity.  You will
+meet them on a fine day in any of the leading thoroughfares: peep through
+the window of a west-end cigar shop in the evening, if you can manage to
+get a glimpse between the blue curtains which intercept the vulgar gaze,
+and you see them in their only enjoyment of existence.  There they are
+lounging about, on round tubs and pipe boxes, in all the dignity of
+whiskers, and gilt watch-guards; whispering soft nothings to the young
+lady in amber, with the large ear-rings, who, as she sits behind the
+counter in a blaze of adoration and gas-light, is the admiration of all
+the female servants in the neighbourhood, and the envy of every
+milliner's apprentice within two miles round.
+
+One of our principal amusements is to watch the gradual progress--the
+rise or fall--of particular shops.  We have formed an intimate
+acquaintance with several, in different parts of town, and are perfectly
+acquainted with their whole history.  We could name off-hand, twenty at
+least, which we are quite sure have paid no taxes for the last six years.
+They are never inhabited for more than two months consecutively, and, we
+verily believe, have witnessed every retail trade in the directory.
+
+There is one, whose history is a sample of the rest, in whose fate we
+have taken especial interest, having had the pleasure of knowing it ever
+since it has been a shop.  It is on the Surrey side of the water--a
+little distance beyond the Marsh-gate.  It was originally a substantial,
+good-looking private house enough; the landlord got into difficulties,
+the house got into Chancery, the tenant went away, and the house went to
+ruin.  At this period our acquaintance with it commenced; the paint was
+all worn off; the windows were broken, the area was green with neglect
+and the overflowings of the water-butt; the butt itself was without a
+lid, and the street-door was the very picture of misery.  The chief
+pastime of the children in the vicinity had been to assemble in a body on
+the steps, and to take it in turn to knock loud double knocks at the
+door, to the great satisfaction of the neighbours generally, and
+especially of the nervous old lady next door but one.  Numerous
+complaints were made, and several small basins of water discharged over
+the offenders, but without effect.  In this state of things, the
+marine-store dealer at the corner of the street, in the most obliging
+manner took the knocker off, and sold it: and the unfortunate house
+looked more wretched than ever.
+
+We deserted our friend for a few weeks.  What was our surprise, on our
+return, to find no trace of its existence!  In its place was a handsome
+shop, fast approaching to a state of completion, and on the shutters were
+large bills, informing the public that it would shortly be opened with
+'an extensive stock of linen-drapery and haberdashery.'  It opened in due
+course; there was the name of the proprietor 'and Co.' in gilt letters,
+almost too dazzling to look at.  Such ribbons and shawls! and two such
+elegant young men behind the counter, each in a clean collar and white
+neckcloth, like the lover in a farce.  As to the proprietor, he did
+nothing but walk up and down the shop, and hand seats to the ladies, and
+hold important conversations with the handsomest of the young men, who
+was shrewdly suspected by the neighbours to be the 'Co.'  We saw all this
+with sorrow; we felt a fatal presentiment that the shop was doomed--and
+so it was.  Its decay was slow, but sure.  Tickets gradually appeared in
+the windows; then rolls of flannel, with labels on them, were stuck
+outside the door; then a bill was pasted on the street-door, intimating
+that the first floor was to let unfurnished; then one of the young men
+disappeared altogether, and the other took to a black neckerchief, and
+the proprietor took to drinking.  The shop became dirty, broken panes of
+glass remained unmended, and the stock disappeared piecemeal.  At last
+the company's man came to cut off the water, and then the linen-draper
+cut off himself, leaving the landlord his compliments and the key.
+
+The next occupant was a fancy stationer.  The shop was more modestly
+painted than before, still it was neat; but somehow we always thought, as
+we passed, that it looked like a poor and struggling concern.  We wished
+the man well, but we trembled for his success.  He was a widower
+evidently, and had employment elsewhere, for he passed us every morning
+on his road to the city.  The business was carried on by his eldest
+daughter.  Poor girl! she needed no assistance.  We occasionally caught a
+glimpse of two or three children, in mourning like herself, as they sat
+in the little parlour behind the shop; and we never passed at night
+without seeing the eldest girl at work, either for them, or in making
+some elegant little trifle for sale.  We often thought, as her pale face
+looked more sad and pensive in the dim candle-light, that if those
+thoughtless females who interfere with the miserable market of poor
+creatures such as these, knew but one-half of the misery they suffer, and
+the bitter privations they endure, in their honourable attempts to earn a
+scanty subsistence, they would, perhaps, resign even opportunities for
+the gratification of vanity, and an immodest love of self-display, rather
+than drive them to a last dreadful resource, which it would shock the
+delicate feelings of these _charitable_ ladies to hear named.
+
+But we are forgetting the shop.  Well, we continued to watch it, and
+every day showed too clearly the increasing poverty of its inmates.  The
+children were clean, it is true, but their clothes were threadbare and
+shabby; no tenant had been procured for the upper part of the house, from
+the letting of which, a portion of the means of paying the rent was to
+have been derived, and a slow, wasting consumption prevented the eldest
+girl from continuing her exertions.  Quarter-day arrived.  The landlord
+had suffered from the extravagance of his last tenant, and he had no
+compassion for the struggles of his successor; he put in an execution.
+As we passed one morning, the broker's men were removing the little
+furniture there was in the house, and a newly-posted bill informed us it
+was again 'To Let.'  What became of the last tenant we never could learn;
+we believe the girl is past all suffering, and beyond all sorrow.  God
+help her!  We hope she is.
+
+We were somewhat curious to ascertain what would be the next stage--for
+that the place had no chance of succeeding now, was perfectly clear.  The
+bill was soon taken down, and some alterations were being made in the
+interior of the shop.  We were in a fever of expectation; we exhausted
+conjecture--we imagined all possible trades, none of which were perfectly
+reconcilable with our idea of the gradual decay of the tenement.  It
+opened, and we wondered why we had not guessed at the real state of the
+case before.  The shop--not a large one at the best of times--had been
+converted into two: one was a bonnet-shape maker's, the other was opened
+by a tobacconist, who also dealt in walking-sticks and Sunday newspapers;
+the two were separated by a thin partition, covered with tawdry striped
+paper.
+
+The tobacconist remained in possession longer than any tenant within our
+recollection.  He was a red-faced, impudent, good-for-nothing dog,
+evidently accustomed to take things as they came, and to make the best of
+a bad job.  He sold as many cigars as he could, and smoked the rest.  He
+occupied the shop as long as he could make peace with the landlord, and
+when he could no longer live in quiet, he very coolly locked the door,
+and bolted himself.  From this period, the two little dens have undergone
+innumerable changes.  The tobacconist was succeeded by a theatrical
+hair-dresser, who ornamented the window with a great variety of
+'characters,' and terrific combats.  The bonnet-shape maker gave place to
+a greengrocer, and the histrionic barber was succeeded, in his turn, by a
+tailor.  So numerous have been the changes, that we have of late done
+little more than mark the peculiar but certain indications of a house
+being poorly inhabited.  It has been progressing by almost imperceptible
+degrees.  The occupiers of the shops have gradually given up room after
+room, until they have only reserved the little parlour for themselves.
+First there appeared a brass plate on the private door, with 'Ladies'
+School' legibly engraved thereon; shortly afterwards we observed a second
+brass plate, then a bell, and then another bell.
+
+When we paused in front of our old friend, and observed these signs of
+poverty, which are not to be mistaken, we thought as we turned away, that
+the house had attained its lowest pitch of degradation.  We were wrong.
+When we last passed it, a 'dairy' was established in the area, and a
+party of melancholy-looking fowls were amusing themselves by running in
+at the front door, and out at the back one.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--SCOTLAND-YARD
+
+
+Scotland-yard is a small--a very small-tract of land, bounded on one side
+by the river Thames, on the other by the gardens of Northumberland House:
+abutting at one end on the bottom of Northumberland-street, at the other
+on the back of Whitehall-place.  When this territory was first
+accidentally discovered by a country gentleman who lost his way in the
+Strand, some years ago, the original settlers were found to be a tailor,
+a publican, two eating-house keepers, and a fruit-pie maker; and it was
+also found to contain a race of strong and bulky men, who repaired to the
+wharfs in Scotland-yard regularly every morning, about five or six
+o'clock, to fill heavy waggons with coal, with which they proceeded to
+distant places up the country, and supplied the inhabitants with fuel.
+When they had emptied their waggons, they again returned for a fresh
+supply; and this trade was continued throughout the year.
+
+As the settlers derived their subsistence from ministering to the wants
+of these primitive traders, the articles exposed for sale, and the places
+where they were sold, bore strong outward marks of being expressly
+adapted to their tastes and wishes.  The tailor displayed in his window a
+Lilliputian pair of leather gaiters, and a diminutive round frock, while
+each doorpost was appropriately garnished with a model of a coal-sack.
+The two eating-house keepers exhibited joints of a magnitude, and
+puddings of a solidity, which coalheavers alone could appreciate; and the
+fruit-pie maker displayed on his well-scrubbed window-board large white
+compositions of flour and dripping, ornamented with pink stains, giving
+rich promise of the fruit within, which made their huge mouths water, as
+they lingered past.
+
+But the choicest spot in all Scotland-yard was the old public-house in
+the corner.  Here, in a dark wainscoted-room of ancient appearance,
+cheered by the glow of a mighty fire, and decorated with an enormous
+clock, whereof the face was white, and the figures black, sat the lusty
+coalheavers, quaffing large draughts of Barclay's best, and puffing forth
+volumes of smoke, which wreathed heavily above their heads, and involved
+the room in a thick dark cloud.  From this apartment might their voices
+be heard on a winter's night, penetrating to the very bank of the river,
+as they shouted out some sturdy chorus, or roared forth the burden of a
+popular song; dwelling upon the last few words with a strength and length
+of emphasis which made the very roof tremble above them.
+
+Here, too, would they tell old legends of what the Thames was in ancient
+times, when the Patent Shot Manufactory wasn't built, and Waterloo-bridge
+had never been thought of; and then they would shake their heads with
+portentous looks, to the deep edification of the rising generation of
+heavers, who crowded round them, and wondered where all this would end;
+whereat the tailor would take his pipe solemnly from his mouth, and say,
+how that he hoped it might end well, but he very much doubted whether it
+would or not, and couldn't rightly tell what to make of it--a mysterious
+expression of opinion, delivered with a semi-prophetic air, which never
+failed to elicit the fullest concurrence of the assembled company; and so
+they would go on drinking and wondering till ten o'clock came, and with
+it the tailor's wife to fetch him home, when the little party broke up,
+to meet again in the same room, and say and do precisely the same things,
+on the following evening at the same hour.
+
+About this time the barges that came up the river began to bring vague
+rumours to Scotland-yard of somebody in the city having been heard to
+say, that the Lord Mayor had threatened in so many words to pull down the
+old London-bridge, and build up a new one.  At first these rumours were
+disregarded as idle tales, wholly destitute of foundation, for nobody in
+Scotland-yard doubted that if the Lord Mayor contemplated any such dark
+design, he would just be clapped up in the Tower for a week or two, and
+then killed off for high treason.
+
+By degrees, however, the reports grew stronger, and more frequent, and at
+last a barge, laden with numerous chaldrons of the best Wallsend, brought
+up the positive intelligence that several of the arches of the old bridge
+were stopped, and that preparations were actually in progress for
+constructing the new one.  What an excitement was visible in the old
+tap-room on that memorable night!  Each man looked into his neighbour's
+face, pale with alarm and astonishment, and read therein an echo of the
+sentiments which filled his own breast.  The oldest heaver present proved
+to demonstration, that the moment the piers were removed, all the water
+in the Thames would run clean off, and leave a dry gully in its place.
+What was to become of the coal-barges--of the trade of Scotland-yard--of
+the very existence of its population?  The tailor shook his head more
+sagely than usual, and grimly pointing to a knife on the table, bid them
+wait and see what happened.  He said nothing--not he; but if the Lord
+Mayor didn't fall a victim to popular indignation, why he would be rather
+astonished; that was all.
+
+They did wait; barge after barge arrived, and still no tidings of the
+assassination of the Lord Mayor.  The first stone was laid: it was done
+by a Duke--the King's brother.  Years passed away, and the bridge was
+opened by the King himself.  In course of time, the piers were removed;
+and when the people in Scotland-yard got up next morning in the confident
+expectation of being able to step over to Pedlar's Acre without wetting
+the soles of their shoes, they found to their unspeakable astonishment
+that the water was just where it used to be.
+
+A result so different from that which they had anticipated from this
+first improvement, produced its full effect upon the inhabitants of
+Scotland-yard.  One of the eating-house keepers began to court public
+opinion, and to look for customers among a new class of people.  He
+covered his little dining-tables with white cloths, and got a painter's
+apprentice to inscribe something about hot joints from twelve to two, in
+one of the little panes of his shop-window.  Improvement began to march
+with rapid strides to the very threshold of Scotland-yard.  A new market
+sprung up at Hungerford, and the Police Commissioners established their
+office in Whitehall-place.  The traffic in Scotland-yard increased; fresh
+Members were added to the House of Commons, the Metropolitan
+Representatives found it a near cut, and many other foot passengers
+followed their example.
+
+We marked the advance of civilisation, and beheld it with a sigh.  The
+eating-house keeper who manfully resisted the innovation of table-cloths,
+was losing ground every day, as his opponent gained it, and a deadly feud
+sprung up between them.  The genteel one no longer took his evening's
+pint in Scotland-yard, but drank gin and water at a 'parlour' in
+Parliament-street.  The fruit-pie maker still continued to visit the old
+room, but he took to smoking cigars, and began to call himself a
+pastrycook, and to read the papers.  The old heavers still assembled
+round the ancient fireplace, but their talk was mournful: and the loud
+song and the joyous shout were heard no more.
+
+And what is Scotland-yard now?  How have its old customs changed; and how
+has the ancient simplicity of its inhabitants faded away!  The old
+tottering public-house is converted into a spacious and lofty
+'wine-vaults;' gold leaf has been used in the construction of the letters
+which emblazon its exterior, and the poet's art has been called into
+requisition, to intimate that if you drink a certain description of ale,
+you must hold fast by the rail.  The tailor exhibits in his window the
+pattern of a foreign-looking brown surtout, with silk buttons, a fur
+collar, and fur cuffs.  He wears a stripe down the outside of each leg of
+his trousers: and we have detected his assistants (for he has assistants
+now) in the act of sitting on the shop-board in the same uniform.
+
+At the other end of the little row of houses a boot-maker has established
+himself in a brick box, with the additional innovation of a first floor;
+and here he exposes for sale, boots--real Wellington boots--an article
+which a few years ago, none of the original inhabitants had ever seen or
+heard of.  It was but the other day, that a dress-maker opened another
+little box in the middle of the row; and, when we thought that the spirit
+of change could produce no alteration beyond that, a jeweller appeared,
+and not content with exposing gilt rings and copper bracelets out of
+number, put up an announcement, which still sticks in his window, that
+'ladies' ears may be pierced within.'  The dress-maker employs a young
+lady who wears pockets in her apron; and the tailor informs the public
+that gentlemen may have their own materials made up.
+
+Amidst all this change, and restlessness, and innovation, there remains
+but one old man, who seems to mourn the downfall of this ancient place.
+He holds no converse with human kind, but, seated on a wooden bench at
+the angle of the wall which fronts the crossing from Whitehall-place,
+watches in silence the gambols of his sleek and well-fed dogs.  He is the
+presiding genius of Scotland-yard.  Years and years have rolled over his
+head; but, in fine weather or in foul, hot or cold, wet or dry, hail,
+rain, or snow, he is still in his accustomed spot.  Misery and want are
+depicted in his countenance; his form is bent by age, his head is grey
+with length of trial, but there he sits from day to day, brooding over
+the past; and thither he will continue to drag his feeble limbs, until
+his eyes have closed upon Scotland-yard, and upon the world together.
+
+A few years hence, and the antiquary of another generation looking into
+some mouldy record of the strife and passions that agitated the world in
+these times, may glance his eye over the pages we have just filled: and
+not all his knowledge of the history of the past, not all his
+black-letter lore, or his skill in book-collecting, not all the dry
+studies of a long life, or the dusty volumes that have cost him a
+fortune, may help him to the whereabouts, either of Scotland-yard, or of
+any one of the landmarks we have mentioned in describing it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--SEVEN DIALS
+
+
+We have always been of opinion that if Tom King and the Frenchman had not
+immortalised Seven Dials, Seven Dials would have immortalised itself.
+Seven Dials! the region of song and poetry--first effusions, and last
+dying speeches: hallowed by the names of Catnach and of Pitts--names that
+will entwine themselves with costermongers, and barrel-organs, when penny
+magazines shall have superseded penny yards of song, and capital
+punishment be unknown!
+
+Look at the construction of the place.  The Gordian knot was all very
+well in its way: so was the maze of Hampton Court: so is the maze at the
+Beulah Spa: so were the ties of stiff white neckcloths, when the
+difficulty of getting one on, was only to be equalled by the apparent
+impossibility of ever getting it off again.  But what involutions can
+compare with those of Seven Dials?  Where is there such another maze of
+streets, courts, lanes, and alleys?  Where such a pure mixture of
+Englishmen and Irishmen, as in this complicated part of London?  We
+boldly aver that we doubt the veracity of the legend to which we have
+adverted.  We _can_ suppose a man rash enough to inquire at random--at a
+house with lodgers too--for a Mr. Thompson, with all but the certainty
+before his eyes, of finding at least two or three Thompsons in any house
+of moderate dimensions; but a Frenchman--a Frenchman in Seven Dials!
+Pooh!  He was an Irishman.  Tom King's education had been neglected in
+his infancy, and as he couldn't understand half the man said, he took it
+for granted he was talking French.
+
+The stranger who finds himself in 'The Dials' for the first time, and
+stands Belzoni-like, at the entrance of seven obscure passages, uncertain
+which to take, will see enough around him to keep his curiosity and
+attention awake for no inconsiderable time.  From the irregular square
+into which he has plunged, the streets and courts dart in all directions,
+until they are lost in the unwholesome vapour which hangs over the
+house-tops, and renders the dirty perspective uncertain and confined; and
+lounging at every corner, as if they came there to take a few gasps of
+such fresh air as has found its way so far, but is too much exhausted
+already, to be enabled to force itself into the narrow alleys around, are
+groups of people, whose appearance and dwellings would fill any mind but
+a regular Londoner's with astonishment.
+
+On one side, a little crowd has collected round a couple of ladies, who
+having imbibed the contents of various 'three-outs' of gin and bitters in
+the course of the morning, have at length differed on some point of
+domestic arrangement, and are on the eve of settling the quarrel
+satisfactorily, by an appeal to blows, greatly to the interest of other
+ladies who live in the same house, and tenements adjoining, and who are
+all partisans on one side or other.
+
+'Vy don't you pitch into her, Sarah?' exclaims one half-dressed matron,
+by way of encouragement.  'Vy don't you? if _my_ 'usband had treated her
+with a drain last night, unbeknown to me, I'd tear her precious eyes
+out--a wixen!'
+
+'What's the matter, ma'am?' inquires another old woman, who has just
+bustled up to the spot.
+
+'Matter!' replies the first speaker, talking _at_ the obnoxious
+combatant, 'matter!  Here's poor dear Mrs. Sulliwin, as has five blessed
+children of her own, can't go out a charing for one arternoon, but what
+hussies must be a comin', and 'ticing avay her oun' 'usband, as she's
+been married to twelve year come next Easter Monday, for I see the
+certificate ven I vas a drinkin' a cup o' tea vith her, only the werry
+last blessed Ven'sday as ever was sent.  I 'appen'd to say promiscuously,
+"Mrs. Sulliwin," says I--'
+
+'What do you mean by hussies?' interrupts a champion of the other party,
+who has evinced a strong inclination throughout to get up a branch fight
+on her own account ('Hooroar,' ejaculates a pot-boy in parenthesis, 'put
+the kye-bosk on her, Mary!'), 'What do you mean by hussies?' reiterates
+the champion.
+
+'Niver mind,' replies the opposition expressively, 'niver mind; _you_ go
+home, and, ven you're quite sober, mend your stockings.'
+
+This somewhat personal allusion, not only to the lady's habits of
+intemperance, but also to the state of her wardrobe, rouses her utmost
+ire, and she accordingly complies with the urgent request of the
+bystanders to 'pitch in,' with considerable alacrity.  The scuffle became
+general, and terminates, in minor play-bill phraseology, with 'arrival of
+the policemen, interior of the station-house, and impressive
+_denouement_.'
+
+In addition to the numerous groups who are idling about the gin-shops and
+squabbling in the centre of the road, every post in the open space has
+its occupant, who leans against it for hours, with listless perseverance.
+It is odd enough that one class of men in London appear to have no
+enjoyment beyond leaning against posts.  We never saw a regular
+bricklayer's labourer take any other recreation, fighting excepted.  Pass
+through St. Giles's in the evening of a week-day, there they are in their
+fustian dresses, spotted with brick-dust and whitewash, leaning against
+posts.  Walk through Seven Dials on Sunday morning: there they are again,
+drab or light corduroy trousers, Blucher boots, blue coats, and great
+yellow waistcoats, leaning against posts.  The idea of a man dressing
+himself in his best clothes, to lean against a post all day!
+
+The peculiar character of these streets, and the close resemblance each
+one bears to its neighbour, by no means tends to decrease the
+bewilderment in which the unexperienced wayfarer through 'the Dials'
+finds himself involved.  He traverses streets of dirty, straggling
+houses, with now and then an unexpected court composed of buildings as
+ill-proportioned and deformed as the half-naked children that wallow in
+the kennels.  Here and there, a little dark chandler's shop, with a
+cracked bell hung up behind the door to announce the entrance of a
+customer, or betray the presence of some young gentleman in whom a
+passion for shop tills has developed itself at an early age: others, as
+if for support, against some handsome lofty building, which usurps the
+place of a low dingy public-house; long rows of broken and patched
+windows expose plants that may have flourished when 'the Dials' were
+built, in vessels as dirty as 'the Dials' themselves; and shops for the
+purchase of rags, bones, old iron, and kitchen-stuff, vie in cleanliness
+with the bird-fanciers and rabbit-dealers, which one might fancy so many
+arks, but for the irresistible conviction that no bird in its proper
+senses, who was permitted to leave one of them, would ever come back
+again.  Brokers' shops, which would seem to have been established by
+humane individuals, as refuges for destitute bugs, interspersed with
+announcements of day-schools, penny theatres, petition-writers, mangles,
+and music for balls or routs, complete the 'still life' of the subject;
+and dirty men, filthy women, squalid children, fluttering shuttlecocks,
+noisy battledores, reeking pipes, bad fruit, more than doubtful oysters,
+attenuated cats, depressed dogs, and anatomical fowls, are its cheerful
+accompaniments.
+
+If the external appearance of the houses, or a glance at their
+inhabitants, present but few attractions, a closer acquaintance with
+either is little calculated to alter one's first impression.  Every room
+has its separate tenant, and every tenant is, by the same mysterious
+dispensation which causes a country curate to 'increase and multiply'
+most marvellously, generally the head of a numerous family.
+
+The man in the shop, perhaps, is in the baked 'jemmy' line, or the
+fire-wood and hearth-stone line, or any other line which requires a
+floating capital of eighteen-pence or thereabouts: and he and his family
+live in the shop, and the small back parlour behind it.  Then there is an
+Irish labourer and _his_ family in the back kitchen, and a jobbing
+man--carpet-beater and so forth--with _his_ family in the front one.  In
+the front one-pair, there's another man with another wife and family, and
+in the back one-pair, there's 'a young 'oman as takes in tambour-work,
+and dresses quite genteel,' who talks a good deal about 'my friend,' and
+can't 'a-bear anything low.'  The second floor front, and the rest of the
+lodgers, are just a second edition of the people below, except a
+shabby-genteel man in the back attic, who has his half-pint of coffee
+every morning from the coffee-shop next door but one, which boasts a
+little front den called a coffee-room, with a fireplace, over which is an
+inscription, politely requesting that, 'to prevent mistakes,' customers
+will 'please to pay on delivery.'  The shabby-genteel man is an object of
+some mystery, but as he leads a life of seclusion, and never was known to
+buy anything beyond an occasional pen, except half-pints of coffee, penny
+loaves, and ha'porths of ink, his fellow-lodgers very naturally suppose
+him to be an author; and rumours are current in the Dials, that he writes
+poems for Mr. Warren.
+
+Now anybody who passed through the Dials on a hot summer's evening, and
+saw the different women of the house gossiping on the steps, would be apt
+to think that all was harmony among them, and that a more primitive set
+of people than the native Diallers could not be imagined.  Alas! the man
+in the shop ill-treats his family; the carpet-beater extends his
+professional pursuits to his wife; the one-pair front has an undying feud
+with the two-pair front, in consequence of the two-pair front persisting
+in dancing over his (the one-pair front's) head, when he and his family
+have retired for the night; the two-pair back will interfere with the
+front kitchen's children; the Irishman comes home drunk every other
+night, and attacks everybody; and the one-pair back screams at
+everything.  Animosities spring up between floor and floor; the very
+cellar asserts his equality.  Mrs. A. 'smacks' Mrs. B.'s child for
+'making faces.'  Mrs. B. forthwith throws cold water over Mrs. A.'s child
+for 'calling names.'  The husbands are embroiled--the quarrel becomes
+general--an assault is the consequence, and a police-officer the result.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--MEDITATIONS IN MONMOUTH-STREET
+
+
+We have always entertained a particular attachment towards
+Monmouth-street, as the only true and real emporium for second-hand
+wearing apparel.  Monmouth-street is venerable from its antiquity, and
+respectable from its usefulness.  Holywell-street we despise; the
+red-headed and red-whiskered Jews who forcibly haul you into their
+squalid houses, and thrust you into a suit of clothes, whether you will
+or not, we detest.
+
+The inhabitants of Monmouth-street are a distinct class; a peaceable and
+retiring race, who immure themselves for the most part in deep cellars,
+or small back parlours, and who seldom come forth into the world, except
+in the dusk and coolness of the evening, when they may be seen seated, in
+chairs on the pavement, smoking their pipes, or watching the gambols of
+their engaging children as they revel in the gutter, a happy troop of
+infantine scavengers.  Their countenances bear a thoughtful and a dirty
+cast, certain indications of their love of traffic; and their habitations
+are distinguished by that disregard of outward appearance and neglect of
+personal comfort, so common among people who are constantly immersed in
+profound speculations, and deeply engaged in sedentary pursuits.
+
+We have hinted at the antiquity of our favourite spot.  'A
+Monmouth-street laced coat' was a by-word a century ago; and still we
+find Monmouth-street the same.  Pilot great-coats with wooden buttons,
+have usurped the place of the ponderous laced coats with full skirts;
+embroidered waistcoats with large flaps, have yielded to double-breasted
+checks with roll-collars; and three-cornered hats of quaint appearance,
+have given place to the low crowns and broad brims of the coachman
+school; but it is the times that have changed, not Monmouth-street.
+Through every alteration and every change, Monmouth-street has still
+remained the burial-place of the fashions; and such, to judge from all
+present appearances, it will remain until there are no more fashions to
+bury.
+
+We love to walk among these extensive groves of the illustrious dead, and
+to indulge in the speculations to which they give rise; now fitting a
+deceased coat, then a dead pair of trousers, and anon the mortal remains
+of a gaudy waistcoat, upon some being of our own conjuring up, and
+endeavouring, from the shape and fashion of the garment itself, to bring
+its former owner before our mind's eye.  We have gone on speculating in
+this way, until whole rows of coats have started from their pegs, and
+buttoned up, of their own accord, round the waists of imaginary wearers;
+lines of trousers have jumped down to meet them; waistcoats have almost
+burst with anxiety to put themselves on; and half an acre of shoes have
+suddenly found feet to fit them, and gone stumping down the street with a
+noise which has fairly awakened us from our pleasant reverie, and driven
+us slowly away, with a bewildered stare, an object of astonishment to the
+good people of Monmouth-street, and of no slight suspicion to the
+policemen at the opposite street corner.
+
+We were occupied in this manner the other day, endeavouring to fit a pair
+of lace-up half-boots on an ideal personage, for whom, to say the truth,
+they were full a couple of sizes too small, when our eyes happened to
+alight on a few suits of clothes ranged outside a shop-window, which it
+immediately struck us, must at different periods have all belonged to,
+and been worn by, the same individual, and had now, by one of those
+strange conjunctions of circumstances which will occur sometimes, come to
+be exposed together for sale in the same shop.  The idea seemed a
+fantastic one, and we looked at the clothes again with a firm
+determination not to be easily led away.  No, we were right; the more we
+looked, the more we were convinced of the accuracy of our previous
+impression.  There was the man's whole life written as legibly on those
+clothes, as if we had his autobiography engrossed on parchment before us.
+
+The first was a patched and much-soiled skeleton suit; one of those
+straight blue cloth cases in which small boys used to be confined, before
+belts and tunics had come in, and old notions had gone out: an ingenious
+contrivance for displaying the full symmetry of a boy's figure, by
+fastening him into a very tight jacket, with an ornamental row of buttons
+over each shoulder, and then buttoning his trousers over it, so as to
+give his legs the appearance of being hooked on, just under the armpits.
+This was the boy's dress.  It had belonged to a town boy, we could see;
+there was a shortness about the legs and arms of the suit; and a bagging
+at the knees, peculiar to the rising youth of London streets.  A small
+day-school he had been at, evidently.  If it had been a regular boys'
+school they wouldn't have let him play on the floor so much, and rub his
+knees so white.  He had an indulgent mother too, and plenty of halfpence,
+as the numerous smears of some sticky substance about the pockets, and
+just below the chin, which even the salesman's skill could not succeed in
+disguising, sufficiently betokened.  They were decent people, but not
+overburdened with riches, or he would not have so far outgrown the suit
+when he passed into those corduroys with the round jacket; in which he
+went to a boys' school, however, and learnt to write--and in ink of
+pretty tolerable blackness, too, if the place where he used to wipe his
+pen might be taken as evidence.
+
+A black suit and the jacket changed into a diminutive coat.  His father
+had died, and the mother had got the boy a message-lad's place in some
+office.  A long-worn suit that one; rusty and threadbare before it was
+laid aside, but clean and free from soil to the last.  Poor woman!  We
+could imagine her assumed cheerfulness over the scanty meal, and the
+refusal of her own small portion, that her hungry boy might have enough.
+Her constant anxiety for his welfare, her pride in his growth mingled
+sometimes with the thought, almost too acute to bear, that as he grew to
+be a man his old affection might cool, old kindnesses fade from his mind,
+and old promises be forgotten--the sharp pain that even then a careless
+word or a cold look would give her--all crowded on our thoughts as
+vividly as if the very scene were passing before us.
+
+These things happen every hour, and we all know it; and yet we felt as
+much sorrow when we saw, or fancied we saw--it makes no difference
+which--the change that began to take place now, as if we had just
+conceived the bare possibility of such a thing for the first time.  The
+next suit, smart but slovenly; meant to be gay, and yet not half so
+decent as the threadbare apparel; redolent of the idle lounge, and the
+blackguard companions, told us, we thought, that the widow's comfort had
+rapidly faded away.  We could imagine that coat--imagine! we could see
+it; we _had_ seen it a hundred times--sauntering in company with three or
+four other coats of the same cut, about some place of profligate resort
+at night.
+
+We dressed, from the same shop-window in an instant, half a dozen boys of
+from fifteen to twenty; and putting cigars into their mouths, and their
+hands into their pockets, watched them as they sauntered down the street,
+and lingered at the corner, with the obscene jest, and the oft-repeated
+oath.  We never lost sight of them, till they had cocked their hats a
+little more on one side, and swaggered into the public-house; and then we
+entered the desolate home, where the mother sat late in the night, alone;
+we watched her, as she paced the room in feverish anxiety, and every now
+and then opened the door, looked wistfully into the dark and empty
+street, and again returned, to be again and again disappointed.  We
+beheld the look of patience with which she bore the brutish threat, nay,
+even the drunken blow; and we heard the agony of tears that gushed from
+her very heart, as she sank upon her knees in her solitary and wretched
+apartment.
+
+A long period had elapsed, and a greater change had taken place, by the
+time of casting off the suit that hung above.  It was that of a stout,
+broad-shouldered, sturdy-chested man; and we knew at once, as anybody
+would, who glanced at that broad-skirted green coat, with the large metal
+buttons, that its wearer seldom walked forth without a dog at his heels,
+and some idle ruffian, the very counterpart of himself, at his side.  The
+vices of the boy had grown with the man, and we fancied his home then--if
+such a place deserve the name.
+
+We saw the bare and miserable room, destitute of furniture, crowded with
+his wife and children, pale, hungry, and emaciated; the man cursing their
+lamentations, staggering to the tap-room, from whence he had just
+returned, followed by his wife and a sickly infant, clamouring for bread;
+and heard the street-wrangle and noisy recrimination that his striking
+her occasioned.  And then imagination led us to some metropolitan
+workhouse, situated in the midst of crowded streets and alleys, filled
+with noxious vapours, and ringing with boisterous cries, where an old and
+feeble woman, imploring pardon for her son, lay dying in a close dark
+room, with no child to clasp her hand, and no pure air from heaven to fan
+her brow.  A stranger closed the eyes that settled into a cold unmeaning
+glare, and strange ears received the words that murmured from the white
+and half-closed lips.
+
+A coarse round frock, with a worn cotton neckerchief, and other articles
+of clothing of the commonest description, completed the history.  A
+prison, and the sentence--banishment or the gallows.  What would the man
+have given then, to be once again the contented humble drudge of his
+boyish years; to have been restored to life, but for a week, a day, an
+hour, a minute, only for so long a time as would enable him to say one
+word of passionate regret to, and hear one sound of heartfelt forgiveness
+from, the cold and ghastly form that lay rotting in the pauper's grave!
+The children wild in the streets, the mother a destitute widow; both
+deeply tainted with the deep disgrace of the husband and father's name,
+and impelled by sheer necessity, down the precipice that had led him to a
+lingering death, possibly of many years' duration, thousands of miles
+away.  We had no clue to the end of the tale; but it was easy to guess
+its termination.
+
+We took a step or two further on, and by way of restoring the naturally
+cheerful tone of our thoughts, began fitting visionary feet and legs into
+a cellar-board full of boots and shoes, with a speed and accuracy that
+would have astonished the most expert artist in leather, living.  There
+was one pair of boots in particular--a jolly, good-tempered,
+hearty-looking pair of tops, that excited our warmest regard; and we had
+got a fine, red-faced, jovial fellow of a market-gardener into them,
+before we had made their acquaintance half a minute.  They were just the
+very thing for him.  There was his huge fat legs bulging over the tops,
+and fitting them too tight to admit of his tucking in the loops he had
+pulled them on by; and his knee-cords with an interval of stocking; and
+his blue apron tucked up round his waist; and his red neckerchief and
+blue coat, and a white hat stuck on one side of his head; and there he
+stood with a broad grin on his great red face, whistling away, as if any
+other idea but that of being happy and comfortable had never entered his
+brain.
+
+This was the very man after our own heart; we knew all about him; we had
+seen him coming up to Covent-garden in his green chaise-cart, with the
+fat, tubby little horse, half a thousand times; and even while we cast an
+affectionate look upon his boots, at that instant, the form of a
+coquettish servant-maid suddenly sprung into a pair of Denmark satin
+shoes that stood beside them, and we at once recognised the very girl who
+accepted his offer of a ride, just on this side the Hammersmith
+suspension-bridge, the very last Tuesday morning we rode into town from
+Richmond.
+
+A very smart female, in a showy bonnet, stepped into a pair of grey cloth
+boots, with black fringe and binding, that were studiously pointing out
+their toes on the other side of the top-boots, and seemed very anxious to
+engage his attention, but we didn't observe that our friend the
+market-gardener appeared at all captivated with these blandishments; for
+beyond giving a knowing wink when they first began, as if to imply that
+he quite understood their end and object, he took no further notice of
+them.  His indifference, however, was amply recompensed by the excessive
+gallantry of a very old gentleman with a silver-headed stick, who
+tottered into a pair of large list shoes, that were standing in one
+corner of the board, and indulged in a variety of gestures expressive of
+his admiration of the lady in the cloth boots, to the immeasurable
+amusement of a young fellow we put into a pair of long-quartered pumps,
+who we thought would have split the coat that slid down to meet him, with
+laughing.
+
+We had been looking on at this little pantomime with great satisfaction
+for some time, when, to our unspeakable astonishment, we perceived that
+the whole of the characters, including a numerous _corps de ballet_ of
+boots and shoes in the background, into which we had been hastily
+thrusting as many feet as we could press into the service, were arranging
+themselves in order for dancing; and some music striking up at the
+moment, to it they went without delay.  It was perfectly delightful to
+witness the agility of the market-gardener.  Out went the boots, first on
+one side, then on the other, then cutting, then shuffling, then setting
+to the Denmark satins, then advancing, then retreating, then going round,
+and then repeating the whole of the evolutions again, without appearing
+to suffer in the least from the violence of the exercise.
+
+Nor were the Denmark satins a bit behindhand, for they jumped and bounded
+about, in all directions; and though they were neither so regular, nor so
+true to the time as the cloth boots, still, as they seemed to do it from
+the heart, and to enjoy it more, we candidly confess that we preferred
+their style of dancing to the other.  But the old gentleman in the list
+shoes was the most amusing object in the whole party; for, besides his
+grotesque attempts to appear youthful, and amorous, which were
+sufficiently entertaining in themselves, the young fellow in the pumps
+managed so artfully that every time the old gentleman advanced to salute
+the lady in the cloth boots, he trod with his whole weight on the old
+fellow's toes, which made him roar with anguish, and rendered all the
+others like to die of laughing.
+
+We were in the full enjoyment of these festivities when we heard a
+shrill, and by no means musical voice, exclaim, 'Hope you'll know me
+agin, imperence!' and on looking intently forward to see from whence the
+sound came, we found that it proceeded, not from the young lady in the
+cloth boots, as we had at first been inclined to suppose, but from a
+bulky lady of elderly appearance who was seated in a chair at the head of
+the cellar-steps, apparently for the purpose of superintending the sale
+of the articles arranged there.
+
+A barrel-organ, which had been in full force close behind us, ceased
+playing; the people we had been fitting into the shoes and boots took to
+flight at the interruption; and as we were conscious that in the depth of
+our meditations we might have been rudely staring at the old lady for
+half an hour without knowing it, we took to flight too, and were soon
+immersed in the deepest obscurity of the adjacent 'Dials.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--HACKNEY-COACH STANDS
+
+
+We maintain that hackney-coaches, properly so called, belong solely to
+the metropolis.  We may be told, that there are hackney-coach stands in
+Edinburgh; and not to go quite so far for a contradiction to our
+position, we may be reminded that Liverpool, Manchester, 'and other large
+towns' (as the Parliamentary phrase goes), have _their_ hackney-coach
+stands.  We readily concede to these places the possession of certain
+vehicles, which may look almost as dirty, and even go almost as slowly,
+as London hackney-coaches; but that they have the slightest claim to
+compete with the metropolis, either in point of stands, drivers, or
+cattle, we indignantly deny.
+
+Take a regular, ponderous, rickety, London hackney-coach of the old
+school, and let any man have the boldness to assert, if he can, that he
+ever beheld any object on the face of the earth which at all resembles
+it, unless, indeed, it were another hackney-coach of the same date.  We
+have recently observed on certain stands, and we say it with deep regret,
+rather dapper green chariots, and coaches of polished yellow, with four
+wheels of the same colour as the coach, whereas it is perfectly notorious
+to every one who has studied the subject, that every wheel ought to be of
+a different colour, and a different size.  These are innovations, and,
+like other miscalled improvements, awful signs of the restlessness of the
+public mind, and the little respect paid to our time-honoured
+institutions.  Why should hackney-coaches be clean?  Our ancestors found
+them dirty, and left them so.  Why should we, with a feverish wish to
+'keep moving,' desire to roll along at the rate of six miles an hour,
+while they were content to rumble over the stones at four?  These are
+solemn considerations.  Hackney-coaches are part and parcel of the law of
+the land; they were settled by the Legislature; plated and numbered by
+the wisdom of Parliament.
+
+Then why have they been swamped by cabs and omnibuses?  Or why should
+people be allowed to ride quickly for eightpence a mile, after Parliament
+had come to the solemn decision that they should pay a shilling a mile
+for riding slowly?  We pause for a reply;--and, having no chance of
+getting one, begin a fresh paragraph.
+
+Our acquaintance with hackney-coach stands is of long standing.  We are a
+walking book of fares, feeling ourselves, half bound, as it were, to be
+always in the right on contested points.  We know all the regular
+watermen within three miles of Covent-garden by sight, and should be
+almost tempted to believe that all the hackney-coach horses in that
+district knew us by sight too, if one-half of them were not blind.  We
+take great interest in hackney-coaches, but we seldom drive, having a
+knack of turning ourselves over when we attempt to do so.  We are as
+great friends to horses, hackney-coach and otherwise, as the renowned Mr.
+Martin, of costermonger notoriety, and yet we never ride.  We keep no
+horse, but a clothes-horse; enjoy no saddle so much as a saddle of
+mutton; and, following our own inclinations, have never followed the
+hounds.  Leaving these fleeter means of getting over the ground, or of
+depositing oneself upon it, to those who like them, by hackney-coach
+stands we take our stand.
+
+There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window at which we are
+writing; there is only one coach on it now, but it is a fair specimen of
+the class of vehicles to which we have alluded--a great, lumbering,
+square concern of a dingy yellow colour (like a bilious brunette), with
+very small glasses, but very large frames; the panels are ornamented with
+a faded coat of arms, in shape something like a dissected bat, the
+axletree is red, and the majority of the wheels are green.  The box is
+partially covered by an old great-coat, with a multiplicity of capes, and
+some extraordinary-looking clothes; and the straw, with which the canvas
+cushion is stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in rivalry of
+the hay, which is peeping through the chinks in the boot.  The horses,
+with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as scanty and
+straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse, are standing patiently
+on some damp straw, occasionally wincing, and rattling the harness; and
+now and then, one of them lifts his mouth to the ear of his companion, as
+if he were saying, in a whisper, that he should like to assassinate the
+coachman.  The coachman himself is in the watering-house; and the
+waterman, with his hands forced into his pockets as far as they can
+possibly go, is dancing the 'double shuffle,' in front of the pump, to
+keep his feet warm.
+
+The servant-girl, with the pink ribbons, at No. 5, opposite, suddenly
+opens the street-door, and four small children forthwith rush out, and
+scream 'Coach!' with all their might and main.  The waterman darts from
+the pump, seizes the horses by their respective bridles, and drags them,
+and the coach too, round to the house, shouting all the time for the
+coachman at the very top, or rather very bottom of his voice, for it is a
+deep bass growl.  A response is heard from the tap-room; the coachman, in
+his wooden-soled shoes, makes the street echo again as he runs across it;
+and then there is such a struggling, and backing, and grating of the
+kennel, to get the coach-door opposite the house-door, that the children
+are in perfect ecstasies of delight.  What a commotion!  The old lady,
+who has been stopping there for the last month, is going back to the
+country.  Out comes box after box, and one side of the vehicle is filled
+with luggage in no time; the children get into everybody's way, and the
+youngest, who has upset himself in his attempts to carry an umbrella, is
+borne off wounded and kicking.  The youngsters disappear, and a short
+pause ensues, during which the old lady is, no doubt, kissing them all
+round in the back parlour.  She appears at last, followed by her married
+daughter, all the children, and both the servants, who, with the joint
+assistance of the coachman and waterman, manage to get her safely into
+the coach.  A cloak is handed in, and a little basket, which we could
+almost swear contains a small black bottle, and a paper of sandwiches.
+Up go the steps, bang goes the door, 'Golden-cross, Charing-cross, Tom,'
+says the waterman; 'Good-bye, grandma,' cry the children, off jingles the
+coach at the rate of three miles an hour, and the mamma and children
+retire into the house, with the exception of one little villain, who runs
+up the street at the top of his speed, pursued by the servant; not
+ill-pleased to have such an opportunity of displaying her attractions.
+She brings him back, and, after casting two or three gracious glances
+across the way, which are either intended for us or the potboy (we are
+not quite certain which), shuts the door, and the hackney-coach stand is
+again at a standstill.
+
+We have been frequently amused with the intense delight with which 'a
+servant of all work,' who is sent for a coach, deposits herself inside;
+and the unspeakable gratification which boys, who have been despatched on
+a similar errand, appear to derive from mounting the box.  But we never
+recollect to have been more amused with a hackney-coach party, than one
+we saw early the other morning in Tottenham-court-road.  It was a
+wedding-party, and emerged from one of the inferior streets near
+Fitzroy-square.  There were the bride, with a thin white dress, and a
+great red face; and the bridesmaid, a little, dumpy, good-humoured young
+woman, dressed, of course, in the same appropriate costume; and the
+bridegroom and his chosen friend, in blue coats, yellow waist-coats,
+white trousers, and Berlin gloves to match.  They stopped at the corner
+of the street, and called a coach with an air of indescribable dignity.
+The moment they were in, the bridesmaid threw a red shawl, which she had,
+no doubt, brought on purpose, negligently over the number on the door,
+evidently to delude pedestrians into the belief that the hackney-coach
+was a private carriage; and away they went, perfectly satisfied that the
+imposition was successful, and quite unconscious that there was a great
+staring number stuck up behind, on a plate as large as a schoolboy's
+slate.  A shilling a mile!--the ride was worth five, at least, to them.
+
+What an interesting book a hackney-coach might produce, if it could carry
+as much in its head as it does in its body!  The autobiography of a
+broken-down hackney-coach, would surely be as amusing as the
+autobiography of a broken-down hackneyed dramatist; and it might tell as
+much of its travels _with_ the pole, as others have of their expeditions
+_to_ it.  How many stories might be related of the different people it
+had conveyed on matters of business or profit--pleasure or pain!  And how
+many melancholy tales of the same people at different periods!  The
+country-girl--the showy, over-dressed woman--the drunken prostitute!  The
+raw apprentice--the dissipated spendthrift--the thief!
+
+Talk of cabs!  Cabs are all very well in cases of expedition, when it's a
+matter of neck or nothing, life or death, your temporary home or your
+long one.  But, besides a cab's lacking that gravity of deportment which
+so peculiarly distinguishes a hackney-coach, let it never be forgotten
+that a cab is a thing of yesterday, and that he never was anything
+better.  A hackney-cab has always been a hackney-cab, from his first
+entry into life; whereas a hackney-coach is a remnant of past gentility,
+a victim to fashion, a hanger-on of an old English family, wearing their
+arms, and, in days of yore, escorted by men wearing their livery,
+stripped of his finery, and thrown upon the world, like a once-smart
+footman when he is no longer sufficiently juvenile for his office,
+progressing lower and lower in the scale of four-wheeled degradation,
+until at last it comes to--_a stand_!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--DOCTORS' COMMONS
+
+
+Walking without any definite object through St. Paul's Churchyard, a
+little while ago, we happened to turn down a street entitled
+'Paul's-chain,' and keeping straight forward for a few hundred yards,
+found ourself, as a natural consequence, in Doctors' Commons.  Now
+Doctors' Commons being familiar by name to everybody, as the place where
+they grant marriage-licenses to love-sick couples, and divorces to
+unfaithful ones; register the wills of people who have any property to
+leave, and punish hasty gentlemen who call ladies by unpleasant names, we
+no sooner discovered that we were really within its precincts, than we
+felt a laudable desire to become better acquainted therewith; and as the
+first object of our curiosity was the Court, whose decrees can even
+unloose the bonds of matrimony, we procured a direction to it; and bent
+our steps thither without delay.
+
+Crossing a quiet and shady court-yard, paved with stone, and frowned upon
+by old red brick houses, on the doors of which were painted the names of
+sundry learned civilians, we paused before a small, green-baized,
+brass-headed-nailed door, which yielding to our gentle push, at once
+admitted us into an old quaint-looking apartment, with sunken windows,
+and black carved wainscoting, at the upper end of which, seated on a
+raised platform, of semicircular shape, were about a dozen solemn-looking
+gentlemen, in crimson gowns and wigs.
+
+At a more elevated desk in the centre, sat a very fat and red-faced
+gentleman, in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance
+announced the judge; and round a long green-baized table below, something
+like a billiard-table without the cushions and pockets, were a number of
+very self-important-looking personages, in stiff neckcloths, and black
+gowns with white fur collars, whom we at once set down as proctors.  At
+the lower end of the billiard-table was an individual in an arm-chair,
+and a wig, whom we afterwards discovered to be the registrar; and seated
+behind a little desk, near the door, were a respectable-looking man in
+black, of about twenty-stone weight or thereabouts, and a fat-faced,
+smirking, civil-looking body, in a black gown, black kid gloves, knee
+shorts, and silks, with a shirt-frill in his bosom, curls on his head,
+and a silver staff in his hand, whom we had no difficulty in recognising
+as the officer of the Court.  The latter, indeed, speedily set our mind
+at rest upon this point, for, advancing to our elbow, and opening a
+conversation forthwith, he had communicated to us, in less than five
+minutes, that he was the apparitor, and the other the court-keeper; that
+this was the Arches Court, and therefore the counsel wore red gowns, and
+the proctors fur collars; and that when the other Courts sat there, they
+didn't wear red gowns or fur collars either; with many other scraps of
+intelligence equally interesting.  Besides these two officers, there was
+a little thin old man, with long grizzly hair, crouched in a remote
+corner, whose duty, our communicative friend informed us, was to ring a
+large hand-bell when the Court opened in the morning, and who, for aught
+his appearance betokened to the contrary, might have been similarly
+employed for the last two centuries at least.
+
+The red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles had got all the
+talk to himself just then, and very well he was doing it, too, only he
+spoke very fast, but that was habit; and rather thick, but that was good
+living.  So we had plenty of time to look about us.  There was one
+individual who amused us mightily.  This was one of the bewigged
+gentlemen in the red robes, who was straddling before the fire in the
+centre of the Court, in the attitude of the brazen Colossus, to the
+complete exclusion of everybody else.  He had gathered up his robe
+behind, in much the same manner as a slovenly woman would her petticoats
+on a very dirty day, in order that he might feel the full warmth of the
+fire.  His wig was put on all awry, with the tail straggling about his
+neck; his scanty grey trousers and short black gaiters, made in the worst
+possible style, imported an additional inelegant appearance to his
+uncouth person; and his limp, badly-starched shirt-collar almost obscured
+his eyes.  We shall never be able to claim any credit as a physiognomist
+again, for, after a careful scrutiny of this gentleman's countenance, we
+had come to the conclusion that it bespoke nothing but conceit and
+silliness, when our friend with the silver staff whispered in our ear
+that he was no other than a doctor of civil law, and heaven knows what
+besides.  So of course we were mistaken, and he must be a very talented
+man.  He conceals it so well though--perhaps with the merciful view of
+not astonishing ordinary people too much--that you would suppose him to
+be one of the stupidest dogs alive.
+
+The gentleman in the spectacles having concluded his judgment, and a few
+minutes having been allowed to elapse, to afford time for the buzz of the
+Court to subside, the registrar called on the next cause, which was 'the
+office of the Judge promoted by Bumple against Sludberry.'  A general
+movement was visible in the Court, at this announcement, and the obliging
+functionary with silver staff whispered us that 'there would be some fun
+now, for this was a brawling case.'
+
+We were not rendered much the wiser by this piece of information, till we
+found by the opening speech of the counsel for the promoter, that, under
+a half-obsolete statute of one of the Edwards, the court was empowered to
+visit with the penalty of excommunication, any person who should be
+proved guilty of the crime of 'brawling,' or 'smiting,' in any church, or
+vestry adjoining thereto; and it appeared, by some eight-and-twenty
+affidavits, which were duly referred to, that on a certain night, at a
+certain vestry-meeting, in a certain parish particularly set forth,
+Thomas Sludberry, the party appeared against in that suit, had made use
+of, and applied to Michael Bumple, the promoter, the words 'You be
+blowed;' and that, on the said Michael Bumple and others remonstrating
+with the said Thomas Sludberry, on the impropriety of his conduct, the
+said Thomas Sludberry repeated the aforesaid expression, 'You be blowed;'
+and furthermore desired and requested to know, whether the said Michael
+Bumple 'wanted anything for himself;' adding, 'that if the said Michael
+Bumple did want anything for himself, he, the said Thomas Sludberry, was
+the man to give it him;' at the same time making use of other heinous and
+sinful expressions, all of which, Bumple submitted, came within the
+intent and meaning of the Act; and therefore he, for the soul's health
+and chastening of Sludberry, prayed for sentence of excommunication
+against him accordingly.
+
+Upon these facts a long argument was entered into, on both sides, to the
+great edification of a number of persons interested in the parochial
+squabbles, who crowded the court; and when some very long and grave
+speeches had been made _pro_ and _con_, the red-faced gentleman in the
+tortoise-shell spectacles took a review of the case, which occupied half
+an hour more, and then pronounced upon Sludberry the awful sentence of
+excommunication for a fortnight, and payment of the costs of the suit.
+Upon this, Sludberry, who was a little, red-faced, sly-looking,
+ginger-beer seller, addressed the court, and said, if they'd be good
+enough to take off the costs, and excommunicate him for the term of his
+natural life instead, it would be much more convenient to him, for he
+never went to church at all.  To this appeal the gentleman in the
+spectacles made no other reply than a look of virtuous indignation; and
+Sludberry and his friends retired.  As the man with the silver staff
+informed us that the court was on the point of rising, we retired
+too--pondering, as we walked away, upon the beautiful spirit of these
+ancient ecclesiastical laws, the kind and neighbourly feelings they are
+calculated to awaken, and the strong attachment to religious institutions
+which they cannot fail to engender.
+
+We were so lost in these meditations, that we had turned into the street,
+and run up against a door-post, before we recollected where we were
+walking.  On looking upwards to see what house we had stumbled upon, the
+words 'Prerogative-Office,' written in large characters, met our eye; and
+as we were in a sight-seeing humour and the place was a public one, we
+walked in.
+
+The room into which we walked, was a long, busy-looking place,
+partitioned off, on either side, into a variety of little boxes, in which
+a few clerks were engaged in copying or examining deeds.  Down the centre
+of the room were several desks nearly breast high, at each of which,
+three or four people were standing, poring over large volumes.  As we
+knew that they were searching for wills, they attracted our attention at
+once.
+
+It was curious to contrast the lazy indifference of the attorneys' clerks
+who were making a search for some legal purpose, with the air of
+earnestness and interest which distinguished the strangers to the place,
+who were looking up the will of some deceased relative; the former
+pausing every now and then with an impatient yawn, or raising their heads
+to look at the people who passed up and down the room; the latter
+stooping over the book, and running down column after column of names in
+the deepest abstraction.
+
+There was one little dirty-faced man in a blue apron, who after a whole
+morning's search, extending some fifty years back, had just found the
+will to which he wished to refer, which one of the officials was reading
+to him in a low hurried voice from a thick vellum book with large clasps.
+It was perfectly evident that the more the clerk read, the less the man
+with the blue apron understood about the matter.  When the volume was
+first brought down, he took off his hat, smoothed down his hair, smiled
+with great self-satisfaction, and looked up in the reader's face with the
+air of a man who had made up his mind to recollect every word he heard.
+The first two or three lines were intelligible enough; but then the
+technicalities began, and the little man began to look rather dubious.
+Then came a whole string of complicated trusts, and he was regularly at
+sea.  As the reader proceeded, it was quite apparent that it was a
+hopeless case, and the little man, with his mouth open and his eyes fixed
+upon his face, looked on with an expression of bewilderment and
+perplexity irresistibly ludicrous.
+
+A little further on, a hard-featured old man with a deeply-wrinkled face,
+was intently perusing a lengthy will with the aid of a pair of horn
+spectacles: occasionally pausing from his task, and slily noting down
+some brief memorandum of the bequests contained in it.  Every wrinkle
+about his toothless mouth, and sharp keen eyes, told of avarice and
+cunning.  His clothes were nearly threadbare, but it was easy to see that
+he wore them from choice and not from necessity; all his looks and
+gestures down to the very small pinches of snuff which he every now and
+then took from a little tin canister, told of wealth, and penury, and
+avarice.
+
+As he leisurely closed the register, put up his spectacles, and folded
+his scraps of paper in a large leathern pocket-book, we thought what a
+nice hard bargain he was driving with some poverty-stricken legatee, who,
+tired of waiting year after year, until some life-interest should fall
+in, was selling his chance, just as it began to grow most valuable, for a
+twelfth part of its worth.  It was a good speculation--a very safe one.
+The old man stowed his pocket-book carefully in the breast of his
+great-coat, and hobbled away with a leer of triumph.  That will had made
+him ten years younger at the lowest computation.
+
+Having commenced our observations, we should certainly have extended them
+to another dozen of people at least, had not a sudden shutting up and
+putting away of the worm-eaten old books, warned us that the time for
+closing the office had arrived; and thus deprived us of a pleasure, and
+spared our readers an infliction.
+
+We naturally fell into a train of reflection as we walked homewards, upon
+the curious old records of likings and dislikings; of jealousies and
+revenges; of affection defying the power of death, and hatred pursued
+beyond the grave, which these depositories contain; silent but striking
+tokens, some of them, of excellence of heart, and nobleness of soul;
+melancholy examples, others, of the worst passions of human nature.  How
+many men as they lay speechless and helpless on the bed of death, would
+have given worlds but for the strength and power to blot out the silent
+evidence of animosity and bitterness, which now stands registered against
+them in Doctors' Commons!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--LONDON RECREATIONS
+
+
+The wish of persons in the humbler classes of life, to ape the manners
+and customs of those whom fortune has placed above them, is often the
+subject of remark, and not unfrequently of complaint.  The inclination
+may, and no doubt does, exist to a great extent, among the small
+gentility--the would-be aristocrats--of the middle classes.  Tradesmen
+and clerks, with fashionable novel-reading families, and
+circulating-library-subscribing daughters, get up small assemblies in
+humble imitation of Almack's, and promenade the dingy 'large room' of
+some second-rate hotel with as much complacency as the enviable few who
+are privileged to exhibit their magnificence in that exclusive haunt of
+fashion and foolery.  Aspiring young ladies, who read flaming accounts of
+some 'fancy fair in high life,' suddenly grow desperately charitable;
+visions of admiration and matrimony float before their eyes; some
+wonderfully meritorious institution, which, by the strangest accident in
+the world, has never been heard of before, is discovered to be in a
+languishing condition: Thomson's great room, or Johnson's nursery-ground,
+is forthwith engaged, and the aforesaid young ladies, from mere charity,
+exhibit themselves for three days, from twelve to four, for the small
+charge of one shilling per head!  With the exception of these classes of
+society, however, and a few weak and insignificant persons, we do not
+think the attempt at imitation to which we have alluded, prevails in any
+great degree.  The different character of the recreations of different
+classes, has often afforded us amusement; and we have chosen it for the
+subject of our present sketch, in the hope that it may possess some
+amusement for our readers.
+
+If the regular City man, who leaves Lloyd's at five o'clock, and drives
+home to Hackney, Clapton, Stamford-hill, or elsewhere, can be said to
+have any daily recreation beyond his dinner, it is his garden.  He never
+does anything to it with his own hands; but he takes great pride in it
+notwithstanding; and if you are desirous of paying your addresses to the
+youngest daughter, be sure to be in raptures with every flower and shrub
+it contains.  If your poverty of expression compel you to make any
+distinction between the two, we would certainly recommend your bestowing
+more admiration on his garden than his wine.  He always takes a walk
+round it, before he starts for town in the morning, and is particularly
+anxious that the fish-pond should be kept specially neat.  If you call on
+him on Sunday in summer-time, about an hour before dinner, you will find
+him sitting in an arm-chair, on the lawn behind the house, with a straw
+hat on, reading a Sunday paper.  A short distance from him you will most
+likely observe a handsome paroquet in a large brass-wire cage; ten to one
+but the two eldest girls are loitering in one of the side walks
+accompanied by a couple of young gentlemen, who are holding parasols over
+them--of course only to keep the sun off--while the younger children,
+with the under nursery-maid, are strolling listlessly about, in the
+shade.  Beyond these occasions, his delight in his garden appears to
+arise more from the consciousness of possession than actual enjoyment of
+it.  When he drives you down to dinner on a week-day, he is rather
+fatigued with the occupations of the morning, and tolerably cross into
+the bargain; but when the cloth is removed, and he has drank three or
+four glasses of his favourite port, he orders the French windows of his
+dining-room (which of course look into the garden) to be opened, and
+throwing a silk handkerchief over his head, and leaning back in his
+arm-chair, descants at considerable length upon its beauty, and the cost
+of maintaining it.  This is to impress you--who are a young friend of the
+family--with a due sense of the excellence of the garden, and the wealth
+of its owner; and when he has exhausted the subject, he goes to sleep.
+
+There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is
+their garden.  An individual of this class, resides some short distance
+from town--say in the Hampstead-road, or the Kilburn-road, or any other
+road where the houses are small and neat, and have little slips of back
+garden.  He and his wife--who is as clean and compact a little body as
+himself--have occupied the same house ever since he retired from business
+twenty years ago.  They have no family.  They once had a son, who died at
+about five years old.  The child's portrait hangs over the mantelpiece in
+the best sitting-room, and a little cart he used to draw about, is
+carefully preserved as a relic.
+
+In fine weather the old gentleman is almost constantly in the garden; and
+when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out of the window at it,
+by the hour together.  He has always something to do there, and you will
+see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and planting, with manifest
+delight.  In spring-time, there is no end to the sowing of seeds, and
+sticking little bits of wood over them, with labels, which look like
+epitaphs to their memory; and in the evening, when the sun has gone down,
+the perseverance with which he lugs a great watering-pot about is
+perfectly astonishing.  The only other recreation he has, is the
+newspaper, which he peruses every day, from beginning to end, generally
+reading the most interesting pieces of intelligence to his wife, during
+breakfast.  The old lady is very fond of flowers, as the hyacinth-glasses
+in the parlour-window, and geranium-pots in the little front court,
+testify.  She takes great pride in the garden too: and when one of the
+four fruit-trees produces rather a larger gooseberry than usual, it is
+carefully preserved under a wine-glass on the sideboard, for the
+edification of visitors, who are duly informed that Mr. So-and-so planted
+the tree which produced it, with his own hands.  On a summer's evening,
+when the large watering-pot has been filled and emptied some fourteen
+times, and the old couple have quite exhausted themselves by trotting
+about, you will see them sitting happily together in the little
+summerhouse, enjoying the calm and peace of the twilight, and watching
+the shadows as they fall upon the garden, and gradually growing thicker
+and more sombre, obscure the tints of their gayest flowers--no bad emblem
+of the years that have silently rolled over their heads, deadening in
+their course the brightest hues of early hopes and feelings which have
+long since faded away.  These are their only recreations, and they
+require no more.  They have within themselves, the materials of comfort
+and content; and the only anxiety of each, is to die before the other.
+
+This is no ideal sketch.  There _used_ to be many old people of this
+description; their numbers may have diminished, and may decrease still
+more.  Whether the course female education has taken of late
+days--whether the pursuit of giddy frivolities, and empty nothings, has
+tended to unfit women for that quiet domestic life, in which they show
+far more beautifully than in the most crowded assembly, is a question we
+should feel little gratification in discussing: we hope not.
+
+Let us turn now, to another portion of the London population, whose
+recreations present about as strong a contrast as can well be
+conceived--we mean the Sunday pleasurers; and let us beg our readers to
+imagine themselves stationed by our side in some well-known rural
+'Tea-gardens.'
+
+The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of whom there are
+additional parties arriving every moment, look as warm as the tables
+which have been recently painted, and have the appearance of being
+red-hot.  What a dust and noise!  Men and women--boys and
+girls--sweethearts and married people--babies in arms, and children in
+chaises--pipes and shrimps--cigars and periwinkles--tea and tobacco.
+Gentlemen, in alarming waistcoats, and steel watch-guards, promenading
+about, three abreast, with surprising dignity (or as the gentleman in the
+next box facetiously observes, 'cutting it uncommon fat!')--ladies, with
+great, long, white pocket-handkerchiefs like small table-cloths, in their
+hands, chasing one another on the grass in the most playful and
+interesting manner, with the view of attracting the attention of the
+aforesaid gentlemen--husbands in perspective ordering bottles of
+ginger-beer for the objects of their affections, with a lavish disregard
+of expense; and the said objects washing down huge quantities of
+'shrimps' and 'winkles,' with an equal disregard of their own bodily
+health and subsequent comfort--boys, with great silk hats just balanced
+on the top of their heads, smoking cigars, and trying to look as if they
+liked them--gentlemen in pink shirts and blue waistcoats, occasionally
+upsetting either themselves, or somebody else, with their own canes.
+
+Some of the finery of these people provokes a smile, but they are all
+clean, and happy, and disposed to be good-natured and sociable.  Those
+two motherly-looking women in the smart pelisses, who are chatting so
+confidentially, inserting a 'ma'am' at every fourth word, scraped an
+acquaintance about a quarter of an hour ago: it originated in admiration
+of the little boy who belongs to one of them--that diminutive specimen of
+mortality in the three-cornered pink satin hat with black feathers.  The
+two men in the blue coats and drab trousers, who are walking up and down,
+smoking their pipes, are their husbands.  The party in the opposite box
+are a pretty fair specimen of the generality of the visitors.  These are
+the father and mother, and old grandmother: a young man and woman, and an
+individual addressed by the euphonious title of 'Uncle Bill,' who is
+evidently the wit of the party.  They have some half-dozen children with
+them, but it is scarcely necessary to notice the fact, for that is a
+matter of course here.  Every woman in 'the gardens,' who has been
+married for any length of time, must have had twins on two or three
+occasions; it is impossible to account for the extent of juvenile
+population in any other way.
+
+Observe the inexpressible delight of the old grandmother, at Uncle Bill's
+splendid joke of 'tea for four: bread-and-butter for forty;' and the loud
+explosion of mirth which follows his wafering a paper 'pigtail' on the
+waiter's collar.  The young man is evidently 'keeping company' with Uncle
+Bill's niece: and Uncle Bill's hints--such as 'Don't forget me at the
+dinner, you know,' 'I shall look out for the cake, Sally,' 'I'll be
+godfather to your first--wager it's a boy,' and so forth, are equally
+embarrassing to the young people, and delightful to the elder ones.  As
+to the old grandmother, she is in perfect ecstasies, and does nothing but
+laugh herself into fits of coughing, until they have finished the
+'gin-and-water warm with,' of which Uncle Bill ordered 'glasses round'
+after tea, 'just to keep the night air out, and to do it up comfortable
+and riglar arter sitch an as-tonishing hot day!'
+
+It is getting dark, and the people begin to move.  The field leading to
+town is quite full of them; the little hand-chaises are dragged wearily
+along, the children are tired, and amuse themselves and the company
+generally by crying, or resort to the much more pleasant expedient of
+going to sleep--the mothers begin to wish they were at home
+again--sweethearts grow more sentimental than ever, as the time for
+parting arrives--the gardens look mournful enough, by the light of the
+two lanterns which hang against the trees for the convenience of
+smokers--and the waiters who have been running about incessantly for the
+last six hours, think they feel a little tired, as they count their
+glasses and their gains.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--THE RIVER
+
+
+'Are you fond of the water?' is a question very frequently asked, in hot
+summer weather, by amphibious-looking young men.  'Very,' is the general
+reply.  'An't you?'--'Hardly ever off it,' is the response, accompanied
+by sundry adjectives, expressive of the speaker's heartfelt admiration of
+that element.  Now, with all respect for the opinion of society in
+general, and cutter clubs in particular, we humbly suggest that some of
+the most painful reminiscences in the mind of every individual who has
+occasionally disported himself on the Thames, must be connected with his
+aquatic recreations.  Who ever heard of a successful water-party?--or to
+put the question in a still more intelligible form, who ever saw one?  We
+have been on water excursions out of number, but we solemnly declare that
+we cannot call to mind one single occasion of the kind, which was not
+marked by more miseries than any one would suppose could be reasonably
+crowded into the space of some eight or nine hours.  Something has always
+gone wrong.  Either the cork of the salad-dressing has come out, or the
+most anxiously expected member of the party has not come out, or the most
+disagreeable man in company would come out, or a child or two have fallen
+into the water, or the gentleman who undertook to steer has endangered
+everybody's life all the way, or the gentlemen who volunteered to row
+have been 'out of practice,' and performed very alarming evolutions,
+putting their oars down into the water and not being able to get them up
+again, or taking terrific pulls without putting them in at all; in either
+case, pitching over on the backs of their heads with startling violence,
+and exhibiting the soles of their pumps to the 'sitters' in the boat, in
+a very humiliating manner.
+
+We grant that the banks of the Thames are very beautiful at Richmond and
+Twickenham, and other distant havens, often sought though seldom reached;
+but from the 'Red-us' back to Blackfriars-bridge, the scene is
+wonderfully changed.  The Penitentiary is a noble building, no doubt, and
+the sportive youths who 'go in' at that particular part of the river, on
+a summer's evening, may be all very well in perspective; but when you are
+obliged to keep in shore coming home, and the young ladies will colour
+up, and look perseveringly the other way, while the married dittos cough
+slightly, and stare very hard at the water, you feel awkward--especially
+if you happen to have been attempting the most distant approach to
+sentimentality, for an hour or two previously.
+
+Although experience and suffering have produced in our minds the result
+we have just stated, we are by no means blind to a proper sense of the
+fun which a looker-on may extract from the amateurs of boating.  What can
+be more amusing than Searle's yard on a fine Sunday morning?  It's a
+Richmond tide, and some dozen boats are preparing for the reception of
+the parties who have engaged them.  Two or three fellows in great rough
+trousers and Guernsey shirts, are getting them ready by easy stages; now
+coming down the yard with a pair of sculls and a cushion--then having a
+chat with the 'Jack,' who, like all his tribe, seems to be wholly
+incapable of doing anything but lounging about--then going back again,
+and returning with a rudder-line and a stretcher--then solacing
+themselves with another chat--and then wondering, with their hands in
+their capacious pockets, 'where them gentlemen's got to as ordered the
+six.'  One of these, the head man, with the legs of his trousers
+carefully tucked up at the bottom, to admit the water, we presume--for it
+is an element in which he is infinitely more at home than on land--is
+quite a character, and shares with the defunct oyster-swallower the
+celebrated name of 'Dando.'  Watch him, as taking a few minutes' respite
+from his toils, he negligently seats himself on the edge of a boat, and
+fans his broad bushy chest with a cap scarcely half so furry.  Look at
+his magnificent, though reddish whiskers, and mark the somewhat native
+humour with which he 'chaffs' the boys and 'prentices, or cunningly
+gammons the gen'lm'n into the gift of a glass of gin, of which we verily
+believe he swallows in one day as much as any six ordinary men, without
+ever being one atom the worse for it.
+
+But the party arrives, and Dando, relieved from his state of uncertainty,
+starts up into activity.  They approach in full aquatic costume, with
+round blue jackets, striped shirts, and caps of all sizes and patterns,
+from the velvet skull-cap of French manufacture, to the easy head-dress
+familiar to the students of the old spelling-books, as having, on the
+authority of the portrait, formed part of the costume of the Reverend Mr.
+Dilworth.
+
+This is the most amusing time to observe a regular Sunday water-party.
+There has evidently been up to this period no inconsiderable degree of
+boasting on everybody's part relative to his knowledge of navigation; the
+sight of the water rapidly cools their courage, and the air of
+self-denial with which each of them insists on somebody else's taking an
+oar, is perfectly delightful.  At length, after a great deal of changing
+and fidgeting, consequent upon the election of a stroke-oar: the
+inability of one gentleman to pull on this side, of another to pull on
+that, and of a third to pull at all, the boat's crew are seated.  'Shove
+her off!' cries the cockswain, who looks as easy and comfortable as if he
+were steering in the Bay of Biscay.  The order is obeyed; the boat is
+immediately turned completely round, and proceeds towards
+Westminster-bridge, amidst such a splashing and struggling as never was
+seen before, except when the Royal George went down.  'Back wa'ater,
+sir,' shouts Dando, 'Back wa'ater, you sir, aft;' upon which everybody
+thinking he must be the individual referred to, they all back water, and
+back comes the boat, stern first, to the spot whence it started.  'Back
+water, you sir, aft; pull round, you sir, for'ad, can't you?' shouts
+Dando, in a frenzy of excitement.  'Pull round, Tom, can't you?'
+re-echoes one of the party.  'Tom an't for'ad,' replies another.  'Yes,
+he is,' cries a third; and the unfortunate young man, at the imminent
+risk of breaking a blood-vessel, pulls and pulls, until the head of the
+boat fairly lies in the direction of Vauxhall-bridge.  'That's right--now
+pull all on you!' shouts Dando again, adding, in an under-tone, to
+somebody by him, 'Blowed if hever I see sich a set of muffs!' and away
+jogs the boat in a zigzag direction, every one of the six oars dipping
+into the water at a different time; and the yard is once more clear,
+until the arrival of the next party.
+
+A well-contested rowing-match on the Thames, is a very lively and
+interesting scene.  The water is studded with boats of all sorts, kinds,
+and descriptions; places in the coal-barges at the different wharfs are
+let to crowds of spectators, beer and tobacco flow freely about; men,
+women, and children wait for the start in breathless expectation; cutters
+of six and eight oars glide gently up and down, waiting to accompany
+their _proteges_ during the race; bands of music add to the animation, if
+not to the harmony of the scene; groups of watermen are assembled at the
+different stairs, discussing the merits of the respective candidates; and
+the prize wherry, which is rowed slowly about by a pair of sculls, is an
+object of general interest.
+
+Two o'clock strikes, and everybody looks anxiously in the direction of
+the bridge through which the candidates for the prize will
+come--half-past two, and the general attention which has been preserved
+so long begins to flag, when suddenly a gun is heard, and a noise of
+distant hurra'ing along each bank of the river--every head is bent
+forward--the noise draws nearer and nearer--the boats which have been
+waiting at the bridge start briskly up the river, and a well-manned
+galley shoots through the arch, the sitters cheering on the boats behind
+them, which are not yet visible.
+
+'Here they are,' is the general cry--and through darts the first boat,
+the men in her, stripped to the skin, and exerting every muscle to
+preserve the advantage they have gained--four other boats follow close
+astern; there are not two boats' length between them--the shouting is
+tremendous, and the interest intense.  'Go on, Pink'--'Give it her,
+Red'--'Sulliwin for ever'--'Bravo!  George'--'Now, Tom,
+now--now--now--why don't your partner stretch out?'--'Two pots to a pint
+on Yellow,' &c., &c.  Every little public-house fires its gun, and hoists
+its flag; and the men who win the heat, come in, amidst a splashing and
+shouting, and banging and confusion, which no one can imagine who has not
+witnessed it, and of which any description would convey a very faint
+idea.
+
+One of the most amusing places we know is the steam-wharf of the London
+Bridge, or St. Katharine's Dock Company, on a Saturday morning in summer,
+when the Gravesend and Margate steamers are usually crowded to excess;
+and as we have just taken a glance at the river above bridge, we hope our
+readers will not object to accompany us on board a Gravesend packet.
+
+Coaches are every moment setting down at the entrance to the wharf, and
+the stare of bewildered astonishment with which the 'fares' resign
+themselves and their luggage into the hands of the porters, who seize all
+the packages at once as a matter of course, and run away with them,
+heaven knows where, is laughable in the extreme.  A Margate boat lies
+alongside the wharf, the Gravesend boat (which starts first) lies
+alongside that again; and as a temporary communication is formed between
+the two, by means of a plank and hand-rail, the natural confusion of the
+scene is by no means diminished.
+
+'Gravesend?' inquires a stout father of a stout family, who follow him,
+under the guidance of their mother, and a servant, at the no small risk
+of two or three of them being left behind in the confusion.  'Gravesend?'
+
+'Pass on, if you please, sir,' replies the attendant--'other boat, sir.'
+
+Hereupon the stout father, being rather mystified, and the stout mother
+rather distracted by maternal anxiety, the whole party deposit themselves
+in the Margate boat, and after having congratulated himself on having
+secured very comfortable seats, the stout father sallies to the chimney
+to look for his luggage, which he has a faint recollection of having
+given some man, something, to take somewhere.  No luggage, however,
+bearing the most remote resemblance to his own, in shape or form, is to
+be discovered; on which the stout father calls very loudly for an
+officer, to whom he states the case, in the presence of another father of
+another family--a little thin man--who entirely concurs with him (the
+stout father) in thinking that it's high time something was done with
+these steam companies, and that as the Corporation Bill failed to do it,
+something else must; for really people's property is not to be sacrificed
+in this way; and that if the luggage isn't restored without delay, he
+will take care it shall be put in the papers, for the public is not to be
+the victim of these great monopolies.  To this, the officer, in his turn,
+replies, that that company, ever since it has been St. Kat'rine's Dock
+Company, has protected life and property; that if it had been the London
+Bridge Wharf Company, indeed, he shouldn't have wondered, seeing that the
+morality of that company (they being the opposition) can't be answered
+for, by no one; but as it is, he's convinced there must be some mistake,
+and he wouldn't mind making a solemn oath afore a magistrate that the
+gentleman'll find his luggage afore he gets to Margate.
+
+Here the stout father, thinking he is making a capital point, replies,
+that as it happens, he is not going to Margate at all, and that
+'Passenger to Gravesend' was on the luggage, in letters of full two
+inches long; on which the officer rapidly explains the mistake, and the
+stout mother, and the stout children, and the servant, are hurried with
+all possible despatch on board the Gravesend boat, which they reached
+just in time to discover that their luggage is there, and that their
+comfortable seats are not.  Then the bell, which is the signal for the
+Gravesend boat starting, begins to ring most furiously: and people keep
+time to the bell, by running in and out of our boat at a double-quick
+pace.  The bell stops; the boat starts: people who have been taking leave
+of their friends on board, are carried away against their will; and
+people who have been taking leave of their friends on shore, find that
+they have performed a very needless ceremony, in consequence of their not
+being carried away at all.  The regular passengers, who have season
+tickets, go below to breakfast; people who have purchased morning papers,
+compose themselves to read them; and people who have not been down the
+river before, think that both the shipping and the water, look a great
+deal better at a distance.
+
+When we get down about as far as Blackwall, and begin to move at a
+quicker rate, the spirits of the passengers appear to rise in proportion.
+Old women who have brought large wicker hand-baskets with them, set
+seriously to work at the demolition of heavy sandwiches, and pass round a
+wine-glass, which is frequently replenished from a flat bottle like a
+stomach-warmer, with considerable glee: handing it first to the gentleman
+in the foraging-cap, who plays the harp--partly as an expression of
+satisfaction with his previous exertions, and partly to induce him to
+play 'Dumbledumbdeary,' for 'Alick' to dance to; which being done, Alick,
+who is a damp earthy child in red worsted socks, takes certain small
+jumps upon the deck, to the unspeakable satisfaction of his family
+circle.  Girls who have brought the first volume of some new novel in
+their reticule, become extremely plaintive, and expatiate to Mr. Brown,
+or young Mr. O'Brien, who has been looking over them, on the blueness of
+the sky, and brightness of the water; on which Mr. Brown or Mr. O'Brien,
+as the case may be, remarks in a low voice that he has been quite
+insensible of late to the beauties of nature, that his whole thoughts and
+wishes have centred in one object alone--whereupon the young lady looks
+up, and failing in her attempt to appear unconscious, looks down again;
+and turns over the next leaf with great difficulty, in order to afford
+opportunity for a lengthened pressure of the hand.
+
+Telescopes, sandwiches, and glasses of brandy-and-water cold without,
+begin to be in great requisition; and bashful men who have been looking
+down the hatchway at the engine, find, to their great relief, a subject
+on which they can converse with one another--and a copious one
+too--Steam.
+
+'Wonderful thing steam, sir.'  'Ah! (a deep-drawn sigh) it is indeed,
+sir.'  'Great power, sir.'  'Immense--immense!'  'Great deal done by
+steam, sir.'  'Ah! (another sigh at the immensity of the subject, and a
+knowing shake of the head) you may say that, sir.'  'Still in its
+infancy, they say, sir.'  Novel remarks of this kind, are generally the
+commencement of a conversation which is prolonged until the conclusion of
+the trip, and, perhaps, lays the foundation of a speaking acquaintance
+between half-a-dozen gentlemen, who, having their families at Gravesend,
+take season tickets for the boat, and dine on board regularly every
+afternoon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--ASTLEY'S
+
+
+We never see any very large, staring, black Roman capitals, in a book, or
+shop-window, or placarded on a wall, without their immediately recalling
+to our mind an indistinct and confused recollection of the time when we
+were first initiated in the mysteries of the alphabet.  We almost fancy
+we see the pin's point following the letter, to impress its form more
+strongly on our bewildered imagination; and wince involuntarily, as we
+remember the hard knuckles with which the reverend old lady who instilled
+into our mind the first principles of education for ninepence per week,
+or ten and sixpence per quarter, was wont to poke our juvenile head
+occasionally, by way of adjusting the confusion of ideas in which we were
+generally involved.  The same kind of feeling pursues us in many other
+instances, but there is no place which recalls so strongly our
+recollections of childhood as Astley's.  It was not a 'Royal
+Amphitheatre' in those days, nor had Ducrow arisen to shed the light of
+classic taste and portable gas over the sawdust of the circus; but the
+whole character of the place was the same, the pieces were the same, the
+clown's jokes were the same, the riding-masters were equally grand, the
+comic performers equally witty, the tragedians equally hoarse, and the
+'highly-trained chargers' equally spirited.  Astley's has altered for the
+better--we have changed for the worse.  Our histrionic taste is gone, and
+with shame we confess, that we are far more delighted and amused with the
+audience, than with the pageantry we once so highly appreciated.
+
+We like to watch a regular Astley's party in the Easter or Midsummer
+holidays--pa and ma, and nine or ten children, varying from five foot six
+to two foot eleven: from fourteen years of age to four.  We had just
+taken our seat in one of the boxes, in the centre of the house, the other
+night, when the next was occupied by just such a party as we should have
+attempted to describe, had we depicted our _beau ideal_ of a group of
+Astley's visitors.
+
+First of all, there came three little boys and a little girl, who, in
+pursuance of pa's directions, issued in a very audible voice from the
+box-door, occupied the front row; then two more little girls were ushered
+in by a young lady, evidently the governess.  Then came three more little
+boys, dressed like the first, in blue jackets and trousers, with lay-down
+shirt-collars: then a child in a braided frock and high state of
+astonishment, with very large round eyes, opened to their utmost width,
+was lifted over the seats--a process which occasioned a considerable
+display of little pink legs--then came ma and pa, and then the eldest
+son, a boy of fourteen years old, who was evidently trying to look as if
+he did not belong to the family.
+
+The first five minutes were occupied in taking the shawls off the little
+girls, and adjusting the bows which ornamented their hair; then it was
+providentially discovered that one of the little boys was seated behind a
+pillar and could not see, so the governess was stuck behind the pillar,
+and the boy lifted into her place.  Then pa drilled the boys, and
+directed the stowing away of their pocket-handkerchiefs, and ma having
+first nodded and winked to the governess to pull the girls' frocks a
+little more off their shoulders, stood up to review the little troop--an
+inspection which appeared to terminate much to her own satisfaction, for
+she looked with a complacent air at pa, who was standing up at the
+further end of the seat.  Pa returned the glance, and blew his nose very
+emphatically; and the poor governess peeped out from behind the pillar,
+and timidly tried to catch ma's eye, with a look expressive of her high
+admiration of the whole family.  Then two of the little boys who had been
+discussing the point whether Astley's was more than twice as large as
+Drury Lane, agreed to refer it to 'George' for his decision; at which
+'George,' who was no other than the young gentleman before noticed, waxed
+indignant, and remonstrated in no very gentle terms on the gross
+impropriety of having his name repeated in so loud a voice at a public
+place, on which all the children laughed very heartily, and one of the
+little boys wound up by expressing his opinion, that 'George began to
+think himself quite a man now,' whereupon both pa and ma laughed too; and
+George (who carried a dress cane and was cultivating whiskers) muttered
+that 'William always was encouraged in his impertinence;' and assumed a
+look of profound contempt, which lasted the whole evening.
+
+The play began, and the interest of the little boys knew no bounds.  Pa
+was clearly interested too, although he very unsuccessfully endeavoured
+to look as if he wasn't.  As for ma, she was perfectly overcome by the
+drollery of the principal comedian, and laughed till every one of the
+immense bows on her ample cap trembled, at which the governess peeped out
+from behind the pillar again, and whenever she could catch ma's eye, put
+her handkerchief to her mouth, and appeared, as in duty bound, to be in
+convulsions of laughter also.  Then when the man in the splendid armour
+vowed to rescue the lady or perish in the attempt, the little boys
+applauded vehemently, especially one little fellow who was apparently on
+a visit to the family, and had been carrying on a child's flirtation, the
+whole evening, with a small coquette of twelve years old, who looked like
+a model of her mamma on a reduced scale; and who, in common with the
+other little girls (who generally speaking have even more coquettishness
+about them than much older ones), looked very properly shocked, when the
+knight's squire kissed the princess's confidential chambermaid.
+
+When the scenes in the circle commenced, the children were more delighted
+than ever; and the wish to see what was going forward, completely
+conquering pa's dignity, he stood up in the box, and applauded as loudly
+as any of them.  Between each feat of horsemanship, the governess leant
+across to ma, and retailed the clever remarks of the children on that
+which had preceded: and ma, in the openness of her heart, offered the
+governess an acidulated drop, and the governess, gratified to be taken
+notice of, retired behind her pillar again with a brighter countenance:
+and the whole party seemed quite happy, except the exquisite in the back
+of the box, who, being too grand to take any interest in the children,
+and too insignificant to be taken notice of by anybody else, occupied
+himself, from time to time, in rubbing the place where the whiskers ought
+to be, and was completely alone in his glory.
+
+We defy any one who has been to Astley's two or three times, and is
+consequently capable of appreciating the perseverance with which
+precisely the same jokes are repeated night after night, and season after
+season, not to be amused with one part of the performances at least--we
+mean the scenes in the circle.  For ourself, we know that when the hoop,
+composed of jets of gas, is let down, the curtain drawn up for the
+convenience of the half-price on their ejectment from the ring, the
+orange-peel cleared away, and the sawdust shaken, with mathematical
+precision, into a complete circle, we feel as much enlivened as the
+youngest child present; and actually join in the laugh which follows the
+clown's shrill shout of 'Here we are!' just for old acquaintance' sake.
+Nor can we quite divest ourself of our old feeling of reverence for the
+riding-master, who follows the clown with a long whip in his hand, and
+bows to the audience with graceful dignity.  He is none of your
+second-rate riding-masters in nankeen dressing-gowns, with brown frogs,
+but the regular gentleman-attendant on the principal riders, who always
+wears a military uniform with a table-cloth inside the breast of the
+coat, in which costume he forcibly reminds one of a fowl trussed for
+roasting.  He is--but why should we attempt to describe that of which no
+description can convey an adequate idea?  Everybody knows the man, and
+everybody remembers his polished boots, his graceful demeanour, stiff, as
+some misjudging persons have in their jealousy considered it, and the
+splendid head of black hair, parted high on the forehead, to impart to
+the countenance an appearance of deep thought and poetic melancholy.  His
+soft and pleasing voice, too, is in perfect unison with his noble
+bearing, as he humours the clown by indulging in a little badinage; and
+the striking recollection of his own dignity, with which he exclaims,
+'Now, sir, if you please, inquire for Miss Woolford, sir,' can never be
+forgotten.  The graceful air, too, with which he introduces Miss Woolford
+into the arena, and, after assisting her to the saddle, follows her fairy
+courser round the circle, can never fail to create a deep impression in
+the bosom of every female servant present.
+
+When Miss Woolford, and the horse, and the orchestra, all stop together
+to take breath, he urbanely takes part in some such dialogue as the
+following (commenced by the clown): 'I say, sir!'--'Well, sir?' (it's
+always conducted in the politest manner.)--'Did you ever happen to hear I
+was in the army, sir?'--'No, sir.'--'Oh, yes, sir--I can go through my
+exercise, sir.'--'Indeed, sir!'--'Shall I do it now, sir?'--'If you
+please, sir; come, sir--make haste' (a cut with the long whip, and 'Ha'
+done now--I don't like it,' from the clown).  Here the clown throws
+himself on the ground, and goes through a variety of gymnastic
+convulsions, doubling himself up, and untying himself again, and making
+himself look very like a man in the most hopeless extreme of human agony,
+to the vociferous delight of the gallery, until he is interrupted by a
+second cut from the long whip, and a request to see 'what Miss Woolford's
+stopping for?'  On which, to the inexpressible mirth of the gallery, he
+exclaims, 'Now, Miss Woolford, what can I come for to go, for to fetch,
+for to bring, for to carry, for to do, for you, ma'am?'  On the lady's
+announcing with a sweet smile that she wants the two flags, they are,
+with sundry grimaces, procured and handed up; the clown facetiously
+observing after the performance of the latter ceremony--'He, he, oh!  I
+say, sir, Miss Woolford knows me; she smiled at me.'  Another cut from
+the whip, a burst from the orchestra, a start from the horse, and round
+goes Miss Woolford again on her graceful performance, to the delight of
+every member of the audience, young or old.  The next pause affords an
+opportunity for similar witticisms, the only additional fun being that of
+the clown making ludicrous grimaces at the riding-master every time his
+back is turned; and finally quitting the circle by jumping over his head,
+having previously directed his attention another way.
+
+Did any of our readers ever notice the class of people, who hang about
+the stage-doors of our minor theatres in the daytime?  You will rarely
+pass one of these entrances without seeing a group of three or four men
+conversing on the pavement, with an indescribable public-house-parlour
+swagger, and a kind of conscious air, peculiar to people of this
+description.  They always seem to think they are exhibiting; the lamps
+are ever before them.  That young fellow in the faded brown coat, and
+very full light green trousers, pulls down the wristbands of his check
+shirt, as ostentatiously as if it were of the finest linen, and cocks the
+white hat of the summer-before-last as knowingly over his right eye, as
+if it were a purchase of yesterday.  Look at the dirty white Berlin
+gloves, and the cheap silk handkerchief stuck in the bosom of his
+threadbare coat.  Is it possible to see him for an instant, and not come
+to the conclusion that he is the walking gentleman who wears a blue
+surtout, clean collar, and white trousers, for half an hour, and then
+shrinks into his worn-out scanty clothes: who has to boast night after
+night of his splendid fortune, with the painful consciousness of a pound
+a-week and his boots to find; to talk of his father's mansion in the
+country, with a dreary recollection of his own two-pair back, in the New
+Cut; and to be envied and flattered as the favoured lover of a rich
+heiress, remembering all the while that the ex-dancer at home is in the
+family way, and out of an engagement?
+
+Next to him, perhaps, you will see a thin pale man, with a very long
+face, in a suit of shining black, thoughtfully knocking that part of his
+boot which once had a heel, with an ash stick.  He is the man who does
+the heavy business, such as prosy fathers, virtuous servants, curates,
+landlords, and so forth.
+
+By the way, talking of fathers, we should very much like to see some
+piece in which all the dramatis personae were orphans.  Fathers are
+invariably great nuisances on the stage, and always have to give the hero
+or heroine a long explanation of what was done before the curtain rose,
+usually commencing with 'It is now nineteen years, my dear child, since
+your blessed mother (here the old villain's voice falters) confided you
+to my charge.  You were then an infant,' &c., &c.  Or else they have to
+discover, all of a sudden, that somebody whom they have been in constant
+communication with, during three long acts, without the slightest
+suspicion, is their own child: in which case they exclaim, 'Ah! what do I
+see?  This bracelet!  That smile!  These documents!  Those eyes!  Can I
+believe my senses?--It must be!--Yes--it is, it is my child!'--'My
+father!' exclaims the child; and they fall into each other's arms, and
+look over each other's shoulders, and the audience give three rounds of
+applause.
+
+To return from this digression, we were about to say, that these are the
+sort of people whom you see talking, and attitudinising, outside the
+stage-doors of our minor theatres.  At Astley's they are always more
+numerous than at any other place.  There is generally a groom or two,
+sitting on the window-sill, and two or three dirty shabby-genteel men in
+checked neckerchiefs, and sallow linen, lounging about, and carrying,
+perhaps, under one arm, a pair of stage shoes badly wrapped up in a piece
+of old newspaper.  Some years ago we used to stand looking, open-mouthed,
+at these men, with a feeling of mysterious curiosity, the very
+recollection of which provokes a smile at the moment we are writing.  We
+could not believe that the beings of light and elegance, in milk-white
+tunics, salmon-coloured legs, and blue scarfs, who flitted on sleek
+cream-coloured horses before our eyes at night, with all the aid of
+lights, music, and artificial flowers, could be the pale,
+dissipated-looking creatures we beheld by day.
+
+We can hardly believe it now.  Of the lower class of actors we have seen
+something, and it requires no great exercise of imagination to identify
+the walking gentleman with the 'dirty swell,' the comic singer with the
+public-house chairman, or the leading tragedian with drunkenness and
+distress; but these other men are mysterious beings, never seen out of
+the ring, never beheld but in the costume of gods and sylphs.  With the
+exception of Ducrow, who can scarcely be classed among them, who ever
+knew a rider at Astley's, or saw him but on horseback?  Can our friend in
+the military uniform ever appear in threadbare attire, or descend to the
+comparatively un-wadded costume of every-day life?  Impossible!  We
+cannot--we will not--believe it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII--GREENWICH FAIR
+
+
+If the Parks be 'the lungs of London,' we wonder what Greenwich Fair
+is--a periodical breaking out, we suppose, a sort of spring-rash: a three
+days' fever, which cools the blood for six months afterwards, and at the
+expiration of which London is restored to its old habits of plodding
+industry, as suddenly and completely as if nothing had ever happened to
+disturb them.
+
+In our earlier days, we were a constant frequenter of Greenwich Fair, for
+years.  We have proceeded to, and returned from it, in almost every
+description of vehicle.  We cannot conscientiously deny the charge of
+having once made the passage in a spring-van, accompanied by thirteen
+gentlemen, fourteen ladies, an unlimited number of children, and a barrel
+of beer; and we have a vague recollection of having, in later days, found
+ourself the eighth outside, on the top of a hackney-coach, at something
+past four o'clock in the morning, with a rather confused idea of our own
+name, or place of residence.  We have grown older since then, and quiet,
+and steady: liking nothing better than to spend our Easter, and all our
+other holidays, in some quiet nook, with people of whom we shall never
+tire; but we think we still remember something of Greenwich Fair, and of
+those who resort to it.  At all events we will try.
+
+The road to Greenwich during the whole of Easter Monday, is in a state of
+perpetual bustle and noise.  Cabs, hackney-coaches, 'shay' carts,
+coal-waggons, stages, omnibuses, sociables, gigs, donkey-chaises--all
+crammed with people (for the question never is, what the horse can draw,
+but what the vehicle will hold), roll along at their utmost speed; the
+dust flies in clouds, ginger-beer corks go off in volleys, the balcony of
+every public-house is crowded with people, smoking and drinking, half the
+private houses are turned into tea-shops, fiddles are in great request,
+every little fruit-shop displays its stall of gilt gingerbread and penny
+toys; turnpike men are in despair; horses won't go on, and wheels will
+come off; ladies in 'carawans' scream with fright at every fresh
+concussion, and their admirers find it necessary to sit remarkably close
+to them, by way of encouragement; servants-of-all-work, who are not
+allowed to have followers, and have got a holiday for the day, make the
+most of their time with the faithful admirer who waits for a stolen
+interview at the corner of the street every night, when they go to fetch
+the beer--apprentices grow sentimental, and straw-bonnet makers kind.
+Everybody is anxious to get on, and actuated by the common wish to be at
+the fair, or in the park, as soon as possible.
+
+Pedestrians linger in groups at the roadside, unable to resist the
+allurements of the stout proprietress of the 'Jack-in-the-box, three
+shies a penny,' or the more splendid offers of the man with three
+thimbles and a pea on a little round board, who astonishes the bewildered
+crowd with some such address as, 'Here's the sort o' game to make you
+laugh seven years arter you're dead, and turn ev'ry air on your ed gray
+vith delight!  Three thimbles and vun little pea--with a vun, two, three,
+and a two, three, vun: catch him who can, look on, keep your eyes open,
+and niver say die! niver mind the change, and the expense: all fair and
+above board: them as don't play can't vin, and luck attend the ryal
+sportsman!  Bet any gen'lm'n any sum of money, from harf-a-crown up to a
+suverin, as he doesn't name the thimble as kivers the pea!'  Here some
+greenhorn whispers his friend that he distinctly saw the pea roll under
+the middle thimble--an impression which is immediately confirmed by a
+gentleman in top-boots, who is standing by, and who, in a low tone,
+regrets his own inability to bet, in consequence of having unfortunately
+left his purse at home, but strongly urges the stranger not to neglect
+such a golden opportunity.  The 'plant' is successful, the bet is made,
+the stranger of course loses: and the gentleman with the thimbles
+consoles him, as he pockets the money, with an assurance that it's 'all
+the fortin of war! this time I vin, next time you vin: niver mind the
+loss of two bob and a bender!  Do it up in a small parcel, and break out
+in a fresh place.  Here's the sort o' game,' &c.--and the eloquent
+harangue, with such variations as the speaker's exuberant fancy suggests,
+is again repeated to the gaping crowd, reinforced by the accession of
+several new-comers.
+
+The chief place of resort in the daytime, after the public-houses, is the
+park, in which the principal amusement is to drag young ladies up the
+steep hill which leads to the Observatory, and then drag them down again,
+at the very top of their speed, greatly to the derangement of their curls
+and bonnet-caps, and much to the edification of lookers-on from below.
+'Kiss in the Ring,' and 'Threading my Grandmother's Needle,' too, are
+sports which receive their full share of patronage.  Love-sick swains,
+under the influence of gin-and-water, and the tender passion, become
+violently affectionate: and the fair objects of their regard enhance the
+value of stolen kisses, by a vast deal of struggling, and holding down of
+heads, and cries of 'Oh!  Ha' done, then, George--Oh, do tickle him for
+me, Mary--Well, I never!' and similar Lucretian ejaculations.  Little old
+men and women, with a small basket under one arm, and a wine-glass,
+without a foot, in the other hand, tender 'a drop o' the right sort' to
+the different groups; and young ladies, who are persuaded to indulge in a
+drop of the aforesaid right sort, display a pleasing degree of reluctance
+to taste it, and cough afterwards with great propriety.
+
+The old pensioners, who, for the moderate charge of a penny, exhibit the
+mast-house, the Thames and shipping, the place where the men used to hang
+in chains, and other interesting sights, through a telescope, are asked
+questions about objects within the range of the glass, which it would
+puzzle a Solomon to answer; and requested to find out particular houses
+in particular streets, which it would have been a task of some difficulty
+for Mr. Horner (not the young gentleman who ate mince-pies with his
+thumb, but the man of Colosseum notoriety) to discover.  Here and there,
+where some three or four couple are sitting on the grass together, you
+will see a sun-burnt woman in a red cloak 'telling fortunes' and
+prophesying husbands, which it requires no extraordinary observation to
+describe, for the originals are before her.  Thereupon, the lady
+concerned laughs and blushes, and ultimately buries her face in an
+imitation cambric handkerchief, and the gentleman described looks
+extremely foolish, and squeezes her hand, and fees the gipsy liberally;
+and the gipsy goes away, perfectly satisfied herself, and leaving those
+behind her perfectly satisfied also: and the prophecy, like many other
+prophecies of greater importance, fulfils itself in time.
+
+But it grows dark: the crowd has gradually dispersed, and only a few
+stragglers are left behind.  The light in the direction of the church
+shows that the fair is illuminated; and the distant noise proves it to be
+filling fast.  The spot, which half an hour ago was ringing with the
+shouts of boisterous mirth, is as calm and quiet as if nothing could ever
+disturb its serenity: the fine old trees, the majestic building at their
+feet, with the noble river beyond, glistening in the moonlight, appear in
+all their beauty, and under their most favourable aspect; the voices of
+the boys, singing their evening hymn, are borne gently on the air; and
+the humblest mechanic who has been lingering on the grass so pleasant to
+the feet that beat the same dull round from week to week in the paved
+streets of London, feels proud to think as he surveys the scene before
+him, that he belongs to the country which has selected such a spot as a
+retreat for its oldest and best defenders in the decline of their lives.
+
+Five minutes' walking brings you to the fair; a scene calculated to
+awaken very different feelings.  The entrance is occupied on either side
+by the vendors of gingerbread and toys: the stalls are gaily lighted up,
+the most attractive goods profusely disposed, and unbonneted young
+ladies, in their zeal for the interest of their employers, seize you by
+the coat, and use all the blandishments of 'Do, dear'--'There's a
+love'--'Don't be cross, now,' &c., to induce you to purchase half a pound
+of the real spice nuts, of which the majority of the regular fair-goers
+carry a pound or two as a present supply, tied up in a cotton
+pocket-handkerchief.  Occasionally you pass a deal table, on which are
+exposed pen'orths of pickled salmon (fennel included), in little white
+saucers: oysters, with shells as large as cheese-plates, and divers
+specimens of a species of snail (_wilks_, we think they are called),
+floating in a somewhat bilious-looking green liquid.  Cigars, too, are in
+great demand; gentlemen must smoke, of course, and here they are, two a
+penny, in a regular authentic cigar-box, with a lighted tallow candle in
+the centre.
+
+Imagine yourself in an extremely dense crowd, which swings you to and
+fro, and in and out, and every way but the right one; add to this the
+screams of women, the shouts of boys, the clanging of gongs, the firing
+of pistols, the ringing of bells, the bellowings of speaking-trumpets,
+the squeaking of penny dittos, the noise of a dozen bands, with three
+drums in each, all playing different tunes at the same time, the
+hallooing of showmen, and an occasional roar from the wild-beast shows;
+and you are in the very centre and heart of the fair.
+
+This immense booth, with the large stage in front, so brightly
+illuminated with variegated lamps, and pots of burning fat, is
+'Richardson's,' where you have a melodrama (with three murders and a
+ghost), a pantomime, a comic song, an overture, and some incidental
+music, all done in five-and-twenty minutes.
+
+The company are now promenading outside in all the dignity of wigs,
+spangles, red-ochre, and whitening.  See with what a ferocious air the
+gentleman who personates the Mexican chief, paces up and down, and with
+what an eye of calm dignity the principal tragedian gazes on the crowd
+below, or converses confidentially with the harlequin!  The four clowns,
+who are engaged in a mock broadsword combat, may be all very well for the
+low-minded holiday-makers; but these are the people for the reflective
+portion of the community.  They look so noble in those Roman dresses,
+with their yellow legs and arms, long black curly heads, bushy eyebrows,
+and scowl expressive of assassination, and vengeance, and everything else
+that is grand and solemn.  Then, the ladies--were there ever such
+innocent and awful-looking beings; as they walk up and down the platform
+in twos and threes, with their arms round each other's waists, or leaning
+for support on one of those majestic men!  Their spangled muslin dresses
+and blue satin shoes and sandals (a _leetle_ the worse for wear) are the
+admiration of all beholders; and the playful manner in which they check
+the advances of the clown, is perfectly enchanting.
+
+'Just a-going to begin!  Pray come for'erd, come for'erd,' exclaims the
+man in the countryman's dress, for the seventieth time: and people force
+their way up the steps in crowds.  The band suddenly strikes up, the
+harlequin and columbine set the example, reels are formed in less than no
+time, the Roman heroes place their arms a-kimbo, and dance with
+considerable agility; and the leading tragic actress, and the gentleman
+who enacts the 'swell' in the pantomime, foot it to perfection.  'All in
+to begin,' shouts the manager, when no more people can be induced to
+'come for'erd,' and away rush the leading members of the company to do
+the dreadful in the first piece.
+
+A change of performance takes place every day during the fair, but the
+story of the tragedy is always pretty much the same.  There is a rightful
+heir, who loves a young lady, and is beloved by her; and a wrongful heir,
+who loves her too, and isn't beloved by her; and the wrongful heir gets
+hold of the rightful heir, and throws him into a dungeon, just to kill
+him off when convenient, for which purpose he hires a couple of
+assassins--a good one and a bad one--who, the moment they are left alone,
+get up a little murder on their own account, the good one killing the bad
+one, and the bad one wounding the good one.  Then the rightful heir is
+discovered in prison, carefully holding a long chain in his hands, and
+seated despondingly in a large arm-chair; and the young lady comes in to
+two bars of soft music, and embraces the rightful heir; and then the
+wrongful heir comes in to two bars of quick music (technically called 'a
+hurry'), and goes on in the most shocking manner, throwing the young lady
+about as if she was nobody, and calling the rightful heir
+'Ar-recreant--ar-wretch!' in a very loud voice, which answers the double
+purpose of displaying his passion, and preventing the sound being
+deadened by the sawdust.  The interest becomes intense; the wrongful heir
+draws his sword, and rushes on the rightful heir; a blue smoke is seen, a
+gong is heard, and a tall white figure (who has been all this time,
+behind the arm-chair, covered over with a table-cloth), slowly rises to
+the tune of 'Oft in the stilly night.'  This is no other than the ghost
+of the rightful heir's father, who was killed by the wrongful heir's
+father, at sight of which the wrongful heir becomes apoplectic, and is
+literally 'struck all of a heap,' the stage not being large enough to
+admit of his falling down at full length.  Then the good assassin
+staggers in, and says he was hired in conjunction with the bad assassin,
+by the wrongful heir, to kill the rightful heir; and he's killed a good
+many people in his time, but he's very sorry for it, and won't do so any
+more--a promise which he immediately redeems, by dying off hand without
+any nonsense about it.  Then the rightful heir throws down his chain; and
+then two men, a sailor, and a young woman (the tenantry of the rightful
+heir) come in, and the ghost makes dumb motions to them, which they, by
+supernatural interference, understand--for no one else can; and the ghost
+(who can't do anything without blue fire) blesses the rightful heir and
+the young lady, by half suffocating them with smoke: and then a
+muffin-bell rings, and the curtain drops.
+
+The exhibitions next in popularity to these itinerant theatres are the
+travelling menageries, or, to speak more intelligibly, the 'Wild-beast
+shows,' where a military band in beef-eater's costume, with leopard-skin
+caps, play incessantly; and where large highly-coloured representations
+of tigers tearing men's heads open, and a lion being burnt with red-hot
+irons to induce him to drop his victim, are hung up outside, by way of
+attracting visitors.
+
+The principal officer at these places is generally a very tall, hoarse
+man, in a scarlet coat, with a cane in his hand, with which he
+occasionally raps the pictures we have just noticed, by way of
+illustrating his description--something in this way.  'Here, here, here;
+the lion, the lion (tap), exactly as he is represented on the canvas
+outside (three taps): no waiting, remember; no deception.  The
+fe-ro-cious lion (tap, tap) who bit off the gentleman's head last
+Cambervel vos a twelvemonth, and has killed on the awerage three keepers
+a-year ever since he arrived at matoority.  No extra charge on this
+account recollect; the price of admission is only sixpence.'  This
+address never fails to produce a considerable sensation, and sixpences
+flow into the treasury with wonderful rapidity.
+
+The dwarfs are also objects of great curiosity, and as a dwarf, a
+giantess, a living skeleton, a wild Indian, 'a young lady of singular
+beauty, with perfectly white hair and pink eyes,' and two or three other
+natural curiosities, are usually exhibited together for the small charge
+of a penny, they attract very numerous audiences.  The best thing about a
+dwarf is, that he has always a little box, about two feet six inches
+high, into which, by long practice, he can just manage to get, by
+doubling himself up like a boot-jack; this box is painted outside like a
+six-roomed house, and as the crowd see him ring a bell, or fire a pistol
+out of the first-floor window, they verily believe that it is his
+ordinary town residence, divided like other mansions into drawing-rooms,
+dining-parlour, and bedchambers.  Shut up in this case, the unfortunate
+little object is brought out to delight the throng by holding a facetious
+dialogue with the proprietor: in the course of which, the dwarf (who is
+always particularly drunk) pledges himself to sing a comic song inside,
+and pays various compliments to the ladies, which induce them to 'come
+for'erd' with great alacrity.  As a giant is not so easily moved, a pair
+of indescribables of most capacious dimensions, and a huge shoe, are
+usually brought out, into which two or three stout men get all at once,
+to the enthusiastic delight of the crowd, who are quite satisfied with
+the solemn assurance that these habiliments form part of the giant's
+everyday costume.
+
+The grandest and most numerously-frequented booth in the whole fair,
+however, is 'The Crown and Anchor'--a temporary ball-room--we forget how
+many hundred feet long, the price of admission to which is one shilling.
+Immediately on your right hand as you enter, after paying your money, is
+a refreshment place, at which cold beef, roast and boiled, French rolls,
+stout, wine, tongue, ham, even fowls, if we recollect right, are
+displayed in tempting array.  There is a raised orchestra, and the place
+is boarded all the way down, in patches, just wide enough for a country
+dance.
+
+There is no master of the ceremonies in this artificial Eden--all is
+primitive, unreserved, and unstudied.  The dust is blinding, the heat
+insupportable, the company somewhat noisy, and in the highest spirits
+possible: the ladies, in the height of their innocent animation, dancing
+in the gentlemen's hats, and the gentlemen promenading 'the gay and
+festive scene' in the ladies' bonnets, or with the more expensive
+ornaments of false noses, and low-crowned, tinder-box-looking hats:
+playing children's drums, and accompanied by ladies on the penny trumpet.
+
+The noise of these various instruments, the orchestra, the shouting, the
+'scratchers,' and the dancing, is perfectly bewildering.  The dancing,
+itself, beggars description--every figure lasts about an hour, and the
+ladies bounce up and down the middle, with a degree of spirit which is
+quite indescribable.  As to the gentlemen, they stamp their feet against
+the ground, every time 'hands four round' begins, go down the middle and
+up again, with cigars in their mouths, and silk handkerchiefs in their
+hands, and whirl their partners round, nothing loth, scrambling and
+falling, and embracing, and knocking up against the other couples, until
+they are fairly tired out, and can move no longer.  The same scene is
+repeated again and again (slightly varied by an occasional 'row') until a
+late hour at night: and a great many clerks and 'prentices find
+themselves next morning with aching heads, empty pockets, damaged hats,
+and a very imperfect recollection of how it was they did _not_ get home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII--PRIVATE THEATRES
+
+
+    'RICHARD THE THIRD.--DUKE OF GLO'STER 2_l._; EARL OF RICHMOND, 1_l_;
+    DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, 15_s._; CATESBY, 12_s._; TRESSEL, 10_s._ 6_d._;
+    LORD STANLEY, 5_s._; LORD MAYOR OF LONDON, 2_s._ 6_d._'
+
+Such are the written placards wafered up in the gentlemen's
+dressing-room, or the green-room (where there is any), at a private
+theatre; and such are the sums extracted from the shop-till, or
+overcharged in the office expenditure, by the donkeys who are prevailed
+upon to pay for permission to exhibit their lamentable ignorance and
+boobyism on the stage of a private theatre.  This they do, in proportion
+to the scope afforded by the character for the display of their
+imbecility.  For instance, the Duke of Glo'ster is well worth two pounds,
+because he has it all to himself; he must wear a real sword, and what is
+better still, he must draw it, several times in the course of the piece.
+The soliloquies alone are well worth fifteen shillings; then there is the
+stabbing King Henry--decidedly cheap at three-and-sixpence, that's
+eighteen-and-sixpence; bullying the coffin-bearers--say eighteen-pence,
+though it's worth much more--that's a pound.  Then the love scene with
+Lady Ann, and the bustle of the fourth act can't be dear at ten shillings
+more--that's only one pound ten, including the 'off with his
+head!'--which is sure to bring down the applause, and it is very easy to
+do--'Orf with his ed' (very quick and loud;--then slow and
+sneeringly)--'So much for Bu-u-u-uckingham!'  Lay the emphasis on the
+'uck;' get yourself gradually into a corner, and work with your right
+hand, while you're saying it, as if you were feeling your way, and it's
+sure to do.  The tent scene is confessedly worth half-a-sovereign, and so
+you have the fight in, gratis, and everybody knows what an effect may be
+produced by a good combat.  One--two--three--four--over; then,
+one--two--three--four--under; then thrust; then dodge and slide about;
+then fall down on one knee; then fight upon it, and then get up again and
+stagger.  You may keep on doing this, as long as it seems to take--say
+ten minutes--and then fall down (backwards, if you can manage it without
+hurting yourself), and die game: nothing like it for producing an effect.
+They always do it at Astley's and Sadler's Wells, and if they don't know
+how to do this sort of thing, who in the world does?  A small child, or a
+female in white, increases the interest of a combat materially--indeed,
+we are not aware that a regular legitimate terrific broadsword combat
+could be done without; but it would be rather difficult, and somewhat
+unusual, to introduce this effect in the last scene of Richard the Third,
+so the only thing to be done, is, just to make the best of a bad bargain,
+and be as long as possible fighting it out.
+
+The principal patrons of private theatres are dirty boys, low
+copying-clerks, in attorneys' offices, capacious-headed youths from city
+counting-houses, Jews whose business, as lenders of fancy dresses, is a
+sure passport to the amateur stage, shop-boys who now and then mistake
+their masters' money for their own; and a choice miscellany of idle
+vagabonds.  The proprietor of a private theatre may be an
+ex-scene-painter, a low coffee-house-keeper, a disappointed eighth-rate
+actor, a retired smuggler, or uncertificated bankrupt.  The theatre
+itself may be in Catherine-street, Strand, the purlieus of the city, the
+neighbourhood of Gray's-inn-lane, or the vicinity of Sadler's Wells; or
+it may, perhaps, form the chief nuisance of some shabby street, on the
+Surrey side of Waterloo-bridge.
+
+The lady performers pay nothing for their characters, and it is needless
+to add, are usually selected from one class of society; the audiences are
+necessarily of much the same character as the performers, who receive, in
+return for their contributions to the management, tickets to the amount
+of the money they pay.
+
+All the minor theatres in London, especially the lowest, constitute the
+centre of a little stage-struck neighbourhood.  Each of them has an
+audience exclusively its own; and at any you will see dropping into the
+pit at half-price, or swaggering into the back of a box, if the price of
+admission be a reduced one, divers boys of from fifteen to twenty-one
+years of age, who throw back their coat and turn up their wristbands,
+after the portraits of Count D'Orsay, hum tunes and whistle when the
+curtain is down, by way of persuading the people near them, that they are
+not at all anxious to have it up again, and speak familiarly of the
+inferior performers as Bill Such-a-one, and Ned So-and-so, or tell each
+other how a new piece called _The Unknown Bandit of the Invisible
+Cavern_, is in rehearsal; how Mister Palmer is to play _The Unknown
+Bandit_; how Charley Scarton is to take the part of an English sailor,
+and fight a broadsword combat with six unknown bandits, at one and the
+same time (one theatrical sailor is always equal to half a dozen men at
+least); how Mister Palmer and Charley Scarton are to go through a double
+hornpipe in fetters in the second act; how the interior of the invisible
+cavern is to occupy the whole extent of the stage; and other
+town-surprising theatrical announcements.  These gentlemen are the
+amateurs--the _Richards_, _Shylocks_, _Beverleys_, and _Othellos_--the
+_Young Dorntons_, _Rovers_, _Captain Absolutes_, and _Charles
+Surfaces_--a private theatre.
+
+See them at the neighbouring public-house or the theatrical coffee-shop!
+They are the kings of the place, supposing no real performers to be
+present; and roll about, hats on one side, and arms a-kimbo, as if they
+had actually come into possession of eighteen shillings a-week, and a
+share of a ticket night.  If one of them does but know an Astley's
+supernumerary he is a happy fellow.  The mingled air of envy and
+admiration with which his companions will regard him, as he converses
+familiarly with some mouldy-looking man in a fancy neckerchief, whose
+partially corked eyebrows, and half-rouged face, testify to the fact of
+his having just left the stage or the circle, sufficiently shows in what
+high admiration these public characters are held.
+
+With the double view of guarding against the discovery of friends or
+employers, and enhancing the interest of an assumed character, by
+attaching a high-sounding name to its representative, these geniuses
+assume fictitious names, which are not the least amusing part of the
+play-bill of a private theatre.  Belville, Melville, Treville, Berkeley,
+Randolph, Byron, St. Clair, and so forth, are among the humblest; and the
+less imposing titles of Jenkins, Walker, Thomson, Barker, Solomons, &c.,
+are completely laid aside.  There is something imposing in this, and it
+is an excellent apology for shabbiness into the bargain.  A shrunken,
+faded coat, a decayed hat, a patched and soiled pair of trousers--nay,
+even a very dirty shirt (and none of these appearances are very uncommon
+among the members of the _corps dramatique_), may be worn for the purpose
+of disguise, and to prevent the remotest chance of recognition.  Then it
+prevents any troublesome inquiries or explanations about employment and
+pursuits; everybody is a gentleman at large, for the occasion, and there
+are none of those unpleasant and unnecessary distinctions to which even
+genius must occasionally succumb elsewhere.  As to the ladies (God bless
+them), they are quite above any formal absurdities; the mere circumstance
+of your being behind the scenes is a sufficient introduction to their
+society--for of course they know that none but strictly respectable
+persons would be admitted into that close fellowship with them, which
+acting engenders.  They place implicit reliance on the manager, no doubt;
+and as to the manager, he is all affability when he knows you well,--or,
+in other words, when he has pocketed your money once, and entertains
+confident hopes of doing so again.
+
+A quarter before eight--there will be a full house to-night--six parties
+in the boxes, already; four little boys and a woman in the pit; and two
+fiddles and a flute in the orchestra, who have got through five overtures
+since seven o'clock (the hour fixed for the commencement of the
+performances), and have just begun the sixth.  There will be plenty of
+it, though, when it does begin, for there is enough in the bill to last
+six hours at least.
+
+That gentleman in the white hat and checked shirt, brown coat and brass
+buttons, lounging behind the stage-box on the O. P. side, is Mr. Horatio
+St. Julien, alias Jem Larkins.  His line is genteel comedy--his father's,
+coal and potato.  He _does_ Alfred Highflier in the last piece, and very
+well he'll do it--at the price.  The party of gentlemen in the opposite
+box, to whom he has just nodded, are friends and supporters of Mr.
+Beverley (otherwise Loggins), the _Macbeth_ of the night.  You observe
+their attempts to appear easy and gentlemanly, each member of the party,
+with his feet cocked upon the cushion in front of the box!  They let them
+do these things here, upon the same humane principle which permits poor
+people's children to knock double knocks at the door of an empty
+house--because they can't do it anywhere else.  The two stout men in the
+centre box, with an opera-glass ostentatiously placed before them, are
+friends of the proprietor--opulent country managers, as he confidentially
+informs every individual among the crew behind the curtain--opulent
+country managers looking out for recruits; a representation which Mr.
+Nathan, the dresser, who is in the manager's interest, and has just
+arrived with the costumes, offers to confirm upon oath if
+required--corroborative evidence, however, is quite unnecessary, for the
+gulls believe it at once.
+
+The stout Jewess who has just entered, is the mother of the pale, bony
+little girl, with the necklace of blue glass beads, sitting by her; she
+is being brought up to 'the profession.'  Pantomime is to be her line,
+and she is coming out to-night, in a hornpipe after the tragedy.  The
+short thin man beside Mr. St. Julien, whose white face is so deeply
+seared with the small-pox, and whose dirty shirt-front is inlaid with
+open-work, and embossed with coral studs like ladybirds, is the low
+comedian and comic singer of the establishment.  The remainder of the
+audience--a tolerably numerous one by this time--are a motley group of
+dupes and blackguards.
+
+The foot-lights have just made their appearance: the wicks of the six
+little oil lamps round the only tier of boxes, are being turned up, and
+the additional light thus afforded serves to show the presence of dirt,
+and absence of paint, which forms a prominent feature in the audience
+part of the house.  As these preparations, however, announce the speedy
+commencement of the play, let us take a peep 'behind,' previous to the
+ringing-up.
+
+The little narrow passages beneath the stage are neither especially clean
+nor too brilliantly lighted; and the absence of any flooring, together
+with the damp mildewy smell which pervades the place, does not conduce in
+any great degree to their comfortable appearance.  Don't fall over this
+plate basket--it's one of the 'properties'--the caldron for the witches'
+cave; and the three uncouth-looking figures, with broken clothes-props in
+their hands, who are drinking gin-and-water out of a pint pot, are the
+weird sisters.  This miserable room, lighted by candles in sconces placed
+at lengthened intervals round the wall, is the dressing-room, common to
+the gentlemen performers, and the square hole in the ceiling is _the_
+trap-door of the stage above.  You will observe that the ceiling is
+ornamented with the beams that support the boards, and tastefully hung
+with cobwebs.
+
+The characters in the tragedy are all dressed, and their own clothes are
+scattered in hurried confusion over the wooden dresser which surrounds
+the room.  That snuff-shop-looking figure, in front of the glass, is
+_Banquo_: and the young lady with the liberal display of legs, who is
+kindly painting his face with a hare's foot, is dressed for _Fleance_.
+The large woman, who is consulting the stage directions in Cumberland's
+edition of _Macbeth_, is the _Lady Macbeth_ of the night; she is always
+selected to play the part, because she is tall and stout, and _looks_ a
+little like Mrs. Siddons--at a considerable distance.  That
+stupid-looking milksop, with light hair and bow legs--a kind of man whom
+you can warrant town-made--is fresh caught; he plays _Malcolm_ to-night,
+just to accustom himself to an audience.  He will get on better by
+degrees; he will play _Othello_ in a month, and in a month more, will
+very probably be apprehended on a charge of embezzlement.  The black-eyed
+female with whom he is talking so earnestly, is dressed for the
+'gentlewoman.'  It is _her_ first appearance, too--in that character.
+The boy of fourteen who is having his eyebrows smeared with soap and
+whitening, is _Duncan_, King of Scotland; and the two dirty men with the
+corked countenances, in very old green tunics, and dirty drab boots, are
+the 'army.'
+
+'Look sharp below there, gents,' exclaims the dresser, a red-headed and
+red-whiskered Jew, calling through the trap, 'they're a-going to ring up.
+The flute says he'll be blowed if he plays any more, and they're getting
+precious noisy in front.'  A general rush immediately takes place to the
+half-dozen little steep steps leading to the stage, and the heterogeneous
+group are soon assembled at the side scenes, in breathless anxiety and
+motley confusion.
+
+'Now,' cries the manager, consulting the written list which hangs behind
+the first P. S, wing, 'Scene 1, open country--lamps down--thunder and
+lightning--all ready, White?'  [This is addressed to one of the army.]
+'All ready.'--'Very well.  Scene 2, front chamber.  Is the front chamber
+down?'--'Yes.'--'Very well.'--'Jones' [to the other army who is up in the
+flies].  'Hallo!'--'Wind up the open country when we ring up.'--'I'll
+take care.'--'Scene 3, back perspective with practical bridge.  Bridge
+ready, White?  Got the tressels there?'--'All right.'
+
+'Very well.  Clear the stage,' cries the manager, hastily packing every
+member of the company into the little space there is between the wings
+and the wall, and one wing and another.  'Places, places.  Now then,
+Witches--Duncan--Malcolm--bleeding officer--where's the bleeding
+officer?'--'Here!' replies the officer, who has been rose-pinking for the
+character.  'Get ready, then; now, White, ring the second music-bell.'
+The actors who are to be discovered, are hastily arranged, and the actors
+who are not to be discovered place themselves, in their anxiety to peep
+at the house, just where the audience can see them.  The bell rings, and
+the orchestra, in acknowledgment of the call, play three distinct chords.
+The bell rings--the tragedy (!) opens--and our description closes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV--VAUXHALL-GARDENS BY DAY
+
+
+There was a time when if a man ventured to wonder how Vauxhall-gardens
+would look by day, he was hailed with a shout of derision at the
+absurdity of the idea.  Vauxhall by daylight!  A porter-pot without
+porter, the House of Commons without the Speaker, a gas-lamp without the
+gas--pooh, nonsense, the thing was not to be thought of.  It was
+rumoured, too, in those times, that Vauxhall-gardens by day, were the
+scene of secret and hidden experiments; that there, carvers were
+exercised in the mystic art of cutting a moderate-sized ham into slices
+thin enough to pave the whole of the grounds; that beneath the shade of
+the tall trees, studious men were constantly engaged in chemical
+experiments, with the view of discovering how much water a bowl of negus
+could possibly bear; and that in some retired nooks, appropriated to the
+study of ornithology, other sage and learned men were, by a process known
+only to themselves, incessantly employed in reducing fowls to a mere
+combination of skin and bone.
+
+Vague rumours of this kind, together with many others of a similar
+nature, cast over Vauxhall-gardens an air of deep mystery; and as there
+is a great deal in the mysterious, there is no doubt that to a good many
+people, at all events, the pleasure they afforded was not a little
+enhanced by this very circumstance.
+
+Of this class of people we confess to having made one.  We loved to
+wander among these illuminated groves, thinking of the patient and
+laborious researches which had been carried on there during the day, and
+witnessing their results in the suppers which were served up beneath the
+light of lamps and to the sound of music at night.  The temples and
+saloons and cosmoramas and fountains glittered and sparkled before our
+eyes; the beauty of the lady singers and the elegant deportment of the
+gentlemen, captivated our hearts; a few hundred thousand of additional
+lamps dazzled our senses; a bowl or two of punch bewildered our brains;
+and we were happy.
+
+In an evil hour, the proprietors of Vauxhall-gardens took to opening them
+by day.  We regretted this, as rudely and harshly disturbing that veil of
+mystery which had hung about the property for many years, and which none
+but the noonday sun, and the late Mr. Simpson, had ever penetrated.  We
+shrunk from going; at this moment we scarcely know why.  Perhaps a morbid
+consciousness of approaching disappointment--perhaps a fatal
+presentiment--perhaps the weather; whatever it was, we did _not_ go until
+the second or third announcement of a race between two balloons tempted
+us, and we went.
+
+We paid our shilling at the gate, and then we saw for the first time,
+that the entrance, if there had been any magic about it at all, was now
+decidedly disenchanted, being, in fact, nothing more nor less than a
+combination of very roughly-painted boards and sawdust.  We glanced at
+the orchestra and supper-room as we hurried past--we just recognised
+them, and that was all.  We bent our steps to the firework-ground; there,
+at least, we should not be disappointed.  We reached it, and stood rooted
+to the spot with mortification and astonishment.  _That_ the Moorish
+tower--that wooden shed with a door in the centre, and daubs of crimson
+and yellow all round, like a gigantic watch-case!  _That_ the place where
+night after night we had beheld the undaunted Mr. Blackmore make his
+terrific ascent, surrounded by flames of fire, and peals of artillery,
+and where the white garments of Madame Somebody (we forget even her name
+now), who nobly devoted her life to the manufacture of fireworks, had so
+often been seen fluttering in the wind, as she called up a red, blue, or
+party-coloured light to illumine her temple!  _That_ the--but at this
+moment the bell rung; the people scampered away, pell-mell, to the spot
+from whence the sound proceeded; and we, from the mere force of habit,
+found ourself running among the first, as if for very life.
+
+It was for the concert in the orchestra.  A small party of dismal men in
+cocked hats were 'executing' the overture to _Tancredi_, and a numerous
+assemblage of ladies and gentlemen, with their families, had rushed from
+their half-emptied stout mugs in the supper boxes, and crowded to the
+spot.  Intense was the low murmur of admiration when a particularly small
+gentleman, in a dress coat, led on a particularly tall lady in a blue
+sarcenet pelisse and bonnet of the same, ornamented with large white
+feathers, and forthwith commenced a plaintive duet.
+
+We knew the small gentleman well; we had seen a lithographed semblance of
+him, on many a piece of music, with his mouth wide open as if in the act
+of singing; a wine-glass in his hand; and a table with two decanters and
+four pine-apples on it in the background.  The tall lady, too, we had
+gazed on, lost in raptures of admiration, many and many a time--how
+different people _do_ look by daylight, and without punch, to be sure!
+It was a beautiful duet: first the small gentleman asked a question, and
+then the tall lady answered it; then the small gentleman and the tall
+lady sang together most melodiously; then the small gentleman went
+through a little piece of vehemence by himself, and got very tenor
+indeed, in the excitement of his feelings, to which the tall lady
+responded in a similar manner; then the small gentleman had a shake or
+two, after which the tall lady had the same, and then they both merged
+imperceptibly into the original air: and the band wound themselves up to
+a pitch of fury, and the small gentleman handed the tall lady out, and
+the applause was rapturous.
+
+The comic singer, however, was the especial favourite; we really thought
+that a gentleman, with his dinner in a pocket-handkerchief, who stood
+near us, would have fainted with excess of joy.  A marvellously facetious
+gentleman that comic singer is; his distinguishing characteristics are, a
+wig approaching to the flaxen, and an aged countenance, and he bears the
+name of one of the English counties, if we recollect right.  He sang a
+very good song about the seven ages, the first half-hour of which
+afforded the assembly the purest delight; of the rest we can make no
+report, as we did not stay to hear any more.
+
+We walked about, and met with a disappointment at every turn; our
+favourite views were mere patches of paint; the fountain that had
+sparkled so showily by lamp-light, presented very much the appearance of
+a water-pipe that had burst; all the ornaments were dingy, and all the
+walks gloomy.  There was a spectral attempt at rope-dancing in the little
+open theatre.  The sun shone upon the spangled dresses of the performers,
+and their evolutions were about as inspiriting and appropriate as a
+country-dance in a family vault.  So we retraced our steps to the
+firework-ground, and mingled with the little crowd of people who were
+contemplating Mr. Green.
+
+Some half-dozen men were restraining the impetuosity of one of the
+balloons, which was completely filled, and had the car already attached;
+and as rumours had gone abroad that a Lord was 'going up,' the crowd were
+more than usually anxious and talkative.  There was one little man in
+faded black, with a dirty face and a rusty black neckerchief with a red
+border, tied in a narrow wisp round his neck, who entered into
+conversation with everybody, and had something to say upon every remark
+that was made within his hearing.  He was standing with his arms folded,
+staring up at the balloon, and every now and then vented his feelings of
+reverence for the aeronaut, by saying, as he looked round to catch
+somebody's eye, 'He's a rum 'un is Green; think o' this here being
+up'ards of his two hundredth ascent; ecod, the man as is ekal to Green
+never had the toothache yet, nor won't have within this hundred year, and
+that's all about it.  When you meets with real talent, and native, too,
+encourage it, that's what I say;' and when he had delivered himself to
+this effect, he would fold his arms with more determination than ever,
+and stare at the balloon with a sort of admiring defiance of any other
+man alive, beyond himself and Green, that impressed the crowd with the
+opinion that he was an oracle.
+
+'Ah, you're very right, sir,' said another gentleman, with his wife, and
+children, and mother, and wife's sister, and a host of female friends, in
+all the gentility of white pocket-handkerchiefs, frills, and spencers,
+'Mr. Green is a steady hand, sir, and there's no fear about him.'
+
+'Fear!' said the little man: 'isn't it a lovely thing to see him and his
+wife a going up in one balloon, and his own son and _his_ wife a jostling
+up against them in another, and all of them going twenty or thirty mile
+in three hours or so, and then coming back in pochayses?  I don't know
+where this here science is to stop, mind you; that's what bothers me.'
+
+Here there was a considerable talking among the females in the spencers.
+
+'What's the ladies a laughing at, sir?' inquired the little man,
+condescendingly.
+
+'It's only my sister Mary,' said one of the girls, 'as says she hopes his
+lordship won't be frightened when he's in the car, and want to come out
+again.'
+
+'Make yourself easy about that there, my dear,' replied the little man.
+'If he was so much as to move a inch without leave, Green would jist
+fetch him a crack over the head with the telescope, as would send him
+into the bottom of the basket in no time, and stun him till they come
+down again.'
+
+'Would he, though?' inquired the other man.
+
+'Yes, would he,' replied the little one, 'and think nothing of it,
+neither, if he was the king himself.  Green's presence of mind is
+wonderful.'
+
+Just at this moment all eyes were directed to the preparations which were
+being made for starting.  The car was attached to the second balloon, the
+two were brought pretty close together, and a military band commenced
+playing, with a zeal and fervour which would render the most timid man in
+existence but too happy to accept any means of quitting that particular
+spot of earth on which they were stationed.  Then Mr. Green, sen., and
+his noble companion entered one car, and Mr. Green, jun., and _his_
+companion the other; and then the balloons went up, and the aerial
+travellers stood up, and the crowd outside roared with delight, and the
+two gentlemen who had never ascended before, tried to wave their flags,
+as if they were not nervous, but held on very fast all the while; and the
+balloons were wafted gently away, our little friend solemnly protesting,
+long after they were reduced to mere specks in the air, that he could
+still distinguish the white hat of Mr. Green.  The gardens disgorged
+their multitudes, boys ran up and down screaming 'bal-loon;' and in all
+the crowded thoroughfares people rushed out of their shops into the
+middle of the road, and having stared up in the air at two little black
+objects till they almost dislocated their necks, walked slowly in again,
+perfectly satisfied.
+
+The next day there was a grand account of the ascent in the morning
+papers, and the public were informed how it was the finest day but four
+in Mr. Green's remembrance; how they retained sight of the earth till
+they lost it behind the clouds; and how the reflection of the balloon on
+the undulating masses of vapour was gorgeously picturesque; together with
+a little science about the refraction of the sun's rays, and some
+mysterious hints respecting atmospheric heat and eddying currents of air.
+
+There was also an interesting account how a man in a boat was distinctly
+heard by Mr. Green, jun., to exclaim, 'My eye!' which Mr. Green, jun.,
+attributed to his voice rising to the balloon, and the sound being thrown
+back from its surface into the car; and the whole concluded with a slight
+allusion to another ascent next Wednesday, all of which was very
+instructive and very amusing, as our readers will see if they look to the
+papers.  If we have forgotten to mention the date, they have only to wait
+till next summer, and take the account of the first ascent, and it will
+answer the purpose equally well.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV--EARLY COACHES
+
+
+We have often wondered how many months' incessant travelling in a
+post-chaise it would take to kill a man; and wondering by analogy, we
+should very much like to know how many months of constant travelling in a
+succession of early coaches, an unfortunate mortal could endure.
+Breaking a man alive upon the wheel, would be nothing to breaking his
+rest, his peace, his heart--everything but his fast--upon four; and the
+punishment of Ixion (the only practical person, by-the-bye, who has
+discovered the secret of the perpetual motion) would sink into utter
+insignificance before the one we have suggested.  If we had been a
+powerful churchman in those good times when blood was shed as freely as
+water, and men were mowed down like grass, in the sacred cause of
+religion, we would have lain by very quietly till we got hold of some
+especially obstinate miscreant, who positively refused to be converted to
+our faith, and then we would have booked him for an inside place in a
+small coach, which travelled day and night: and securing the remainder of
+the places for stout men with a slight tendency to coughing and spitting,
+we would have started him forth on his last travels: leaving him
+mercilessly to all the tortures which the waiters, landlords, coachmen,
+guards, boots, chambermaids, and other familiars on his line of road,
+might think proper to inflict.
+
+Who has not experienced the miseries inevitably consequent upon a summons
+to undertake a hasty journey?  You receive an intimation from your place
+of business--wherever that may be, or whatever you may be--that it will
+be necessary to leave town without delay.  You and your family are
+forthwith thrown into a state of tremendous excitement; an express is
+immediately dispatched to the washerwoman's; everybody is in a bustle;
+and you, yourself, with a feeling of dignity which you cannot altogether
+conceal, sally forth to the booking-office to secure your place.  Here a
+painful consciousness of your own unimportance first rushes on your
+mind--the people are as cool and collected as if nobody were going out of
+town, or as if a journey of a hundred odd miles were a mere nothing.  You
+enter a mouldy-looking room, ornamented with large posting-bills; the
+greater part of the place enclosed behind a huge, lumbering, rough
+counter, and fitted up with recesses that look like the dens of the
+smaller animals in a travelling menagerie, without the bars.  Some
+half-dozen people are 'booking' brown-paper parcels, which one of the
+clerks flings into the aforesaid recesses with an air of recklessness
+which you, remembering the new carpet-bag you bought in the morning, feel
+considerably annoyed at; porters, looking like so many Atlases, keep
+rushing in and out, with large packages on their shoulders; and while you
+are waiting to make the necessary inquiries, you wonder what on earth the
+booking-office clerks can have been before they were booking-office
+clerks; one of them with his pen behind his ear, and his hands behind
+him, is standing in front of the fire, like a full-length portrait of
+Napoleon; the other with his hat half off his head, enters the
+passengers' names in the books with a coolness which is inexpressibly
+provoking; and the villain whistles--actually whistles--while a man asks
+him what the fare is outside, all the way to Holyhead!--in frosty
+weather, too!  They are clearly an isolated race, evidently possessing no
+sympathies or feelings in common with the rest of mankind.  Your turn
+comes at last, and having paid the fare, you tremblingly inquire--'What
+time will it be necessary for me to be here in the morning?'--'Six
+o'clock,' replies the whistler, carelessly pitching the sovereign you
+have just parted with, into a wooden bowl on the desk.  'Rather before
+than arter,' adds the man with the semi-roasted unmentionables, with just
+as much ease and complacency as if the whole world got out of bed at
+five.  You turn into the street, ruminating as you bend your steps
+homewards on the extent to which men become hardened in cruelty, by
+custom.
+
+If there be one thing in existence more miserable than another, it most
+unquestionably is the being compelled to rise by candlelight.  If you
+have ever doubted the fact, you are painfully convinced of your error, on
+the morning of your departure.  You left strict orders, overnight, to be
+called at half-past four, and you have done nothing all night but doze
+for five minutes at a time, and start up suddenly from a terrific dream
+of a large church-clock with the small hand running round, with
+astonishing rapidity, to every figure on the dial-plate.  At last,
+completely exhausted, you fall gradually into a refreshing sleep--your
+thoughts grow confused--the stage-coaches, which have been 'going off'
+before your eyes all night, become less and less distinct, until they go
+off altogether; one moment you are driving with all the skill and
+smartness of an experienced whip--the next you are exhibiting _a la_
+Ducrow, on the off-leader; anon you are closely muffled up, inside, and
+have just recognised in the person of the guard an old schoolfellow,
+whose funeral, even in your dream, you remember to have attended eighteen
+years ago.  At last you fall into a state of complete oblivion, from
+which you are aroused, as if into a new state of existence, by a singular
+illusion.  You are apprenticed to a trunk-maker; how, or why, or when, or
+wherefore, you don't take the trouble to inquire; but there you are,
+pasting the lining in the lid of a portmanteau.  Confound that other
+apprentice in the back shop, how he is hammering!--rap, rap, rap--what an
+industrious fellow he must be! you have heard him at work for half an
+hour past, and he has been hammering incessantly the whole time.  Rap,
+rap, rap, again--he's talking now--what's that he said?  Five o'clock!
+You make a violent exertion, and start up in bed.  The vision is at once
+dispelled; the trunk-maker's shop is your own bedroom, and the other
+apprentice your shivering servant, who has been vainly endeavouring to
+wake you for the last quarter of an hour, at the imminent risk of
+breaking either his own knuckles or the panels of the door.
+
+You proceed to dress yourself, with all possible dispatch.  The flaring
+flat candle with the long snuff, gives light enough to show that the
+things you want, are not where they ought to be, and you undergo a
+trifling delay in consequence of having carefully packed up one of your
+boots in your over-anxiety of the preceding night.  You soon complete
+your toilet, however, for you are not particular on such an occasion, and
+you shaved yesterday evening; so mounting your Petersham great-coat, and
+green travelling shawl, and grasping your carpet-bag in your right hand,
+you walk lightly down-stairs, lest you should awaken any of the family,
+and after pausing in the common sitting-room for one moment, just to have
+a cup of coffee (the said common sitting-room looking remarkably
+comfortable, with everything out of its place, and strewed with the
+crumbs of last night's supper), you undo the chain and bolts of the
+street-door, and find yourself fairly in the street.
+
+A thaw, by all that is miserable!  The frost is completely broken up. You
+look down the long perspective of Oxford-street, the gas-lights
+mournfully reflected on the wet pavement, and can discern no speck in the
+road to encourage the belief that there is a cab or a coach to be
+had--the very coachmen have gone home in despair.  The cold sleet is
+drizzling down with that gentle regularity, which betokens a duration of
+four-and-twenty hours at least; the damp hangs upon the house-tops and
+lamp-posts, and clings to you like an invisible cloak.  The water is
+'coming in' in every area, the pipes have burst, the water-butts are
+running over; the kennels seem to be doing matches against time,
+pump-handles descend of their own accord, horses in market-carts fall
+down, and there's no one to help them up again, policemen look as if they
+had been carefully sprinkled with powdered glass; here and there a
+milk-woman trudges slowly along, with a bit of list round each foot to
+keep her from slipping; boys who 'don't sleep in the house,' and are not
+allowed much sleep out of it, can't wake their masters by thundering at
+the shop-door, and cry with the cold--the compound of ice, snow, and
+water on the pavement, is a couple of inches thick--nobody ventures to
+walk fast to keep himself warm, and nobody could succeed in keeping
+himself warm if he did.
+
+It strikes a quarter past five as you trudge down Waterloo-place on your
+way to the Golden Cross, and you discover, for the first time, that you
+were called about an hour too early.  You have not time to go back; there
+is no place open to go into, and you have, therefore, no resource but to
+go forward, which you do, feeling remarkably satisfied with yourself, and
+everything about you.  You arrive at the office, and look wistfully up
+the yard for the Birmingham High-flier, which, for aught you can see, may
+have flown away altogether, for preparations appear to be on foot for the
+departure of any vehicle in the shape of a coach.  You wander into the
+booking-office, which with the gas-lights and blazing fire, looks quite
+comfortable by contrast--that is to say, if any place _can_ look
+comfortable at half-past five on a winter's morning.  There stands the
+identical book-keeper in the same position as if he had not moved since
+you saw him yesterday.  As he informs you, that the coach is up the yard,
+and will be brought round in about a quarter of an hour, you leave your
+bag, and repair to 'The Tap'--not with any absurd idea of warming
+yourself, because you feel such a result to be utterly hopeless, but for
+the purpose of procuring some hot brandy-and-water, which you do,--when
+the kettle boils! an event which occurs exactly two minutes and a half
+before the time fixed for the starting of the coach.
+
+The first stroke of six, peals from St. Martin's church steeple, just as
+you take the first sip of the boiling liquid.  You find yourself at the
+booking-office in two seconds, and the tap-waiter finds himself much
+comforted by your brandy-and-water, in about the same period.  The coach
+is out; the horses are in, and the guard and two or three porters, are
+stowing the luggage away, and running up the steps of the booking-office,
+and down the steps of the booking-office, with breathless rapidity.  The
+place, which a few minutes ago was so still and quiet, is now all bustle;
+the early vendors of the morning papers have arrived, and you are
+assailed on all sides with shouts of '_Times_, gen'lm'n, _Times_,'
+'Here's _Chron--Chron--Chron_,' '_Herald_, ma'am,'  'Highly interesting
+murder, gen'lm'n,' 'Curious case o' breach o' promise, ladies.'  The
+inside passengers are already in their dens, and the outsides, with the
+exception of yourself, are pacing up and down the pavement to keep
+themselves warm; they consist of two young men with very long hair, to
+which the sleet has communicated the appearance of crystallised rats'
+tails; one thin young woman cold and peevish, one old gentleman ditto
+ditto, and something in a cloak and cap, intended to represent a military
+officer; every member of the party, with a large stiff shawl over his
+chin, looking exactly as if he were playing a set of Pan's pipes.
+
+'Take off the cloths, Bob,' says the coachman, who now appears for the
+first time, in a rough blue great-coat, of which the buttons behind are
+so far apart, that you can't see them both at the same time.  'Now,
+gen'lm'n,' cries the guard, with the waybill in his hand.  'Five minutes
+behind time already!'  Up jump the passengers--the two young men smoking
+like lime-kilns, and the old gentleman grumbling audibly.  The thin young
+woman is got upon the roof, by dint of a great deal of pulling, and
+pushing, and helping and trouble, and she repays it by expressing her
+solemn conviction that she will never be able to get down again.
+
+'All right,' sings out the guard at last, jumping up as the coach starts,
+and blowing his horn directly afterwards, in proof of the soundness of
+his wind.  'Let 'em go, Harry, give 'em their heads,' cries the
+coachman--and off we start as briskly as if the morning were 'all right,'
+as well as the coach: and looking forward as anxiously to the termination
+of our journey, as we fear our readers will have done, long since, to the
+conclusion of our paper.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI--OMNIBUSES
+
+
+It is very generally allowed that public conveyances afford an extensive
+field for amusement and observation.  Of all the public conveyances that
+have been constructed since the days of the Ark--we think that is the
+earliest on record--to the present time, commend us to an omnibus.  A
+long stage is not to be despised, but there you have only six insides,
+and the chances are, that the same people go all the way with you--there
+is no change, no variety.  Besides, after the first twelve hours or so,
+people get cross and sleepy, and when you have seen a man in his
+nightcap, you lose all respect for him; at least, that is the case with
+us.  Then on smooth roads people frequently get prosy, and tell long
+stories, and even those who don't talk, may have very unpleasant
+predilections.  We once travelled four hundred miles, inside a
+stage-coach, with a stout man, who had a glass of rum-and-water, warm,
+handed in at the window at every place where we changed horses.  This was
+decidedly unpleasant.  We have also travelled occasionally, with a small
+boy of a pale aspect, with light hair, and no perceptible neck, coming up
+to town from school under the protection of the guard, and directed to be
+left at the Cross Keys till called for.  This is, perhaps, even worse
+than rum-and-water in a close atmosphere.  Then there is the whole train
+of evils consequent on a change of the coachman; and the misery of the
+discovery--which the guard is sure to make the moment you begin to
+doze--that he wants a brown-paper parcel, which he distinctly remembers
+to have deposited under the seat on which you are reposing.  A great deal
+of bustle and groping takes place, and when you are thoroughly awakened,
+and severely cramped, by holding your legs up by an almost supernatural
+exertion, while he is looking behind them, it suddenly occurs to him that
+he put it in the fore-boot.  Bang goes the door; the parcel is
+immediately found; off starts the coach again; and the guard plays the
+key-bugle as loud as he can play it, as if in mockery of your
+wretchedness.
+
+Now, you meet with none of these afflictions in an omnibus; sameness
+there can never be.  The passengers change as often in the course of one
+journey as the figures in a kaleidoscope, and though not so glittering,
+are far more amusing.  We believe there is no instance on record, of a
+man's having gone to sleep in one of these vehicles.  As to long stories,
+would any man venture to tell a long story in an omnibus? and even if he
+did, where would be the harm? nobody could possibly hear what he was
+talking about.  Again; children, though occasionally, are not often to be
+found in an omnibus; and even when they are, if the vehicle be full, as
+is generally the case, somebody sits upon them, and we are unconscious of
+their presence.  Yes, after mature reflection, and considerable
+experience, we are decidedly of opinion, that of all known vehicles, from
+the glass-coach in which we were taken to be christened, to that sombre
+caravan in which we must one day make our last earthly journey, there is
+nothing like an omnibus.
+
+We will back the machine in which we make our daily peregrination from
+the top of Oxford-street to the city, against any 'buss' on the road,
+whether it be for the gaudiness of its exterior, the perfect simplicity
+of its interior, or the native coolness of its cad.  This young gentleman
+is a singular instance of self-devotion; his somewhat intemperate zeal on
+behalf of his employers, is constantly getting him into trouble, and
+occasionally into the house of correction.  He is no sooner emancipated,
+however, than he resumes the duties of his profession with unabated
+ardour.  His principal distinction is his activity.  His great boast is,
+'that he can chuck an old gen'lm'n into the buss, shut him in, and rattle
+off, afore he knows where it's a-going to'--a feat which he frequently
+performs, to the infinite amusement of every one but the old gentleman
+concerned, who, somehow or other, never can see the joke of the thing.
+
+We are not aware that it has ever been precisely ascertained, how many
+passengers our omnibus will contain.  The impression on the cad's mind
+evidently is, that it is amply sufficient for the accommodation of any
+number of persons that can be enticed into it.  'Any room?' cries a hot
+pedestrian.  'Plenty o' room, sir,' replies the conductor, gradually
+opening the door, and not disclosing the real state of the case, until
+the wretched man is on the steps.  'Where?' inquires the entrapped
+individual, with an attempt to back out again.  'Either side, sir,'
+rejoins the cad, shoving him in, and slamming the door.  'All right,
+Bill.'  Retreat is impossible; the new-comer rolls about, till he falls
+down somewhere, and there he stops.
+
+As we get into the city a little before ten, four or five of our party
+are regular passengers.  We always take them up at the same places, and
+they generally occupy the same seats; they are always dressed in the same
+manner, and invariably discuss the same topics--the increasing rapidity
+of cabs, and the disregard of moral obligations evinced by omnibus men.
+There is a little testy old man, with a powdered head, who always sits on
+the right-hand side of the door as you enter, with his hands folded on
+the top of his umbrella.  He is extremely impatient, and sits there for
+the purpose of keeping a sharp eye on the cad, with whom he generally
+holds a running dialogue.  He is very officious in helping people in and
+out, and always volunteers to give the cad a poke with his umbrella, when
+any one wants to alight.  He usually recommends ladies to have sixpence
+ready, to prevent delay; and if anybody puts a window down, that he can
+reach, he immediately puts it up again.
+
+'Now, what are you stopping for?' says the little man every morning, the
+moment there is the slightest indication of 'pulling up' at the corner of
+Regent-street, when some such dialogue as the following takes place
+between him and the cad:
+
+'What are you stopping for?'
+
+Here the cad whistles, and affects not to hear the question.
+
+'I say [a poke], what are you stopping for?'
+
+'For passengers, sir.  Ba--nk.--Ty.'
+
+'I know you're stopping for passengers; but you've no business to do so.
+_Why_ are you stopping?'
+
+'Vy, sir, that's a difficult question.  I think it is because we perfer
+stopping here to going on.'
+
+'Now mind,' exclaims the little old man, with great vehemence, 'I'll pull
+you up to-morrow; I've often threatened to do it; now I will.'
+
+'Thankee, sir,' replies the cad, touching his hat with a mock expression
+of gratitude;--'werry much obliged to you indeed, sir.'  Here the young
+men in the omnibus laugh very heartily, and the old gentleman gets very
+red in the face, and seems highly exasperated.
+
+The stout gentleman in the white neckcloth, at the other end of the
+vehicle, looks very prophetic, and says that something must shortly be
+done with these fellows, or there's no saying where all this will end;
+and the shabby-genteel man with the green bag, expresses his entire
+concurrence in the opinion, as he has done regularly every morning for
+the last six months.
+
+A second omnibus now comes up, and stops immediately behind us.  Another
+old gentleman elevates his cane in the air, and runs with all his might
+towards our omnibus; we watch his progress with great interest; the door
+is opened to receive him, he suddenly disappears--he has been spirited
+away by the opposition.  Hereupon the driver of the opposition taunts our
+people with his having 'regularly done 'em out of that old swell,' and
+the voice of the 'old swell' is heard, vainly protesting against this
+unlawful detention.  We rattle off, the other omnibus rattles after us,
+and every time we stop to take up a passenger, they stop to take him too;
+sometimes we get him; sometimes they get him; but whoever don't get him,
+say they ought to have had him, and the cads of the respective vehicles
+abuse one another accordingly.
+
+As we arrive in the vicinity of Lincoln's-inn-fields, Bedford-row, and
+other legal haunts, we drop a great many of our original passengers, and
+take up fresh ones, who meet with a very sulky reception.  It is rather
+remarkable, that the people already in an omnibus, always look at
+newcomers, as if they entertained some undefined idea that they have no
+business to come in at all.  We are quite persuaded the little old man
+has some notion of this kind, and that he considers their entry as a sort
+of negative impertinence.
+
+Conversation is now entirely dropped; each person gazes vacantly through
+the window in front of him, and everybody thinks that his opposite
+neighbour is staring at him.  If one man gets out at Shoe-lane, and
+another at the corner of Farringdon-street, the little old gentleman
+grumbles, and suggests to the latter, that if he had got out at Shoe-lane
+too, he would have saved them the delay of another stoppage; whereupon
+the young men laugh again, and the old gentleman looks very solemn, and
+says nothing more till he gets to the Bank, when he trots off as fast as
+he can, leaving us to do the same, and to wish, as we walk away, that we
+could impart to others any portion of the amusement we have gained for
+ourselves.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII--THE LAST CAB-DRIVER, AND THE FIRST OMNIBUS CAD
+
+
+Of all the cabriolet-drivers whom we have ever had the honour and
+gratification of knowing by sight--and our acquaintance in this way has
+been most extensive--there is one who made an impression on our mind
+which can never be effaced, and who awakened in our bosom a feeling of
+admiration and respect, which we entertain a fatal presentiment will
+never be called forth again by any human being.  He was a man of most
+simple and prepossessing appearance.  He was a brown-whiskered,
+white-hatted, no-coated cabman; his nose was generally red, and his
+bright blue eye not unfrequently stood out in bold relief against a black
+border of artificial workmanship; his boots were of the Wellington form,
+pulled up to meet his corduroy knee-smalls, or at least to approach as
+near them as their dimensions would admit of; and his neck was usually
+garnished with a bright yellow handkerchief.  In summer he carried in his
+mouth a flower; in winter, a straw--slight, but, to a contemplative mind,
+certain indications of a love of nature, and a taste for botany.
+
+His cabriolet was gorgeously painted--a bright red; and wherever we went,
+City or West End, Paddington or Holloway, North, East, West, or South,
+there was the red cab, bumping up against the posts at the street
+corners, and turning in and out, among hackney-coaches, and drays, and
+carts, and waggons, and omnibuses, and contriving by some strange means
+or other, to get out of places which no other vehicle but the red cab
+could ever by any possibility have contrived to get into at all.  Our
+fondness for that red cab was unbounded.  How we should have liked to
+have seen it in the circle at Astley's!  Our life upon it, that it should
+have performed such evolutions as would have put the whole company to
+shame--Indian chiefs, knights, Swiss peasants, and all.
+
+Some people object to the exertion of getting into cabs, and others
+object to the difficulty of getting out of them; we think both these are
+objections which take their rise in perverse and ill-conditioned minds.
+The getting into a cab is a very pretty and graceful process, which, when
+well performed, is essentially melodramatic.  First, there is the
+expressive pantomime of every one of the eighteen cabmen on the stand,
+the moment you raise your eyes from the ground.  Then there is your own
+pantomime in reply--quite a little ballet.  Four cabs immediately leave
+the stand, for your especial accommodation; and the evolutions of the
+animals who draw them, are beautiful in the extreme, as they grate the
+wheels of the cabs against the curb-stones, and sport playfully in the
+kennel.  You single out a particular cab, and dart swiftly towards it.
+One bound, and you are on the first step; turn your body lightly round to
+the right, and you are on the second; bend gracefully beneath the reins,
+working round to the left at the same time, and you are in the cab.
+There is no difficulty in finding a seat: the apron knocks you
+comfortably into it at once, and off you go.
+
+The getting out of a cab is, perhaps, rather more complicated in its
+theory, and a shade more difficult in its execution.  We have studied the
+subject a great deal, and we think the best way is, to throw yourself
+out, and trust to chance for alighting on your feet.  If you make the
+driver alight first, and then throw yourself upon him, you will find that
+he breaks your fall materially.  In the event of your contemplating an
+offer of eightpence, on no account make the tender, or show the money,
+until you are safely on the pavement.  It is very bad policy attempting
+to save the fourpence.  You are very much in the power of a cabman, and
+he considers it a kind of fee not to do you any wilful damage.  Any
+instruction, however, in the art of getting out of a cab, is wholly
+unnecessary if you are going any distance, because the probability is,
+that you will be shot lightly out before you have completed the third
+mile.
+
+We are not aware of any instance on record in which a cab-horse has
+performed three consecutive miles without going down once.  What of that?
+It is all excitement.  And in these days of derangement of the nervous
+system and universal lassitude, people are content to pay handsomely for
+excitement; where can it be procured at a cheaper rate?
+
+But to return to the red cab; it was omnipresent.  You had but to walk
+down Holborn, or Fleet-street, or any of the principal thoroughfares in
+which there is a great deal of traffic, and judge for yourself.  You had
+hardly turned into the street, when you saw a trunk or two, lying on the
+ground: an uprooted post, a hat-box, a portmanteau, and a carpet-bag,
+strewed about in a very picturesque manner: a horse in a cab standing by,
+looking about him with great unconcern; and a crowd, shouting and
+screaming with delight, cooling their flushed faces against the glass
+windows of a chemist's shop.--'What's the matter here, can you tell
+me?'--'O'ny a cab, sir.'--'Anybody hurt, do you know?'--'O'ny the fare,
+sir.  I see him a turnin' the corner, and I ses to another gen'lm'n
+"that's a reg'lar little oss that, and he's a comin' along rayther sweet,
+an't he?"--"He just is," ses the other gen'lm'n, ven bump they cums agin
+the post, and out flies the fare like bricks.'  Need we say it was the
+red cab; or that the gentleman with the straw in his mouth, who emerged
+so coolly from the chemist's shop and philosophically climbing into the
+little dickey, started off at full gallop, was the red cab's licensed
+driver?
+
+The ubiquity of this red cab, and the influence it exercised over the
+risible muscles of justice itself, was perfectly astonishing.  You walked
+into the justice-room of the Mansion-house; the whole court resounded
+with merriment.  The Lord Mayor threw himself back in his chair, in a
+state of frantic delight at his own joke; every vein in Mr. Hobler's
+countenance was swollen with laughter, partly at the Lord Mayor's
+facetiousness, but more at his own; the constables and police-officers
+were (as in duty bound) in ecstasies at Mr. Hobler and the Lord Mayor
+combined; and the very paupers, glancing respectfully at the beadle's
+countenance, tried to smile, as even he relaxed.  A tall, weazen-faced
+man, with an impediment in his speech, would be endeavouring to state a
+case of imposition against the red cab's driver; and the red cab's
+driver, and the Lord Mayor, and Mr. Hobler, would be having a little fun
+among themselves, to the inordinate delight of everybody but the
+complainant.  In the end, justice would be so tickled with the red
+cab-driver's native humour, that the fine would be mitigated, and he
+would go away full gallop, in the red cab, to impose on somebody else
+without loss of time.
+
+The driver of the red cab, confident in the strength of his own moral
+principles, like many other philosophers, was wont to set the feelings
+and opinions of society at complete defiance.  Generally speaking,
+perhaps, he would as soon carry a fare safely to his destination, as he
+would upset him--sooner, perhaps, because in that case he not only got
+the money, but had the additional amusement of running a longer heat
+against some smart rival.  But society made war upon him in the shape of
+penalties, and he must make war upon society in his own way.  This was
+the reasoning of the red cab-driver.  So, he bestowed a searching look
+upon the fare, as he put his hand in his waistcoat pocket, when he had
+gone half the mile, to get the money ready; and if he brought forth
+eightpence, out he went.
+
+The last time we saw our friend was one wet evening in
+Tottenham-court-road, when he was engaged in a very warm and somewhat
+personal altercation with a loquacious little gentleman in a green coat.
+Poor fellow! there were great excuses to be made for him: he had not
+received above eighteenpence more than his fare, and consequently
+laboured under a great deal of very natural indignation.  The dispute had
+attained a pretty considerable height, when at last the loquacious little
+gentleman, making a mental calculation of the distance, and finding that
+he had already paid more than he ought, avowed his unalterable
+determination to 'pull up' the cabman in the morning.
+
+'Now, just mark this, young man,' said the little gentleman, 'I'll pull
+you up to-morrow morning.'
+
+'No! will you though?' said our friend, with a sneer.
+
+'I will,' replied the little gentleman, 'mark my words, that's all.  If I
+live till to-morrow morning, you shall repent this.'
+
+There was a steadiness of purpose, and indignation of speech, about the
+little gentleman, as he took an angry pinch of snuff, after this last
+declaration, which made a visible impression on the mind of the red
+cab-driver.  He appeared to hesitate for an instant.  It was only for an
+instant; his resolve was soon taken.
+
+'You'll pull me up, will you?' said our friend.
+
+'I will,' rejoined the little gentleman, with even greater vehemence an
+before.
+
+'Very well,' said our friend, tucking up his shirt sleeves very calmly.
+'There'll be three veeks for that.  Wery good; that'll bring me up to the
+middle o' next month.  Three veeks more would carry me on to my birthday,
+and then I've got ten pound to draw.  I may as well get board, lodgin',
+and washin', till then, out of the county, as pay for it myself;
+consequently here goes!'
+
+So, without more ado, the red cab-driver knocked the little gentleman
+down, and then called the police to take himself into custody, with all
+the civility in the world.
+
+A story is nothing without the sequel; and therefore, we may state, that
+to our certain knowledge, the board, lodging, and washing were all
+provided in due course.  We happen to know the fact, for it came to our
+knowledge thus: We went over the House of Correction for the county of
+Middlesex shortly after, to witness the operation of the silent system;
+and looked on all the 'wheels' with the greatest anxiety, in search of
+our long-lost friend.  He was nowhere to be seen, however, and we began
+to think that the little gentleman in the green coat must have relented,
+when, as we were traversing the kitchen-garden, which lies in a
+sequestered part of the prison, we were startled by hearing a voice,
+which apparently proceeded from the wall, pouring forth its soul in the
+plaintive air of 'All round my hat,' which was then just beginning to
+form a recognised portion of our national music.
+
+We started.--'What voice is that?' said we.  The Governor shook his head.
+
+'Sad fellow,' he replied, 'very sad.  He positively refused to work on
+the wheel; so, after many trials, I was compelled to order him into
+solitary confinement.  He says he likes it very much though, and I am
+afraid he does, for he lies on his back on the floor, and sings comic
+songs all day!'
+
+Shall we add, that our heart had not deceived us and that the comic
+singer was no other than our eagerly-sought friend, the red cab-driver?
+
+We have never seen him since, but we have strong reason to suspect that
+this noble individual was a distant relative of a waterman of our
+acquaintance, who, on one occasion, when we were passing the coach-stand
+over which he presides, after standing very quietly to see a tall man
+struggle into a cab, ran up very briskly when it was all over (as his
+brethren invariably do), and, touching his hat, asked, as a matter of
+course, for 'a copper for the waterman.'  Now, the fare was by no means a
+handsome man; and, waxing very indignant at the demand, he
+replied--'Money!  What for?  Coming up and looking at me, I
+suppose!'--'Vell, sir,' rejoined the waterman, with a smile of immovable
+complacency, '_that's_ worth twopence.'
+
+The identical waterman afterwards attained a very prominent station in
+society; and as we know something of his life, and have often thought of
+telling what we _do_ know, perhaps we shall never have a better
+opportunity than the present.
+
+Mr. William Barker, then, for that was the gentleman's name, Mr. William
+Barker was born--but why need we relate where Mr. William Barker was
+born, or when?  Why scrutinise the entries in parochial ledgers, or seek
+to penetrate the Lucinian mysteries of lying-in hospitals?  Mr. William
+Barker _was_ born, or he had never been.  There is a son--there was a
+father.  There is an effect--there was a cause.  Surely this is
+sufficient information for the most Fatima-like curiosity; and, if it be
+not, we regret our inability to supply any further evidence on the point.
+Can there be a more satisfactory, or more strictly parliamentary course?
+Impossible.
+
+We at once avow a similar inability to record at what precise period, or
+by what particular process, this gentleman's patronymic, of William
+Barker, became corrupted into 'Bill Boorker.' Mr. Barker acquired a high
+standing, and no inconsiderable reputation, among the members of that
+profession to which he more peculiarly devoted his energies; and to them
+he was generally known, either by the familiar appellation of 'Bill
+Boorker,' or the flattering designation of 'Aggerawatin Bill,' the latter
+being a playful and expressive _sobriquet_, illustrative of Mr. Barker's
+great talent in 'aggerawatin' and rendering wild such subjects of her
+Majesty as are conveyed from place to place, through the instrumentality
+of omnibuses.  Of the early life of Mr. Barker little is known, and even
+that little is involved in considerable doubt and obscurity.  A want of
+application, a restlessness of purpose, a thirsting after porter, a love
+of all that is roving and cadger-like in nature, shared in common with
+many other great geniuses, appear to have been his leading
+characteristics.  The busy hum of a parochial free-school, and the shady
+repose of a county gaol, were alike inefficacious in producing the
+slightest alteration in Mr. Barker's disposition.  His feverish
+attachment to change and variety nothing could repress; his native daring
+no punishment could subdue.
+
+If Mr. Barker can be fairly said to have had any weakness in his earlier
+years, it was an amiable one--love; love in its most comprehensive
+form--a love of ladies, liquids, and pocket-handkerchiefs.  It was no
+selfish feeling; it was not confined to his own possessions, which but
+too many men regard with exclusive complacency.  No; it was a nobler
+love--a general principle.  It extended itself with equal force to the
+property of other people.
+
+There is something very affecting in this.  It is still more affecting to
+know, that such philanthropy is but imperfectly rewarded.  Bow-street,
+Newgate, and Millbank, are a poor return for general benevolence,
+evincing itself in an irrepressible love for all created objects.  Mr.
+Barker felt it so.  After a lengthened interview with the highest legal
+authorities, he quitted his ungrateful country, with the consent, and at
+the expense, of its Government; proceeded to a distant shore; and there
+employed himself, like another Cincinnatus, in clearing and cultivating
+the soil--a peaceful pursuit, in which a term of seven years glided
+almost imperceptibly away.
+
+Whether, at the expiration of the period we have just mentioned, the
+British Government required Mr. Barker's presence here, or did not
+require his residence abroad, we have no distinct means of ascertaining.
+We should be inclined, however, to favour the latter position, inasmuch
+as we do not find that he was advanced to any other public post on his
+return, than the post at the corner of the Haymarket, where he officiated
+as assistant-waterman to the hackney-coach stand.  Seated, in this
+capacity, on a couple of tubs near the curbstone, with a brass plate and
+number suspended round his neck by a massive chain, and his ankles
+curiously enveloped in haybands, he is supposed to have made those
+observations on human nature which exercised so material an influence
+over all his proceedings in later life.
+
+Mr. Barker had not officiated for many months in this capacity, when the
+appearance of the first omnibus caused the public mind to go in a new
+direction, and prevented a great many hackney-coaches from going in any
+direction at all.  The genius of Mr. Barker at once perceived the whole
+extent of the injury that would be eventually inflicted on cab and coach
+stands, and, by consequence, on watermen also, by the progress of the
+system of which the first omnibus was a part.  He saw, too, the necessity
+of adopting some more profitable profession; and his active mind at once
+perceived how much might be done in the way of enticing the youthful and
+unwary, and shoving the old and helpless, into the wrong buss, and
+carrying them off, until, reduced to despair, they ransomed themselves by
+the payment of sixpence a-head, or, to adopt his own figurative
+expression in all its native beauty, 'till they was rig'larly done over,
+and forked out the stumpy.'
+
+An opportunity for realising his fondest anticipations, soon presented
+itself.  Rumours were rife on the hackney-coach stands, that a buss was
+building, to run from Lisson-grove to the Bank, down Oxford-street and
+Holborn; and the rapid increase of busses on the Paddington-road,
+encouraged the idea.  Mr. Barker secretly and cautiously inquired in the
+proper quarters.  The report was correct; the 'Royal William' was to make
+its first journey on the following Monday.  It was a crack affair
+altogether.  An enterprising young cabman, of established reputation as a
+dashing whip--for he had compromised with the parents of three scrunched
+children, and just 'worked out' his fine for knocking down an old
+lady--was the driver; and the spirited proprietor, knowing Mr. Barker's
+qualifications, appointed him to the vacant office of cad on the very
+first application.  The buss began to run, and Mr. Barker entered into a
+new suit of clothes, and on a new sphere of action.
+
+To recapitulate all the improvements introduced by this extraordinary man
+into the omnibus system--gradually, indeed, but surely--would occupy a
+far greater space than we are enabled to devote to this imperfect memoir.
+To him is universally assigned the original suggestion of the practice
+which afterwards became so general--of the driver of a second buss
+keeping constantly behind the first one, and driving the pole of his
+vehicle either into the door of the other, every time it was opened, or
+through the body of any lady or gentleman who might make an attempt to
+get into it; a humorous and pleasant invention, exhibiting all that
+originality of idea, and fine, bold flow of spirits, so conspicuous in
+every action of this great man.
+
+Mr. Barker had opponents of course; what man in public life has not?  But
+even his worst enemies cannot deny that he has taken more old ladies and
+gentlemen to Paddington who wanted to go to the Bank, and more old ladies
+and gentlemen to the Bank who wanted to go to Paddington, than any six
+men on the road; and however much malevolent spirits may pretend to doubt
+the accuracy of the statement, they well know it to be an established
+fact, that he has forcibly conveyed a variety of ancient persons of
+either sex, to both places, who had not the slightest or most distant
+intention of going anywhere at all.
+
+Mr. Barker was the identical cad who nobly distinguished himself, some
+time since, by keeping a tradesman on the step--the omnibus going at full
+speed all the time--till he had thrashed him to his entire satisfaction,
+and finally throwing him away, when he had quite done with him.  Mr.
+Barker it _ought_ to have been, who honestly indignant at being
+ignominiously ejected from a house of public entertainment, kicked the
+landlord in the knee, and thereby caused his death.  We say it _ought_ to
+have been Mr. Barker, because the action was not a common one, and could
+have emanated from no ordinary mind.
+
+It has now become matter of history; it is recorded in the Newgate
+Calendar; and we wish we could attribute this piece of daring heroism to
+Mr. Barker.  We regret being compelled to state that it was not performed
+by him.  Would, for the family credit we could add, that it was achieved
+by his brother!
+
+It was in the exercise of the nicer details of his profession, that Mr.
+Barker's knowledge of human nature was beautifully displayed.  He could
+tell at a glance where a passenger wanted to go to, and would shout the
+name of the place accordingly, without the slightest reference to the
+real destination of the vehicle.  He knew exactly the kind of old lady
+that would be too much flurried by the process of pushing in and pulling
+out of the caravan, to discover where she had been put down, until too
+late; had an intuitive perception of what was passing in a passenger's
+mind when he inwardly resolved to 'pull that cad up to-morrow morning;'
+and never failed to make himself agreeable to female servants, whom he
+would place next the door, and talk to all the way.
+
+Human judgment is never infallible, and it would occasionally happen that
+Mr. Barker experimentalised with the timidity or forbearance of the wrong
+person, in which case a summons to a Police-office, was, on more than one
+occasion, followed by a committal to prison.  It was not in the power of
+trifles such as these, however, to subdue the freedom of his spirit.  As
+soon as they passed away, he resumed the duties of his profession with
+unabated ardour.
+
+We have spoken of Mr. Barker and of the red cab-driver, in the past
+tense.  Alas! Mr. Barker has again become an absentee; and the class of
+men to which they both belonged is fast disappearing.  Improvement has
+peered beneath the aprons of our cabs, and penetrated to the very
+innermost recesses of our omnibuses.  Dirt and fustian will vanish before
+cleanliness and livery.  Slang will be forgotten when civility becomes
+general: and that enlightened, eloquent, sage, and profound body, the
+Magistracy of London, will be deprived of half their amusement, and half
+their occupation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII--A PARLIAMENTARY SKETCH
+
+
+We hope our readers will not be alarmed at this rather ominous title.  We
+assure them that we are not about to become political, neither have we
+the slightest intention of being more prosy than usual--if we can help
+it.  It has occurred to us that a slight sketch of the general aspect of
+'the House,' and the crowds that resort to it on the night of an
+important debate, would be productive of some amusement: and as we have
+made some few calls at the aforesaid house in our time--have visited it
+quite often enough for our purpose, and a great deal too often for our
+personal peace and comfort--we have determined to attempt the
+description.  Dismissing from our minds, therefore, all that feeling of
+awe, which vague ideas of breaches of privilege, Serjeant-at-Arms, heavy
+denunciations, and still heavier fees, are calculated to awaken, we enter
+at once into the building, and upon our subject.
+
+Half-past four o'clock--and at five the mover of the Address will be 'on
+his legs,' as the newspapers announce sometimes by way of novelty, as if
+speakers were occasionally in the habit of standing on their heads.  The
+members are pouring in, one after the other, in shoals.  The few
+spectators who can obtain standing-room in the passages, scrutinise them
+as they pass, with the utmost interest, and the man who can identify a
+member occasionally, becomes a person of great importance.  Every now and
+then you hear earnest whispers of 'That's Sir John Thomson.'  'Which? him
+with the gilt order round his neck?'  'No, no; that's one of the
+messengers--that other with the yellow gloves, is Sir John Thomson.'
+'Here's Mr. Smith.'  'Lor!'  'Yes, how d'ye do, sir?--(He is our new
+member)--How do you do, sir?'  Mr. Smith stops: turns round with an air
+of enchanting urbanity (for the rumour of an intended dissolution has
+been very extensively circulated this morning); seizes both the hands of
+his gratified constituent, and, after greeting him with the most
+enthusiastic warmth, darts into the lobby with an extraordinary display
+of ardour in the public cause, leaving an immense impression in his
+favour on the mind of his 'fellow-townsman.'
+
+The arrivals increase in number, and the heat and noise increase in very
+unpleasant proportion.  The livery servants form a complete lane on
+either side of the passage, and you reduce yourself into the smallest
+possible space to avoid being turned out.  You see that stout man with
+the hoarse voice, in the blue coat, queer-crowned, broad-brimmed hat,
+white corduroy breeches, and great boots, who has been talking
+incessantly for half an hour past, and whose importance has occasioned no
+small quantity of mirth among the strangers.  That is the great
+conservator of the peace of Westminster.  You cannot fail to have
+remarked the grace with which he saluted the noble Lord who passed just
+now, or the excessive dignity of his air, as he expostulates with the
+crowd.  He is rather out of temper now, in consequence of the very
+irreverent behaviour of those two young fellows behind him, who have done
+nothing but laugh all the time they have been here.
+
+'Will they divide to-night, do you think, Mr. ---' timidly inquires a
+little thin man in the crowd, hoping to conciliate the man of office.
+
+'How _can_ you ask such questions, sir?' replies the functionary, in an
+incredibly loud key, and pettishly grasping the thick stick he carries in
+his right hand.  'Pray do not, sir.  I beg of you; pray do not, sir.'
+The little man looks remarkably out of his element, and the uninitiated
+part of the throng are in positive convulsions of laughter.
+
+Just at this moment some unfortunate individual appears, with a very
+smirking air, at the bottom of the long passage.  He has managed to elude
+the vigilance of the special constable downstairs, and is evidently
+congratulating himself on having made his way so far.
+
+'Go back, sir--you must _not_ come here,' shouts the hoarse one, with
+tremendous emphasis of voice and gesture, the moment the offender catches
+his eye.
+
+The stranger pauses.
+
+'Do you hear, sir--will you go back?' continues the official dignitary,
+gently pushing the intruder some half-dozen yards.
+
+'Come, don't push me,' replies the stranger, turning angrily round.
+
+'I will, sir.'
+
+'You won't, sir.'
+
+'Go out, sir.'
+
+'Take your hands off me, sir.'
+
+'Go out of the passage, sir.'
+
+'You're a Jack-in-office, sir.'
+
+'A what?' ejaculates he of the boots.
+
+'A Jack-in-office, sir, and a very insolent fellow,' reiterates the
+stranger, now completely in a passion.
+
+'Pray do not force me to put you out, sir,' retorts the other--'pray do
+not--my instructions are to keep this passage clear--it's the Speaker's
+orders, sir.'
+
+'D-n the Speaker, sir!' shouts the intruder.
+
+'Here, Wilson!--Collins!' gasps the officer, actually paralysed at this
+insulting expression, which in his mind is all but high treason; 'take
+this man out--take him out, I say!  How dare you, sir?' and down goes the
+unfortunate man five stairs at a time, turning round at every stoppage,
+to come back again, and denouncing bitter vengeance against the
+commander-in-chief, and all his supernumeraries.
+
+'Make way, gentlemen,--pray make way for the Members, I beg of you!'
+shouts the zealous officer, turning back, and preceding a whole string of
+the liberal and independent.
+
+You see this ferocious-looking gentleman, with a complexion almost as
+sallow as his linen, and whose large black moustache would give him the
+appearance of a figure in a hairdresser's window, if his countenance
+possessed the thought which is communicated to those waxen caricatures of
+the human face divine.  He is a militia-officer, and the most amusing
+person in the House.  Can anything be more exquisitely absurd than the
+burlesque grandeur of his air, as he strides up to the lobby, his eyes
+rolling like those of a Turk's head in a cheap Dutch clock?  He never
+appears without that bundle of dirty papers which he carries under his
+left arm, and which are generally supposed to be the miscellaneous
+estimates for 1804, or some equally important documents.  He is very
+punctual in his attendance at the House, and his self-satisfied
+'He-ar-He-ar,' is not unfrequently the signal for a general titter.
+
+This is the gentleman who once actually sent a messenger up to the
+Strangers' gallery in the old House of Commons, to inquire the name of an
+individual who was using an eye-glass, in order that he might complain to
+the Speaker that the person in question was quizzing him!  On another
+occasion, he is reported to have repaired to Bellamy's kitchen--a
+refreshment-room, where persons who are not Members are admitted on
+sufferance, as it were--and perceiving two or three gentlemen at supper,
+who, he was aware, were not Members, and could not, in that place, very
+well resent his behaviour, he indulged in the pleasantry of sitting with
+his booted leg on the table at which they were supping!  He is generally
+harmless, though, and always amusing.
+
+By dint of patience, and some little interest with our friend the
+constable, we have contrived to make our way to the Lobby, and you can
+just manage to catch an occasional glimpse of the House, as the door is
+opened for the admission of Members.  It is tolerably full already, and
+little groups of Members are congregated together here, discussing the
+interesting topics of the day.
+
+That smart-looking fellow in the black coat with velvet facings and
+cuffs, who wears his _D'Orsay_ hat so rakishly, is 'Honest Tom,' a
+metropolitan representative; and the large man in the cloak with the
+white lining--not the man by the pillar; the other with the light hair
+hanging over his coat collar behind--is his colleague.  The quiet
+gentlemanly-looking man in the blue surtout, gray trousers, white
+neckerchief and gloves, whose closely-buttoned coat displays his manly
+figure and broad chest to great advantage, is a very well-known
+character.  He has fought a great many battles in his time, and conquered
+like the heroes of old, with no other arms than those the gods gave him.
+The old hard-featured man who is standing near him, is really a good
+specimen of a class of men, now nearly extinct.  He is a county Member,
+and has been from time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary.
+Look at his loose, wide, brown coat, with capacious pockets on each side;
+the knee-breeches and boots, the immensely long waistcoat, and silver
+watch-chain dangling below it, the wide-brimmed brown hat, and the white
+handkerchief tied in a great bow, with straggling ends sticking out
+beyond his shirt-frill.  It is a costume one seldom sees nowadays, and
+when the few who wear it have died off, it will be quite extinct.  He can
+tell you long stories of Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, and Canning, and how much
+better the House was managed in those times, when they used to get up at
+eight or nine o'clock, except on regular field-days, of which everybody
+was apprised beforehand.  He has a great contempt for all young Members
+of Parliament, and thinks it quite impossible that a man can say anything
+worth hearing, unless he has sat in the House for fifteen years at least,
+without saying anything at all.  He is of opinion that 'that young
+Macaulay' was a regular impostor; he allows, that Lord Stanley may do
+something one of these days, but 'he's too young, sir--too young.'  He is
+an excellent authority on points of precedent, and when he grows
+talkative, after his wine, will tell you how Sir Somebody Something, when
+he was whipper-in for the Government, brought four men out of their beds
+to vote in the majority, three of whom died on their way home again; how
+the House once divided on the question, that fresh candles be now brought
+in; how the Speaker was once upon a time left in the chair by accident,
+at the conclusion of business, and was obliged to sit in the House by
+himself for three hours, till some Member could be knocked up and brought
+back again, to move the adjournment; and a great many other anecdotes of
+a similar description.
+
+There he stands, leaning on his stick; looking at the throng of
+Exquisites around him with most profound contempt; and conjuring up,
+before his mind's eye, the scenes he beheld in the old House, in days
+gone by, when his own feelings were fresher and brighter, and when, as he
+imagines, wit, talent, and patriotism flourished more brightly too.
+
+You are curious to know who that young man in the rough great-coat is,
+who has accosted every Member who has entered the House since we have
+been standing here.  He is not a Member; he is only an 'hereditary
+bondsman,' or, in other words, an Irish correspondent of an Irish
+newspaper, who has just procured his forty-second frank from a Member
+whom he never saw in his life before.  There he goes again--another!
+Bless the man, he has his hat and pockets full already.
+
+We will try our fortune at the Strangers' gallery, though the nature of
+the debate encourages very little hope of success.  What on earth are you
+about?  Holding up your order as if it were a talisman at whose command
+the wicket would fly open?  Nonsense.  Just preserve the order for an
+autograph, if it be worth keeping at all, and make your appearance at the
+door with your thumb and forefinger expressively inserted in your
+waistcoat-pocket.  This tall stout man in black is the door-keeper.  'Any
+room?'  'Not an inch--two or three dozen gentlemen waiting down-stairs on
+the chance of somebody's going out.'  Pull out your purse--'Are you
+_quite_ sure there's no room?'--'I'll go and look,' replies the
+door-keeper, with a wistful glance at your purse, 'but I'm afraid there's
+not.'  He returns, and with real feeling assures you that it is morally
+impossible to get near the gallery.  It is of no use waiting.  When you
+are refused admission into the Strangers' gallery at the House of
+Commons, under such circumstances, you may return home thoroughly
+satisfied that the place must be remarkably full indeed. {122}
+
+Retracing our steps through the long passage, descending the stairs, and
+crossing Palace-yard, we halt at a small temporary doorway adjoining the
+King's entrance to the House of Lords.  The order of the serjeant-at-arms
+will admit you into the Reporters' gallery, from whence you can obtain a
+tolerably good view of the House.  Take care of the stairs, they are none
+of the best; through this little wicket--there.  As soon as your eyes
+become a little used to the mist of the place, and the glare of the
+chandeliers below you, you will see that some unimportant personage on
+the Ministerial side of the House (to your right hand) is speaking,
+amidst a hum of voices and confusion which would rival Babel, but for the
+circumstance of its being all in one language.
+
+The 'hear, hear,' which occasioned that laugh, proceeded from our warlike
+friend with the moustache; he is sitting on the back seat against the
+wall, behind the Member who is speaking, looking as ferocious and
+intellectual as usual.  Take one look around you, and retire!  The body
+of the House and the side galleries are full of Members; some, with their
+legs on the back of the opposite seat; some, with theirs stretched out to
+their utmost length on the floor; some going out, others coming in; all
+talking, laughing, lounging, coughing, oh-ing, questioning, or groaning;
+presenting a conglomeration of noise and confusion, to be met with in no
+other place in existence, not even excepting Smithfield on a market-day,
+or a cock-pit in its glory.
+
+But let us not omit to notice Bellamy's kitchen, or, in other words, the
+refreshment-room, common to both Houses of Parliament, where
+Ministerialists and Oppositionists, Whigs and Tories, Radicals, Peers,
+and Destructives, strangers from the gallery, and the more favoured
+strangers from below the bar, are alike at liberty to resort; where
+divers honourable members prove their perfect independence by remaining
+during the whole of a heavy debate, solacing themselves with the creature
+comforts; and whence they are summoned by whippers-in, when the House is
+on the point of dividing; either to give their 'conscientious votes' on
+questions of which they are conscientiously innocent of knowing anything
+whatever, or to find a vent for the playful exuberance of their
+wine-inspired fancies, in boisterous shouts of 'Divide,' occasionally
+varied with a little howling, barking, crowing, or other ebullitions of
+senatorial pleasantry.
+
+When you have ascended the narrow staircase which, in the present
+temporary House of Commons, leads to the place we are describing, you
+will probably observe a couple of rooms on your right hand, with tables
+spread for dining.  Neither of these is the kitchen, although they are
+both devoted to the same purpose; the kitchen is further on to our left,
+up these half-dozen stairs.  Before we ascend the staircase, however, we
+must request you to pause in front of this little bar-place with the
+sash-windows; and beg your particular attention to the steady,
+honest-looking old fellow in black, who is its sole occupant.  Nicholas
+(we do not mind mentioning the old fellow's name, for if Nicholas be not
+a public man, who is?--and public men's names are public
+property)--Nicholas is the butler of Bellamy's, and has held the same
+place, dressed exactly in the same manner, and said precisely the same
+things, ever since the oldest of its present visitors can remember.  An
+excellent servant Nicholas is--an unrivalled compounder of
+salad-dressing--an admirable preparer of soda-water and lemon--a special
+mixer of cold grog and punch--and, above all, an unequalled judge of
+cheese.  If the old man have such a thing as vanity in his composition,
+this is certainly his pride; and if it be possible to imagine that
+anything in this world could disturb his impenetrable calmness, we should
+say it would be the doubting his judgment on this important point.
+
+We needn't tell you all this, however, for if you have an atom of
+observation, one glance at his sleek, knowing-looking head and face--his
+prim white neckerchief, with the wooden tie into which it has been
+regularly folded for twenty years past, merging by imperceptible degrees
+into a small-plaited shirt-frill--and his comfortable-looking form
+encased in a well-brushed suit of black--would give you a better idea of
+his real character than a column of our poor description could convey.
+
+Nicholas is rather out of his element now; he cannot see the kitchen as
+he used to in the old House; there, one window of his glass-case opened
+into the room, and then, for the edification and behoof of more juvenile
+questioners, he would stand for an hour together, answering deferential
+questions about Sheridan, and Percival, and Castlereagh, and Heaven knows
+who beside, with manifest delight, always inserting a 'Mister' before
+every commoner's name.
+
+Nicholas, like all men of his age and standing, has a great idea of the
+degeneracy of the times.  He seldom expresses any political opinions, but
+we managed to ascertain, just before the passing of the Reform Bill, that
+Nicholas was a thorough Reformer.  What was our astonishment to discover
+shortly after the meeting of the first reformed Parliament, that he was a
+most inveterate and decided Tory!  It was very odd: some men change their
+opinions from necessity, others from expediency, others from inspiration;
+but that Nicholas should undergo any change in any respect, was an event
+we had never contemplated, and should have considered impossible.  His
+strong opinion against the clause which empowered the metropolitan
+districts to return Members to Parliament, too, was perfectly
+unaccountable.
+
+We discovered the secret at last; the metropolitan Members always dined
+at home.  The rascals!  As for giving additional Members to Ireland, it
+was even worse--decidedly unconstitutional.  Why, sir, an Irish Member
+would go up there, and eat more dinner than three English Members put
+together.  He took no wine; drank table-beer by the half-gallon; and went
+home to Manchester-buildings, or Millbank-street, for his
+whiskey-and-water.  And what was the consequence?  Why, the concern
+lost--actually lost, sir--by his patronage.  A queer old fellow is
+Nicholas, and as completely a part of the building as the house itself.
+We wonder he ever left the old place, and fully expected to see in the
+papers, the morning after the fire, a pathetic account of an old
+gentleman in black, of decent appearance, who was seen at one of the
+upper windows when the flames were at their height, and declared his
+resolute intention of falling with the floor.  He must have been got out
+by force.  However, he was got out--here he is again, looking as he
+always does, as if he had been in a bandbox ever since the last session.
+There he is, at his old post every night, just as we have described him:
+and, as characters are scarce, and faithful servants scarcer, long may he
+be there, say we!
+
+Now, when you have taken your seat in the kitchen, and duly noticed the
+large fire and roasting-jack at one end of the room--the little table for
+washing glasses and draining jugs at the other--the clock over the window
+opposite St. Margaret's Church--the deal tables and wax candles--the
+damask table-cloths and bare floor--the plate and china on the tables,
+and the gridiron on the fire; and a few other anomalies peculiar to the
+place--we will point out to your notice two or three of the people
+present, whose station or absurdities render them the most worthy of
+remark.
+
+It is half-past twelve o'clock, and as the division is not expected for
+an hour or two, a few Members are lounging away the time here in
+preference to standing at the bar of the House, or sleeping in one of the
+side galleries.  That singularly awkward and ungainly-looking man, in the
+brownish-white hat, with the straggling black trousers which reach about
+half-way down the leg of his boots, who is leaning against the
+meat-screen, apparently deluding himself into the belief that he is
+thinking about something, is a splendid sample of a Member of the House
+of Commons concentrating in his own person the wisdom of a constituency.
+Observe the wig, of a dark hue but indescribable colour, for if it be
+naturally brown, it has acquired a black tint by long service, and if it
+be naturally black, the same cause has imparted to it a tinge of rusty
+brown; and remark how very materially the great blinker-like spectacles
+assist the expression of that most intelligent face.  Seriously speaking,
+did you ever see a countenance so expressive of the most hopeless extreme
+of heavy dulness, or behold a form so strangely put together?  He is no
+great speaker: but when he _does_ address the House, the effect is
+absolutely irresistible.
+
+The small gentleman with the sharp nose, who has just saluted him, is a
+Member of Parliament, an ex-Alderman, and a sort of amateur fireman.  He,
+and the celebrated fireman's dog, were observed to be remarkably active
+at the conflagration of the two Houses of Parliament--they both ran up
+and down, and in and out, getting under people's feet, and into
+everybody's way, fully impressed with the belief that they were doing a
+great deal of good, and barking tremendously.  The dog went quietly back
+to his kennel with the engine, but the gentleman kept up such an
+incessant noise for some weeks after the occurrence, that he became a
+positive nuisance.  As no more parliamentary fires have occurred,
+however, and as he has consequently had no more opportunities of writing
+to the newspapers to relate how, by way of preserving pictures he cut
+them out of their frames, and performed other great national services, he
+has gradually relapsed into his old state of calmness.
+
+That female in black--not the one whom the Lord's-Day-Bill Baronet has
+just chucked under the chin; the shorter of the two--is 'Jane:' the Hebe
+of Bellamy's.  Jane is as great a character as Nicholas, in her way.  Her
+leading features are a thorough contempt for the great majority of her
+visitors; her predominant quality, love of admiration, as you cannot fail
+to observe, if you mark the glee with which she listens to something the
+young Member near her mutters somewhat unintelligibly in her ear (for his
+speech is rather thick from some cause or other), and how playfully she
+digs the handle of a fork into the arm with which he detains her, by way
+of reply.
+
+Jane is no bad hand at repartees, and showers them about, with a degree
+of liberality and total absence of reserve or constraint, which
+occasionally excites no small amazement in the minds of strangers.  She
+cuts jokes with Nicholas, too, but looks up to him with a great deal of
+respect--the immovable stolidity with which Nicholas receives the
+aforesaid jokes, and looks on, at certain pastoral friskings and rompings
+(Jane's only recreations, and they are very innocent too) which
+occasionally take place in the passage, is not the least amusing part of
+his character.
+
+The two persons who are seated at the table in the corner, at the farther
+end of the room, have been constant guests here, for many years past; and
+one of them has feasted within these walls, many a time, with the most
+brilliant characters of a brilliant period.  He has gone up to the other
+House since then; the greater part of his boon companions have shared
+Yorick's fate, and his visits to Bellamy's are comparatively few.
+
+If he really be eating his supper now, at what hour can he possibly have
+dined!  A second solid mass of rump-steak has disappeared, and he eat the
+first in four minutes and three quarters, by the clock over the window.
+Was there ever such a personification of Falstaff!  Mark the air with
+which he gloats over that Stilton, as he removes the napkin which has
+been placed beneath his chin to catch the superfluous gravy of the steak,
+and with what gusto he imbibes the porter which has been fetched,
+expressly for him, in the pewter pot.  Listen to the hoarse sound of that
+voice, kept down as it is by layers of solids, and deep draughts of rich
+wine, and tell us if you ever saw such a perfect picture of a regular
+_gourmand_; and whether he is not exactly the man whom you would pitch
+upon as having been the partner of Sheridan's parliamentary carouses, the
+volunteer driver of the hackney-coach that took him home, and the
+involuntary upsetter of the whole party?
+
+What an amusing contrast between his voice and appearance, and that of
+the spare, squeaking old man, who sits at the same table, and who,
+elevating a little cracked bantam sort of voice to its highest pitch,
+invokes damnation upon his own eyes or somebody else's at the
+commencement of every sentence he utters.  'The Captain,' as they call
+him, is a very old frequenter of Bellamy's; much addicted to stopping
+'after the House is up' (an inexpiable crime in Jane's eyes), and a
+complete walking reservoir of spirits and water.
+
+The old Peer--or rather, the old man--for his peerage is of comparatively
+recent date--has a huge tumbler of hot punch brought him; and the other
+damns and drinks, and drinks and damns, and smokes.  Members arrive every
+moment in a great bustle to report that 'The Chancellor of the
+Exchequer's up,' and to get glasses of brandy-and-water to sustain them
+during the division; people who have ordered supper, countermand it, and
+prepare to go down-stairs, when suddenly a bell is heard to ring with
+tremendous violence, and a cry of 'Di-vi-sion!' is heard in the passage.
+This is enough; away rush the members pell-mell.  The room is cleared in
+an instant; the noise rapidly dies away; you hear the creaking of the
+last boot on the last stair, and are left alone with the leviathan of
+rump-steaks.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX--PUBLIC DINNERS
+
+
+All public dinners in London, from the Lord Mayor's annual banquet at
+Guildhall, to the Chimney-sweepers' anniversary at White Conduit House;
+from the Goldsmiths' to the Butchers', from the Sheriffs' to the Licensed
+Victuallers'; are amusing scenes.  Of all entertainments of this
+description, however, we think the annual dinner of some public charity
+is the most amusing.  At a Company's dinner, the people are nearly all
+alike--regular old stagers, who make it a matter of business, and a thing
+not to be laughed at.  At a political dinner, everybody is disagreeable,
+and inclined to speechify--much the same thing, by-the-bye; but at a
+charity dinner you see people of all sorts, kinds, and descriptions.  The
+wine may not be remarkably special, to be sure, and we have heard some
+hardhearted monsters grumble at the collection; but we really think the
+amusement to be derived from the occasion, sufficient to counterbalance
+even these disadvantages.
+
+Let us suppose you are induced to attend a dinner of this
+description--'Indigent Orphans' Friends' Benevolent Institution,' we
+think it is.  The name of the charity is a line or two longer, but never
+mind the rest.  You have a distinct recollection, however, that you
+purchased a ticket at the solicitation of some charitable friend: and you
+deposit yourself in a hackney-coach, the driver of which--no doubt that
+you may do the thing in style--turns a deaf ear to your earnest
+entreaties to be set down at the corner of Great Queen-street, and
+persists in carrying you to the very door of the Freemasons', round which
+a crowd of people are assembled to witness the entrance of the indigent
+orphans' friends.  You hear great speculations as you pay the fare, on
+the possibility of your being the noble Lord who is announced to fill the
+chair on the occasion, and are highly gratified to hear it eventually
+decided that you are only a 'wocalist.'
+
+The first thing that strikes you, on your entrance, is the astonishing
+importance of the committee.  You observe a door on the first landing,
+carefully guarded by two waiters, in and out of which stout gentlemen
+with very red faces keep running, with a degree of speed highly
+unbecoming the gravity of persons of their years and corpulency.  You
+pause, quite alarmed at the bustle, and thinking, in your innocence, that
+two or three people must have been carried out of the dining-room in
+fits, at least.  You are immediately undeceived by the
+waiter--'Up-stairs, if you please, sir; this is the committee-room.'
+Up-stairs you go, accordingly; wondering, as you mount, what the duties
+of the committee can be, and whether they ever do anything beyond
+confusing each other, and running over the waiters.
+
+Having deposited your hat and cloak, and received a remarkably small
+scrap of pasteboard in exchange (which, as a matter of course, you lose,
+before you require it again), you enter the hall, down which there are
+three long tables for the less distinguished guests, with a cross table
+on a raised platform at the upper end for the reception of the very
+particular friends of the indigent orphans.  Being fortunate enough to
+find a plate without anybody's card in it, you wisely seat yourself at
+once, and have a little leisure to look about you.  Waiters, with
+wine-baskets in their hands, are placing decanters of sherry down the
+tables, at very respectable distances; melancholy-looking salt-cellars,
+and decayed vinegar-cruets, which might have belonged to the parents of
+the indigent orphans in their time, are scattered at distant intervals on
+the cloth; and the knives and forks look as if they had done duty at
+every public dinner in London since the accession of George the First.
+The musicians are scraping and grating and screwing tremendously--playing
+no notes but notes of preparation; and several gentlemen are gliding
+along the sides of the tables, looking into plate after plate with
+frantic eagerness, the expression of their countenances growing more and
+more dismal as they meet with everybody's card but their own.
+
+You turn round to take a look at the table behind you, and--not being in
+the habit of attending public dinners--are somewhat struck by the
+appearance of the party on which your eyes rest.  One of its principal
+members appears to be a little man, with a long and rather inflamed face,
+and gray hair brushed bolt upright in front; he wears a wisp of black
+silk round his neck, without any stiffener, as an apology for a
+neckerchief, and is addressed by his companions by the familiar
+appellation of 'Fitz,' or some such monosyllable.  Near him is a stout
+man in a white neckerchief and buff waistcoat, with shining dark hair,
+cut very short in front, and a great, round, healthy-looking face, on
+which he studiously preserves a half sentimental simper.  Next him,
+again, is a large-headed man, with black hair and bushy whiskers; and
+opposite them are two or three others, one of whom is a little
+round-faced person, in a dress-stock and blue under-waistcoat.  There is
+something peculiar in their air and manner, though you could hardly
+describe what it is; you cannot divest yourself of the idea that they
+have come for some other purpose than mere eating and drinking.  You have
+no time to debate the matter, however, for the waiters (who have been
+arranged in lines down the room, placing the dishes on table) retire to
+the lower end; the dark man in the blue coat and bright buttons, who has
+the direction of the music, looks up to the gallery, and calls out 'band'
+in a very loud voice; out burst the orchestra, up rise the visitors, in
+march fourteen stewards, each with a long wand in his hand, like the evil
+genius in a pantomime; then the chairman, then the titled visitors; they
+all make their way up the room, as fast as they can, bowing, and smiling,
+and smirking, and looking remarkably amiable.  The applause ceases, grace
+is said, the clatter of plates and dishes begins; and every one appears
+highly gratified, either with the presence of the distinguished visitors,
+or the commencement of the anxiously-expected dinner.
+
+As to the dinner itself--the mere dinner--it goes off much the same
+everywhere.  Tureens of soup are emptied with awful rapidity--waiters
+take plates of turbot away, to get lobster-sauce, and bring back plates
+of lobster-sauce without turbot; people who can carve poultry, are great
+fools if they own it, and people who can't have no wish to learn.  The
+knives and forks form a pleasing accompaniment to Auber's music, and
+Auber's music would form a pleasing accompaniment to the dinner, if you
+could hear anything besides the cymbals.  The substantials
+disappear--moulds of jelly vanish like lightning--hearty eaters wipe
+their foreheads, and appear rather overcome by their recent
+exertions--people who have looked very cross hitherto, become remarkably
+bland, and ask you to take wine in the most friendly manner possible--old
+gentlemen direct your attention to the ladies' gallery, and take great
+pains to impress you with the fact that the charity is always peculiarly
+favoured in this respect--every one appears disposed to become
+talkative--and the hum of conversation is loud and general.
+
+'Pray, silence, gentlemen, if you please, for _Non nobis_!' shouts the
+toast-master with stentorian lungs--a toast-master's shirt-front,
+waistcoat, and neckerchief, by-the-bye, always exhibit three distinct
+shades of cloudy-white.--'Pray, silence, gentlemen, for _Non nobis_!'
+The singers, whom you discover to be no other than the very party that
+excited your curiosity at first, after 'pitching' their voices
+immediately begin _too-too_ing most dismally, on which the regular old
+stagers burst into occasional cries of--'Sh--Sh--waiters!--Silence,
+waiters--stand still, waiters--keep back, waiters,' and other exorcisms,
+delivered in a tone of indignant remonstrance.  The grace is soon
+concluded, and the company resume their seats.  The uninitiated portion
+of the guests applaud _Non nobis_ as vehemently as if it were a capital
+comic song, greatly to the scandal and indignation of the regular diners,
+who immediately attempt to quell this sacrilegious approbation, by cries
+of 'Hush, hush!' whereupon the others, mistaking these sounds for hisses,
+applaud more tumultuously than before, and, by way of placing their
+approval beyond the possibility of doubt, shout '_Encore_!' most
+vociferously.
+
+The moment the noise ceases, up starts the toast-master:--'Gentlemen,
+charge your glasses, if you please!'  Decanters having been handed about,
+and glasses filled, the toast-master proceeds, in a regular ascending
+scale:--'Gentlemen--_air_--you--all charged?
+Pray--silence--gentlemen--for--the cha-i-r!'  The chairman rises, and,
+after stating that he feels it quite unnecessary to preface the toast he
+is about to propose, with any observations whatever, wanders into a maze
+of sentences, and flounders about in the most extraordinary manner,
+presenting a lamentable spectacle of mystified humanity, until he arrives
+at the words, 'constitutional sovereign of these realms,' at which
+elderly gentlemen exclaim 'Bravo!' and hammer the table tremendously with
+their knife-handles.  'Under any circumstances, it would give him the
+greatest pride, it would give him the greatest pleasure--he might almost
+say, it would afford him satisfaction [cheers] to propose that toast.
+What must be his feelings, then, when he has the gratification of
+announcing, that he has received her Majesty's commands to apply to the
+Treasurer of her Majesty's Household, for her Majesty's annual donation
+of 25_l._ in aid of the funds of this charity!'  This announcement (which
+has been regularly made by every chairman, since the first foundation of
+the charity, forty-two years ago) calls forth the most vociferous
+applause; the toast is drunk with a great deal of cheering and knocking;
+and 'God save the Queen' is sung by the 'professional gentlemen;' the
+unprofessional gentlemen joining in the chorus, and giving the national
+anthem an effect which the newspapers, with great justice, describe as
+'perfectly electrical.'
+
+The other 'loyal and patriotic' toasts having been drunk with all due
+enthusiasm, a comic song having been well sung by the gentleman with the
+small neckerchief, and a sentimental one by the second of the party, we
+come to the most important toast of the evening--'Prosperity to the
+charity.'  Here again we are compelled to adopt newspaper phraseology,
+and to express our regret at being 'precluded from giving even the
+substance of the noble lord's observations.'  Suffice it to say, that the
+speech, which is somewhat of the longest, is rapturously received; and
+the toast having been drunk, the stewards (looking more important than
+ever) leave the room, and presently return, heading a procession of
+indigent orphans, boys and girls, who walk round the room, curtseying,
+and bowing, and treading on each other's heels, and looking very much as
+if they would like a glass of wine apiece, to the high gratification of
+the company generally, and especially of the lady patronesses in the
+gallery.  _Exeunt_ children, and re-enter stewards, each with a blue
+plate in his hand.  The band plays a lively air; the majority of the
+company put their hands in their pockets and look rather serious; and the
+noise of sovereigns, rattling on crockery, is heard from all parts of the
+room.
+
+After a short interval, occupied in singing and toasting, the secretary
+puts on his spectacles, and proceeds to read the report and list of
+subscriptions, the latter being listened to with great attention.  'Mr.
+Smith, one guinea--Mr. Tompkins, one guinea--Mr. Wilson, one guinea--Mr.
+Hickson, one guinea--Mr. Nixon, one guinea--Mr. Charles Nixon, one
+guinea--[hear, hear!]--Mr. James Nixon, one guinea--Mr. Thomas Nixon, one
+pound one [tremendous applause].  Lord Fitz Binkle, the chairman of the
+day, in addition to an annual donation of fifteen pounds--thirty guineas
+[prolonged knocking: several gentlemen knock the stems off their
+wine-glasses, in the vehemence of their approbation].  Lady, Fitz Binkle,
+in addition to an annual donation of ten pound--twenty pound' [protracted
+knocking and shouts of 'Bravo!']  The list being at length concluded, the
+chairman rises, and proposes the health of the secretary, than whom he
+knows no more zealous or estimable individual.  The secretary, in
+returning thanks, observes that _he_ knows no more excellent individual
+than the chairman--except the senior officer of the charity, whose health
+_he_ begs to propose.  The senior officer, in returning thanks, observes
+that _he_ knows no more worthy man than the secretary--except Mr. Walker,
+the auditor, whose health _he_ begs to propose.  Mr. Walker, in returning
+thanks, discovers some other estimable individual, to whom alone the
+senior officer is inferior--and so they go on toasting and lauding and
+thanking: the only other toast of importance being 'The Lady Patronesses
+now present!' on which all the gentlemen turn their faces towards the
+ladies' gallery, shouting tremendously; and little priggish men, who have
+imbibed more wine than usual, kiss their hands and exhibit distressing
+contortions of visage.
+
+We have protracted our dinner to so great a length, that we have hardly
+time to add one word by way of grace.  We can only entreat our readers
+not to imagine, because we have attempted to extract some amusement from
+a charity dinner, that we are at all disposed to underrate, either the
+excellence of the benevolent institutions with which London abounds, or
+the estimable motives of those who support them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX--THE FIRST OF MAY
+
+
+    'Now ladies, up in the sky-parlour: only once a year, if you please!'
+
+                                              YOUNG LADY WITH BRASS LADLE.
+
+    'Sweep--sweep--sw-e-ep!'
+
+                                                        ILLEGAL WATCHWORD.
+
+The first of May!  There is a merry freshness in the sound, calling to
+our minds a thousand thoughts of all that is pleasant in nature and
+beautiful in her most delightful form.  What man is there, over whose
+mind a bright spring morning does not exercise a magic
+influence--carrying him back to the days of his childish sports, and
+conjuring up before him the old green field with its gently-waving trees,
+where the birds sang as he has never heard them since--where the
+butterfly fluttered far more gaily than he ever sees him now, in all his
+ramblings--where the sky seemed bluer, and the sun shone more
+brightly--where the air blew more freshly over greener grass, and
+sweeter-smelling flowers--where everything wore a richer and more
+brilliant hue than it is ever dressed in now!  Such are the deep feelings
+of childhood, and such are the impressions which every lovely object
+stamps upon its heart!  The hardy traveller wanders through the maze of
+thick and pathless woods, where the sun's rays never shone, and heaven's
+pure air never played; he stands on the brink of the roaring waterfall,
+and, giddy and bewildered, watches the foaming mass as it leaps from
+stone to stone, and from crag to crag; he lingers in the fertile plains
+of a land of perpetual sunshine, and revels in the luxury of their balmy
+breath.  But what are the deep forests, or the thundering waters, or the
+richest landscapes that bounteous nature ever spread, to charm the eyes,
+and captivate the senses of man, compared with the recollection of the
+old scenes of his early youth?  Magic scenes indeed; for the fancies of
+childhood dressed them in colours brighter than the rainbow, and almost
+as fleeting!
+
+In former times, spring brought with it not only such associations as
+these, connected with the past, but sports and games for the
+present--merry dances round rustic pillars, adorned with emblems of the
+season, and reared in honour of its coming.  Where are they now!  Pillars
+we have, but they are no longer rustic ones; and as to dancers, they are
+used to rooms, and lights, and would not show well in the open air.
+Think of the immorality, too!  What would your sabbath enthusiasts say,
+to an aristocratic ring encircling the Duke of York's column in
+Carlton-terrace--a grand _poussette_ of the middle classes, round
+Alderman Waithman's monument in Fleet-street,--or a general
+hands-four-round of ten-pound householders, at the foot of the Obelisk in
+St. George's-fields?  Alas! romance can make no head against the riot
+act; and pastoral simplicity is not understood by the police.
+
+Well; many years ago we began to be a steady and matter-of-fact sort of
+people, and dancing in spring being beneath our dignity, we gave it up,
+and in course of time it descended to the sweeps--a fall certainly,
+because, though sweeps are very good fellows in their way, and moreover
+very useful in a civilised community, they are not exactly the sort of
+people to give the tone to the little elegances of society.  The sweeps,
+however, got the dancing to themselves, and they kept it up, and handed
+it down.  This was a severe blow to the romance of spring-time, but, it
+did not entirely destroy it, either; for a portion of it descended to the
+sweeps with the dancing, and rendered them objects of great interest.  A
+mystery hung over the sweeps in those days.  Legends were in existence of
+wealthy gentlemen who had lost children, and who, after many years of
+sorrow and suffering, had found them in the character of sweeps.  Stories
+were related of a young boy who, having been stolen from his parents in
+his infancy, and devoted to the occupation of chimney-sweeping, was sent,
+in the course of his professional career, to sweep the chimney of his
+mother's bedroom; and how, being hot and tired when he came out of the
+chimney, he got into the bed he had so often slept in as an infant, and
+was discovered and recognised therein by his mother, who once every year
+of her life, thereafter, requested the pleasure of the company of every
+London sweep, at half-past one o'clock, to roast beef, plum-pudding,
+porter, and sixpence.
+
+Such stories as these, and there were many such, threw an air of mystery
+round the sweeps, and produced for them some of those good effects which
+animals derive from the doctrine of the transmigration of souls.  No one
+(except the masters) thought of ill-treating a sweep, because no one knew
+who he might be, or what nobleman's or gentleman's son he might turn out.
+Chimney-sweeping was, by many believers in the marvellous, considered as
+a sort of probationary term, at an earlier or later period of which,
+divers young noblemen were to come into possession of their rank and
+titles: and the profession was held by them in great respect accordingly.
+
+We remember, in our young days, a little sweep about our own age, with
+curly hair and white teeth, whom we devoutly and sincerely believed to be
+the lost son and heir of some illustrious personage--an impression which
+was resolved into an unchangeable conviction on our infant mind, by the
+subject of our speculations informing us, one day, in reply to our
+question, propounded a few moments before his ascent to the summit of the
+kitchen chimney, 'that he believed he'd been born in the vurkis, but he'd
+never know'd his father.'  We felt certain, from that time forth, that he
+would one day be owned by a lord: and we never heard the church-bells
+ring, or saw a flag hoisted in the neighbourhood, without thinking that
+the happy event had at last occurred, and that his long-lost parent had
+arrived in a coach and six, to take him home to Grosvenor-square.  He
+never came, however; and, at the present moment, the young gentleman in
+question is settled down as a master sweep in the neighbourhood of
+Battle-bridge, his distinguishing characteristics being a decided
+antipathy to washing himself, and the possession of a pair of legs very
+inadequate to the support of his unwieldy and corpulent body.
+
+The romance of spring having gone out before our time, we were fain to
+console ourselves as we best could with the uncertainty that enveloped
+the birth and parentage of its attendant dancers, the sweeps; and we
+_did_ console ourselves with it, for many years.  But, even this wicked
+source of comfort received a shock from which it has never recovered--a
+shock which has been in reality its death-blow.  We could not disguise
+from ourselves the fact that whole families of sweeps were regularly born
+of sweeps, in the rural districts of Somers Town and Camden Town--that
+the eldest son succeeded to the father's business, that the other
+branches assisted him therein, and commenced on their own account; that
+their children again, were educated to the profession; and that about
+their identity there could be no mistake whatever.  We could not be
+blind, we say, to this melancholy truth, but we could not bring ourselves
+to admit it, nevertheless, and we lived on for some years in a state of
+voluntary ignorance.  We were roused from our pleasant slumber by certain
+dark insinuations thrown out by a friend of ours, to the effect that
+children in the lower ranks of life were beginning to _choose_
+chimney-sweeping as their particular walk; that applications had been
+made by various boys to the constituted authorities, to allow them to
+pursue the object of their ambition with the full concurrence and
+sanction of the law; that the affair, in short, was becoming one of mere
+legal contract.  We turned a deaf ear to these rumours at first, but
+slowly and surely they stole upon us.  Month after month, week after
+week, nay, day after day, at last, did we meet with accounts of similar
+applications.  The veil was removed, all mystery was at an end, and
+chimney-sweeping had become a favourite and chosen pursuit.  There is no
+longer any occasion to steal boys; for boys flock in crowds to bind
+themselves.  The romance of the trade has fled, and the chimney-sweeper
+of the present day, is no more like unto him of thirty years ago, than is
+a Fleet-street pickpocket to a Spanish brigand, or Paul Pry to Caleb
+Williams.
+
+This gradual decay and disuse of the practice of leading noble youths
+into captivity, and compelling them to ascend chimneys, was a severe
+blow, if we may so speak, to the romance of chimney-sweeping, and to the
+romance of spring at the same time.  But even this was not all, for some
+few years ago the dancing on May-day began to decline; small sweeps were
+observed to congregate in twos or threes, unsupported by a 'green,' with
+no 'My Lord' to act as master of the ceremonies, and no 'My Lady' to
+preside over the exchequer.  Even in companies where there was a 'green'
+it was an absolute nothing--a mere sprout--and the instrumental
+accompaniments rarely extended beyond the shovels and a set of Panpipes,
+better known to the many, as a 'mouth-organ.'
+
+These were signs of the times, portentous omens of a coming change; and
+what was the result which they shadowed forth?  Why, the master sweeps,
+influenced by a restless spirit of innovation, actually interposed their
+authority, in opposition to the dancing, and substituted a dinner--an
+anniversary dinner at White Conduit House--where clean faces appeared in
+lieu of black ones smeared with rose pink; and knee cords and tops
+superseded nankeen drawers and rosetted shoes.
+
+Gentlemen who were in the habit of riding shy horses; and steady-going
+people who have no vagrancy in their souls, lauded this alteration to the
+skies, and the conduct of the master sweeps was described beyond the
+reach of praise.  But how stands the real fact?  Let any man deny, if he
+can, that when the cloth had been removed, fresh pots and pipes laid upon
+the table, and the customary loyal and patriotic toasts proposed, the
+celebrated Mr. Sluffen, of Adam-and-Eve-court, whose authority not the
+most malignant of our opponents can call in question, expressed himself
+in a manner following: 'That now he'd cotcht the cheerman's hi, he vished
+he might be jolly vell blessed, if he worn't a goin' to have his innings,
+vich he vould say these here obserwashuns--that how some mischeevus coves
+as know'd nuffin about the consarn, had tried to sit people agin the
+mas'r swips, and take the shine out o' their bis'nes, and the bread out
+o' the traps o' their preshus kids, by a makin' o' this here remark, as
+chimblies could be as vell svept by 'sheenery as by boys; and that the
+makin' use o' boys for that there purpuss vos barbareous; vereas, he 'ad
+been a chummy--he begged the cheerman's parding for usin' such a wulgar
+hexpression--more nor thirty year--he might say he'd been born in a
+chimbley--and he know'd uncommon vell as 'sheenery vos vus nor o' no use:
+and as to kerhewelty to the boys, everybody in the chimbley line know'd
+as vell as he did, that they liked the climbin' better nor nuffin as
+vos.'  From this day, we date the total fall of the last lingering
+remnant of May-day dancing, among the _elite_ of the profession: and from
+this period we commence a new era in that portion of our spring
+associations which relates to the first of May.
+
+We are aware that the unthinking part of the population will meet us
+here, with the assertion, that dancing on May-day still continues--that
+'greens' are annually seen to roll along the streets--that youths in the
+garb of clowns, precede them, giving vent to the ebullitions of their
+sportive fancies; and that lords and ladies follow in their wake.
+
+Granted.  We are ready to acknowledge that in outward show, these
+processions have greatly improved: we do not deny the introduction of
+solos on the drum; we will even go so far as to admit an occasional
+fantasia on the triangle, but here our admissions end.  We positively
+deny that the sweeps have art or part in these proceedings.  We
+distinctly charge the dustmen with throwing what they ought to clear
+away, into the eyes of the public.  We accuse scavengers, brickmakers,
+and gentlemen who devote their energies to the costermongering line, with
+obtaining money once a-year, under false pretences.  We cling with
+peculiar fondness to the custom of days gone by, and have shut out
+conviction as long as we could, but it has forced itself upon us; and we
+now proclaim to a deluded public, that the May-day dancers are _not_
+sweeps.  The size of them, alone, is sufficient to repudiate the idea.
+It is a notorious fact that the widely-spread taste for register-stoves
+has materially increased the demand for small boys; whereas the men, who,
+under a fictitious character, dance about the streets on the first of May
+nowadays, would be a tight fit in a kitchen flue, to say nothing of the
+parlour.  This is strong presumptive evidence, but we have positive
+proof--the evidence of our own senses.  And here is our testimony.
+
+Upon the morning of the second of the merry month of May, in the year of
+our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-six, we went out for a
+stroll, with a kind of forlorn hope of seeing something or other which
+might induce us to believe that it was really spring, and not Christmas.
+After wandering as far as Copenhagen House, without meeting anything
+calculated to dispel our impression that there was a mistake in the
+almanacks, we turned back down Maidenlane, with the intention of passing
+through the extensive colony lying between it and Battle-bridge, which is
+inhabited by proprietors of donkey-carts, boilers of horse-flesh, makers
+of tiles, and sifters of cinders; through which colony we should have
+passed, without stoppage or interruption, if a little crowd gathered
+round a shed had not attracted our attention, and induced us to pause.
+
+When we say a 'shed,' we do not mean the conservatory sort of building,
+which, according to the old song, Love tenanted when he was a young man,
+but a wooden house with windows stuffed with rags and paper, and a small
+yard at the side, with one dust-cart, two baskets, a few shovels, and
+little heaps of cinders, and fragments of china and tiles, scattered
+about it.  Before this inviting spot we paused; and the longer we looked,
+the more we wondered what exciting circumstance it could be, that induced
+the foremost members of the crowd to flatten their noses against the
+parlour window, in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of what was going
+on inside.  After staring vacantly about us for some minutes, we
+appealed, touching the cause of this assemblage, to a gentleman in a suit
+of tarpaulin, who was smoking his pipe on our right hand; but as the only
+answer we obtained was a playful inquiry whether our mother had disposed
+of her mangle, we determined to await the issue in silence.
+
+Judge of our virtuous indignation, when the street-door of the shed
+opened, and a party emerged therefrom, clad in the costume and emulating
+the appearance, of May-day sweeps!
+
+The first person who appeared was 'my lord,' habited in a blue coat and
+bright buttons, with gilt paper tacked over the seams, yellow
+knee-breeches, pink cotton stockings, and shoes; a cocked hat, ornamented
+with shreds of various-coloured paper, on his head, a _bouquet_ the size
+of a prize cauliflower in his button-hole, a long Belcher handkerchief in
+his right hand, and a thin cane in his left.  A murmur of applause ran
+through the crowd (which was chiefly composed of his lordship's personal
+friends), when this graceful figure made his appearance, which swelled
+into a burst of applause as his fair partner in the dance bounded forth
+to join him.  Her ladyship was attired in pink crape over bed-furniture,
+with a low body and short sleeves.  The symmetry of her ankles was
+partially concealed by a very perceptible pair of frilled trousers; and
+the inconvenience which might have resulted from the circumstance of her
+white satin shoes being a few sizes too large, was obviated by their
+being firmly attached to her legs with strong tape sandals.
+
+Her head was ornamented with a profusion of artificial flowers; and in
+her hand she bore a large brass ladle, wherein to receive what she
+figuratively denominated 'the tin.'  The other characters were a young
+gentleman in girl's clothes and a widow's cap; two clowns who walked upon
+their hands in the mud, to the immeasurable delight of all the
+spectators; a man with a drum; another man with a flageolet; a dirty
+woman in a large shawl, with a box under her arm for the money,--and
+last, though not least, the 'green,' animated by no less a personage than
+our identical friend in the tarpaulin suit.
+
+The man hammered away at the drum, the flageolet squeaked, the shovels
+rattled, the 'green' rolled about, pitching first on one side and then on
+the other; my lady threw her right foot over her left ankle, and her left
+foot over her right ankle, alternately; my lord ran a few paces forward,
+and butted at the 'green,' and then a few paces backward upon the toes of
+the crowd, and then went to the right, and then to the left, and then
+dodged my lady round the 'green;' and finally drew her arm through his,
+and called upon the boys to shout, which they did lustily--for this was
+the dancing.
+
+We passed the same group, accidentally, in the evening.  We never saw a
+'green' so drunk, a lord so quarrelsome (no: not even in the house of
+peers after dinner), a pair of clowns so melancholy, a lady so muddy, or
+a party so miserable.
+
+How has May-day decayed!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI--BROKERS' AND MARINE-STORE SHOPS
+
+
+When we affirm that brokers' shops are strange places, and that if an
+authentic history of their contents could be procured, it would furnish
+many a page of amusement, and many a melancholy tale, it is necessary to
+explain the class of shops to which we allude.  Perhaps when we make use
+of the term 'Brokers' Shop,' the minds of our readers will at once
+picture large, handsome warehouses, exhibiting a long perspective of
+French-polished dining-tables, rosewood chiffoniers, and mahogany
+wash-hand-stands, with an occasional vista of a four-post bedstead and
+hangings, and an appropriate foreground of dining-room chairs.  Perhaps
+they will imagine that we mean an humble class of second-hand furniture
+repositories.  Their imagination will then naturally lead them to that
+street at the back of Long-acre, which is composed almost entirely of
+brokers' shops; where you walk through groves of deceitful, showy-looking
+furniture, and where the prospect is occasionally enlivened by a bright
+red, blue, and yellow hearth-rug, embellished with the pleasing device of
+a mail-coach at full speed, or a strange animal, supposed to have been
+originally intended for a dog, with a mass of worsted-work in his mouth,
+which conjecture has likened to a basket of flowers.
+
+This, by-the-bye, is a tempting article to young wives in the humbler
+ranks of life, who have a first-floor front to furnish--they are lost in
+admiration, and hardly know which to admire most.  The dog is very
+beautiful, but they have a dog already on the best tea-tray, and two more
+on the mantel-piece.  Then, there is something so genteel about that
+mail-coach; and the passengers outside (who are all hat) give it such an
+air of reality!
+
+The goods here are adapted to the taste, or rather to the means, of cheap
+purchasers.  There are some of the most beautiful _looking_ Pembroke
+tables that were ever beheld: the wood as green as the trees in the Park,
+and the leaves almost as certain to fall off in the course of a year.
+There is also a most extensive assortment of tent and turn-up bedsteads,
+made of stained wood, and innumerable specimens of that base imposition
+on society--a sofa bedstead.
+
+A turn-up bedstead is a blunt, honest piece of furniture; it may be
+slightly disguised with a sham drawer; and sometimes a mad attempt is
+even made to pass it off for a book-case; ornament it as you will,
+however, the turn-up bedstead seems to defy disguise, and to insist on
+having it distinctly understood that he is a turn-up bedstead, and
+nothing else--that he is indispensably necessary, and that being so
+useful, he disdains to be ornamental.
+
+How different is the demeanour of a sofa bedstead!  Ashamed of its real
+use, it strives to appear an article of luxury and gentility--an attempt
+in which it miserably fails.  It has neither the respectability of a
+sofa, nor the virtues of a bed; every man who keeps a sofa bedstead in
+his house, becomes a party to a wilful and designing fraud--we question
+whether you could insult him more, than by insinuating that you entertain
+the least suspicion of its real use.
+
+To return from this digression, we beg to say, that neither of these
+classes of brokers' shops, forms the subject of this sketch.  The shops
+to which we advert, are immeasurably inferior to those on whose outward
+appearance we have slightly touched.  Our readers must often have
+observed in some by-street, in a poor neighbourhood, a small dirty shop,
+exposing for sale the most extraordinary and confused jumble of old,
+worn-out, wretched articles, that can well be imagined.  Our wonder at
+their ever having been bought, is only to be equalled by our astonishment
+at the idea of their ever being sold again.  On a board, at the side of
+the door, are placed about twenty books--all odd volumes; and as many
+wine-glasses--all different patterns; several locks, an old earthenware
+pan, full of rusty keys; two or three gaudy chimney-ornaments--cracked,
+of course; the remains of a lustre, without any drops; a round frame like
+a capital O, which has once held a mirror; a flute, complete with the
+exception of the middle joint; a pair of curling-irons; and a tinder-box.
+In front of the shop-window, are ranged some half-dozen high-backed
+chairs, with spinal complaints and wasted legs; a corner cupboard; two or
+three very dark mahogany tables with flaps like mathematical problems;
+some pickle-jars, some surgeons' ditto, with gilt labels and without
+stoppers; an unframed portrait of some lady who flourished about the
+beginning of the thirteenth century, by an artist who never flourished at
+all; an incalculable host of miscellanies of every description, including
+bottles and cabinets, rags and bones, fenders and street-door knockers,
+fire-irons, wearing apparel and bedding, a hall-lamp, and a room-door.
+Imagine, in addition to this incongruous mass, a black doll in a white
+frock, with two faces--one looking up the street, and the other looking
+down, swinging over the door; a board with the squeezed-up inscription
+'Dealer in marine stores,' in lanky white letters, whose height is
+strangely out of proportion to their width; and you have before you
+precisely the kind of shop to which we wish to direct your attention.
+
+Although the same heterogeneous mixture of things will be found at all
+these places, it is curious to observe how truly and accurately some of
+the minor articles which are exposed for sale--articles of wearing
+apparel, for instance--mark the character of the neighbourhood.  Take
+Drury-Lane and Covent-garden for example.
+
+This is essentially a theatrical neighbourhood.  There is not a potboy in
+the vicinity who is not, to a greater or less extent, a dramatic
+character.  The errand-boys and chandler's-shop-keepers' sons, are all
+stage-struck: they 'gets up' plays in back kitchens hired for the
+purpose, and will stand before a shop-window for hours, contemplating a
+great staring portrait of Mr. Somebody or other, of the Royal Coburg
+Theatre, 'as he appeared in the character of Tongo the Denounced.'  The
+consequence is, that there is not a marine-store shop in the
+neighbourhood, which does not exhibit for sale some faded articles of
+dramatic finery, such as three or four pairs of soiled buff boots with
+turn-over red tops, heretofore worn by a 'fourth robber,' or 'fifth mob;'
+a pair of rusty broadswords, a few gauntlets, and certain resplendent
+ornaments, which, if they were yellow instead of white, might be taken
+for insurance plates of the Sun Fire-office.  There are several of these
+shops in the narrow streets and dirty courts, of which there are so many
+near the national theatres, and they all have tempting goods of this
+description, with the addition, perhaps, of a lady's pink dress covered
+with spangles; white wreaths, stage shoes, and a tiara like a tin lamp
+reflector.  They have been purchased of some wretched supernumeraries, or
+sixth-rate actors, and are now offered for the benefit of the rising
+generation, who, on condition of making certain weekly payments,
+amounting in the whole to about ten times their value, may avail
+themselves of such desirable bargains.
+
+Let us take a very different quarter, and apply it to the same test.
+Look at a marine-store dealer's, in that reservoir of dirt, drunkenness,
+and drabs: thieves, oysters, baked potatoes, and pickled
+salmon--Ratcliff-highway.  Here, the wearing apparel is all nautical.
+Rough blue jackets, with mother-of-pearl buttons, oil-skin hats, coarse
+checked shirts, and large canvas trousers that look as if they were made
+for a pair of bodies instead of a pair of legs, are the staple
+commodities.  Then, there are large bunches of cotton
+pocket-handkerchiefs, in colour and pattern unlike any one ever saw
+before, with the exception of those on the backs of the three young
+ladies without bonnets who passed just now.  The furniture is much the
+same as elsewhere, with the addition of one or two models of ships, and
+some old prints of naval engagements in still older frames.  In the
+window, are a few compasses, a small tray containing silver watches in
+clumsy thick cases; and tobacco-boxes, the lid of each ornamented with a
+ship, or an anchor, or some such trophy.  A sailor generally pawns or
+sells all he has before he has been long ashore, and if he does not, some
+favoured companion kindly saves him the trouble.  In either case, it is
+an even chance that he afterwards unconsciously repurchases the same
+things at a higher price than he gave for them at first.
+
+Again: pay a visit with a similar object, to a part of London, as unlike
+both of these as they are to each other.  Cross over to the Surrey side,
+and look at such shops of this description as are to be found near the
+King's Bench prison, and in 'the Rules.'  How different, and how
+strikingly illustrative of the decay of some of the unfortunate residents
+in this part of the metropolis!  Imprisonment and neglect have done their
+work.  There is contamination in the profligate denizens of a debtor's
+prison; old friends have fallen off; the recollection of former
+prosperity has passed away; and with it all thoughts for the past, all
+care for the future.  First, watches and rings, then cloaks, coats, and
+all the more expensive articles of dress, have found their way to the
+pawnbroker's.  That miserable resource has failed at last, and the sale
+of some trifling article at one of these shops, has been the only mode
+left of raising a shilling or two, to meet the urgent demands of the
+moment.  Dressing-cases and writing-desks, too old to pawn but too good
+to keep; guns, fishing-rods, musical instruments, all in the same
+condition; have first been sold, and the sacrifice has been but slightly
+felt.  But hunger must be allayed, and what has already become a habit,
+is easily resorted to, when an emergency arises.  Light articles of
+clothing, first of the ruined man, then of his wife, at last of their
+children, even of the youngest, have been parted with, piecemeal.  There
+they are, thrown carelessly together until a purchaser presents himself,
+old, and patched and repaired, it is true; but the make and materials
+tell of better days; and the older they are, the greater the misery and
+destitution of those whom they once adorned.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII--GIN-SHOPS
+
+
+It is a remarkable circumstance, that different trades appear to partake
+of the disease to which elephants and dogs are especially liable, and to
+run stark, staring, raving mad, periodically.  The great distinction
+between the animals and the trades, is, that the former run mad with a
+certain degree of propriety--they are very regular in their
+irregularities.  We know the period at which the emergency will arise,
+and provide against it accordingly.  If an elephant run mad, we are all
+ready for him--kill or cure--pills or bullets, calomel in conserve of
+roses, or lead in a musket-barrel.  If a dog happen to look unpleasantly
+warm in the summer months, and to trot about the shady side of the
+streets with a quarter of a yard of tongue hanging out of his mouth, a
+thick leather muzzle, which has been previously prepared in compliance
+with the thoughtful injunctions of the Legislature, is instantly clapped
+over his head, by way of making him cooler, and he either looks
+remarkably unhappy for the next six weeks, or becomes legally insane, and
+goes mad, as it were, by Act of Parliament.  But these trades are as
+eccentric as comets; nay, worse, for no one can calculate on the
+recurrence of the strange appearances which betoken the disease.
+Moreover, the contagion is general, and the quickness with which it
+diffuses itself, almost incredible.
+
+We will cite two or three cases in illustration of our meaning.  Six or
+eight years ago, the epidemic began to display itself among the
+linen-drapers and haberdashers.  The primary symptoms were an inordinate
+love of plate-glass, and a passion for gas-lights and gilding.  The
+disease gradually progressed, and at last attained a fearful height.
+Quiet, dusty old shops in different parts of town, were pulled down;
+spacious premises with stuccoed fronts and gold letters, were erected
+instead; floors were covered with Turkey carpets; roofs supported by
+massive pillars; doors knocked into windows; a dozen squares of glass
+into one; one shopman into a dozen; and there is no knowing what would
+have been done, if it had not been fortunately discovered, just in time,
+that the Commissioners of Bankruptcy were as competent to decide such
+cases as the Commissioners of Lunacy, and that a little confinement and
+gentle examination did wonders.  The disease abated.  It died away.  A
+year or two of comparative tranquillity ensued.  Suddenly it burst out
+again amongst the chemists; the symptoms were the same, with the addition
+of a strong desire to stick the royal arms over the shop-door, and a
+great rage for mahogany, varnish, and expensive floor-cloth.  Then, the
+hosiers were infected, and began to pull down their shop-fronts with
+frantic recklessness.  The mania again died away, and the public began to
+congratulate themselves on its entire disappearance, when it burst forth
+with tenfold violence among the publicans, and keepers of 'wine vaults.'
+From that moment it has spread among them with unprecedented rapidity,
+exhibiting a concatenation of all the previous symptoms; onward it has
+rushed to every part of town, knocking down all the old public-houses,
+and depositing splendid mansions, stone balustrades, rosewood fittings,
+immense lamps, and illuminated clocks, at the corner of every street.
+
+The extensive scale on which these places are established, and the
+ostentatious manner in which the business of even the smallest among them
+is divided into branches, is amusing.  A handsome plate of ground glass
+in one door directs you 'To the Counting-house;' another to the 'Bottle
+Department; a third to the 'Wholesale Department;' a fourth to 'The Wine
+Promenade;' and so forth, until we are in daily expectation of meeting
+with a 'Brandy Bell,' or a 'Whiskey Entrance.'  Then, ingenuity is
+exhausted in devising attractive titles for the different descriptions of
+gin; and the dram-drinking portion of the community as they gaze upon the
+gigantic black and white announcements, which are only to be equalled in
+size by the figures beneath them, are left in a state of pleasing
+hesitation between 'The Cream of the Valley,' 'The Out and Out,' 'The No
+Mistake,' 'The Good for Mixing,' 'The real Knock-me-down,' 'The
+celebrated Butter Gin,' 'The regular Flare-up,' and a dozen other,
+equally inviting and wholesome _liqueurs_.  Although places of this
+description are to be met with in every second street, they are
+invariably numerous and splendid in precise proportion to the dirt and
+poverty of the surrounding neighbourhood.  The gin-shops in and near
+Drury-Lane, Holborn, St. Giles's, Covent-garden, and Clare-market, are
+the handsomest in London.  There is more of filth and squalid misery near
+those great thorough-fares than in any part of this mighty city.
+
+We will endeavour to sketch the bar of a large gin-shop, and its ordinary
+customers, for the edification of such of our readers as may not have had
+opportunities of observing such scenes; and on the chance of finding one
+well suited to our purpose, we will make for Drury-Lane, through the
+narrow streets and dirty courts which divide it from Oxford-street, and
+that classical spot adjoining the brewery at the bottom of
+Tottenham-court-road, best known to the initiated as the 'Rookery.'
+
+The filthy and miserable appearance of this part of London can hardly be
+imagined by those (and there are many such) who have not witnessed it.
+Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper: every
+room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even
+three--fruit and 'sweet-stuff' manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and
+red-herring vendors in the front parlours, cobblers in the back; a
+bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation
+in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a 'musician' in the front
+kitchen, and a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one--filth
+everywhere--a gutter before the houses and a drain behind--clothes drying
+and slops emptying, from the windows; girls of fourteen or fifteen, with
+matted hair, walking about barefoot, and in white great-coats, almost
+their only covering; boys of all ages, in coats of all sizes and no coats
+at all; men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel,
+lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and
+swearing.
+
+You turn the corner.  What a change!  All is light and brilliancy.  The
+hum of many voices issues from that splendid gin-shop which forms the
+commencement of the two streets opposite; and the gay building with the
+fantastically ornamented parapet, the illuminated clock, the plate-glass
+windows surrounded by stucco rosettes, and its profusion of gas-lights in
+richly-gilt burners, is perfectly dazzling when contrasted with the
+darkness and dirt we have just left.  The interior is even gayer than the
+exterior.  A bar of French-polished mahogany, elegantly carved, extends
+the whole width of the place; and there are two side-aisles of great
+casks, painted green and gold, enclosed within a light brass rail, and
+bearing such inscriptions, as 'Old Tom, 549;' 'Young Tom, 360;' 'Samson,
+1421'--the figures agreeing, we presume, with 'gallons,' understood.
+Beyond the bar is a lofty and spacious saloon, full of the same enticing
+vessels, with a gallery running round it, equally well furnished.  On the
+counter, in addition to the usual spirit apparatus, are two or three
+little baskets of cakes and biscuits, which are carefully secured at top
+with wicker-work, to prevent their contents being unlawfully abstracted.
+Behind it, are two showily-dressed damsels with large necklaces,
+dispensing the spirits and 'compounds.'  They are assisted by the
+ostensible proprietor of the concern, a stout, coarse fellow in a fur
+cap, put on very much on one side to give him a knowing air, and to
+display his sandy whiskers to the best advantage.
+
+The two old washerwomen, who are seated on the little bench to the left
+of the bar, are rather overcome by the head-dresses and haughty demeanour
+of the young ladies who officiate.  They receive their half-quartern of
+gin and peppermint, with considerable deference, prefacing a request for
+'one of them soft biscuits,' with a 'Jist be good enough, ma'am.'  They
+are quite astonished at the impudent air of the young fellow in a brown
+coat and bright buttons, who, ushering in his two companions, and walking
+up to the bar in as careless a manner as if he had been used to green and
+gold ornaments all his life, winks at one of the young ladies with
+singular coolness, and calls for a 'kervorten and a three-out-glass,'
+just as if the place were his own.  'Gin for you, sir?' says the young
+lady when she has drawn it: carefully looking every way but the right
+one, to show that the wink had no effect upon her.  'For me, Mary, my
+dear,' replies the gentleman in brown.  'My name an't Mary as it
+happens,' says the young girl, rather relaxing as she delivers the
+change.  'Well, if it an't, it ought to be,' responds the irresistible
+one; 'all the Marys as ever _I_ see, was handsome gals.'  Here the young
+lady, not precisely remembering how blushes are managed in such cases,
+abruptly ends the flirtation by addressing the female in the faded
+feathers who has just entered, and who, after stating explicitly, to
+prevent any subsequent misunderstanding, that 'this gentleman pays,'
+calls for 'a glass of port wine and a bit of sugar.'
+
+Those two old men who came in 'just to have a drain,' finished their
+third quartern a few seconds ago; they have made themselves crying drunk;
+and the fat comfortable-looking elderly women, who had 'a glass of
+rum-srub' each, having chimed in with their complaints on the hardness of
+the times, one of the women has agreed to stand a glass round, jocularly
+observing that 'grief never mended no broken bones, and as good people's
+wery scarce, what I says is, make the most on 'em, and that's all about
+it!' a sentiment which appears to afford unlimited satisfaction to those
+who have nothing to pay.
+
+It is growing late, and the throng of men, women, and children, who have
+been constantly going in and out, dwindles down to two or three
+occasional stragglers--cold, wretched-looking creatures, in the last
+stage of emaciation and disease.  The knot of Irish labourers at the
+lower end of the place, who have been alternately shaking hands with, and
+threatening the life of each other, for the last hour, become furious in
+their disputes, and finding it impossible to silence one man, who is
+particularly anxious to adjust the difference, they resort to the
+expedient of knocking him down and jumping on him afterwards.  The man in
+the fur cap, and the potboy rush out; a scene of riot and confusion
+ensues; half the Irishmen get shut out, and the other half get shut in;
+the potboy is knocked among the tubs in no time; the landlord hits
+everybody, and everybody hits the landlord; the barmaids scream; the
+police come in; the rest is a confused mixture of arms, legs, staves,
+torn coats, shouting, and struggling.  Some of the party are borne off to
+the station-house, and the remainder slink home to beat their wives for
+complaining, and kick the children for daring to be hungry.
+
+We have sketched this subject very slightly, not only because our limits
+compel us to do so, but because, if it were pursued farther, it would be
+painful and repulsive.  Well-disposed gentlemen, and charitable ladies,
+would alike turn with coldness and disgust from a description of the
+drunken besotted men, and wretched broken-down miserable women, who form
+no inconsiderable portion of the frequenters of these haunts; forgetting,
+in the pleasant consciousness of their own rectitude, the poverty of the
+one, and the temptation of the other.  Gin-drinking is a great vice in
+England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater; and until you improve
+the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek
+relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance
+which, divided among his family, would furnish a morsel of bread for
+each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour.  If Temperance
+Societies would suggest an antidote against hunger, filth, and foul air,
+or could establish dispensaries for the gratuitous distribution of
+bottles of Lethe-water, gin-palaces would be numbered among the things
+that were.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII--THE PAWNBROKER'S SHOP
+
+
+Of the numerous receptacles for misery and distress with which the
+streets of London unhappily abound, there are, perhaps, none which
+present such striking scenes as the pawnbrokers' shops.  The very nature
+and description of these places occasions their being but little known,
+except to the unfortunate beings whose profligacy or misfortune drives
+them to seek the temporary relief they offer.  The subject may appear, at
+first sight, to be anything but an inviting one, but we venture on it
+nevertheless, in the hope that, as far as the limits of our present paper
+are concerned, it will present nothing to disgust even the most
+fastidious reader.
+
+There are some pawnbrokers' shops of a very superior description.  There
+are grades in pawning as in everything else, and distinctions must be
+observed even in poverty.  The aristocratic Spanish cloak and the
+plebeian calico shirt, the silver fork and the flat iron, the muslin
+cravat and the Belcher neckerchief, would but ill assort together; so,
+the better sort of pawnbroker calls himself a silver-smith, and decorates
+his shop with handsome trinkets and expensive jewellery, while the more
+humble money-lender boldly advertises his calling, and invites
+observation.  It is with pawnbrokers' shops of the latter class, that we
+have to do.  We have selected one for our purpose, and will endeavour to
+describe it.
+
+The pawnbroker's shop is situated near Drury-Lane, at the corner of a
+court, which affords a side entrance for the accommodation of such
+customers as may be desirous of avoiding the observation of the
+passers-by, or the chance of recognition in the public street.  It is a
+low, dirty-looking, dusty shop, the door of which stands always
+doubtfully, a little way open: half inviting, half repelling the
+hesitating visitor, who, if he be as yet uninitiated, examines one of the
+old garnet brooches in the window for a minute or two with affected
+eagerness, as if he contemplated making a purchase; and then looking
+cautiously round to ascertain that no one watches him, hastily slinks in:
+the door closing of itself after him, to just its former width.  The shop
+front and the window-frames bear evident marks of having been once
+painted; but, what the colour was originally, or at what date it was
+probably laid on, are at this remote period questions which may be asked,
+but cannot be answered.  Tradition states that the transparency in the
+front door, which displays at night three red balls on a blue ground,
+once bore also, inscribed in graceful waves, the words 'Money advanced on
+plate, jewels, wearing apparel, and every description of property,' but a
+few illegible hieroglyphics are all that now remain to attest the fact.
+The plate and jewels would seem to have disappeared, together with the
+announcement, for the articles of stock, which are displayed in some
+profusion in the window, do not include any very valuable luxuries of
+either kind.  A few old china cups; some modern vases, adorned with
+paltry paintings of three Spanish cavaliers playing three Spanish
+guitars; or a party of boors carousing: each boor with one leg painfully
+elevated in the air, by way of expressing his perfect freedom and gaiety;
+several sets of chessmen, two or three flutes, a few fiddles, a
+round-eyed portrait staring in astonishment from a very dark ground; some
+gaudily-bound prayer-books and testaments, two rows of silver watches
+quite as clumsy and almost as large as Ferguson's first; numerous
+old-fashioned table and tea spoons, displayed, fan-like, in half-dozens;
+strings of coral with great broad gilt snaps; cards of rings and
+brooches, fastened and labelled separately, like the insects in the
+British Museum; cheap silver penholders and snuff-boxes, with a masonic
+star, complete the jewellery department; while five or six beds in smeary
+clouded ticks, strings of blankets and sheets, silk and cotton
+handkerchiefs, and wearing apparel of every description, form the more
+useful, though even less ornamental, part, of the articles exposed for
+sale.  An extensive collection of planes, chisels, saws, and other
+carpenters' tools, which have been pledged, and never redeemed, form the
+foreground of the picture; while the large frames full of ticketed
+bundles, which are dimly seen through the dirty casement up-stairs--the
+squalid neighbourhood--the adjoining houses, straggling, shrunken, and
+rotten, with one or two filthy, unwholesome-looking heads thrust out of
+every window, and old red pans and stunted plants exposed on the
+tottering parapets, to the manifest hazard of the heads of the
+passers-by--the noisy men loitering under the archway at the corner of
+the court, or about the gin-shop next door--and their wives patiently
+standing on the curb-stone, with large baskets of cheap vegetables slung
+round them for sale, are its immediate auxiliaries.
+
+If the outside of the pawnbroker's shop be calculated to attract the
+attention, or excite the interest, of the speculative pedestrian, its
+interior cannot fail to produce the same effect in an increased degree.
+The front door, which we have before noticed, opens into the common shop,
+which is the resort of all those customers whose habitual acquaintance
+with such scenes renders them indifferent to the observation of their
+companions in poverty.  The side door opens into a small passage from
+which some half-dozen doors (which may be secured on the inside by bolts)
+open into a corresponding number of little dens, or closets, which face
+the counter.  Here, the more timid or respectable portion of the crowd
+shroud themselves from the notice of the remainder, and patiently wait
+until the gentleman behind the counter, with the curly black hair,
+diamond ring, and double silver watch-guard, shall feel disposed to
+favour them with his notice--a consummation which depends considerably on
+the temper of the aforesaid gentleman for the time being.
+
+At the present moment, this elegantly-attired individual is in the act of
+entering the duplicate he has just made out, in a thick book: a process
+from which he is diverted occasionally, by a conversation he is carrying
+on with another young man similarly employed at a little distance from
+him, whose allusions to 'that last bottle of soda-water last night,' and
+'how regularly round my hat he felt himself when the young 'ooman gave
+'em in charge,' would appear to refer to the consequences of some stolen
+joviality of the preceding evening.  The customers generally, however,
+seem unable to participate in the amusement derivable from this source,
+for an old sallow-looking woman, who has been leaning with both arms on
+the counter with a small bundle before her, for half an hour previously,
+suddenly interrupts the conversation by addressing the jewelled
+shopman--'Now, Mr. Henry, do make haste, there's a good soul, for my two
+grandchildren's locked up at home, and I'm afeer'd of the fire.'  The
+shopman slightly raises his head, with an air of deep abstraction, and
+resumes his entry with as much deliberation as if he were engraving.
+'You're in a hurry, Mrs. Tatham, this ev'nin', an't you?' is the only
+notice he deigns to take, after the lapse of five minutes or so.  'Yes, I
+am indeed, Mr. Henry; now, do serve me next, there's a good creetur.  I
+wouldn't worry you, only it's all along o' them botherin' children.'
+'What have you got here?' inquires the shopman, unpinning the
+bundle--'old concern, I suppose--pair o' stays and a petticut.  You must
+look up somethin' else, old 'ooman; I can't lend you anything more upon
+them; they're completely worn out by this time, if it's only by putting
+in, and taking out again, three times a week.'  'Oh! you're a rum un, you
+are,' replies the old woman, laughing extremely, as in duty bound; 'I
+wish I'd got the gift of the gab like you; see if I'd be up the spout so
+often then!  No, no; it an't the petticut; it's a child's frock and a
+beautiful silk ankecher, as belongs to my husband.  He gave four shillin'
+for it, the werry same blessed day as he broke his arm.'--'What do you
+want upon these?' inquires Mr. Henry, slightly glancing at the articles,
+which in all probability are old acquaintances.  'What do you want upon
+these?'--'Eighteenpence.'--'Lend you ninepence.'--'Oh, make it a
+shillin'; there's a dear--do now?'--'Not another farden.'--'Well, I
+suppose I must take it.'  The duplicate is made out, one ticket pinned on
+the parcel, the other given to the old woman; the parcel is flung
+carelessly down into a corner, and some other customer prefers his claim
+to be served without further delay.
+
+The choice falls on an unshaven, dirty, sottish-looking fellow, whose
+tarnished paper-cap, stuck negligently over one eye, communicates an
+additionally repulsive expression to his very uninviting countenance.  He
+was enjoying a little relaxation from his sedentary pursuits a quarter of
+an hour ago, in kicking his wife up the court.  He has come to redeem
+some tools:--probably to complete a job with, on account of which he has
+already received some money, if his inflamed countenance and drunken
+staggers may be taken as evidence of the fact.  Having waited some little
+time, he makes his presence known by venting his ill-humour on a ragged
+urchin, who, being unable to bring his face on a level with the counter
+by any other process, has employed himself in climbing up, and then
+hooking himself on with his elbows--an uneasy perch, from which he has
+fallen at intervals, generally alighting on the toes of the person in his
+immediate vicinity.  In the present case, the unfortunate little wretch
+has received a cuff which sends him reeling to this door; and the donor
+of the blow is immediately the object of general indignation.
+
+'What do you strike the boy for, you brute?' exclaims a slipshod woman,
+with two flat irons in a little basket.  'Do you think he's your wife,
+you willin?'  'Go and hang yourself!' replies the gentleman addressed,
+with a drunken look of savage stupidity, aiming at the same time a blow
+at the woman which fortunately misses its object.  'Go and hang yourself;
+and wait till I come and cut you down.'--'Cut you down,' rejoins the
+woman, 'I wish I had the cutting of you up, you wagabond! (loud.)  Oh!
+you precious wagabond! (rather louder.)  Where's your wife, you willin?
+(louder still; women of this class are always sympathetic, and work
+themselves into a tremendous passion on the shortest notice.)  Your poor
+dear wife as you uses worser nor a dog--strike a woman--you a man! (very
+shrill;) I wish I had you--I'd murder you, I would, if I died for
+it!'--'Now be civil,' retorts the man fiercely.  'Be civil, you wiper!'
+ejaculates the woman contemptuously.  'An't it shocking?' she continues,
+turning round, and appealing to an old woman who is peeping out of one of
+the little closets we have before described, and who has not the
+slightest objection to join in the attack, possessing, as she does, the
+comfortable conviction that she is bolted in.  'Ain't it shocking, ma'am?
+(Dreadful! says the old woman in a parenthesis, not exactly knowing what
+the question refers to.)  He's got a wife, ma'am, as takes in mangling,
+and is as 'dustrious and hard-working a young 'ooman as can be, (very
+fast) as lives in the back parlour of our 'ous, which my husband and me
+lives in the front one (with great rapidity)--and we hears him a beaten'
+on her sometimes when he comes home drunk, the whole night through, and
+not only a beaten' her, but beaten' his own child too, to make her more
+miserable--ugh, you beast! and she, poor creater, won't swear the peace
+agin him, nor do nothin', because she likes the wretch arter all--worse
+luck!'  Here, as the woman has completely run herself out of breath, the
+pawnbroker himself, who has just appeared behind the counter in a gray
+dressing-gown, embraces the favourable opportunity of putting in a
+word:--'Now I won't have none of this sort of thing on my premises!' he
+interposes with an air of authority.  'Mrs. Mackin, keep yourself to
+yourself, or you don't get fourpence for a flat iron here; and Jinkins,
+you leave your ticket here till you're sober, and send your wife for them
+two planes, for I won't have you in my shop at no price; so make yourself
+scarce, before I make you scarcer.'
+
+This eloquent address produces anything but the effect desired; the women
+rail in concert; the man hits about him in all directions, and is in the
+act of establishing an indisputable claim to gratuitous lodgings for the
+night, when the entrance of his wife, a wretched, worn-out woman,
+apparently in the last stage of consumption, whose face bears evident
+marks of recent ill-usage, and whose strength seems hardly equal to the
+burden--light enough, God knows!--of the thin, sickly child she carries
+in her arms, turns his cowardly rage in a safer direction.  'Come home,
+dear,' cries the miserable creature, in an imploring tone; '_do_ come
+home, there's a good fellow, and go to bed.'--'Go home yourself,' rejoins
+the furious ruffian.  'Do come home quietly,' repeats the wife, bursting
+into tears.  'Go home yourself,' retorts the husband again, enforcing his
+argument by a blow which sends the poor creature flying out of the shop.
+Her 'natural protector' follows her up the court, alternately venting his
+rage in accelerating her progress, and in knocking the little scanty blue
+bonnet of the unfortunate child over its still more scanty and
+faded-looking face.
+
+In the last box, which is situated in the darkest and most obscure corner
+of the shop, considerably removed from either of the gas-lights, are a
+young delicate girl of about twenty, and an elderly female, evidently her
+mother from the resemblance between them, who stand at some distance
+back, as if to avoid the observation even of the shopman.  It is not
+their first visit to a pawnbroker's shop, for they answer without a
+moment's hesitation the usual questions, put in a rather respectful
+manner, and in a much lower tone than usual, of 'What name shall I
+say?--Your own property, of course?--Where do you live?--Housekeeper or
+lodger?'  They bargain, too, for a higher loan than the shopman is at
+first inclined to offer, which a perfect stranger would be little
+disposed to do; and the elder female urges her daughter on, in scarcely
+audible whispers, to exert her utmost powers of persuasion to obtain an
+advance of the sum, and expatiate on the value of the articles they have
+brought to raise a present supply upon.  They are a small gold chain and
+a 'Forget me not' ring: the girl's property, for they are both too small
+for the mother; given her in better times; prized, perhaps, once, for the
+giver's sake, but parted with now without a struggle; for want has
+hardened the mother, and her example has hardened the girl, and the
+prospect of receiving money, coupled with a recollection of the misery
+they have both endured from the want of it--the coldness of old
+friends--the stern refusal of some, and the still more galling compassion
+of others--appears to have obliterated the consciousness of
+self-humiliation, which the idea of their present situation would once
+have aroused.
+
+In the next box, is a young female, whose attire, miserably poor, but
+extremely gaudy, wretchedly cold, but extravagantly fine, too plainly
+bespeaks her station.  The rich satin gown with its faded trimmings, the
+worn-out thin shoes, and pink silk stockings, the summer bonnet in
+winter, and the sunken face, where a daub of rouge only serves as an
+index to the ravages of squandered health never to be regained, and lost
+happiness never to be restored, and where the practised smile is a
+wretched mockery of the misery of the heart, cannot be mistaken.  There
+is something in the glimpse she has just caught of her young neighbour,
+and in the sight of the little trinkets she has offered in pawn, that
+seems to have awakened in this woman's mind some slumbering recollection,
+and to have changed, for an instant, her whole demeanour.  Her first
+hasty impulse was to bend forward as if to scan more minutely the
+appearance of her half-concealed companions; her next, on seeing them
+involuntarily shrink from her, to retreat to the back of the box, cover
+her face with her hands, and burst into tears.
+
+There are strange chords in the human heart, which will lie dormant
+through years of depravity and wickedness, but which will vibrate at last
+to some slight circumstance apparently trivial in itself, but connected
+by some undefined and indistinct association, with past days that can
+never be recalled, and with bitter recollections from which the most
+degraded creature in existence cannot escape.
+
+There has been another spectator, in the person of a woman in the common
+shop; the lowest of the low; dirty, unbonneted, flaunting, and slovenly.
+Her curiosity was at first attracted by the little she could see of the
+group; then her attention.  The half-intoxicated leer changed to an
+expression of something like interest, and a feeling similar to that we
+have described, appeared for a moment, and only a moment, to extend
+itself even to her bosom.
+
+Who shall say how soon these women may change places?  The last has but
+two more stages--the hospital and the grave.  How many females situated
+as her two companions are, and as she may have been once, have terminated
+the same wretched course, in the same wretched manner!  One is already
+tracing her footsteps with frightful rapidity.  How soon may the other
+follow her example!  How many have done the same!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV--CRIMINAL COURTS
+
+
+We shall never forget the mingled feelings of awe and respect with which
+we used to gaze on the exterior of Newgate in our schoolboy days.  How
+dreadful its rough heavy walls, and low massive doors, appeared to
+us--the latter looking as if they were made for the express purpose of
+letting people in, and never letting them out again.  Then the fetters
+over the debtors' door, which we used to think were a _bona fide_ set of
+irons, just hung up there, for convenience' sake, ready to be taken down
+at a moment's notice, and riveted on the limbs of some refractory felon!
+We were never tired of wondering how the hackney-coachmen on the opposite
+stand could cut jokes in the presence of such horrors, and drink pots of
+half-and-half so near the last drop.
+
+Often have we strayed here, in sessions time, to catch a glimpse of the
+whipping-place, and that dark building on one side of the yard, in which
+is kept the gibbet with all its dreadful apparatus, and on the door of
+which we half expected to see a brass plate, with the inscription 'Mr.
+Ketch;' for we never imagined that the distinguished functionary could by
+possibility live anywhere else!  The days of these childish dreams have
+passed away, and with them many other boyish ideas of a gayer nature.
+But we still retain so much of our original feeling, that to this hour we
+never pass the building without something like a shudder.
+
+What London pedestrian is there who has not, at some time or other, cast
+a hurried glance through the wicket at which prisoners are admitted into
+this gloomy mansion, and surveyed the few objects he could discern, with
+an indescribable feeling of curiosity?  The thick door, plated with iron
+and mounted with spikes, just low enough to enable you to see, leaning
+over them, an ill-looking fellow, in a broad-brimmed hat, Belcher
+handkerchief and top-boots: with a brown coat, something between a
+great-coat and a 'sporting' jacket, on his back, and an immense key in
+his left hand.  Perhaps you are lucky enough to pass, just as the gate is
+being opened; then, you see on the other side of the lodge, another gate,
+the image of its predecessor, and two or three more turnkeys, who look
+like multiplications of the first one, seated round a fire which just
+lights up the whitewashed apartment sufficiently to enable you to catch a
+hasty glimpse of these different objects.  We have a great respect for
+Mrs. Fry, but she certainly ought to have written more romances than Mrs.
+Radcliffe.
+
+We were walking leisurely down the Old Bailey, some time ago, when, as we
+passed this identical gate, it was opened by the officiating turnkey.  We
+turned quickly round, as a matter of course, and saw two persons
+descending the steps.  We could not help stopping and observing them.
+
+They were an elderly woman, of decent appearance, though evidently poor,
+and a boy of about fourteen or fifteen.  The woman was crying bitterly;
+she carried a small bundle in her hand, and the boy followed at a short
+distance behind her.  Their little history was obvious.  The boy was her
+son, to whose early comfort she had perhaps sacrificed her own--for whose
+sake she had borne misery without repining, and poverty without a
+murmur--looking steadily forward to the time, when he who had so long
+witnessed her struggles for himself, might be enabled to make some
+exertions for their joint support.  He had formed dissolute connexions;
+idleness had led to crime; and he had been committed to take his trial
+for some petty theft.  He had been long in prison, and, after receiving
+some trifling additional punishment, had been ordered to be discharged
+that morning.  It was his first offence, and his poor old mother, still
+hoping to reclaim him, had been waiting at the gate to implore him to
+return home.
+
+We cannot forget the boy; he descended the steps with a dogged look,
+shaking his head with an air of bravado and obstinate determination.
+They walked a few paces, and paused.  The woman put her hand upon his
+shoulder in an agony of entreaty, and the boy sullenly raised his head as
+if in refusal.  It was a brilliant morning, and every object looked fresh
+and happy in the broad, gay sunlight; he gazed round him for a few
+moments, bewildered with the brightness of the scene, for it was long
+since he had beheld anything save the gloomy walls of a prison.  Perhaps
+the wretchedness of his mother made some impression on the boy's heart;
+perhaps some undefined recollection of the time when he was a happy
+child, and she his only friend, and best companion, crowded on him--he
+burst into tears; and covering his face with one hand, and hurriedly
+placing the other in his mother's, walked away with her.
+
+Curiosity has occasionally led us into both Courts at the Old Bailey.
+Nothing is so likely to strike the person who enters them for the first
+time, as the calm indifference with which the proceedings are conducted;
+every trial seems a mere matter of business.  There is a great deal of
+form, but no compassion; considerable interest, but no sympathy.  Take
+the Old Court for example.  There sit the judges, with whose great
+dignity everybody is acquainted, and of whom therefore we need say no
+more.  Then, there is the Lord Mayor in the centre, looking as cool as a
+Lord Mayor _can_ look, with an immense _bouquet_ before him, and habited
+in all the splendour of his office.  Then, there are the Sheriffs, who
+are almost as dignified as the Lord Mayor himself; and the Barristers,
+who are quite dignified enough in their own opinion; and the spectators,
+who having paid for their admission, look upon the whole scene as if it
+were got up especially for their amusement.  Look upon the whole group in
+the body of the Court--some wholly engrossed in the morning papers,
+others carelessly conversing in low whispers, and others, again, quietly
+dozing away an hour--and you can scarcely believe that the result of the
+trial is a matter of life or death to one wretched being present.  But
+turn your eyes to the dock; watch the prisoner attentively for a few
+moments; and the fact is before you, in all its painful reality.  Mark
+how restlessly he has been engaged for the last ten minutes, in forming
+all sorts of fantastic figures with the herbs which are strewed upon the
+ledge before him; observe the ashy paleness of his face when a particular
+witness appears, and how he changes his position and wipes his clammy
+forehead, and feverish hands, when the case for the prosecution is
+closed, as if it were a relief to him to feel that the jury knew the
+worst.
+
+The defence is concluded; the judge proceeds to sum up the evidence; and
+the prisoner watches the countenances of the jury, as a dying man,
+clinging to life to the very last, vainly looks in the face of his
+physician for a slight ray of hope.  They turn round to consult; you can
+almost hear the man's heart beat, as he bites the stalk of rosemary, with
+a desperate effort to appear composed.  They resume their places--a dead
+silence prevails as the foreman delivers in the verdict--'Guilty!'  A
+shriek bursts from a female in the gallery; the prisoner casts one look
+at the quarter from whence the noise proceeded; and is immediately
+hurried from the dock by the gaoler.  The clerk directs one of the
+officers of the Court to 'take the woman out,' and fresh business is
+proceeded with, as if nothing had occurred.
+
+No imaginary contrast to a case like this, could be as complete as that
+which is constantly presented in the New Court, the gravity of which is
+frequently disturbed in no small degree, by the cunning and pertinacity
+of juvenile offenders.  A boy of thirteen is tried, say for picking the
+pocket of some subject of her Majesty, and the offence is about as
+clearly proved as an offence can be.  He is called upon for his defence,
+and contents himself with a little declamation about the jurymen and his
+country--asserts that all the witnesses have committed perjury, and hints
+that the police force generally have entered into a conspiracy 'again'
+him.  However probable this statement may be, it fails to convince the
+Court, and some such scene as the following then takes place:
+
+_Court_: Have you any witnesses to speak to your character, boy?
+
+_Boy_: Yes, my Lord; fifteen gen'lm'n is a vaten outside, and vos a vaten
+all day yesterday, vich they told me the night afore my trial vos a
+comin' on.
+
+_Court_.  Inquire for these witnesses.
+
+Here, a stout beadle runs out, and vociferates for the witnesses at the
+very top of his voice; for you hear his cry grow fainter and fainter as
+he descends the steps into the court-yard below.  After an absence of
+five minutes, he returns, very warm and hoarse, and informs the Court of
+what it knew perfectly well before--namely, that there are no such
+witnesses in attendance.  Hereupon, the boy sets up a most awful howling;
+screws the lower part of the palms of his hands into the corners of his
+eyes; and endeavours to look the picture of injured innocence.  The jury
+at once find him 'guilty,' and his endeavours to squeeze out a tear or
+two are redoubled.  The governor of the gaol then states, in reply to an
+inquiry from the bench, that the prisoner has been under his care twice
+before.  This the urchin resolutely denies in some such terms as--'S'elp
+me, gen'lm'n, I never vos in trouble afore--indeed, my Lord, I never vos.
+It's all a howen to my having a twin brother, vich has wrongfully got
+into trouble, and vich is so exactly like me, that no vun ever knows the
+difference atween us.'
+
+This representation, like the defence, fails in producing the desired
+effect, and the boy is sentenced, perhaps, to seven years'
+transportation.  Finding it impossible to excite compassion, he gives
+vent to his feelings in an imprecation bearing reference to the eyes of
+'old big vig!' and as he declines to take the trouble of walking from the
+dock, is forthwith carried out, congratulating himself on having
+succeeded in giving everybody as much trouble as possible.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV--A VISIT TO NEWGATE
+
+
+'The force of habit' is a trite phrase in everybody's mouth; and it is
+not a little remarkable that those who use it most as applied to others,
+unconsciously afford in their own persons singular examples of the power
+which habit and custom exercise over the minds of men, and of the little
+reflection they are apt to bestow on subjects with which every day's
+experience has rendered them familiar.  If Bedlam could be suddenly
+removed like another Aladdin's palace, and set down on the space now
+occupied by Newgate, scarcely one man out of a hundred, whose road to
+business every morning lies through Newgate-street, or the Old Bailey,
+would pass the building without bestowing a hasty glance on its small,
+grated windows, and a transient thought upon the condition of the unhappy
+beings immured in its dismal cells; and yet these same men, day by day,
+and hour by hour, pass and repass this gloomy depository of the guilt and
+misery of London, in one perpetual stream of life and bustle, utterly
+unmindful of the throng of wretched creatures pent up within it--nay, not
+even knowing, or if they do, not heeding, the fact, that as they pass one
+particular angle of the massive wall with a light laugh or a merry
+whistle, they stand within one yard of a fellow-creature, bound and
+helpless, whose hours are numbered, from whom the last feeble ray of hope
+has fled for ever, and whose miserable career will shortly terminate in a
+violent and shameful death.  Contact with death even in its least
+terrible shape, is solemn and appalling.  How much more awful is it to
+reflect on this near vicinity to the dying--to men in full health and
+vigour, in the flower of youth or the prime of life, with all their
+faculties and perceptions as acute and perfect as your own; but dying,
+nevertheless--dying as surely--with the hand of death imprinted upon them
+as indelibly--as if mortal disease had wasted their frames to shadows,
+and corruption had already begun!
+
+It was with some such thoughts as these that we determined, not many
+weeks since, to visit the interior of Newgate--in an amateur capacity, of
+course; and, having carried our intention into effect, we proceed to lay
+its results before our readers, in the hope--founded more upon the nature
+of the subject, than on any presumptuous confidence in our own
+descriptive powers--that this paper may not be found wholly devoid of
+interest.  We have only to premise, that we do not intend to fatigue the
+reader with any statistical accounts of the prison; they will be found at
+length in numerous reports of numerous committees, and a variety of
+authorities of equal weight.  We took no notes, made no memoranda,
+measured none of the yards, ascertained the exact number of inches in no
+particular room: are unable even to report of how many apartments the
+gaol is composed.
+
+We saw the prison, and saw the prisoners; and what we did see, and what
+we thought, we will tell at once in our own way.
+
+Having delivered our credentials to the servant who answered our knock at
+the door of the governor's house, we were ushered into the 'office;' a
+little room, on the right-hand side as you enter, with two windows
+looking into the Old Bailey: fitted up like an ordinary attorney's
+office, or merchant's counting-house, with the usual fixtures--a
+wainscoted partition, a shelf or two, a desk, a couple of stools, a pair
+of clerks, an almanack, a clock, and a few maps.  After a little delay,
+occasioned by sending into the interior of the prison for the officer
+whose duty it was to conduct us, that functionary arrived; a
+respectable-looking man of about two or three and fifty, in a
+broad-brimmed hat, and full suit of black, who, but for his keys, would
+have looked quite as much like a clergyman as a turnkey.  We were
+disappointed; he had not even top-boots on.  Following our conductor by a
+door opposite to that at which we had entered, we arrived at a small
+room, without any other furniture than a little desk, with a book for
+visitors' autographs, and a shelf, on which were a few boxes for papers,
+and casts of the heads and faces of the two notorious murderers, Bishop
+and Williams; the former, in particular, exhibiting a style of head and
+set of features, which might have afforded sufficient moral grounds for
+his instant execution at any time, even had there been no other evidence
+against him.  Leaving this room also, by an opposite door, we found
+ourself in the lodge which opens on the Old Bailey; one side of which is
+plentifully garnished with a choice collection of heavy sets of irons,
+including those worn by the redoubtable Jack Sheppard--genuine; and those
+_said_ to have been graced by the sturdy limbs of the no less celebrated
+Dick Turpin--doubtful.  From this lodge, a heavy oaken gate, bound with
+iron, studded with nails of the same material, and guarded by another
+turnkey, opens on a few steps, if we remember right, which terminate in a
+narrow and dismal stone passage, running parallel with the Old Bailey,
+and leading to the different yards, through a number of tortuous and
+intricate windings, guarded in their turn by huge gates and gratings,
+whose appearance is sufficient to dispel at once the slightest hope of
+escape that any new-comer may have entertained; and the very recollection
+of which, on eventually traversing the place again, involves one in a
+maze of confusion.
+
+It is necessary to explain here, that the buildings in the prison, or in
+other words the different wards--form a square, of which the four sides
+abut respectively on the Old Bailey, the old College of Physicians (now
+forming a part of Newgate-market), the Sessions-house, and
+Newgate-street.  The intermediate space is divided into several paved
+yards, in which the prisoners take such air and exercise as can be had in
+such a place.  These yards, with the exception of that in which prisoners
+under sentence of death are confined (of which we shall presently give a
+more detailed description), run parallel with Newgate-street, and
+consequently from the Old Bailey, as it were, to Newgate-market.  The
+women's side is in the right wing of the prison nearest the
+Sessions-house.  As we were introduced into this part of the building
+first, we will adopt the same order, and introduce our readers to it
+also.
+
+Turning to the right, then, down the passage to which we just now
+adverted, omitting any mention of intervening gates--for if we noticed
+every gate that was unlocked for us to pass through, and locked again as
+soon as we had passed, we should require a gate at every comma--we came
+to a door composed of thick bars of wood, through which were discernible,
+passing to and fro in a narrow yard, some twenty women: the majority of
+whom, however, as soon as they were aware of the presence of strangers,
+retreated to their wards.  One side of this yard is railed off at a
+considerable distance, and formed into a kind of iron cage, about five
+feet ten inches in height, roofed at the top, and defended in front by
+iron bars, from which the friends of the female prisoners communicate
+with them.  In one corner of this singular-looking den, was a yellow,
+haggard, decrepit old woman, in a tattered gown that had once been black,
+and the remains of an old straw bonnet, with faded ribbon of the same
+hue, in earnest conversation with a young girl--a prisoner, of course--of
+about two-and-twenty.  It is impossible to imagine a more
+poverty-stricken object, or a creature so borne down in soul and body, by
+excess of misery and destitution, as the old woman.  The girl was a
+good-looking, robust female, with a profusion of hair streaming about in
+the wind--for she had no bonnet on--and a man's silk pocket-handkerchief
+loosely thrown over a most ample pair of shoulders.  The old woman was
+talking in that low, stifled tone of voice which tells so forcibly of
+mental anguish; and every now and then burst into an irrepressible sharp,
+abrupt cry of grief, the most distressing sound that ears can hear.  The
+girl was perfectly unmoved.  Hardened beyond all hope of redemption, she
+listened doggedly to her mother's entreaties, whatever they were: and,
+beyond inquiring after 'Jem,' and eagerly catching at the few halfpence
+her miserable parent had brought her, took no more apparent interest in
+the conversation than the most unconcerned spectators.  Heaven knows
+there were enough of them, in the persons of the other prisoners in the
+yard, who were no more concerned by what was passing before their eyes,
+and within their hearing, than if they were blind and deaf.  Why should
+they be?  Inside the prison, and out, such scenes were too familiar to
+them, to excite even a passing thought, unless of ridicule or contempt
+for feelings which they had long since forgotten.
+
+A little farther on, a squalid-looking woman in a slovenly,
+thick-bordered cap, with her arms muffled in a large red shawl, the
+fringed ends of which straggled nearly to the bottom of a dirty white
+apron, was communicating some instructions to _her_ visitor--her daughter
+evidently.  The girl was thinly clad, and shaking with the cold.  Some
+ordinary word of recognition passed between her and her mother when she
+appeared at the grating, but neither hope, condolence, regret, nor
+affection was expressed on either side.  The mother whispered her
+instructions, and the girl received them with her pinched-up,
+half-starved features twisted into an expression of careful cunning.  It
+was some scheme for the woman's defence that she was disclosing, perhaps;
+and a sullen smile came over the girl's face for an instant, as if she
+were pleased: not so much at the probability of her mother's liberation,
+as at the chance of her 'getting off' in spite of her prosecutors.  The
+dialogue was soon concluded; and with the same careless indifference with
+which they had approached each other, the mother turned towards the inner
+end of the yard, and the girl to the gate at which she had entered.
+
+The girl belonged to a class--unhappily but too extensive--the very
+existence of which, should make men's hearts bleed.  Barely past her
+childhood, it required but a glance to discover that she was one of those
+children, born and bred in neglect and vice, who have never known what
+childhood is: who have never been taught to love and court a parent's
+smile, or to dread a parent's frown.  The thousand nameless endearments
+of childhood, its gaiety and its innocence, are alike unknown to them.
+They have entered at once upon the stern realities and miseries of life,
+and to their better nature it is almost hopeless to appeal in
+after-times, by any of the references which will awaken, if it be only
+for a moment, some good feeling in ordinary bosoms, however corrupt they
+may have become.  Talk to _them_ of parental solicitude, the happy days
+of childhood, and the merry games of infancy!  Tell them of hunger and
+the streets, beggary and stripes, the gin-shop, the station-house, and
+the pawnbroker's, and they will understand you.
+
+Two or three women were standing at different parts of the grating,
+conversing with their friends, but a very large proportion of the
+prisoners appeared to have no friends at all, beyond such of their old
+companions as might happen to be within the walls.  So, passing hastily
+down the yard, and pausing only for an instant to notice the little
+incidents we have just recorded, we were conducted up a clean and
+well-lighted flight of stone stairs to one of the wards.  There are
+several in this part of the building, but a description of one is a
+description of the whole.
+
+It was a spacious, bare, whitewashed apartment, lighted, of course, by
+windows looking into the interior of the prison, but far more light and
+airy than one could reasonably expect to find in such a situation.  There
+was a large fire with a deal table before it, round which ten or a dozen
+women were seated on wooden forms at dinner.  Along both sides of the
+room ran a shelf; below it, at regular intervals, a row of large hooks
+were fixed in the wall, on each of which was hung the sleeping mat of a
+prisoner: her rug and blanket being folded up, and placed on the shelf
+above.  At night, these mats are placed on the floor, each beneath the
+hook on which it hangs during the day; and the ward is thus made to
+answer the purposes both of a day-room and sleeping apartment.  Over the
+fireplace, was a large sheet of pasteboard, on which were displayed a
+variety of texts from Scripture, which were also scattered about the room
+in scraps about the size and shape of the copy-slips which are used in
+schools.  On the table was a sufficient provision of a kind of stewed
+beef and brown bread, in pewter dishes, which are kept perfectly bright,
+and displayed on shelves in great order and regularity when they are not
+in use.
+
+The women rose hastily, on our entrance, and retired in a hurried manner
+to either side of the fireplace.  They were all cleanly--many of them
+decently--attired, and there was nothing peculiar, either in their
+appearance or demeanour.  One or two resumed the needlework which they
+had probably laid aside at the commencement of their meal; others gazed
+at the visitors with listless curiosity; and a few retired behind their
+companions to the very end of the room, as if desirous to avoid even the
+casual observation of the strangers.  Some old Irish women, both in this
+and other wards, to whom the thing was no novelty, appeared perfectly
+indifferent to our presence, and remained standing close to the seats
+from which they had just risen; but the general feeling among the females
+seemed to be one of uneasiness during the period of our stay among them:
+which was very brief.  Not a word was uttered during the time of our
+remaining, unless, indeed, by the wardswoman in reply to some question
+which we put to the turnkey who accompanied us.  In every ward on the
+female side, a wardswoman is appointed to preserve order, and a similar
+regulation is adopted among the males.  The wardsmen and wardswomen are
+all prisoners, selected for good conduct.  They alone are allowed the
+privilege of sleeping on bedsteads; a small stump bedstead being placed
+in every ward for that purpose.  On both sides of the gaol, is a small
+receiving-room, to which prisoners are conducted on their first
+reception, and whence they cannot be removed until they have been
+examined by the surgeon of the prison. {161}
+
+Retracing our steps to the dismal passage in which we found ourselves at
+first (and which, by-the-bye, contains three or four dark cells for the
+accommodation of refractory prisoners), we were led through a narrow yard
+to the 'school'--a portion of the prison set apart for boys under
+fourteen years of age.  In a tolerable-sized room, in which were
+writing-materials and some copy-books, was the schoolmaster, with a
+couple of his pupils; the remainder having been fetched from an adjoining
+apartment, the whole were drawn up in line for our inspection.  There
+were fourteen of them in all, some with shoes, some without; some in
+pinafores without jackets, others in jackets without pinafores, and one
+in scarce anything at all.  The whole number, without an exception we
+believe, had been committed for trial on charges of pocket-picking; and
+fourteen such terrible little faces we never beheld.--There was not one
+redeeming feature among them--not a glance of honesty--not a wink
+expressive of anything but the gallows and the hulks, in the whole
+collection.  As to anything like shame or contrition, that was entirely
+out of the question.  They were evidently quite gratified at being
+thought worth the trouble of looking at; their idea appeared to be, that
+we had come to see Newgate as a grand affair, and that they were an
+indispensable part of the show; and every boy as he 'fell in' to the
+line, actually seemed as pleased and important as if he had done
+something excessively meritorious in getting there at all.  We never
+looked upon a more disagreeable sight, because we never saw fourteen such
+hopeless creatures of neglect, before.
+
+On either side of the school-yard is a yard for men, in one of
+which--that towards Newgate-street--prisoners of the more respectable
+class are confined.  Of the other, we have little description to offer,
+as the different wards necessarily partake of the same character.  They
+are provided, like the wards on the women's side, with mats and rugs,
+which are disposed of in the same manner during the day; the only very
+striking difference between their appearance and that of the wards
+inhabited by the females, is the utter absence of any employment.
+Huddled together on two opposite forms, by the fireside, sit twenty men
+perhaps; here, a boy in livery; there, a man in a rough great-coat and
+top-boots; farther on, a desperate-looking fellow in his shirt-sleeves,
+with an old Scotch cap upon his shaggy head; near him again, a tall
+ruffian, in a smock-frock; next to him, a miserable being of distressed
+appearance, with his head resting on his hand;--all alike in one respect,
+all idle and listless.  When they do leave the fire, sauntering moodily
+about, lounging in the window, or leaning against the wall, vacantly
+swinging their bodies to and fro.  With the exception of a man reading an
+old newspaper, in two or three instances, this was the case in every ward
+we entered.
+
+The only communication these men have with their friends, is through two
+close iron gratings, with an intermediate space of about a yard in width
+between the two, so that nothing can be handed across, nor can the
+prisoner have any communication by touch with the person who visits him.
+The married men have a separate grating, at which to see their wives, but
+its construction is the same.
+
+The prison chapel is situated at the back of the governor's house: the
+latter having no windows looking into the interior of the prison.
+Whether the associations connected with the place--the knowledge that
+here a portion of the burial service is, on some dreadful occasions,
+performed over the quick and not upon the dead--cast over it a still more
+gloomy and sombre air than art has imparted to it, we know not, but its
+appearance is very striking.  There is something in a silent and deserted
+place of worship, solemn and impressive at any time; and the very
+dissimilarity of this one from any we have been accustomed to, only
+enhances the impression.  The meanness of its appointments--the bare and
+scanty pulpit, with the paltry painted pillars on either side--the
+women's gallery with its great heavy curtain--the men's with its
+unpainted benches and dingy front--the tottering little table at the
+altar, with the commandments on the wall above it, scarcely legible
+through lack of paint, and dust and damp--so unlike the velvet and
+gilding, the marble and wood, of a modern church--are strange and
+striking.  There is one object, too, which rivets the attention and
+fascinates the gaze, and from which we may turn horror-stricken in vain,
+for the recollection of it will haunt us, waking and sleeping, for a long
+time afterwards.  Immediately below the reading-desk, on the floor of the
+chapel, and forming the most conspicuous object in its little area, is
+_the condemned pew_; a huge black pen, in which the wretched people, who
+are singled out for death, are placed on the Sunday preceding their
+execution, in sight of all their fellow-prisoners, from many of whom they
+may have been separated but a week before, to hear prayers for their own
+souls, to join in the responses of their own burial service, and to
+listen to an address, warning their recent companions to take example by
+their fate, and urging themselves, while there is yet time--nearly
+four-and-twenty hours--to 'turn, and flee from the wrath to come!'
+Imagine what have been the feelings of the men whom that fearful pew has
+enclosed, and of whom, between the gallows and the knife, no mortal
+remnant may now remain!  Think of the hopeless clinging to life to the
+last, and the wild despair, far exceeding in anguish the felon's death
+itself, by which they have heard the certainty of their speedy
+transmission to another world, with all their crimes upon their heads,
+rung into their ears by the officiating clergyman!
+
+At one time--and at no distant period either--the coffins of the men
+about to be executed, were placed in that pew, upon the seat by their
+side, during the whole service.  It may seem incredible, but it is true.
+Let us hope that the increased spirit of civilisation and humanity which
+abolished this frightful and degrading custom, may extend itself to other
+usages equally barbarous; usages which have not even the plea of utility
+in their defence, as every year's experience has shown them to be more
+and more inefficacious.
+
+Leaving the chapel, descending to the passage so frequently alluded to,
+and crossing the yard before noticed as being allotted to prisoners of a
+more respectable description than the generality of men confined here,
+the visitor arrives at a thick iron gate of great size and strength.
+Having been admitted through it by the turnkey on duty, he turns sharp
+round to the left, and pauses before another gate; and, having passed
+this last barrier, he stands in the most terrible part of this gloomy
+building--the condemned ward.
+
+The press-yard, well known by name to newspaper readers, from its
+frequent mention in accounts of executions, is at the corner of the
+building, and next to the ordinary's house, in Newgate-street: running
+from Newgate-street, towards the centre of the prison, parallel with
+Newgate-market.  It is a long, narrow court, of which a portion of the
+wall in Newgate-street forms one end, and the gate the other.  At the
+upper end, on the left hand--that is, adjoining the wall in
+Newgate-street--is a cistern of water, and at the bottom a double grating
+(of which the gate itself forms a part) similar to that before described.
+Through these grates the prisoners are allowed to see their friends; a
+turnkey always remaining in the vacant space between, during the whole
+interview.  Immediately on the right as you enter, is a building
+containing the press-room, day-room, and cells; the yard is on every side
+surrounded by lofty walls guarded by _chevaux de frise_; and the whole is
+under the constant inspection of vigilant and experienced turnkeys.
+
+In the first apartment into which we were conducted--which was at the top
+of a staircase, and immediately over the press-room--were five-and-twenty
+or thirty prisoners, all under sentence of death, awaiting the result of
+the recorder's report--men of all ages and appearances, from a hardened
+old offender with swarthy face and grizzly beard of three days' growth,
+to a handsome boy, not fourteen years old, and of singularly youthful
+appearance even for that age, who had been condemned for burglary.  There
+was nothing remarkable in the appearance of these prisoners.  One or two
+decently-dressed men were brooding with a dejected air over the fire;
+several little groups of two or three had been engaged in conversation at
+the upper end of the room, or in the windows; and the remainder were
+crowded round a young man seated at a table, who appeared to be engaged
+in teaching the younger ones to write.  The room was large, airy, and
+clean.  There was very little anxiety or mental suffering depicted in the
+countenance of any of the men;--they had all been sentenced to death, it
+is true, and the recorder's report had not yet been made; but, we
+question whether there was a man among them, notwithstanding, who did not
+_know_ that although he had undergone the ceremony, it never was intended
+that his life should be sacrificed.  On the table lay a Testament, but
+there were no tokens of its having been in recent use.
+
+In the press-room below, were three men, the nature of whose offence
+rendered it necessary to separate them, even from their companions in
+guilt.  It is a long, sombre room, with two windows sunk into the stone
+wall, and here the wretched men are pinioned on the morning of their
+execution, before moving towards the scaffold.  The fate of one of these
+prisoners was uncertain; some mitigatory circumstances having come to
+light since his trial, which had been humanely represented in the proper
+quarter.  The other two had nothing to expect from the mercy of the
+crown; their doom was sealed; no plea could be urged in extenuation of
+their crime, and they well knew that for them there was no hope in this
+world.  'The two short ones,' the turnkey whispered, 'were dead men.'
+
+The man to whom we have alluded as entertaining some hopes of escape, was
+lounging, at the greatest distance he could place between himself and his
+companions, in the window nearest to the door.  He was probably aware of
+our approach, and had assumed an air of courageous indifference; his face
+was purposely averted towards the window, and he stirred not an inch
+while we were present.  The other two men were at the upper end of the
+room.  One of them, who was imperfectly seen in the dim light, had his
+back towards us, and was stooping over the fire, with his right arm on
+the mantel-piece, and his head sunk upon it.  The other was leaning on
+the sill of the farthest window.  The light fell full upon him, and
+communicated to his pale, haggard face, and disordered hair, an
+appearance which, at that distance, was ghastly.  His cheek rested upon
+his hand; and, with his face a little raised, and his eyes wildly staring
+before him, he seemed to be unconsciously intent on counting the chinks
+in the opposite wall.  We passed this room again afterwards.  The first
+man was pacing up and down the court with a firm military step--he had
+been a soldier in the foot-guards--and a cloth cap jauntily thrown on one
+side of his head.  He bowed respectfully to our conductor, and the salute
+was returned.  The other two still remained in the positions we have
+described, and were as motionless as statues. {165}
+
+A few paces up the yard, and forming a continuation of the building, in
+which are the two rooms we have just quitted, lie the condemned cells.
+The entrance is by a narrow and obscure stair-case leading to a dark
+passage, in which a charcoal stove casts a lurid tint over the objects in
+its immediate vicinity, and diffuses something like warmth around.  From
+the left-hand side of this passage, the massive door of every cell on the
+story opens; and from it alone can they be approached.  There are three
+of these passages, and three of these ranges of cells, one above the
+other; but in size, furniture and appearance, they are all precisely
+alike.  Prior to the recorder's report being made, all the prisoners
+under sentence of death are removed from the day-room at five o'clock in
+the afternoon, and locked up in these cells, where they are allowed a
+candle until ten o'clock; and here they remain until seven next morning.
+When the warrant for a prisoner's execution arrives, he is removed to the
+cells and confined in one of them until he leaves it for the scaffold.
+He is at liberty to walk in the yard; but, both in his walks and in his
+cell, he is constantly attended by a turnkey who never leaves him on any
+pretence.
+
+We entered the first cell.  It was a stone dungeon, eight feet long by
+six wide, with a bench at the upper end, under which were a common rug, a
+bible, and prayer-book.  An iron candlestick was fixed into the wall at
+the side; and a small high window in the back admitted as much air and
+light as could struggle in between a double row of heavy, crossed iron
+bars.  It contained no other furniture of any description.
+
+Conceive the situation of a man, spending his last night on earth in this
+cell.  Buoyed up with some vague and undefined hope of reprieve, he knew
+not why--indulging in some wild and visionary idea of escaping, he knew
+not how--hour after hour of the three preceding days allowed him for
+preparation, has fled with a speed which no man living would deem
+possible, for none but this dying man can know.  He has wearied his
+friends with entreaties, exhausted the attendants with importunities,
+neglected in his feverish restlessness the timely warnings of his
+spiritual consoler; and, now that the illusion is at last dispelled, now
+that eternity is before him and guilt behind, now that his fears of death
+amount almost to madness, and an overwhelming sense of his helpless,
+hopeless state rushes upon him, he is lost and stupefied, and has neither
+thoughts to turn to, nor power to call upon, the Almighty Being, from
+whom alone he can seek mercy and forgiveness, and before whom his
+repentance can alone avail.
+
+Hours have glided by, and still he sits upon the same stone bench with
+folded arms, heedless alike of the fast decreasing time before him, and
+the urgent entreaties of the good man at his side.  The feeble light is
+wasting gradually, and the deathlike stillness of the street without,
+broken only by the rumbling of some passing vehicle which echoes
+mournfully through the empty yards, warns him that the night is waning
+fast away.  The deep bell of St. Paul's strikes--one!  He heard it; it
+has roused him.  Seven hours left!  He paces the narrow limits of his
+cell with rapid strides, cold drops of terror starting on his forehead,
+and every muscle of his frame quivering with agony.  Seven hours!  He
+suffers himself to be led to his seat, mechanically takes the bible which
+is placed in his hand, and tries to read and listen.  No: his thoughts
+will wander.  The book is torn and soiled by use--and like the book he
+read his lessons in, at school, just forty years ago!  He has never
+bestowed a thought upon it, perhaps, since he left it as a child: and yet
+the place, the time, the room--nay, the very boys he played with, crowd
+as vividly before him as if they were scenes of yesterday; and some
+forgotten phrase, some childish word, rings in his ears like the echo of
+one uttered but a minute since.  The voice of the clergyman recalls him
+to himself.  He is reading from the sacred book its solemn promises of
+pardon for repentance, and its awful denunciation of obdurate men.  He
+falls upon his knees and clasps his hands to pray.  Hush! what sound was
+that?  He starts upon his feet.  It cannot be two yet.  Hark!  Two
+quarters have struck;--the third--the fourth.  It is!  Six hours left.
+Tell him not of repentance!  Six hours' repentance for eight times six
+years of guilt and sin!  He buries his face in his hands, and throws
+himself on the bench.
+
+Worn with watching and excitement, he sleeps, and the same unsettled
+state of mind pursues him in his dreams.  An insupportable load is taken
+from his breast; he is walking with his wife in a pleasant field, with
+the bright sky above them, and a fresh and boundless prospect on every
+side--how different from the stone walls of Newgate!  She is looking--not
+as she did when he saw her for the last time in that dreadful place, but
+as she used when he loved her--long, long ago, before misery and
+ill-treatment had altered her looks, and vice had changed his nature, and
+she is leaning upon his arm, and looking up into his face with tenderness
+and affection--and he does _not_ strike her now, nor rudely shake her
+from him.  And oh! how glad he is to tell her all he had forgotten in
+that last hurried interview, and to fall on his knees before her and
+fervently beseech her pardon for all the unkindness and cruelty that
+wasted her form and broke her heart!  The scene suddenly changes.  He is
+on his trial again: there are the judge and jury, and prosecutors, and
+witnesses, just as they were before.  How full the court is--what a sea
+of heads--with a gallows, too, and a scaffold--and how all those people
+stare at _him_!  Verdict, 'Guilty.'  No matter; he will escape.
+
+The night is dark and cold, the gates have been left open, and in an
+instant he is in the street, flying from the scene of his imprisonment
+like the wind.  The streets are cleared, the open fields are gained and
+the broad, wide country lies before him.  Onward he dashes in the midst
+of darkness, over hedge and ditch, through mud and pool, bounding from
+spot to spot with a speed and lightness, astonishing even to himself.  At
+length he pauses; he must be safe from pursuit now; he will stretch
+himself on that bank and sleep till sunrise.
+
+A period of unconsciousness succeeds.  He wakes, cold and wretched.  The
+dull, gray light of morning is stealing into the cell, and falls upon the
+form of the attendant turnkey.  Confused by his dreams, he starts from
+his uneasy bed in momentary uncertainty.  It is but momentary.  Every
+object in the narrow cell is too frightfully real to admit of doubt or
+mistake.  He is the condemned felon again, guilty and despairing; and in
+two hours more will be dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS
+
+
+CHAPTER I--THOUGHTS ABOUT PEOPLE
+
+
+It is strange with how little notice, good, bad, or indifferent, a man
+may live and die in London.  He awakens no sympathy in the breast of any
+single person; his existence is a matter of interest to no one save
+himself; he cannot be said to be forgotten when he dies, for no one
+remembered him when he was alive.  There is a numerous class of people in
+this great metropolis who seem not to possess a single friend, and whom
+nobody appears to care for.  Urged by imperative necessity in the first
+instance, they have resorted to London in search of employment, and the
+means of subsistence.  It is hard, we know, to break the ties which bind
+us to our homes and friends, and harder still to efface the thousand
+recollections of happy days and old times, which have been slumbering in
+our bosoms for years, and only rush upon the mind, to bring before it
+associations connected with the friends we have left, the scenes we have
+beheld too probably for the last time, and the hopes we once cherished,
+but may entertain no more.  These men, however, happily for themselves,
+have long forgotten such thoughts.  Old country friends have died or
+emigrated; former correspondents have become lost, like themselves, in
+the crowd and turmoil of some busy city; and they have gradually settled
+down into mere passive creatures of habit and endurance.
+
+We were seated in the enclosure of St. James's Park the other day, when
+our attention was attracted by a man whom we immediately put down in our
+own mind as one of this class.  He was a tall, thin, pale person, in a
+black coat, scanty gray trousers, little pinched-up gaiters, and brown
+beaver gloves.  He had an umbrella in his hand--not for use, for the day
+was fine--but, evidently, because he always carried one to the office in
+the morning.  He walked up and down before the little patch of grass on
+which the chairs are placed for hire, not as if he were doing it for
+pleasure or recreation, but as if it were a matter of compulsion, just as
+he would walk to the office every morning from the back settlements of
+Islington.  It was Monday; he had escaped for four-and-twenty hours from
+the thraldom of the desk; and was walking here for exercise and
+amusement--perhaps for the first time in his life.  We were inclined to
+think he had never had a holiday before, and that he did not know what to
+do with himself.  Children were playing on the grass; groups of people
+were loitering about, chatting and laughing; but the man walked steadily
+up and down, unheeding and unheeded his spare, pale face looking as if it
+were incapable of bearing the expression of curiosity or interest.
+
+There was something in the man's manner and appearance which told us, we
+fancied, his whole life, or rather his whole day, for a man of this sort
+has no variety of days.  We thought we almost saw the dingy little back
+office into which he walks every morning, hanging his hat on the same
+peg, and placing his legs beneath the same desk: first, taking off that
+black coat which lasts the year through, and putting on the one which did
+duty last year, and which he keeps in his desk to save the other.  There
+he sits till five o'clock, working on, all day, as regularly as the dial
+over the mantel-piece, whose loud ticking is as monotonous as his whole
+existence: only raising his head when some one enters the counting-house,
+or when, in the midst of some difficult calculation, he looks up to the
+ceiling as if there were inspiration in the dusty skylight with a green
+knot in the centre of every pane of glass.  About five, or half-past, he
+slowly dismounts from his accustomed stool, and again changing his coat,
+proceeds to his usual dining-place, somewhere near Bucklersbury.  The
+waiter recites the bill of fare in a rather confidential manner--for he
+is a regular customer--and after inquiring 'What's in the best cut?' and
+'What was up last?' he orders a small plate of roast beef, with greens,
+and half-a-pint of porter.  He has a small plate to-day, because greens
+are a penny more than potatoes, and he had 'two breads' yesterday, with
+the additional enormity of 'a cheese' the day before.  This important
+point settled, he hangs up his hat--he took it off the moment he sat
+down--and bespeaks the paper after the next gentleman.  If he can get it
+while he is at dinner, he eats with much greater zest; balancing it
+against the water-bottle, and eating a bit of beef, and reading a line or
+two, alternately.  Exactly at five minutes before the hour is up, he
+produces a shilling, pays the reckoning, carefully deposits the change in
+his waistcoat-pocket (first deducting a penny for the waiter), and
+returns to the office, from which, if it is not foreign post night, he
+again sallies forth, in about half an hour.  He then walks home, at his
+usual pace, to his little back room at Islington, where he has his tea;
+perhaps solacing himself during the meal with the conversation of his
+landlady's little boy, whom he occasionally rewards with a penny, for
+solving problems in simple addition.  Sometimes, there is a letter or two
+to take up to his employer's, in Russell-square; and then, the wealthy
+man of business, hearing his voice, calls out from the
+dining-parlour,--'Come in, Mr. Smith:' and Mr. Smith, putting his hat at
+the feet of one of the hall chairs, walks timidly in, and being
+condescendingly desired to sit down, carefully tucks his legs under his
+chair, and sits at a considerable distance from the table while he drinks
+the glass of sherry which is poured out for him by the eldest boy, and
+after drinking which, he backs and slides out of the room, in a state of
+nervous agitation from which he does not perfectly recover, until he
+finds himself once more in the Islington-road.  Poor, harmless creatures
+such men are; contented but not happy; broken-spirited and humbled, they
+may feel no pain, but they never know pleasure.
+
+Compare these men with another class of beings who, like them, have
+neither friend nor companion, but whose position in society is the result
+of their own choice.  These are generally old fellows with white heads
+and red faces, addicted to port wine and Hessian boots, who from some
+cause, real or imaginary--generally the former, the excellent reason
+being that they are rich, and their relations poor--grow suspicious of
+everybody, and do the misanthropical in chambers, taking great delight in
+thinking themselves unhappy, and making everybody they come near,
+miserable.  You may see such men as these, anywhere; you will know them
+at coffee-houses by their discontented exclamations and the luxury of
+their dinners; at theatres, by their always sitting in the same place and
+looking with a jaundiced eye on all the young people near them; at
+church, by the pomposity with which they enter, and the loud tone in
+which they repeat the responses; at parties, by their getting cross at
+whist and hating music.  An old fellow of this kind will have his
+chambers splendidly furnished, and collect books, plate, and pictures
+about him in profusion; not so much for his own gratification, as to be
+superior to those who have the desire, but not the means, to compete with
+him.  He belongs to two or three clubs, and is envied, and flattered, and
+hated by the members of them all.  Sometimes he will be appealed to by a
+poor relation--a married nephew perhaps--for some little assistance: and
+then he will declaim with honest indignation on the improvidence of young
+married people, the worthlessness of a wife, the insolence of having a
+family, the atrocity of getting into debt with a hundred and twenty-five
+pounds a year, and other unpardonable crimes; winding up his exhortations
+with a complacent review of his own conduct, and a delicate allusion to
+parochial relief.  He dies, some day after dinner, of apoplexy, having
+bequeathed his property to a Public Society, and the Institution erects a
+tablet to his memory, expressive of their admiration of his Christian
+conduct in this world, and their comfortable conviction of his happiness
+in the next.
+
+But, next to our very particular friends, hackney-coachmen, cabmen and
+cads, whom we admire in proportion to the extent of their cool impudence
+and perfect self-possession, there is no class of people who amuse us
+more than London apprentices.  They are no longer an organised body,
+bound down by solemn compact to terrify his Majesty's subjects whenever
+it pleases them to take offence in their heads and staves in their hands.
+They are only bound, now, by indentures, and, as to their valour, it is
+easily restrained by the wholesome dread of the New Police, and a
+perspective view of a damp station-house, terminating in a police-office
+and a reprimand.  They are still, however, a peculiar class, and not the
+less pleasant for being inoffensive.  Can any one fail to have noticed
+them in the streets on Sunday?  And were there ever such harmless efforts
+at the grand and magnificent as the young fellows display!  We walked
+down the Strand, a Sunday or two ago, behind a little group; and they
+furnished food for our amusement the whole way.  They had come out of
+some part of the city; it was between three and four o'clock in the
+afternoon; and they were on their way to the Park.  There were four of
+them, all arm-in-arm, with white kid gloves like so many bridegrooms,
+light trousers of unprecedented patterns, and coats for which the English
+language has yet no name--a kind of cross between a great-coat and a
+surtout, with the collar of the one, the skirts of the other, and pockets
+peculiar to themselves.
+
+Each of the gentlemen carried a thick stick, with a large tassel at the
+top, which he occasionally twirled gracefully round; and the whole four,
+by way of looking easy and unconcerned, were walking with a paralytic
+swagger irresistibly ludicrous.  One of the party had a watch about the
+size and shape of a reasonable Ribstone pippin, jammed into his
+waistcoat-pocket, which he carefully compared with the clocks at St.
+Clement's and the New Church, the illuminated clock at Exeter 'Change,
+the clock of St. Martin's Church, and the clock of the Horse Guards.
+When they at last arrived in St. James's Park, the member of the party
+who had the best-made boots on, hired a second chair expressly for his
+feet, and flung himself on this two-pennyworth of sylvan luxury with an
+air which levelled all distinctions between Brookes's and Snooks's,
+Crockford's and Bagnigge Wells.
+
+We may smile at such people, but they can never excite our anger.  They
+are usually on the best terms with themselves, and it follows almost as a
+matter of course, in good humour with every one about them.  Besides,
+they are always the faint reflection of higher lights; and, if they do
+display a little occasional foolery in their own proper persons, it is
+surely more tolerable than precocious puppyism in the Quadrant, whiskered
+dandyism in Regent-street and Pall-mall, or gallantry in its dotage
+anywhere.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--A CHRISTMAS DINNER
+
+
+Christmas time!  That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast
+something like a jovial feeling is not roused--in whose mind some
+pleasant associations are not awakened--by the recurrence of Christmas.
+There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it
+used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope,
+or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the
+present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and
+straitened incomes--of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends,
+and of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune.
+Never heed such dismal reminiscences.  There are few men who have lived
+long enough in the world, who cannot call up such thoughts any day in the
+year.  Then do not select the merriest of the three hundred and
+sixty-five for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the
+blazing fire--fill the glass and send round the song--and if your room be
+smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with
+reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter,
+and empty it off-hand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you
+used to sing, and thank God it's no worse.  Look on the merry faces of
+your children (if you have any) as they sit round the fire.  One little
+seat may be empty; one slight form that gladdened the father's heart, and
+roused the mother's pride to look upon, may not be there.  Dwell not upon
+the past; think not that one short year ago, the fair child now resolving
+into dust, sat before you, with the bloom of health upon its cheek, and
+the gaiety of infancy in its joyous eye.  Reflect upon your present
+blessings--of which every man has many--not on your past misfortunes, of
+which all men have some.  Fill your glass again, with a merry face and
+contented heart.  Our life on it, but your Christmas shall be merry, and
+your new year a happy one!
+
+Who can be insensible to the outpourings of good feeling, and the honest
+interchange of affectionate attachment, which abound at this season of
+the year?  A Christmas family-party!  We know nothing in nature more
+delightful!  There seems a magic in the very name of Christmas.  Petty
+jealousies and discords are forgotten; social feelings are awakened, in
+bosoms to which they have long been strangers; father and son, or brother
+and sister, who have met and passed with averted gaze, or a look of cold
+recognition, for months before, proffer and return the cordial embrace,
+and bury their past animosities in their present happiness.  Kindly
+hearts that have yearned towards each other, but have been withheld by
+false notions of pride and self-dignity, are again reunited, and all is
+kindness and benevolence!  Would that Christmas lasted the whole year
+through (as it ought), and that the prejudices and passions which deform
+our better nature, were never called into action among those to whom they
+should ever be strangers!
+
+The Christmas family-party that we mean, is not a mere assemblage of
+relations, got up at a week or two's notice, originating this year,
+having no family precedent in the last, and not likely to be repeated in
+the next.  No.  It is an annual gathering of all the accessible members
+of the family, young or old, rich or poor; and all the children look
+forward to it, for two months beforehand, in a fever of anticipation.
+Formerly, it was held at grandpapa's; but grandpapa getting old, and
+grandmamma getting old too, and rather infirm, they have given up
+house-keeping, and domesticated themselves with uncle George; so, the
+party always takes place at uncle George's house, but grandmamma sends in
+most of the good things, and grandpapa always _will_ toddle down, all the
+way to Newgate-market, to buy the turkey, which he engages a porter to
+bring home behind him in triumph, always insisting on the man's being
+rewarded with a glass of spirits, over and above his hire, to drink 'a
+merry Christmas and a happy new year' to aunt George.  As to grandmamma,
+she is very secret and mysterious for two or three days beforehand, but
+not sufficiently so, to prevent rumours getting afloat that she has
+purchased a beautiful new cap with pink ribbons for each of the servants,
+together with sundry books, and pen-knives, and pencil-cases, for the
+younger branches; to say nothing of divers secret additions to the order
+originally given by aunt George at the pastry-cook's, such as another
+dozen of mince-pies for the dinner, and a large plum-cake for the
+children.
+
+On Christmas-eve, grandmamma is always in excellent spirits, and after
+employing all the children, during the day, in stoning the plums, and all
+that, insists, regularly every year, on uncle George coming down into the
+kitchen, taking off his coat, and stirring the pudding for half an hour
+or so, which uncle George good-humouredly does, to the vociferous delight
+of the children and servants.  The evening concludes with a glorious game
+of blind-man's-buff, in an early stage of which grandpapa takes great
+care to be caught, in order that he may have an opportunity of displaying
+his dexterity.
+
+On the following morning, the old couple, with as many of the children as
+the pew will hold, go to church in great state: leaving aunt George at
+home dusting decanters and filling casters, and uncle George carrying
+bottles into the dining-parlour, and calling for corkscrews, and getting
+into everybody's way.
+
+When the church-party return to lunch, grandpapa produces a small sprig
+of mistletoe from his pocket, and tempts the boys to kiss their little
+cousins under it--a proceeding which affords both the boys and the old
+gentleman unlimited satisfaction, but which rather outrages grandmamma's
+ideas of decorum, until grandpapa says, that when he was just thirteen
+years and three months old, _he_ kissed grandmamma under a mistletoe too,
+on which the children clap their hands, and laugh very heartily, as do
+aunt George and uncle George; and grandmamma looks pleased, and says,
+with a benevolent smile, that grandpapa was an impudent young dog, on
+which the children laugh very heartily again, and grandpapa more heartily
+than any of them.
+
+But all these diversions are nothing to the subsequent excitement when
+grandmamma in a high cap, and slate-coloured silk gown; and grandpapa
+with a beautifully plaited shirt-frill, and white neckerchief; seat
+themselves on one side of the drawing-room fire, with uncle George's
+children and little cousins innumerable, seated in the front, waiting the
+arrival of the expected visitors.  Suddenly a hackney-coach is heard to
+stop, and uncle George, who has been looking out of the window, exclaims
+'Here's Jane!' on which the children rush to the door, and helter-skelter
+down-stairs; and uncle Robert and aunt Jane, and the dear little baby,
+and the nurse, and the whole party, are ushered up-stairs amidst
+tumultuous shouts of 'Oh, my!' from the children, and frequently repeated
+warnings not to hurt baby from the nurse.  And grandpapa takes the child,
+and grandmamma kisses her daughter, and the confusion of this first entry
+has scarcely subsided, when some other aunts and uncles with more cousins
+arrive, and the grown-up cousins flirt with each other, and so do the
+little cousins too, for that matter, and nothing is to be heard but a
+confused din of talking, laughing, and merriment.
+
+A hesitating double knock at the street-door, heard during a momentary
+pause in the conversation, excites a general inquiry of 'Who's that?' and
+two or three children, who have been standing at the window, announce in
+a low voice, that it's 'poor aunt Margaret.'  Upon which, aunt George
+leaves the room to welcome the new-comer; and grandmamma draws herself
+up, rather stiff and stately; for Margaret married a poor man without her
+consent, and poverty not being a sufficiently weighty punishment for her
+offence, has been discarded by her friends, and debarred the society of
+her dearest relatives.  But Christmas has come round, and the unkind
+feelings that have struggled against better dispositions during the year,
+have melted away before its genial influence, like half-formed ice
+beneath the morning sun.  It is not difficult in a moment of angry
+feeling for a parent to denounce a disobedient child; but, to banish her
+at a period of general good-will and hilarity, from the hearth, round
+which she has sat on so many anniversaries of the same day, expanding by
+slow degrees from infancy to girlhood, and then bursting, almost
+imperceptibly, into a woman, is widely different.  The air of conscious
+rectitude, and cold forgiveness, which the old lady has assumed, sits ill
+upon her; and when the poor girl is led in by her sister, pale in looks
+and broken in hope--not from poverty, for that she could bear, but from
+the consciousness of undeserved neglect, and unmerited unkindness--it is
+easy to see how much of it is assumed.  A momentary pause succeeds; the
+girl breaks suddenly from her sister and throws herself, sobbing, on her
+mother's neck.  The father steps hastily forward, and takes her husband's
+hand.  Friends crowd round to offer their hearty congratulations, and
+happiness and harmony again prevail.
+
+As to the dinner, it's perfectly delightful--nothing goes wrong, and
+everybody is in the very best of spirits, and disposed to please and be
+pleased.  Grandpapa relates a circumstantial account of the purchase of
+the turkey, with a slight digression relative to the purchase of previous
+turkeys, on former Christmas-days, which grandmamma corroborates in the
+minutest particular.  Uncle George tells stories, and carves poultry, and
+takes wine, and jokes with the children at the side-table, and winks at
+the cousins that are making love, or being made love to, and exhilarates
+everybody with his good humour and hospitality; and when, at last, a
+stout servant staggers in with a gigantic pudding, with a sprig of holly
+in the top, there is such a laughing, and shouting, and clapping of
+little chubby hands, and kicking up of fat dumpy legs, as can only be
+equalled by the applause with which the astonishing feat of pouring
+lighted brandy into mince-pies, is received by the younger visitors.
+Then the dessert!--and the wine!--and the fun!  Such beautiful speeches,
+and _such_ songs, from aunt Margaret's husband, who turns out to be such
+a nice man, and _so_ attentive to grandmamma!  Even grandpapa not only
+sings his annual song with unprecedented vigour, but on being honoured
+with an unanimous _encore_, according to annual custom, actually comes
+out with a new one which nobody but grandmamma ever heard before; and a
+young scapegrace of a cousin, who has been in some disgrace with the old
+people, for certain heinous sins of omission and commission--neglecting
+to call, and persisting in drinking Burton Ale--astonishes everybody into
+convulsions of laughter by volunteering the most extraordinary comic
+songs that ever were heard.  And thus the evening passes, in a strain of
+rational good-will and cheerfulness, doing more to awaken the sympathies
+of every member of the party in behalf of his neighbour, and to
+perpetuate their good feeling during the ensuing year, than half the
+homilies that have ever been written, by half the Divines that have ever
+lived.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--THE NEW YEAR
+
+
+Next to Christmas-day, the most pleasant annual epoch in existence is the
+advent of the New Year.  There are a lachrymose set of people who usher
+in the New Year with watching and fasting, as if they were bound to
+attend as chief mourners at the obsequies of the old one.  Now, we cannot
+but think it a great deal more complimentary, both to the old year that
+has rolled away, and to the New Year that is just beginning to dawn upon
+us, to see the old fellow out, and the new one in, with gaiety and glee.
+
+There must have been some few occurrences in the past year to which we
+can look back, with a smile of cheerful recollection, if not with a
+feeling of heartfelt thankfulness.  And we are bound by every rule of
+justice and equity to give the New Year credit for being a good one,
+until he proves himself unworthy the confidence we repose in him.
+
+This is our view of the matter; and entertaining it, notwithstanding our
+respect for the old year, one of the few remaining moments of whose
+existence passes away with every word we write, here we are, seated by
+our fireside on this last night of the old year, one thousand eight
+hundred and thirty-six, penning this article with as jovial a face as if
+nothing extraordinary had happened, or was about to happen, to disturb
+our good humour.
+
+Hackney-coaches and carriages keep rattling up the street and down the
+street in rapid succession, conveying, doubtless, smartly-dressed
+coachfuls to crowded parties; loud and repeated double knocks at the
+house with green blinds, opposite, announce to the whole neighbourhood
+that there's one large party in the street at all events; and we saw
+through the window, and through the fog too, till it grew so thick that
+we rung for candles, and drew our curtains, pastry-cooks' men with green
+boxes on their heads, and rout-furniture-warehouse-carts, with cane seats
+and French lamps, hurrying to the numerous houses where an annual
+festival is held in honour of the occasion.
+
+We can fancy one of these parties, we think, as well as if we were duly
+dress-coated and pumped, and had just been announced at the drawing-room
+door.
+
+Take the house with the green blinds for instance.  We know it is a
+quadrille party, because we saw some men taking up the front drawing-room
+carpet while we sat at breakfast this morning, and if further evidence be
+required, and we must tell the truth, we just now saw one of the young
+ladies 'doing' another of the young ladies' hair, near one of the bedroom
+windows, in an unusual style of splendour, which nothing else but a
+quadrille party could possibly justify.
+
+The master of the house with the green blinds is in a public office; we
+know the fact by the cut of his coat, the tie of his neckcloth, and the
+self-satisfaction of his gait--the very green blinds themselves have a
+Somerset House air about them.
+
+Hark!--a cab!  That's a junior clerk in the same office; a tidy sort of
+young man, with a tendency to cold and corns, who comes in a pair of
+boots with black cloth fronts, and brings his shoes in his coat-pocket,
+which shoes he is at this very moment putting on in the hall.  Now he is
+announced by the man in the passage to another man in a blue coat, who is
+a disguised messenger from the office.
+
+The man on the first landing precedes him to the drawing-room door.  'Mr.
+Tupple!' shouts the messenger.  'How _are_ you, Tupple?' says the master
+of the house, advancing from the fire, before which he has been talking
+politics and airing himself.  'My dear, this is Mr. Tupple (a courteous
+salute from the lady of the house); Tupple, my eldest daughter; Julia, my
+dear, Mr. Tupple; Tupple, my other daughters; my son, sir;' Tupple rubs
+his hands very hard, and smiles as if it were all capital fun, and keeps
+constantly bowing and turning himself round, till the whole family have
+been introduced, when he glides into a chair at the corner of the sofa,
+and opens a miscellaneous conversation with the young ladies upon the
+weather, and the theatres, and the old year, and the last new murder, and
+the balloon, and the ladies' sleeves, and the festivities of the season,
+and a great many other topics of small talk.
+
+More double knocks! what an extensive party! what an incessant hum of
+conversation and general sipping of coffee!  We see Tupple now, in our
+mind's eye, in the height of his glory.  He has just handed that stout
+old lady's cup to the servant; and now, he dives among the crowd of young
+men by the door, to intercept the other servant, and secure the
+muffin-plate for the old lady's daughter, before he leaves the room; and
+now, as he passes the sofa on his way back, he bestows a glance of
+recognition and patronage upon the young ladies as condescending and
+familiar as if he had known them from infancy.
+
+Charming person Mr. Tupple--perfect ladies' man--such a delightful
+companion, too!  Laugh!--nobody ever understood papa's jokes half so well
+as Mr. Tupple, who laughs himself into convulsions at every fresh burst
+of facetiousness.  Most delightful partner! talks through the whole set!
+and although he does seem at first rather gay and frivolous, so romantic
+and with so _much_ feeling!  Quite a love.  No great favourite with the
+young men, certainly, who sneer at, and affect to despise him; but
+everybody knows that's only envy, and they needn't give themselves the
+trouble to depreciate his merits at any rate, for Ma says he shall be
+asked to every future dinner-party, if it's only to talk to people
+between the courses, and distract their attention when there's any
+unexpected delay in the kitchen.
+
+At supper, Mr. Tupple shows to still greater advantage than he has done
+throughout the evening, and when Pa requests every one to fill their
+glasses for the purpose of drinking happiness throughout the year, Mr.
+Tupple is _so_ droll: insisting on all the young ladies having their
+glasses filled, notwithstanding their repeated assurances that they never
+can, by any possibility, think of emptying them and subsequently begging
+permission to say a few words on the sentiment which has just been
+uttered by Pa--when he makes one of the most brilliant and poetical
+speeches that can possibly be imagined, about the old year and the new
+one.  After the toast has been drunk, and when the ladies have retired,
+Mr. Tupple requests that every gentleman will do him the favour of
+filling his glass, for he has a toast to propose: on which all the
+gentlemen cry 'Hear! hear!' and pass the decanters accordingly: and Mr.
+Tupple being informed by the master of the house that they are all
+charged, and waiting for his toast, rises, and begs to remind the
+gentlemen present, how much they have been delighted by the dazzling
+array of elegance and beauty which the drawing-room has exhibited that
+night, and how their senses have been charmed, and their hearts
+captivated, by the bewitching concentration of female loveliness which
+that very room has so recently displayed.  (Loud cries of 'Hear!')  Much
+as he (Tupple) would be disposed to deplore the absence of the ladies, on
+other grounds, he cannot but derive some consolation from the reflection
+that the very circumstance of their not being present, enables him to
+propose a toast, which he would have otherwise been prevented from
+giving--that toast he begs to say is--'The Ladies!'  (Great applause.)
+The Ladies! among whom the fascinating daughters of their excellent host,
+are alike conspicuous for their beauty, their accomplishments, and their
+elegance.  He begs them to drain a bumper to 'The Ladies, and a happy new
+year to them!'  (Prolonged approbation; above which the noise of the
+ladies dancing the Spanish dance among themselves, overhead, is
+distinctly audible.)
+
+The applause consequent on this toast, has scarcely subsided, when a
+young gentleman in a pink under-waistcoat, sitting towards the bottom of
+the table, is observed to grow very restless and fidgety, and to evince
+strong indications of some latent desire to give vent to his feelings in
+a speech, which the wary Tupple at once perceiving, determines to
+forestall by speaking himself.  He, therefore, rises again, with an air
+of solemn importance, and trusts he may be permitted to propose another
+toast (unqualified approbation, and Mr. Tupple proceeds).  He is sure
+they must all be deeply impressed with the hospitality--he may say the
+splendour--with which they have been that night received by their worthy
+host and hostess.  (Unbounded applause.)  Although this is the first
+occasion on which he has had the pleasure and delight of sitting at that
+board, he has known his friend Dobble long and intimately; he has been
+connected with him in business--he wishes everybody present knew Dobble
+as well as he does.  (A cough from the host.)  He (Tupple) can lay his
+hand upon his (Tupple's) heart, and declare his confident belief that a
+better man, a better husband, a better father, a better brother, a better
+son, a better relation in any relation of life, than Dobble, never
+existed.  (Loud cries of 'Hear!')  They have seen him to-night in the
+peaceful bosom of his family; they should see him in the morning, in the
+trying duties of his office.  Calm in the perusal of the morning papers,
+uncompromising in the signature of his name, dignified in his replies to
+the inquiries of stranger applicants, deferential in his behaviour to his
+superiors, majestic in his deportment to the messengers.  (Cheers.)  When
+he bears this merited testimony to the excellent qualities of his friend
+Dobble, what can he say in approaching such a subject as Mrs. Dobble?  Is
+it requisite for him to expatiate on the qualities of that amiable woman?
+No; he will spare his friend Dobble's feelings; he will spare the
+feelings of his friend--if he will allow him to have the honour of
+calling him so--Mr. Dobble, junior.  (Here Mr. Dobble, junior, who has
+been previously distending his mouth to a considerable width, by
+thrusting a particularly fine orange into that feature, suspends
+operations, and assumes a proper appearance of intense melancholy).  He
+will simply say--and he is quite certain it is a sentiment in which all
+who hear him will readily concur--that his friend Dobble is as superior
+to any man he ever knew, as Mrs. Dobble is far beyond any woman he ever
+saw (except her daughters); and he will conclude by proposing their
+worthy 'Host and Hostess, and may they live to enjoy many more new
+years!'
+
+The toast is drunk with acclamation; Dobble returns thanks, and the whole
+party rejoin the ladies in the drawing-room.  Young men who were too
+bashful to dance before supper, find tongues and partners; the musicians
+exhibit unequivocal symptoms of having drunk the new year in, while the
+company were out; and dancing is kept up, until far in the first morning
+of the new year.
+
+We have scarcely written the last word of the previous sentence, when the
+first stroke of twelve, peals from the neighbouring churches.  There
+certainly--we must confess it now--is something awful in the sound.
+Strictly speaking, it may not be more impressive now, than at any other
+time; for the hours steal as swiftly on, at other periods, and their
+flight is little heeded.  But, we measure man's life by years, and it is
+a solemn knell that warns us we have passed another of the landmarks
+which stands between us and the grave.  Disguise it as we may, the
+reflection will force itself on our minds, that when the next bell
+announces the arrival of a new year, we may be insensible alike of the
+timely warning we have so often neglected, and of all the warm feelings
+that glow within us now.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--MISS EVANS AND THE EAGLE
+
+
+Mr. Samuel Wilkins was a carpenter, a journeyman carpenter of small
+dimensions, decidedly below the middle size--bordering, perhaps, upon the
+dwarfish.  His face was round and shining, and his hair carefully twisted
+into the outer corner of each eye, till it formed a variety of that
+description of semi-curls, usually known as 'aggerawators.'  His earnings
+were all-sufficient for his wants, varying from eighteen shillings to one
+pound five, weekly--his manner undeniable--his sabbath waistcoats
+dazzling.  No wonder that, with these qualifications, Samuel Wilkins
+found favour in the eyes of the other sex: many women have been
+captivated by far less substantial qualifications.  But, Samuel was proof
+against their blandishments, until at length his eyes rested on those of
+a Being for whom, from that time forth, he felt fate had destined him.
+He came, and conquered--proposed, and was accepted--loved, and was
+beloved.  Mr. Wilkins 'kept company' with Jemima Evans.
+
+Miss Evans (or Ivins, to adopt the pronunciation most in vogue with her
+circle of acquaintance) had adopted in early life the useful pursuit of
+shoe-binding, to which she had afterwards superadded the occupation of a
+straw-bonnet maker.  Herself, her maternal parent, and two sisters,
+formed an harmonious quartett in the most secluded portion of
+Camden-town; and here it was that Mr. Wilkins presented himself, one
+Monday afternoon, in his best attire, with his face more shining and his
+waistcoat more bright than either had ever appeared before.  The family
+were just going to tea, and were _so_ glad to see him.  It was quite a
+little feast; two ounces of seven-and-sixpenny green, and a quarter of a
+pound of the best fresh; and Mr. Wilkins had brought a pint of shrimps,
+neatly folded up in a clean belcher, to give a zest to the meal, and
+propitiate Mrs. Ivins.  Jemima was 'cleaning herself' up-stairs; so Mr.
+Samuel Wilkins sat down and talked domestic economy with Mrs. Ivins,
+whilst the two youngest Miss Ivinses poked bits of lighted brown paper
+between the bars under the kettle, to make the water boil for tea.
+
+'I wos a thinking,' said Mr. Samuel Wilkins, during a pause in the
+conversation--'I wos a thinking of taking J'mima to the Eagle
+to-night.'--'O my!' exclaimed Mrs. Ivins.  'Lor! how nice!' said the
+youngest Miss Ivins.  'Well, I declare!' added the youngest Miss Ivins
+but one.  'Tell J'mima to put on her white muslin, Tilly,' screamed Mrs.
+Ivins, with motherly anxiety; and down came J'mima herself soon
+afterwards in a white muslin gown carefully hooked and eyed, a little red
+shawl, plentifully pinned, a white straw bonnet trimmed with red ribbons,
+a small necklace, a large pair of bracelets, Denmark satin shoes, and
+open-worked stockings; white cotton gloves on her fingers, and a cambric
+pocket-handkerchief, carefully folded up, in her hand--all quite genteel
+and ladylike.  And away went Miss J'mima Ivins and Mr. Samuel Wilkins,
+and a dress-cane, with a gilt knob at the top, to the admiration and envy
+of the street in general, and to the high gratification of Mrs. Ivins,
+and the two youngest Miss Ivinses in particular.  They had no sooner
+turned into the Pancras-road, than who should Miss J'mima Ivins stumble
+upon, by the most fortunate accident in the world, but a young lady as
+she knew, with _her_ young man!--And it is so strange how things do turn
+out sometimes--they were actually going to the Eagle too.  So Mr. Samuel
+Wilkins was introduced to Miss J'mima Ivins's friend's young man, and
+they all walked on together, talking, and laughing, and joking away like
+anything; and when they got as far as Pentonville, Miss Ivins's friend's
+young man _would_ have the ladies go into the Crown, to taste some shrub,
+which, after a great blushing and giggling, and hiding of faces in
+elaborate pocket-handkerchiefs, they consented to do.  Having tasted it
+once, they were easily prevailed upon to taste it again; and they sat out
+in the garden tasting shrub, and looking at the Busses alternately, till
+it was just the proper time to go to the Eagle; and then they resumed
+their journey, and walked very fast, for fear they should lose the
+beginning of the concert in the Rotunda.
+
+'How ev'nly!' said Miss J'mima Ivins, and Miss J'mima Ivins's friend,
+both at once, when they had passed the gate and were fairly inside the
+gardens.  There were the walks, beautifully gravelled and planted--and
+the refreshment-boxes, painted and ornamented like so many
+snuff-boxes--and the variegated lamps shedding their rich light upon the
+company's heads--and the place for dancing ready chalked for the
+company's feet--and a Moorish band playing at one end of the gardens--and
+an opposition military band playing away at the other.  Then, the waiters
+were rushing to and fro with glasses of negus, and glasses of
+brandy-and-water, and bottles of ale, and bottles of stout; and
+ginger-beer was going off in one place, and practical jokes were going on
+in another; and people were crowding to the door of the Rotunda; and in
+short the whole scene was, as Miss J'mima Ivins, inspired by the novelty,
+or the shrub, or both, observed--'one of dazzling excitement.'  As to the
+concert-room, never was anything half so splendid.  There was an
+orchestra for the singers, all paint, gilding, and plate-glass; and such
+an organ!  Miss J'mima Ivins's friend's young man whispered it had cost
+'four hundred pound,' which Mr. Samuel Wilkins said was 'not dear
+neither;' an opinion in which the ladies perfectly coincided.  The
+audience were seated on elevated benches round the room, and crowded into
+every part of it; and everybody was eating and drinking as comfortably as
+possible.  Just before the concert commenced, Mr. Samuel Wilkins ordered
+two glasses of rum-and-water 'warm with--' and two slices of lemon, for
+himself and the other young man, together with 'a pint o' sherry wine for
+the ladies, and some sweet carraway-seed biscuits;' and they would have
+been quite comfortable and happy, only a strange gentleman with large
+whiskers _would_ stare at Miss J'mima Ivins, and another gentleman in a
+plaid waistcoat _would_ wink at Miss J'mima Ivins's friend; on which Miss
+Jemima Ivins's friend's young man exhibited symptoms of boiling over, and
+began to mutter about 'people's imperence,' and 'swells out o' luck;' and
+to intimate, in oblique terms, a vague intention of knocking somebody's
+head off; which he was only prevented from announcing more emphatically,
+by both Miss J'mima Ivins and her friend threatening to faint away on the
+spot if he said another word.
+
+The concert commenced--overture on the organ.  'How solemn!' exclaimed
+Miss J'mima Ivins, glancing, perhaps unconsciously, at the gentleman with
+the whiskers.  Mr. Samuel Wilkins, who had been muttering apart for some
+time past, as if he were holding a confidential conversation with the
+gilt knob of the dress-cane, breathed hard-breathing vengeance,
+perhaps,--but said nothing.  'The soldier tired,' Miss Somebody in white
+satin.  'Ancore!' cried Miss J'mima Ivins's friend.  'Ancore!' shouted
+the gentleman in the plaid waistcoat immediately, hammering the table
+with a stout-bottle.  Miss J'mima Ivins's friend's young man eyed the man
+behind the waistcoat from head to foot, and cast a look of interrogative
+contempt towards Mr. Samuel Wilkins.  Comic song, accompanied on the
+organ.  Miss J'mima Ivins was convulsed with laughter--so was the man
+with the whiskers.  Everything the ladies did, the plaid waistcoat and
+whiskers did, by way of expressing unity of sentiment and congeniality of
+soul; and Miss J'mima Ivins, and Miss J'mima Ivins's friend, grew lively
+and talkative, as Mr. Samuel Wilkins, and Miss J'mima Ivins's friend's
+young man, grew morose and surly in inverse proportion.
+
+Now, if the matter had ended here, the little party might soon have
+recovered their former equanimity; but Mr. Samuel Wilkins and his friend
+began to throw looks of defiance upon the waistcoat and whiskers.  And
+the waistcoat and whiskers, by way of intimating the slight degree in
+which they were affected by the looks aforesaid, bestowed glances of
+increased admiration upon Miss J'mima Ivins and friend.  The concert and
+vaudeville concluded, they promenaded the gardens.  The waistcoat and
+whiskers did the same; and made divers remarks complimentary to the
+ankles of Miss J'mima Ivins and friend, in an audible tone.  At length,
+not satisfied with these numerous atrocities, they actually came up and
+asked Miss J'mima Ivins, and Miss J'mima Ivins's friend, to dance,
+without taking no more notice of Mr. Samuel Wilkins, and Miss J'mima
+Ivins's friend's young man, than if they was nobody!
+
+'What do you mean by that, scoundrel!' exclaimed Mr. Samuel Wilkins,
+grasping the gilt-knobbed dress-cane firmly in his right hand.  'What's
+the matter with _you_, you little humbug?' replied the whiskers.  'How
+dare you insult me and my friend?' inquired the friend's young man.  'You
+and your friend be hanged!' responded the waistcoat.  'Take that,'
+exclaimed Mr. Samuel Wilkins.  The ferrule of the gilt-knobbed dress-cane
+was visible for an instant, and then the light of the variegated lamps
+shone brightly upon it as it whirled into the air, cane and all.  'Give
+it him,' said the waistcoat.  'Horficer!' screamed the ladies.  Miss
+J'mima Ivins's beau, and the friend's young man, lay gasping on the
+gravel, and the waistcoat and whiskers were seen no more.
+
+Miss J'mima Ivins and friend being conscious that the affray was in no
+slight degree attributable to themselves, of course went into hysterics
+forthwith; declared themselves the most injured of women; exclaimed, in
+incoherent ravings, that they had been suspected--wrongfully
+suspected--oh! that they should ever have lived to see the day--and so
+forth; suffered a relapse every time they opened their eyes and saw their
+unfortunate little admirers; and were carried to their respective abodes
+in a hackney-coach, and a state of insensibility, compounded of shrub,
+sherry, and excitement.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--THE PARLOUR ORATOR
+
+
+We had been lounging one evening, down Oxford-street, Holborn, Cheapside,
+Coleman-street, Finsbury-square, and so on, with the intention of
+returning westward, by Pentonville and the New-road, when we began to
+feel rather thirsty, and disposed to rest for five or ten minutes.  So,
+we turned back towards an old, quiet, decent public-house, which we
+remembered to have passed but a moment before (it was not far from the
+City-road), for the purpose of solacing ourself with a glass of ale.  The
+house was none of your stuccoed, French-polished, illuminated palaces,
+but a modest public-house of the old school, with a little old bar, and a
+little old landlord, who, with a wife and daughter of the same pattern,
+was comfortably seated in the bar aforesaid--a snug little room with a
+cheerful fire, protected by a large screen: from behind which the young
+lady emerged on our representing our inclination for a glass of ale.
+
+'Won't you walk into the parlour, sir?' said the young lady, in seductive
+tones.
+
+'You had better walk into the parlour, sir,' said the little old
+landlord, throwing his chair back, and looking round one side of the
+screen, to survey our appearance.
+
+'You had much better step into the parlour, sir,' said the little old
+lady, popping out her head, on the other side of the screen.
+
+We cast a slight glance around, as if to express our ignorance of the
+locality so much recommended.  The little old landlord observed it;
+bustled out of the small door of the small bar; and forthwith ushered us
+into the parlour itself.
+
+It was an ancient, dark-looking room, with oaken wainscoting, a sanded
+floor, and a high mantel-piece.  The walls were ornamented with three or
+four old coloured prints in black frames, each print representing a naval
+engagement, with a couple of men-of-war banging away at each other most
+vigorously, while another vessel or two were blowing up in the distance,
+and the foreground presented a miscellaneous collection of broken masts
+and blue legs sticking up out of the water.  Depending from the ceiling
+in the centre of the room, were a gas-light and bell-pull; on each side
+were three or four long narrow tables, behind which was a thickly-planted
+row of those slippery, shiny-looking wooden chairs, peculiar to
+hostelries of this description.  The monotonous appearance of the sanded
+boards was relieved by an occasional spittoon; and a triangular pile of
+those useful articles adorned the two upper corners of the apartment.
+
+At the furthest table, nearest the fire, with his face towards the door
+at the bottom of the room, sat a stoutish man of about forty, whose
+short, stiff, black hair curled closely round a broad high forehead, and
+a face to which something besides water and exercise had communicated a
+rather inflamed appearance.  He was smoking a cigar, with his eyes fixed
+on the ceiling, and had that confident oracular air which marked him as
+the leading politician, general authority, and universal
+anecdote-relater, of the place.  He had evidently just delivered himself
+of something very weighty; for the remainder of the company were puffing
+at their respective pipes and cigars in a kind of solemn abstraction, as
+if quite overwhelmed with the magnitude of the subject recently under
+discussion.
+
+On his right hand sat an elderly gentleman with a white head, and
+broad-brimmed brown hat; on his left, a sharp-nosed, light-haired man in
+a brown surtout reaching nearly to his heels, who took a whiff at his
+pipe, and an admiring glance at the red-faced man, alternately.
+
+'Very extraordinary!' said the light-haired man after a pause of five
+minutes.  A murmur of assent ran through the company.
+
+'Not at all extraordinary--not at all,' said the red-faced man, awakening
+suddenly from his reverie, and turning upon the light-haired man, the
+moment he had spoken.
+
+'Why should it be extraordinary?--why is it extraordinary?--prove it to
+be extraordinary!'
+
+'Oh, if you come to that--' said the light-haired man, meekly.
+
+'Come to that!' ejaculated the man with the red face; 'but we _must_ come
+to that.  We stand, in these times, upon a calm elevation of intellectual
+attainment, and not in the dark recess of mental deprivation.  Proof, is
+what I require--proof, and not assertions, in these stirring times.
+Every gen'lem'n that knows me, knows what was the nature and effect of my
+observations, when it was in the contemplation of the Old-street Suburban
+Representative Discovery Society, to recommend a candidate for that place
+in Cornwall there--I forget the name of it.  "Mr. Snobee," said Mr.
+Wilson, "is a fit and proper person to represent the borough in
+Parliament."  "Prove it," says I.  "He is a friend to Reform," says Mr.
+Wilson.  "Prove it," says I.  "The abolitionist of the national debt, the
+unflinching opponent of pensions, the uncompromising advocate of the
+negro, the reducer of sinecures and the duration of Parliaments; the
+extender of nothing but the suffrages of the people," says Mr. Wilson.
+"Prove it," says I.  "His acts prove it," says he.  "Prove _them_," says
+I.
+
+'And he could not prove them,' said the red-faced man, looking round
+triumphantly; 'and the borough didn't have him; and if you carried this
+principle to the full extent, you'd have no debt, no pensions, no
+sinecures, no negroes, no nothing.  And then, standing upon an elevation
+of intellectual attainment, and having reached the summit of popular
+prosperity, you might bid defiance to the nations of the earth, and erect
+yourselves in the proud confidence of wisdom and superiority.  This is my
+argument--this always has been my argument--and if I was a Member of the
+House of Commons to-morrow, I'd make 'em shake in their shoes with it.
+And the red-faced man, having struck the table very hard with his
+clenched fist, to add weight to the declaration, smoked away like a
+brewery.
+
+'Well!' said the sharp-nosed man, in a very slow and soft voice,
+addressing the company in general, 'I always do say, that of all the
+gentlemen I have the pleasure of meeting in this room, there is not one
+whose conversation I like to hear so much as Mr. Rogers's, or who is such
+improving company.'
+
+'Improving company!' said Mr. Rogers, for that, it seemed, was the name
+of the red-faced man.  'You may say I am improving company, for I've
+improved you all to some purpose; though as to my conversation being as
+my friend Mr. Ellis here describes it, that is not for me to say anything
+about.  You, gentlemen, are the best judges on that point; but this I
+will say, when I came into this parish, and first used this room, ten
+years ago, I don't believe there was one man in it, who knew he was a
+slave--and now you all know it, and writhe under it.  Inscribe that upon
+my tomb, and I am satisfied.'
+
+'Why, as to inscribing it on your tomb,' said a little greengrocer with a
+chubby face, 'of course you can have anything chalked up, as you likes to
+pay for, so far as it relates to yourself and your affairs; but, when you
+come to talk about slaves, and that there abuse, you'd better keep it in
+the family, 'cos I for one don't like to be called them names, night
+after night.'
+
+'You _are_ a slave,' said the red-faced man, 'and the most pitiable of
+all slaves.'
+
+'Werry hard if I am,' interrupted the greengrocer, 'for I got no good out
+of the twenty million that was paid for 'mancipation, anyhow.'
+
+'A willing slave,' ejaculated the red-faced man, getting more red with
+eloquence, and contradiction--'resigning the dearest birthright of your
+children--neglecting the sacred call of Liberty--who, standing
+imploringly before you, appeals to the warmest feelings of your heart,
+and points to your helpless infants, but in vain.'
+
+'Prove it,' said the greengrocer.
+
+'Prove it!' sneered the man with the red face.  'What! bending beneath
+the yoke of an insolent and factious oligarchy; bowed down by the
+domination of cruel laws; groaning beneath tyranny and oppression on
+every hand, at every side, and in every corner.  Prove it!--'  The
+red-faced man abruptly broke off, sneered melo-dramatically, and buried
+his countenance and his indignation together, in a quart pot.
+
+'Ah, to be sure, Mr. Rogers,' said a stout broker in a large waistcoat,
+who had kept his eyes fixed on this luminary all the time he was
+speaking.  'Ah, to be sure,' said the broker with a sigh, 'that's the
+point.'
+
+'Of course, of course,' said divers members of the company, who
+understood almost as much about the matter as the broker himself.
+
+'You had better let him alone, Tommy,' said the broker, by way of advice
+to the little greengrocer; 'he can tell what's o'clock by an eight-day,
+without looking at the minute hand, he can.  Try it on, on some other
+suit; it won't do with him, Tommy.'
+
+'What is a man?' continued the red-faced specimen of the species, jerking
+his hat indignantly from its peg on the wall.  'What is an Englishman?
+Is he to be trampled upon by every oppressor?  Is he to be knocked down
+at everybody's bidding?  What's freedom?  Not a standing army.  What's a
+standing army?  Not freedom.  What's general happiness?  Not universal
+misery.  Liberty ain't the window-tax, is it?  The Lords ain't the
+Commons, are they?'  And the red-faced man, gradually bursting into a
+radiating sentence, in which such adjectives as 'dastardly,'
+'oppressive,' 'violent,' and 'sanguinary,' formed the most conspicuous
+words, knocked his hat indignantly over his eyes, left the room, and
+slammed the door after him.
+
+'Wonderful man!' said he of the sharp nose.
+
+'Splendid speaker!' added the broker.
+
+'Great power!' said everybody but the greengrocer.  And as they said it,
+the whole party shook their heads mysteriously, and one by one retired,
+leaving us alone in the old parlour.
+
+If we had followed the established precedent in all such instances, we
+should have fallen into a fit of musing, without delay.  The ancient
+appearance of the room--the old panelling of the wall--the chimney
+blackened with smoke and age--would have carried us back a hundred years
+at least, and we should have gone dreaming on, until the pewter-pot on
+the table, or the little beer-chiller on the fire, had started into life,
+and addressed to us a long story of days gone by.  But, by some means or
+other, we were not in a romantic humour; and although we tried very hard
+to invest the furniture with vitality, it remained perfectly unmoved,
+obstinate, and sullen.  Being thus reduced to the unpleasant necessity of
+musing about ordinary matters, our thoughts reverted to the red-faced
+man, and his oratorical display.
+
+A numerous race are these red-faced men; there is not a parlour, or
+club-room, or benefit society, or humble party of any kind, without its
+red-faced man.  Weak-pated dolts they are, and a great deal of mischief
+they do to their cause, however good.  So, just to hold a pattern one up,
+to know the others by, we took his likeness at once, and put him in here.
+And that is the reason why we have written this paper.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--THE HOSPITAL PATIENT
+
+
+In our rambles through the streets of London after evening has set in, we
+often pause beneath the windows of some public hospital, and picture to
+ourself the gloomy and mournful scenes that are passing within.  The
+sudden moving of a taper as its feeble ray shoots from window to window,
+until its light gradually disappears, as if it were carried farther back
+into the room to the bedside of some suffering patient, is enough to
+awaken a whole crowd of reflections; the mere glimmering of the
+low-burning lamps, which, when all other habitations are wrapped in
+darkness and slumber, denote the chamber where so many forms are writhing
+with pain, or wasting with disease, is sufficient to check the most
+boisterous merriment.
+
+Who can tell the anguish of those weary hours, when the only sound the
+sick man hears, is the disjointed wanderings of some feverish slumberer
+near him, the low moan of pain, or perhaps the muttered, long-forgotten
+prayer of a dying man?  Who, but they who have felt it, can imagine the
+sense of loneliness and desolation which must be the portion of those who
+in the hour of dangerous illness are left to be tended by strangers; for
+what hands, be they ever so gentle, can wipe the clammy brow, or smooth
+the restless bed, like those of mother, wife, or child?
+
+Impressed with these thoughts, we have turned away, through the
+nearly-deserted streets; and the sight of the few miserable creatures
+still hovering about them, has not tended to lessen the pain which such
+meditations awaken.  The hospital is a refuge and resting-place for
+hundreds, who but for such institutions must die in the streets and
+doorways; but what can be the feelings of some outcasts when they are
+stretched on the bed of sickness with scarcely a hope of recovery?  The
+wretched woman who lingers about the pavement, hours after midnight, and
+the miserable shadow of a man--the ghastly remnant that want and
+drunkenness have left--which crouches beneath a window-ledge, to sleep
+where there is some shelter from the rain, have little to bind them to
+life, but what have they to look back upon, in death?  What are the
+unwonted comforts of a roof and a bed, to them, when the recollections of
+a whole life of debasement stalk before them; when repentance seems a
+mockery, and sorrow comes too late?
+
+About a twelvemonth ago, as we were strolling through Covent-garden (we
+had been thinking about these things over-night), we were attracted by
+the very prepossessing appearance of a pickpocket, who having declined to
+take the trouble of walking to the Police-office, on the ground that he
+hadn't the slightest wish to go there at all, was being conveyed thither
+in a wheelbarrow, to the huge delight of a crowd.
+
+Somehow, we never can resist joining a crowd, so we turned back with the
+mob, and entered the office, in company with our friend the pickpocket, a
+couple of policemen, and as many dirty-faced spectators as could squeeze
+their way in.
+
+There was a powerful, ill-looking young fellow at the bar, who was
+undergoing an examination, on the very common charge of having, on the
+previous night, ill-treated a woman, with whom he lived in some court
+hard by.  Several witnesses bore testimony to acts of the grossest
+brutality; and a certificate was read from the house-surgeon of a
+neighbouring hospital, describing the nature of the injuries the woman
+had received, and intimating that her recovery was extremely doubtful.
+
+Some question appeared to have been raised about the identity of the
+prisoner; for when it was agreed that the two magistrates should visit
+the hospital at eight o'clock that evening, to take her deposition, it
+was settled that the man should be taken there also.  He turned pale at
+this, and we saw him clench the bar very hard when the order was given.
+He was removed directly afterwards, and he spoke not a word.
+
+We felt an irrepressible curiosity to witness this interview, although it
+is hard to tell why, at this instant, for we knew it must be a painful
+one.  It was no very difficult matter for us to gain permission, and we
+obtained it.
+
+The prisoner, and the officer who had him in custody, were already at the
+hospital when we reached it, and waiting the arrival of the magistrates
+in a small room below stairs.  The man was handcuffed, and his hat was
+pulled forward over his eyes.  It was easy to see, though, by the
+whiteness of his countenance, and the constant twitching of the muscles
+of his face, that he dreaded what was to come.  After a short interval,
+the magistrates and clerk were bowed in by the house-surgeon and a couple
+of young men who smelt very strong of tobacco-smoke--they were introduced
+as 'dressers'--and after one magistrate had complained bitterly of the
+cold, and the other of the absence of any news in the evening paper, it
+was announced that the patient was prepared; and we were conducted to the
+'casualty ward' in which she was lying.
+
+The dim light which burnt in the spacious room, increased rather than
+diminished the ghastly appearance of the hapless creatures in the beds,
+which were ranged in two long rows on either side.  In one bed, lay a
+child enveloped in bandages, with its body half-consumed by fire; in
+another, a female, rendered hideous by some dreadful accident, was wildly
+beating her clenched fists on the coverlet, in pain; on a third, there
+lay stretched a young girl, apparently in the heavy stupor often the
+immediate precursor of death: her face was stained with blood, and her
+breast and arms were bound up in folds of linen.  Two or three of the
+beds were empty, and their recent occupants were sitting beside them, but
+with faces so wan, and eyes so bright and glassy, that it was fearful to
+meet their gaze.  On every face was stamped the expression of anguish and
+suffering.
+
+The object of the visit was lying at the upper end of the room.  She was
+a fine young woman of about two or three and twenty.  Her long black
+hair, which had been hastily cut from near the wounds on her head,
+streamed over the pillow in jagged and matted locks.  Her face bore deep
+marks of the ill-usage she had received: her hand was pressed upon her
+side, as if her chief pain were there; her breathing was short and heavy;
+and it was plain to see that she was dying fast.  She murmured a few
+words in reply to the magistrate's inquiry whether she was in great pain;
+and, having been raised on the pillow by the nurse, looked vacantly upon
+the strange countenances that surrounded her bed.  The magistrate nodded
+to the officer, to bring the man forward.  He did so, and stationed him
+at the bedside.  The girl looked on with a wild and troubled expression
+of face; but her sight was dim, and she did not know him.
+
+'Take off his hat,' said the magistrate.  The officer did as he was
+desired, and the man's features were disclosed.
+
+The girl started up, with an energy quite preternatural; the fire gleamed
+in her heavy eyes, and the blood rushed to her pale and sunken cheeks.
+It was a convulsive effort.  She fell back upon her pillow, and covering
+her scarred and bruised face with her hands, burst into tears.  The man
+cast an anxious look towards her, but otherwise appeared wholly unmoved.
+After a brief pause the nature of the errand was explained, and the oath
+tendered.
+
+'Oh, no, gentlemen,' said the girl, raising herself once more, and
+folding her hands together; 'no, gentlemen, for God's sake!  I did it
+myself--it was nobody's fault--it was an accident.  He didn't hurt me; he
+wouldn't for all the world.  Jack, dear Jack, you know you wouldn't!'
+
+Her sight was fast failing her, and her hand groped over the bedclothes
+in search of his.  Brute as the man was, he was not prepared for this.
+He turned his face from the bed, and sobbed.  The girl's colour changed,
+and her breathing grew more difficult.  She was evidently dying.
+
+'We respect the feelings which prompt you to this,' said the gentleman
+who had spoken first, 'but let me warn you, not to persist in what you
+know to be untrue, until it is too late.  It cannot save him.'
+
+'Jack,' murmured the girl, laying her hand upon his arm, 'they shall not
+persuade me to swear your life away.  He didn't do it, gentlemen.  He
+never hurt me.'  She grasped his arm tightly, and added, in a broken
+whisper, 'I hope God Almighty will forgive me all the wrong I have done,
+and the life I have led.  God bless you, Jack.  Some kind gentleman take
+my love to my poor old father.  Five years ago, he said he wished I had
+died a child.  Oh, I wish I had!  I wish I had!'
+
+The nurse bent over the girl for a few seconds, and then drew the sheet
+over her face.  It covered a corpse.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--THE MISPLACED ATTACHMENT OF MR. JOHN DOUNCE
+
+
+If we had to make a classification of society, there is a particular kind
+of men whom we should immediately set down under the head of 'Old Boys;'
+and a column of most extensive dimensions the old boys would require.  To
+what precise causes the rapid advance of old-boy population is to be
+traced, we are unable to determine.  It would be an interesting and
+curious speculation, but, as we have not sufficient space to devote to it
+here, we simply state the fact that the numbers of the old boys have been
+gradually augmenting within the last few years, and that they are at this
+moment alarmingly on the increase.
+
+Upon a general review of the subject, and without considering it minutely
+in detail, we should be disposed to subdivide the old boys into two
+distinct classes--the gay old boys, and the steady old boys.  The gay old
+boys, are paunchy old men in the disguise of young ones, who frequent the
+Quadrant and Regent-street in the day-time: the theatres (especially
+theatres under lady management) at night; and who assume all the
+foppishness and levity of boys, without the excuse of youth or
+inexperience.  The steady old boys are certain stout old gentlemen of
+clean appearance, who are always to be seen in the same taverns, at the
+same hours every evening, smoking and drinking in the same company.
+
+There was once a fine collection of old boys to be seen round the
+circular table at Offley's every night, between the hours of half-past
+eight and half-past eleven.  We have lost sight of them for some time.
+There were, and may be still, for aught we know, two splendid specimens
+in full blossom at the Rainbow Tavern in Fleet-street, who always used to
+sit in the box nearest the fireplace, and smoked long cherry-stick pipes
+which went under the table, with the bowls resting on the floor.  Grand
+old boys they were--fat, red-faced, white-headed old fellows--always
+there--one on one side the table, and the other opposite--puffing and
+drinking away in great state.  Everybody knew them, and it was supposed
+by some people that they were both immortal.
+
+Mr. John Dounce was an old boy of the latter class (we don't mean
+immortal, but steady), a retired glove and braces maker, a widower,
+resident with three daughters--all grown up, and all unmarried--in
+Cursitor-street, Chancery-lane.  He was a short, round, large-faced,
+tubbish sort of man, with a broad-brimmed hat, and a square coat; and had
+that grave, but confident, kind of roll, peculiar to old boys in general.
+Regular as clockwork--breakfast at nine--dress and tittivate a
+little--down to the Sir Somebody's Head--a glass of ale and the
+paper--come back again, and take daughters out for a walk--dinner at
+three--glass of grog and pipe--nap--tea--little walk--Sir Somebody's Head
+again--capital house--delightful evenings.  There were Mr. Harris, the
+law-stationer, and Mr. Jennings, the robe-maker (two jolly young fellows
+like himself), and Jones, the barrister's clerk--rum fellow that
+Jones--capital company--full of anecdote!--and there they sat every night
+till just ten minutes before twelve, drinking their brandy-and-water, and
+smoking their pipes, and telling stories, and enjoying themselves with a
+kind of solemn joviality particularly edifying.
+
+Sometimes Jones would propose a half-price visit to Drury Lane or Covent
+Garden, to see two acts of a five-act play, and a new farce, perhaps, or
+a ballet, on which occasions the whole four of them went together: none
+of your hurrying and nonsense, but having their brandy-and-water first,
+comfortably, and ordering a steak and some oysters for their supper
+against they came back, and then walking coolly into the pit, when the
+'rush' had gone in, as all sensible people do, and did when Mr. Dounce
+was a young man, except when the celebrated Master Betty was at the
+height of his popularity, and then, sir,--then--Mr. Dounce perfectly well
+remembered getting a holiday from business; and going to the pit doors at
+eleven o'clock in the forenoon, and waiting there, till six in the
+afternoon, with some sandwiches in a pocket-handkerchief and some wine in
+a phial; and fainting after all, with the heat and fatigue, before the
+play began; in which situation he was lifted out of the pit, into one of
+the dress boxes, sir, by five of the finest women of that day, sir, who
+compassionated his situation and administered restoratives, and sent a
+black servant, six foot high, in blue and silver livery, next morning
+with their compliments, and to know how he found himself, sir--by G-!
+Between the acts Mr. Dounce and Mr. Harris, and Mr. Jennings, used to
+stand up, and look round the house, and Jones--knowing fellow that
+Jones--knew everybody--pointed out the fashionable and celebrated Lady
+So-and-So in the boxes, at the mention of whose name Mr. Dounce, after
+brushing up his hair, and adjusting his neckerchief, would inspect the
+aforesaid Lady So-and-So through an immense glass, and remark, either,
+that she was a 'fine woman--very fine woman, indeed,' or that 'there
+might be a little more of her, eh, Jones?'  Just as the case might happen
+to be.  When the dancing began, John Dounce and the other old boys were
+particularly anxious to see what was going forward on the stage, and
+Jones--wicked dog that Jones--whispered little critical remarks into the
+ears of John Dounce, which John Dounce retailed to Mr. Harris and Mr.
+Harris to Mr. Jennings; and then they all four laughed, until the tears
+ran down out of their eyes.
+
+When the curtain fell, they walked back together, two and two, to the
+steaks and oysters; and when they came to the second glass of
+brandy-and-water, Jones--hoaxing scamp, that Jones--used to recount how
+he had observed a lady in white feathers, in one of the pit boxes, gazing
+intently on Mr. Dounce all the evening, and how he had caught Mr. Dounce,
+whenever he thought no one was looking at him, bestowing ardent looks of
+intense devotion on the lady in return; on which Mr. Harris and Mr.
+Jennings used to laugh very heartily, and John Dounce more heartily than
+either of them, acknowledging, however, that the time _had_ been when he
+_might_ have done such things; upon which Mr. Jones used to poke him in
+the ribs, and tell him he had been a sad dog in his time, which John
+Dounce with chuckles confessed.  And after Mr. Harris and Mr. Jennings
+had preferred their claims to the character of having been sad dogs too,
+they separated harmoniously, and trotted home.
+
+The decrees of Fate, and the means by which they are brought about, are
+mysterious and inscrutable.  John Dounce had led this life for twenty
+years and upwards, without wish for change, or care for variety, when his
+whole social system was suddenly upset and turned completely
+topsy-turvy--not by an earthquake, or some other dreadful convulsion of
+nature, as the reader would be inclined to suppose, but by the simple
+agency of an oyster; and thus it happened.
+
+Mr. John Dounce was returning one night from the Sir Somebody's Head, to
+his residence in Cursitor-street--not tipsy, but rather excited, for it
+was Mr. Jennings's birthday, and they had had a brace of partridges for
+supper, and a brace of extra glasses afterwards, and Jones had been more
+than ordinarily amusing--when his eyes rested on a newly-opened
+oyster-shop, on a magnificent scale, with natives laid, one deep, in
+circular marble basins in the windows, together with little round barrels
+of oysters directed to Lords and Baronets, and Colonels and Captains, in
+every part of the habitable globe.
+
+Behind the natives were the barrels, and behind the barrels was a young
+lady of about five-and-twenty, all in blue, and all alone--splendid
+creature, charming face and lovely figure!  It is difficult to say
+whether Mr. John Dounce's red countenance, illuminated as it was by the
+flickering gas-light in the window before which he paused, excited the
+lady's risibility, or whether a natural exuberance of animal spirits
+proved too much for that staidness of demeanour which the forms of
+society rather dictatorially prescribe.  But certain it is, that the lady
+smiled; then put her finger upon her lip, with a striking recollection of
+what was due to herself; and finally retired, in oyster-like bashfulness,
+to the very back of the counter.  The sad-dog sort of feeling came
+strongly upon John Dounce: he lingered--the lady in blue made no sign.
+He coughed--still she came not.  He entered the shop.
+
+'Can you open me an oyster, my dear?' said Mr. John Dounce.
+
+'Dare say I can, sir,' replied the lady in blue, with playfulness.  And
+Mr. John Dounce eat one oyster, and then looked at the young lady, and
+then eat another, and then squeezed the young lady's hand as she was
+opening the third, and so forth, until he had devoured a dozen of those
+at eightpence in less than no time.
+
+'Can you open me half-a-dozen more, my dear?' inquired Mr. John Dounce.
+
+'I'll see what I can do for you, sir,' replied the young lady in blue,
+even more bewitchingly than before; and Mr. John Dounce eat half-a-dozen
+more of those at eightpence.
+
+'You couldn't manage to get me a glass of brandy-and-water, my dear, I
+suppose?' said Mr. John Dounce, when he had finished the oysters: in a
+tone which clearly implied his supposition that she could.
+
+'I'll see, sir,' said the young lady: and away she ran out of the shop,
+and down the street, her long auburn ringlets shaking in the wind in the
+most enchanting manner; and back she came again, tripping over the
+coal-cellar lids like a whipping-top, with a tumbler of brandy-and-water,
+which Mr. John Dounce insisted on her taking a share of, as it was
+regular ladies' grog--hot, strong, sweet, and plenty of it.
+
+So, the young lady sat down with Mr. John Dounce, in a little red box
+with a green curtain, and took a small sip of the brandy-and-water, and a
+small look at Mr. John Dounce, and then turned her head away, and went
+through various other serio-pantomimic fascinations, which forcibly
+reminded Mr. John Dounce of the first time he courted his first wife, and
+which made him feel more affectionate than ever; in pursuance of which
+affection, and actuated by which feeling, Mr. John Dounce sounded the
+young lady on her matrimonial engagements, when the young lady denied
+having formed any such engagements at all--she couldn't abear the men,
+they were such deceivers; thereupon Mr. John Dounce inquired whether this
+sweeping condemnation was meant to include other than very young men; on
+which the young lady blushed deeply--at least she turned away her head,
+and said Mr. John Dounce had made her blush, so of course she _did_
+blush--and Mr. John Dounce was a long time drinking the brandy-and-water;
+and, at last, John Dounce went home to bed, and dreamed of his first
+wife, and his second wife, and the young lady, and partridges, and
+oysters, and brandy-and-water, and disinterested attachments.
+
+The next morning, John Dounce was rather feverish with the extra
+brandy-and-water of the previous night; and, partly in the hope of
+cooling himself with an oyster, and partly with the view of ascertaining
+whether he owed the young lady anything, or not, went back to the
+oyster-shop.  If the young lady had appeared beautiful by night, she was
+perfectly irresistible by day; and, from this time forward, a change came
+over the spirit of John Dounce's dream.  He bought shirt-pins; wore a
+ring on his third finger; read poetry; bribed a cheap miniature-painter
+to perpetrate a faint resemblance to a youthful face, with a curtain over
+his head, six large books in the background, and an open country in the
+distance (this he called his portrait); 'went on' altogether in such an
+uproarious manner, that the three Miss Dounces went off on small
+pensions, he having made the tenement in Cursitor-street too warm to
+contain them; and in short, comported and demeaned himself in every
+respect like an unmitigated old Saracen, as he was.
+
+As to his ancient friends, the other old boys, at the Sir Somebody's
+Head, he dropped off from them by gradual degrees; for, even when he did
+go there, Jones--vulgar fellow that Jones--persisted in asking 'when it
+was to be?' and 'whether he was to have any gloves?' together with other
+inquiries of an equally offensive nature: at which not only Harris
+laughed, but Jennings also; so, he cut the two, altogether, and attached
+himself solely to the blue young lady at the smart oyster-shop.
+
+Now comes the moral of the story--for it has a moral after all.  The
+last-mentioned young lady, having derived sufficient profit and emolument
+from John Dounce's attachment, not only refused, when matters came to a
+crisis, to take him for better for worse, but expressly declared, to use
+her own forcible words, that she 'wouldn't have him at no price;' and
+John Dounce, having lost his old friends, alienated his relations, and
+rendered himself ridiculous to everybody, made offers successively to a
+schoolmistress, a landlady, a feminine tobacconist, and a housekeeper;
+and, being directly rejected by each and every of them, was accepted by
+his cook, with whom he now lives, a henpecked husband, a melancholy
+monument of antiquated misery, and a living warning to all uxorious old
+boys.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--THE MISTAKEN MILLINER.  A TALE OF AMBITION
+
+
+Miss Amelia Martin was pale, tallish, thin, and two-and-thirty--what
+ill-natured people would call plain, and police reports interesting.  She
+was a milliner and dressmaker, living on her business and not above it.
+If you had been a young lady in service, and had wanted Miss Martin, as a
+great many young ladies in service did, you would just have stepped up,
+in the evening, to number forty-seven, Drummond-street, George-street,
+Euston-square, and after casting your eye on a brass door-plate, one foot
+ten by one and a half, ornamented with a great brass knob at each of the
+four corners, and bearing the inscription 'Miss Martin; millinery and
+dressmaking, in all its branches;' you'd just have knocked two loud
+knocks at the street-door; and down would have come Miss Martin herself,
+in a merino gown of the newest fashion, black velvet bracelets on the
+genteelest principle, and other little elegancies of the most approved
+description.
+
+If Miss Martin knew the young lady who called, or if the young lady who
+called had been recommended by any other young lady whom Miss Martin
+knew, Miss Martin would forthwith show her up-stairs into the two-pair
+front, and chat she would--_so_ kind, and _so_ comfortable--it really
+wasn't like a matter of business, she was so friendly; and, then Miss
+Martin, after contemplating the figure and general appearance of the
+young lady in service with great apparent admiration, would say how well
+she would look, to be sure, in a low dress with short sleeves; made very
+full in the skirts, with four tucks in the bottom; to which the young
+lady in service would reply in terms expressive of her entire concurrence
+in the notion, and of the virtuous indignation with which she reflected
+on the tyranny of 'Missis,' who wouldn't allow a young girl to wear a
+short sleeve of an arternoon--no, nor nothing smart, not even a pair of
+ear-rings; let alone hiding people's heads of hair under them frightful
+caps.  At the termination of this complaint, Miss Amelia Martin would
+distantly suggest certain dark suspicions that some people were jealous
+on account of their own daughters, and were obliged to keep their
+servants' charms under, for fear they should get married first, which was
+no uncommon circumstance--leastways she had known two or three young
+ladies in service, who had married a great deal better than their
+missises, and _they_ were not very good-looking either; and then the
+young lady would inform Miss Martin, in confidence, that how one of their
+young ladies was engaged to a young man and was a-going to be married,
+and Missis was so proud about it there was no bearing of her; but how she
+needn't hold her head quite so high neither, for, after all, he was only
+a clerk.  And, after expressing due contempt for clerks in general, and
+the engaged clerk in particular, and the highest opinion possible of
+themselves and each other, Miss Martin and the young lady in service
+would bid each other good night, in a friendly but perfectly genteel
+manner: and the one went back to her 'place,' and the other, to her room
+on the second-floor front.
+
+There is no saying how long Miss Amelia Martin might have continued this
+course of life; how extensive a connection she might have established
+among young ladies in service; or what amount her demands upon their
+quarterly receipts might have ultimately attained, had not an unforeseen
+train of circumstances directed her thoughts to a sphere of action very
+different from dressmaking or millinery.
+
+A friend of Miss Martin's who had long been keeping company with an
+ornamental painter and decorator's journeyman, at last consented (on
+being at last asked to do so) to name the day which would make the
+aforesaid journeyman a happy husband.  It was a Monday that was appointed
+for the celebration of the nuptials, and Miss Amelia Martin was invited,
+among others, to honour the wedding-dinner with her presence.  It was a
+charming party; Somers-town the locality, and a front parlour the
+apartment.  The ornamental painter and decorator's journeyman had taken a
+house--no lodgings nor vulgarity of that kind, but a house--four
+beautiful rooms, and a delightful little washhouse at the end of the
+passage--which was the most convenient thing in the world, for the
+bridesmaids could sit in the front parlour and receive the company, and
+then run into the little washhouse and see how the pudding and boiled
+pork were getting on in the copper, and then pop back into the parlour
+again, as snug and comfortable as possible.  And such a parlour as it
+was!  Beautiful Kidderminster carpet--six bran-new cane-bottomed stained
+chairs--three wine-glasses and a tumbler on each sideboard--farmer's girl
+and farmer's boy on the mantelpiece: girl tumbling over a stile, and boy
+spitting himself, on the handle of a pitchfork--long white dimity
+curtains in the window--and, in short, everything on the most genteel
+scale imaginable.
+
+Then, the dinner.  There was baked leg of mutton at the top, boiled leg
+of mutton at the bottom, pair of fowls and leg of pork in the middle;
+porter-pots at the corners; pepper, mustard, and vinegar in the centre;
+vegetables on the floor; and plum-pudding and apple-pie and tartlets
+without number: to say nothing of cheese, and celery, and water-cresses,
+and all that sort of thing.  As to the Company!  Miss Amelia Martin
+herself declared, on a subsequent occasion, that, much as she had heard
+of the ornamental painter's journeyman's connexion, she never could have
+supposed it was half so genteel.  There was his father, such a funny old
+gentleman--and his mother, such a dear old lady--and his sister, such a
+charming girl--and his brother, such a manly-looking young man--with such
+a eye!  But even all these were as nothing when compared with his musical
+friends, Mr. and Mrs. Jennings Rodolph, from White Conduit, with whom the
+ornamental painter's journeyman had been fortunate enough to contract an
+intimacy while engaged in decorating the concert-room of that noble
+institution.  To hear them sing separately, was divine, but when they
+went through the tragic duet of 'Red Ruffian, retire!' it was, as Miss
+Martin afterwards remarked, 'thrilling.'  And why (as Mr. Jennings
+Rodolph observed) why were they not engaged at one of the patent
+theatres?  If he was to be told that their voices were not powerful
+enough to fill the House, his only reply was, that he would back himself
+for any amount to fill Russell-square--a statement in which the company,
+after hearing the duet, expressed their full belief; so they all said it
+was shameful treatment; and both Mr. and Mrs. Jennings Rodolph said it
+was shameful too; and Mr. Jennings Rodolph looked very serious, and said
+he knew who his malignant opponents were, but they had better take care
+how far they went, for if they irritated him too much he had not quite
+made up his mind whether he wouldn't bring the subject before Parliament;
+and they all agreed that it ''ud serve 'em quite right, and it was very
+proper that such people should be made an example of.'  So Mr. Jennings
+Rodolph said he'd think of it.
+
+When the conversation resumed its former tone, Mr. Jennings Rodolph
+claimed his right to call upon a lady, and the right being conceded,
+trusted Miss Martin would favour the company--a proposal which met with
+unanimous approbation, whereupon Miss Martin, after sundry hesitatings
+and coughings, with a preparatory choke or two, and an introductory
+declaration that she was frightened to death to attempt it before such
+great judges of the art, commenced a species of treble chirruping
+containing frequent allusions to some young gentleman of the name of
+Hen-e-ry, with an occasional reference to madness and broken hearts.  Mr.
+Jennings Rodolph frequently interrupted the progress of the song, by
+ejaculating 'Beautiful!'--'Charming!'--'Brilliant!'--'Oh! splendid,' &c.;
+and at its close the admiration of himself, and his lady, knew no bounds.
+
+'Did you ever hear so sweet a voice, my dear?' inquired Mr. Jennings
+Rodolph of Mrs. Jennings Rodolph.
+
+'Never; indeed I never did, love,' replied Mrs. Jennings Rodolph.
+
+'Don't you think Miss Martin, with a little cultivation, would be very
+like Signora Marra Boni, my dear?' asked Mr. Jennings Rodolph.
+
+'Just exactly the very thing that struck me, my love,' answered Mrs.
+Jennings Rodolph.
+
+And thus the time passed away; Mr. Jennings Rodolph played tunes on a
+walking-stick, and then went behind the parlour-door and gave his
+celebrated imitations of actors, edge-tools, and animals; Miss Martin
+sang several other songs with increased admiration every time; and even
+the funny old gentleman began singing.  His song had properly seven
+verses, but as he couldn't recollect more than the first one, he sang
+that over seven times, apparently very much to his own personal
+gratification.  And then all the company sang the national anthem with
+national independence--each for himself, without reference to the
+other--and finally separated: all declaring that they never had spent so
+pleasant an evening: and Miss Martin inwardly resolving to adopt the
+advice of Mr. Jennings Rodolph, and to 'come out' without delay.
+
+Now, 'coming out,' either in acting, or singing, or society, or
+facetiousness, or anything else, is all very well, and remarkably
+pleasant to the individual principally concerned, if he or she can but
+manage to come out with a burst, and being out, to keep out, and not go
+in again; but, it does unfortunately happen that both consummations are
+extremely difficult to accomplish, and that the difficulties, of getting
+out at all in the first instance, and if you surmount them, of keeping
+out in the second, are pretty much on a par, and no slight ones
+either--and so Miss Amelia Martin shortly discovered.  It is a singular
+fact (there being ladies in the case) that Miss Amelia Martin's principal
+foible was vanity, and the leading characteristic of Mrs. Jennings
+Rodolph an attachment to dress.  Dismal wailings were heard to issue from
+the second-floor front of number forty-seven, Drummond-street,
+George-street, Euston-square; it was Miss Martin practising.
+Half-suppressed murmurs disturbed the calm dignity of the White Conduit
+orchestra at the commencement of the season.  It was the appearance of
+Mrs. Jennings Rodolph in full dress, that occasioned them.  Miss Martin
+studied incessantly--the practising was the consequence.  Mrs. Jennings
+Rodolph taught gratuitously now and then--the dresses were the result.
+
+Weeks passed away; the White Conduit season had begun, and progressed,
+and was more than half over.  The dressmaking business had fallen off,
+from neglect; and its profits had dwindled away almost imperceptibly.  A
+benefit-night approached; Mr. Jennings Rodolph yielded to the earnest
+solicitations of Miss Amelia Martin, and introduced her personally to the
+'comic gentleman' whose benefit it was.  The comic gentleman was all
+smiles and blandness--he had composed a duet, expressly for the occasion,
+and Miss Martin should sing it with him.  The night arrived; there was an
+immense room--ninety-seven sixpenn'orths of gin-and-water, thirty-two
+small glasses of brandy-and-water, five-and-twenty bottled ales, and
+forty-one neguses; and the ornamental painter's journeyman, with his wife
+and a select circle of acquaintance, were seated at one of the
+side-tables near the orchestra.  The concert began.
+Song--sentimental--by a light-haired young gentleman in a blue coat, and
+bright basket buttons--[applause].  Another song, doubtful, by another
+gentleman in another blue coat and more bright basket buttons--[increased
+applause].  Duet, Mr. Jennings Rodolph, and Mrs. Jennings Rodolph, 'Red
+Ruffian, retire!'--[great applause].  Solo, Miss Julia Montague
+(positively on this occasion only)--'I am a Friar'--[enthusiasm].
+Original duet, comic--Mr. H. Taplin (the comic gentleman) and Miss
+Martin--'The Time of Day.'  'Brayvo!--Brayvo!' cried the ornamental
+painter's journeyman's party, as Miss Martin was gracefully led in by the
+comic gentleman.  'Go to work, Harry,' cried the comic gentleman's
+personal friends.  'Tap-tap-tap,' went the leader's bow on the
+music-desk.  The symphony began, and was soon afterwards followed by a
+faint kind of ventriloquial chirping, proceeding apparently from the
+deepest recesses of the interior of Miss Amelia Martin.  'Sing
+out'--shouted one gentleman in a white great-coat.  'Don't be afraid to
+put the steam on, old gal,' exclaimed another, 'S-s-s-s-s-s-s'-went the
+five-and-twenty bottled ales.  'Shame, shame!' remonstrated the
+ornamental painter's journeyman's party--'S-s-s-s' went the bottled ales
+again, accompanied by all the gins, and a majority of the brandies.
+
+'Turn them geese out,' cried the ornamental painter's journeyman's party,
+with great indignation.
+
+'Sing out,' whispered Mr. Jennings Rodolph.
+
+'So I do,' responded Miss Amelia Martin.
+
+'Sing louder,' said Mrs. Jennings Rodolph.
+
+'I can't,' replied Miss Amelia Martin.
+
+'Off, off, off,' cried the rest of the audience.
+
+'Bray-vo!' shouted the painter's party.  It wouldn't do--Miss Amelia
+Martin left the orchestra, with much less ceremony than she had entered
+it; and, as she couldn't sing out, never came out.  The general good
+humour was not restored until Mr. Jennings Rodolph had become purple in
+the face, by imitating divers quadrupeds for half an hour, without being
+able to render himself audible; and, to this day, neither has Miss Amelia
+Martin's good humour been restored, nor the dresses made for and
+presented to Mrs. Jennings Rodolph, nor the local abilities which Mr.
+Jennings Rodolph once staked his professional reputation that Miss Martin
+possessed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--THE DANCING ACADEMY
+
+
+Of all the dancing academies that ever were established, there never was
+one more popular in its immediate vicinity than Signor Billsmethi's, of
+the 'King's Theatre.'  It was not in Spring-gardens, or Newman-street, or
+Berners-street, or Gower-street, or Charlotte-street, or Percy-street, or
+any other of the numerous streets which have been devoted time out of
+mind to professional people, dispensaries, and boarding-houses; it was
+not in the West-end at all--it rather approximated to the eastern portion
+of London, being situated in the populous and improving neighbourhood of
+Gray's-inn-lane.  It was not a dear dancing academy--four-and-sixpence a
+quarter is decidedly cheap upon the whole.  It was _very_ select, the
+number of pupils being strictly limited to seventy-five, and a quarter's
+payment in advance being rigidly exacted.  There was public tuition and
+private tuition--an assembly-room and a parlour.  Signor Billsmethi's
+family were always thrown in with the parlour, and included in parlour
+price; that is to say, a private pupil had Signor Billsmethi's parlour to
+dance _in_, and Signor Billsmethi's family to dance _with_; and when he
+had been sufficiently broken in in the parlour, he began to run in
+couples in the assembly-room.
+
+Such was the dancing academy of Signor Billsmethi, when Mr. Augustus
+Cooper, of Fetter-lane, first saw an unstamped advertisement walking
+leisurely down Holborn-hill, announcing to the world that Signor
+Billsmethi, of the King's Theatre, intended opening for the season with a
+Grand Ball.
+
+Now, Mr. Augustus Cooper was in the oil and colour line--just of age,
+with a little money, a little business, and a little mother, who, having
+managed her husband and _his_ business in his lifetime, took to managing
+her son and _his_ business after his decease; and so, somehow or other,
+he had been cooped up in the little back parlour behind the shop on
+week-days, and in a little deal box without a lid (called by courtesy a
+pew) at Bethel Chapel, on Sundays, and had seen no more of the world than
+if he had been an infant all his days; whereas Young White, at the
+gas-fitter's over the way, three years younger than him, had been flaring
+away like winkin'--going to the theatre--supping at harmonic
+meetings--eating oysters by the barrel--drinking stout by the
+gallon--even out all night, and coming home as cool in the morning as if
+nothing had happened.  So Mr. Augustus Cooper made up his mind that he
+would not stand it any longer, and had that very morning expressed to his
+mother a firm determination to be 'blowed,' in the event of his not being
+instantly provided with a street-door key.  And he was walking down
+Holborn-hill, thinking about all these things, and wondering how he could
+manage to get introduced into genteel society for the first time, when
+his eyes rested on Signor Billsmethi's announcement, which it immediately
+struck him was just the very thing he wanted; for he should not only be
+able to select a genteel circle of acquaintance at once, out of the
+five-and-seventy pupils at four-and-sixpence a quarter, but should
+qualify himself at the same time to go through a hornpipe in private
+society, with perfect ease to himself and great delight to his friends.
+So, he stopped the unstamped advertisement--an animated sandwich,
+composed of a boy between two boards--and having procured a very small
+card with the Signor's address indented thereon, walked straight at once
+to the Signor's house--and very fast he walked too, for fear the list
+should be filled up, and the five-and-seventy completed, before he got
+there.  The Signor was at home, and, what was still more gratifying, he
+was an Englishman!  Such a nice man--and so polite!  The list was not
+full, but it was a most extraordinary circumstance that there was only
+just one vacancy, and even that one would have been filled up, that very
+morning, only Signor Billsmethi was dissatisfied with the reference, and,
+being very much afraid that the lady wasn't select, wouldn't take her.
+
+'And very much delighted I am, Mr. Cooper,' said Signor Billsmethi, 'that
+I did _not_ take her.  I assure you, Mr. Cooper--I don't say it to
+flatter you, for I know you're above it--that I consider myself extremely
+fortunate in having a gentleman of your manners and appearance, sir.'
+
+'I am very glad of it too, sir,' said Augustus Cooper.
+
+'And I hope we shall be better acquainted, sir,' said Signor Billsmethi.
+
+'And I'm sure I hope we shall too, sir,' responded Augustus Cooper.  Just
+then, the door opened, and in came a young lady, with her hair curled in
+a crop all over her head, and her shoes tied in sandals all over her
+ankles.
+
+'Don't run away, my dear,' said Signor Billsmethi; for the young lady
+didn't know Mr. Cooper was there when she ran in, and was going to run
+out again in her modesty, all in confusion-like.  'Don't run away, my
+dear,' said Signor Billsmethi, 'this is Mr. Cooper--Mr. Cooper, of
+Fetter-lane.  Mr. Cooper, my daughter, sir--Miss Billsmethi, sir, who I
+hope will have the pleasure of dancing many a quadrille, minuet, gavotte,
+country-dance, fandango, double-hornpipe, and farinagholkajingo with you,
+sir.  She dances them all, sir; and so shall you, sir, before you're a
+quarter older, sir.'
+
+And Signor Bellsmethi slapped Mr. Augustus Cooper on the back, as if he
+had known him a dozen years,--so friendly;--and Mr. Cooper bowed to the
+young lady, and the young lady curtseyed to him, and Signor Billsmethi
+said they were as handsome a pair as ever he'd wish to see; upon which
+the young lady exclaimed, 'Lor, pa!' and blushed as red as Mr. Cooper
+himself--you might have thought they were both standing under a red lamp
+at a chemist's shop; and before Mr. Cooper went away it was settled that
+he should join the family circle that very night--taking them just as
+they were--no ceremony nor nonsense of that kind--and learn his positions
+in order that he might lose no time, and be able to come out at the
+forthcoming ball.
+
+Well; Mr. Augustus Cooper went away to one of the cheap shoemakers' shops
+in Holborn, where gentlemen's dress-pumps are seven-and-sixpence, and
+men's strong walking just nothing at all, and bought a pair of the
+regular seven-and-sixpenny, long-quartered, town-mades, in which he
+astonished himself quite as much as his mother, and sallied forth to
+Signor Billsmethi's.  There were four other private pupils in the
+parlour: two ladies and two gentlemen.  Such nice people!  Not a bit of
+pride about them.  One of the ladies in particular, who was in training
+for a Columbine, was remarkably affable; and she and Miss Billsmethi took
+such an interest in Mr. Augustus Cooper, and joked, and smiled, and
+looked so bewitching, that he got quite at home, and learnt his steps in
+no time.  After the practising was over, Signor Billsmethi, and Miss
+Billsmethi, and Master Billsmethi, and a young lady, and the two ladies,
+and the two gentlemen, danced a quadrille--none of your slipping and
+sliding about, but regular warm work, flying into corners, and diving
+among chairs, and shooting out at the door,--something like dancing!
+Signor Billsmethi in particular, notwithstanding his having a little
+fiddle to play all the time, was out on the landing every figure, and
+Master Billsmethi, when everybody else was breathless, danced a hornpipe,
+with a cane in his hand, and a cheese-plate on his head, to the
+unqualified admiration of the whole company.  Then, Signor Billsmethi
+insisted, as they were so happy, that they should all stay to supper, and
+proposed sending Master Billsmethi for the beer and spirits, whereupon
+the two gentlemen swore, 'strike 'em wulgar if they'd stand that;' and
+were just going to quarrel who should pay for it, when Mr. Augustus
+Cooper said he would, if they'd have the kindness to allow him--and they
+_had_ the kindness to allow him; and Master Billsmethi brought the beer
+in a can, and the rum in a quart pot.  They had a regular night of it;
+and Miss Billsmethi squeezed Mr. Augustus Cooper's hand under the table;
+and Mr. Augustus Cooper returned the squeeze, and returned home too, at
+something to six o'clock in the morning, when he was put to bed by main
+force by the apprentice, after repeatedly expressing an uncontrollable
+desire to pitch his revered parent out of the second-floor window, and to
+throttle the apprentice with his own neck-handkerchief.
+
+Weeks had worn on, and the seven-and-sixpenny town-mades had nearly worn
+out, when the night arrived for the grand dress-ball at which the whole
+of the five-and-seventy pupils were to meet together, for the first time
+that season, and to take out some portion of their respective
+four-and-sixpences in lamp-oil and fiddlers.  Mr. Augustus Cooper had
+ordered a new coat for the occasion--a two-pound-tenner from Turnstile.
+It was his first appearance in public; and, after a grand Sicilian
+shawl-dance by fourteen young ladies in character, he was to open the
+quadrille department with Miss Billsmethi herself, with whom he had
+become quite intimate since his first introduction.  It _was_ a night!
+Everything was admirably arranged.  The sandwich-boy took the hats and
+bonnets at the street-door; there was a turn-up bedstead in the back
+parlour, on which Miss Billsmethi made tea and coffee for such of the
+gentlemen as chose to pay for it, and such of the ladies as the gentlemen
+treated; red port-wine negus and lemonade were handed round at
+eighteen-pence a head; and in pursuance of a previous engagement with the
+public-house at the corner of the street, an extra potboy was laid on for
+the occasion.  In short, nothing could exceed the arrangements, except
+the company.  Such ladies!  Such pink silk stockings!  Such artificial
+flowers!  Such a number of cabs!  No sooner had one cab set down a couple
+of ladies, than another cab drove up and set down another couple of
+ladies, and they all knew: not only one another, but the majority of the
+gentlemen into the bargain, which made it all as pleasant and lively as
+could be.  Signor Billsmethi, in black tights, with a large blue bow in
+his buttonhole, introduced the ladies to such of the gentlemen as were
+strangers: and the ladies talked away--and laughed they did--it was
+delightful to see them.
+
+As to the shawl-dance, it was the most exciting thing that ever was
+beheld; there was such a whisking, and rustling, and fanning, and getting
+ladies into a tangle with artificial flowers, and then disentangling them
+again!  And as to Mr. Augustus Cooper's share in the quadrille, he got
+through it admirably.  He was missing from his partner, now and then,
+certainly, and discovered on such occasions to be either dancing with
+laudable perseverance in another set, or sliding about in perspective,
+without any definite object; but, generally speaking, they managed to
+shove him through the figure, until he turned up in the right place.  Be
+this as it may, when he had finished, a great many ladies and gentlemen
+came up and complimented him very much, and said they had never seen a
+beginner do anything like it before; and Mr. Augustus Cooper was
+perfectly satisfied with himself, and everybody else into the bargain;
+and 'stood' considerable quantities of spirits-and-water, negus, and
+compounds, for the use and behoof of two or three dozen very particular
+friends, selected from the select circle of five-and-seventy pupils.
+
+Now, whether it was the strength of the compounds, or the beauty of the
+ladies, or what not, it did so happen that Mr. Augustus Cooper
+encouraged, rather than repelled, the very flattering attentions of a
+young lady in brown gauze over white calico who had appeared particularly
+struck with him from the first; and when the encouragements had been
+prolonged for some time, Miss Billsmethi betrayed her spite and jealousy
+thereat by calling the young lady in brown gauze a 'creeter,' which
+induced the young lady in brown gauze to retort, in certain sentences
+containing a taunt founded on the payment of four-and-sixpence a quarter,
+which reference Mr. Augustus Cooper, being then and there in a state of
+considerable bewilderment, expressed his entire concurrence in.  Miss
+Billsmethi, thus renounced, forthwith began screaming in the loudest key
+of her voice, at the rate of fourteen screams a minute; and being
+unsuccessful, in an onslaught on the eyes and face, first of the lady in
+gauze and then of Mr. Augustus Cooper, called distractedly on the other
+three-and-seventy pupils to furnish her with oxalic acid for her own
+private drinking; and, the call not being honoured, made another rush at
+Mr. Cooper, and then had her stay-lace cut, and was carried off to bed.
+Mr. Augustus Cooper, not being remarkable for quickness of apprehension,
+was at a loss to understand what all this meant, until Signor Billsmethi
+explained it in a most satisfactory manner, by stating to the pupils,
+that Mr. Augustus Cooper had made and confirmed divers promises of
+marriage to his daughter on divers occasions, and had now basely deserted
+her; on which, the indignation of the pupils became universal; and as
+several chivalrous gentlemen inquired rather pressingly of Mr. Augustus
+Cooper, whether he required anything for his own use, or, in other words,
+whether he 'wanted anything for himself,' he deemed it prudent to make a
+precipitate retreat.  And the upshot of the matter was, that a lawyer's
+letter came next day, and an action was commenced next week; and that Mr.
+Augustus Cooper, after walking twice to the Serpentine for the purpose of
+drowning himself, and coming twice back without doing it, made a
+confidante of his mother, who compromised the matter with twenty pounds
+from the till: which made twenty pounds four shillings and sixpence paid
+to Signor Billsmethi, exclusive of treats and pumps.  And Mr. Augustus
+Cooper went back and lived with his mother, and there he lives to this
+day; and as he has lost his ambition for society, and never goes into the
+world, he will never see this account of himself, and will never be any
+the wiser.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--SHABBY-GENTEEL PEOPLE
+
+
+There are certain descriptions of people who, oddly enough, appear to
+appertain exclusively to the metropolis.  You meet them, every day, in
+the streets of London, but no one ever encounters them elsewhere; they
+seem indigenous to the soil, and to belong as exclusively to London as
+its own smoke, or the dingy bricks and mortar.  We could illustrate the
+remark by a variety of examples, but, in our present sketch, we will only
+advert to one class as a specimen--that class which is so aptly and
+expressively designated as 'shabby-genteel.'
+
+Now, shabby people, God knows, may be found anywhere, and genteel people
+are not articles of greater scarcity out of London than in it; but this
+compound of the two--this shabby-gentility--is as purely local as the
+statue at Charing-cross, or the pump at Aldgate.  It is worthy of remark,
+too, that only men are shabby-genteel; a woman is always either dirty and
+slovenly in the extreme, or neat and respectable, however
+poverty-stricken in appearance.  A very poor man, 'who has seen better
+days,' as the phrase goes, is a strange compound of dirty-slovenliness
+and wretched attempts at faded smartness.
+
+We will endeavour to explain our conception of the term which forms the
+title of this paper.  If you meet a man, lounging up Drury-Lane, or
+leaning with his back against a post in Long-acre, with his hands in the
+pockets of a pair of drab trousers plentifully besprinkled with
+grease-spots: the trousers made very full over the boots, and ornamented
+with two cords down the outside of each leg--wearing, also, what has been
+a brown coat with bright buttons, and a hat very much pinched up at the
+side, cocked over his right eye--don't pity him.  He is not
+shabby-genteel.  The 'harmonic meetings' at some fourth-rate
+public-house, or the purlieus of a private theatre, are his chosen
+haunts; he entertains a rooted antipathy to any kind of work, and is on
+familiar terms with several pantomime men at the large houses.  But, if
+you see hurrying along a by-street, keeping as close as he can to the
+area-railings, a man of about forty or fifty, clad in an old rusty suit
+of threadbare black cloth which shines with constant wear as if it had
+been bees-waxed--the trousers tightly strapped down, partly for the look
+of the thing and partly to keep his old shoes from slipping off at the
+heels,--if you observe, too, that his yellowish-white neckerchief is
+carefully pinned up, to conceal the tattered garment underneath, and that
+his hands are encased in the remains of an old pair of beaver gloves, you
+may set him down as a shabby-genteel man.  A glance at that depressed
+face, and timorous air of conscious poverty, will make your heart
+ache--always supposing that you are neither a philosopher nor a political
+economist.
+
+We were once haunted by a shabby-genteel man; he was bodily present to
+our senses all day, and he was in our mind's eye all night.  The man of
+whom Sir Walter Scott speaks in his Demonology, did not suffer half the
+persecution from his imaginary gentleman-usher in black velvet, that we
+sustained from our friend in quondam black cloth.  He first attracted our
+notice, by sitting opposite to us in the reading-room at the British
+Museum; and what made the man more remarkable was, that he always had
+before him a couple of shabby-genteel books--two old dog's-eared folios,
+in mouldy worm-eaten covers, which had once been smart.  He was in his
+chair, every morning, just as the clock struck ten; he was always the
+last to leave the room in the afternoon; and when he did, he quitted it
+with the air of a man who knew not where else to go, for warmth and
+quiet.  There he used to sit all day, as close to the table as possible,
+in order to conceal the lack of buttons on his coat: with his old hat
+carefully deposited at his feet, where he evidently flattered himself it
+escaped observation.
+
+About two o'clock, you would see him munching a French roll or a penny
+loaf; not taking it boldly out of his pocket at once, like a man who knew
+he was only making a lunch; but breaking off little bits in his pocket,
+and eating them by stealth.  He knew too well it was his dinner.
+
+When we first saw this poor object, we thought it quite impossible that
+his attire could ever become worse.  We even went so far, as to speculate
+on the possibility of his shortly appearing in a decent second-hand suit.
+We knew nothing about the matter; he grew more and more shabby-genteel
+every day.  The buttons dropped off his waistcoat, one by one; then, he
+buttoned his coat; and when one side of the coat was reduced to the same
+condition as the waistcoat, he buttoned it over--on the other side.  He
+looked somewhat better at the beginning of the week than at the
+conclusion, because the neckerchief, though yellow, was not quite so
+dingy; and, in the midst of all this wretchedness, he never appeared
+without gloves and straps.  He remained in this state for a week or two.
+At length, one of the buttons on the back of the coat fell off, and then
+the man himself disappeared, and we thought he was dead.
+
+We were sitting at the same table about a week after his disappearance,
+and as our eyes rested on his vacant chair, we insensibly fell into a
+train of meditation on the subject of his retirement from public life.
+We were wondering whether he had hung himself, or thrown himself off a
+bridge--whether he really was dead or had only been arrested--when our
+conjectures were suddenly set at rest by the entry of the man himself.
+He had undergone some strange metamorphosis, and walked up the centre of
+the room with an air which showed he was fully conscious of the
+improvement in his appearance.  It was very odd.  His clothes were a
+fine, deep, glossy black; and yet they looked like the same suit; nay,
+there were the very darns with which old acquaintance had made us
+familiar.  The hat, too--nobody could mistake the shape of that hat, with
+its high crown gradually increasing in circumference towards the top.
+Long service had imparted to it a reddish-brown tint; but, now, it was as
+black as the coat.  The truth flashed suddenly upon us--they had been
+'revived.'  It is a deceitful liquid that black and blue reviver; we have
+watched its effects on many a shabby-genteel man.  It betrays its victims
+into a temporary assumption of importance: possibly into the purchase of
+a new pair of gloves, or a cheap stock, or some other trifling article of
+dress.  It elevates their spirits for a week, only to depress them, if
+possible, below their original level.  It was so in this case; the
+transient dignity of the unhappy man decreased, in exact proportion as
+the 'reviver' wore off.  The knees of the unmentionables, and the elbows
+of the coat, and the seams generally, soon began to get alarmingly white.
+The hat was once more deposited under the table, and its owner crept into
+his seat as quietly as ever.
+
+There was a week of incessant small rain and mist.  At its expiration the
+'reviver' had entirely vanished, and the shabby-genteel man never
+afterwards attempted to effect any improvement in his outward appearance.
+
+It would be difficult to name any particular part of town as the
+principal resort of shabby-genteel men.  We have met a great many persons
+of this description in the neighbourhood of the inns of court.  They may
+be met with, in Holborn, between eight and ten any morning; and whoever
+has the curiosity to enter the Insolvent Debtors' Court will observe,
+both among spectators and practitioners, a great variety of them.  We
+never went on 'Change, by any chance, without seeing some shabby-genteel
+men, and we have often wondered what earthly business they can have
+there.  They will sit there, for hours, leaning on great, dropsical,
+mildewed umbrellas, or eating Abernethy biscuits.  Nobody speaks to them,
+nor they to any one.  On consideration, we remember to have occasionally
+seen two shabby-genteel men conversing together on 'Change, but our
+experience assures us that this is an uncommon circumstance, occasioned
+by the offer of a pinch of snuff, or some such civility.
+
+It would be a task of equal difficulty, either to assign any particular
+spot for the residence of these beings, or to endeavour to enumerate
+their general occupations.  We were never engaged in business with more
+than one shabby-genteel man; and he was a drunken engraver, and lived in
+a damp back-parlour in a new row of houses at Camden-town, half street,
+half brick-field, somewhere near the canal.  A shabby-genteel man may
+have no occupation, or he may be a corn agent, or a coal agent, or a wine
+merchant, or a collector of debts, or a broker's assistant, or a
+broken-down attorney.  He may be a clerk of the lowest description, or a
+contributor to the press of the same grade.  Whether our readers have
+noticed these men, in their walks, as often as we have, we know not; this
+we know--that the miserably poor man (no matter whether he owes his
+distresses to his own conduct, or that of others) who feels his poverty
+and vainly strives to conceal it, is one of the most pitiable objects in
+human nature.  Such objects, with few exceptions, are shabby-genteel
+people.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--MAKING A NIGHT OF IT
+
+
+Damon and Pythias were undoubtedly very good fellows in their way: the
+former for his extreme readiness to put in special bail for a friend: and
+the latter for a certain trump-like punctuality in turning up just in the
+very nick of time, scarcely less remarkable.  Many points in their
+character have, however, grown obsolete.  Damons are rather hard to find,
+in these days of imprisonment for debt (except the sham ones, and they
+cost half-a-crown); and, as to the Pythiases, the few that have existed
+in these degenerate times, have had an unfortunate knack of making
+themselves scarce, at the very moment when their appearance would have
+been strictly classical.  If the actions of these heroes, however, can
+find no parallel in modern times, their friendship can.  We have Damon
+and Pythias on the one hand.  We have Potter and Smithers on the other;
+and, lest the two last-mentioned names should never have reached the ears
+of our unenlightened readers, we can do no better than make them
+acquainted with the owners thereof.
+
+Mr. Thomas Potter, then, was a clerk in the city, and Mr. Robert Smithers
+was a ditto in the same; their incomes were limited, but their friendship
+was unbounded.  They lived in the same street, walked into town every
+morning at the same hour, dined at the same slap-bang every day, and
+revelled in each other's company very night.  They were knit together by
+the closest ties of intimacy and friendship, or, as Mr. Thomas Potter
+touchingly observed, they were 'thick-and-thin pals, and nothing but it.'
+There was a spice of romance in Mr. Smithers's disposition, a ray of
+poetry, a gleam of misery, a sort of consciousness of he didn't exactly
+know what, coming across him he didn't precisely know why--which stood
+out in fine relief against the off-hand, dashing,
+amateur-pickpocket-sort-of-manner, which distinguished Mr. Potter in an
+eminent degree.
+
+The peculiarity of their respective dispositions, extended itself to
+their individual costume.  Mr. Smithers generally appeared in public in a
+surtout and shoes, with a narrow black neckerchief and a brown hat, very
+much turned up at the sides--peculiarities which Mr. Potter wholly
+eschewed, for it was his ambition to do something in the celebrated
+'kiddy' or stage-coach way, and he had even gone so far as to invest
+capital in the purchase of a rough blue coat with wooden buttons, made
+upon the fireman's principle, in which, with the addition of a
+low-crowned, flower-pot-saucer-shaped hat, he had created no
+inconsiderable sensation at the Albion in Little Russell-street, and
+divers other places of public and fashionable resort.
+
+Mr. Potter and Mr. Smithers had mutually agreed that, on the receipt of
+their quarter's salary, they would jointly and in company 'spend the
+evening'--an evident misnomer--the spending applying, as everybody knows,
+not to the evening itself but to all the money the individual may chance
+to be possessed of, on the occasion to which reference is made; and they
+had likewise agreed that, on the evening aforesaid, they would 'make a
+night of it'--an expressive term, implying the borrowing of several hours
+from to-morrow morning, adding them to the night before, and
+manufacturing a compound night of the whole.
+
+The quarter-day arrived at last--we say at last, because quarter-days are
+as eccentric as comets: moving wonderfully quick when you have a good
+deal to pay, and marvellously slow when you have a little to receive.
+Mr. Thomas Potter and Mr. Robert Smithers met by appointment to begin the
+evening with a dinner; and a nice, snug, comfortable dinner they had,
+consisting of a little procession of four chops and four kidneys,
+following each other, supported on either side by a pot of the real
+draught stout, and attended by divers cushions of bread, and wedges of
+cheese.
+
+When the cloth was removed, Mr. Thomas Potter ordered the waiter to bring
+in, two goes of his best Scotch whiskey, with warm water and sugar, and a
+couple of his 'very mildest' Havannahs, which the waiter did.  Mr. Thomas
+Potter mixed his grog, and lighted his cigar; Mr. Robert Smithers did the
+same; and then, Mr. Thomas Potter jocularly proposed as the first toast,
+'the abolition of all offices whatever' (not sinecures, but
+counting-houses), which was immediately drunk by Mr. Robert Smithers,
+with enthusiastic applause.  So they went on, talking politics, puffing
+cigars, and sipping whiskey-and-water, until the 'goes'--most
+appropriately so called--were both gone, which Mr. Robert Smithers
+perceiving, immediately ordered in two more goes of the best Scotch
+whiskey, and two more of the very mildest Havannahs; and the goes kept
+coming in, and the mild Havannahs kept going out, until, what with the
+drinking, and lighting, and puffing, and the stale ashes on the table,
+and the tallow-grease on the cigars, Mr. Robert Smithers began to doubt
+the mildness of the Havannahs, and to feel very much as if he had been
+sitting in a hackney-coach with his back to the horses.
+
+As to Mr. Thomas Potter, he _would_ keep laughing out loud, and
+volunteering inarticulate declarations that he was 'all right;' in proof
+of which, he feebly bespoke the evening paper after the next gentleman,
+but finding it a matter of some difficulty to discover any news in its
+columns, or to ascertain distinctly whether it had any columns at all,
+walked slowly out to look for the moon, and, after coming back quite pale
+with looking up at the sky so long, and attempting to express mirth at
+Mr. Robert Smithers having fallen asleep, by various galvanic chuckles,
+laid his head on his arm, and went to sleep also.  When he awoke again,
+Mr. Robert Smithers awoke too, and they both very gravely agreed that it
+was extremely unwise to eat so many pickled walnuts with the chops, as it
+was a notorious fact that they always made people queer and sleepy;
+indeed, if it had not been for the whiskey and cigars, there was no
+knowing what harm they mightn't have done 'em.  So they took some coffee,
+and after paying the bill,--twelve and twopence the dinner, and the odd
+tenpence for the waiter--thirteen shillings in all--started out on their
+expedition to manufacture a night.
+
+It was just half-past eight, so they thought they couldn't do better than
+go at half-price to the slips at the City Theatre, which they did
+accordingly.  Mr. Robert Smithers, who had become extremely poetical
+after the settlement of the bill, enlivening the walk by informing Mr.
+Thomas Potter in confidence that he felt an inward presentiment of
+approaching dissolution, and subsequently embellishing the theatre, by
+falling asleep with his head and both arms gracefully drooping over the
+front of the boxes.
+
+Such was the quiet demeanour of the unassuming Smithers, and such were
+the happy effects of Scotch whiskey and Havannahs on that interesting
+person!  But Mr. Thomas Potter, whose great aim it was to be considered
+as a 'knowing card,' a 'fast-goer,' and so forth, conducted himself in a
+very different manner, and commenced going very fast indeed--rather too
+fast at last, for the patience of the audience to keep pace with him.  On
+his first entry, he contented himself by earnestly calling upon the
+gentlemen in the gallery to 'flare up,' accompanying the demand with
+another request, expressive of his wish that they would instantaneously
+'form a union,' both which requisitions were responded to, in the manner
+most in vogue on such occasions.
+
+'Give that dog a bone!' cried one gentleman in his shirt-sleeves.
+
+'Where have you been a having half a pint of intermediate beer?' cried a
+second.  'Tailor!' screamed a third.  'Barber's clerk!' shouted a fourth.
+'Throw him O--VER!' roared a fifth; while numerous voices concurred in
+desiring Mr. Thomas Potter to 'go home to his mother!'  All these taunts
+Mr. Thomas Potter received with supreme contempt, cocking the low-crowned
+hat a little more on one side, whenever any reference was made to his
+personal appearance, and, standing up with his arms a-kimbo, expressing
+defiance melodramatically.
+
+The overture--to which these various sounds had been an _ad libitum_
+accompaniment--concluded, the second piece began, and Mr. Thomas Potter,
+emboldened by impunity, proceeded to behave in a most unprecedented and
+outrageous manner.  First of all, he imitated the shake of the principal
+female singer; then, groaned at the blue fire; then, affected to be
+frightened into convulsions of terror at the appearance of the ghost;
+and, lastly, not only made a running commentary, in an audible voice,
+upon the dialogue on the stage, but actually awoke Mr. Robert Smithers,
+who, hearing his companion making a noise, and having a very indistinct
+notion where he was, or what was required of him, immediately, by way of
+imitating a good example, set up the most unearthly, unremitting, and
+appalling howling that ever audience heard.  It was too much.  'Turn them
+out!' was the general cry.  A noise, as of shuffling of feet, and men
+being knocked up with violence against wainscoting, was heard: a hurried
+dialogue of 'Come out?'--'I won't!'--'You shall!'--'I shan't!'--'Give me
+your card, Sir?'--'You're a scoundrel, Sir!' and so forth, succeeded.  A
+round of applause betokened the approbation of the audience, and Mr.
+Robert Smithers and Mr. Thomas Potter found themselves shot with
+astonishing swiftness into the road, without having had the trouble of
+once putting foot to ground during the whole progress of their rapid
+descent.
+
+Mr. Robert Smithers, being constitutionally one of the slow-goers, and
+having had quite enough of fast-going, in the course of his recent
+expulsion, to last until the quarter-day then next ensuing at the very
+least, had no sooner emerged with his companion from the precincts of
+Milton-street, than he proceeded to indulge in circuitous references to
+the beauties of sleep, mingled with distant allusions to the propriety of
+returning to Islington, and testing the influence of their patent Bramahs
+over the street-door locks to which they respectively belonged.  Mr.
+Thomas Potter, however, was valorous and peremptory.  They had come out
+to make a night of it: and a night must be made.  So Mr. Robert Smithers,
+who was three parts dull, and the other dismal, despairingly assented;
+and they went into a wine-vaults, to get materials for assisting them in
+making a night; where they found a good many young ladies, and various
+old gentlemen, and a plentiful sprinkling of hackney-coachmen and
+cab-drivers, all drinking and talking together; and Mr. Thomas Potter and
+Mr. Robert Smithers drank small glasses of brandy, and large glasses of
+soda, until they began to have a very confused idea, either of things in
+general, or of anything in particular; and, when they had done treating
+themselves they began to treat everybody else; and the rest of the
+entertainment was a confused mixture of heads and heels, black eyes and
+blue uniforms, mud and gas-lights, thick doors, and stone paving.
+
+Then, as standard novelists expressively inform us--'all was a blank!'
+and in the morning the blank was filled up with the words
+'STATION-HOUSE,' and the station-house was filled up with Mr. Thomas
+Potter, Mr. Robert Smithers, and the major part of their wine-vault
+companions of the preceding night, with a comparatively small portion of
+clothing of any kind.  And it was disclosed at the Police-office, to the
+indignation of the Bench, and the astonishment of the spectators, how one
+Robert Smithers, aided and abetted by one Thomas Potter, had knocked down
+and beaten, in divers streets, at different times, five men, four boys,
+and three women; how the said Thomas Potter had feloniously obtained
+possession of five door-knockers, two bell-handles, and a bonnet; how
+Robert Smithers, his friend, had sworn, at least forty pounds' worth of
+oaths, at the rate of five shillings apiece; terrified whole streets full
+of Her Majesty's subjects with awful shrieks and alarms of fire;
+destroyed the uniforms of five policemen; and committed various other
+atrocities, too numerous to recapitulate.  And the magistrate, after an
+appropriate reprimand, fined Mr. Thomas Potter and Mr. Thomas Smithers
+five shillings each, for being, what the law vulgarly terms, drunk; and
+thirty-four pounds for seventeen assaults at forty shillings a-head, with
+liberty to speak to the prosecutors.
+
+The prosecutors _were_ spoken to, and Messrs. Potter and Smithers lived
+on credit, for a quarter, as best they might; and, although the
+prosecutors expressed their readiness to be assaulted twice a week, on
+the same terms, they have never since been detected in 'making a night of
+it.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII--THE PRISONERS' VAN
+
+
+We were passing the corner of Bow-street, on our return from a lounging
+excursion the other afternoon, when a crowd, assembled round the door of
+the Police-office, attracted our attention.  We turned up the street
+accordingly.  There were thirty or forty people, standing on the pavement
+and half across the road; and a few stragglers were patiently stationed
+on the opposite side of the way--all evidently waiting in expectation of
+some arrival.  We waited too, a few minutes, but nothing occurred; so, we
+turned round to an unshorn, sallow-looking cobbler, who was standing next
+us with his hands under the bib of his apron, and put the usual question
+of 'What's the matter?'  The cobbler eyed us from head to foot, with
+superlative contempt, and laconically replied 'Nuffin.'
+
+Now, we were perfectly aware that if two men stop in the street to look
+at any given object, or even to gaze in the air, two hundred men will be
+assembled in no time; but, as we knew very well that no crowd of people
+could by possibility remain in a street for five minutes without getting
+up a little amusement among themselves, unless they had some absorbing
+object in view, the natural inquiry next in order was, 'What are all
+these people waiting here for?'--'Her Majesty's carriage,' replied the
+cobbler.  This was still more extraordinary.  We could not imagine what
+earthly business Her Majesty's carriage could have at the Public Office,
+Bow-street.  We were beginning to ruminate on the possible causes of such
+an uncommon appearance, when a general exclamation from all the boys in
+the crowd of 'Here's the wan!' caused us to raise our heads, and look up
+the street.
+
+The covered vehicle, in which prisoners are conveyed from the
+police-offices to the different prisons, was coming along at full speed.
+It then occurred to us, for the first time, that Her Majesty's carriage
+was merely another name for the prisoners' van, conferred upon it, not
+only by reason of the superior gentility of the term, but because the
+aforesaid van is maintained at Her Majesty's expense: having been
+originally started for the exclusive accommodation of ladies and
+gentlemen under the necessity of visiting the various houses of call
+known by the general denomination of 'Her Majesty's Gaols.'
+
+The van drew up at the office-door, and the people thronged round the
+steps, just leaving a little alley for the prisoners to pass through.
+Our friend the cobbler, and the other stragglers, crossed over, and we
+followed their example.  The driver, and another man who had been seated
+by his side in front of the vehicle, dismounted, and were admitted into
+the office.  The office-door was closed after them, and the crowd were on
+the tiptoe of expectation.
+
+After a few minutes' delay, the door again opened, and the two first
+prisoners appeared.  They were a couple of girls, of whom the
+elder--could not be more than sixteen, and the younger of whom had
+certainly not attained her fourteenth year.  That they were sisters, was
+evident, from the resemblance which still subsisted between them, though
+two additional years of depravity had fixed their brand upon the elder
+girl's features, as legibly as if a red-hot iron had seared them.  They
+were both gaudily dressed, the younger one especially; and, although
+there was a strong similarity between them in both respects, which was
+rendered the more obvious by their being handcuffed together, it is
+impossible to conceive a greater contrast than the demeanour of the two
+presented.  The younger girl was weeping bitterly--not for display, or in
+the hope of producing effect, but for very shame: her face was buried in
+her handkerchief: and her whole manner was but too expressive of bitter
+and unavailing sorrow.
+
+'How long are you for, Emily?' screamed a red-faced woman in the crowd.
+'Six weeks and labour,' replied the elder girl with a flaunting laugh;
+'and that's better than the stone jug anyhow; the mill's a deal better
+than the Sessions, and here's Bella a-going too for the first time.  Hold
+up your head, you chicken,' she continued, boisterously tearing the other
+girl's handkerchief away; 'Hold up your head, and show 'em your face.  I
+an't jealous, but I'm blessed if I an't game!'--'That's right, old gal,'
+exclaimed a man in a paper cap, who, in common with the greater part of
+the crowd, had been inexpressibly delighted with this little
+incident.--'Right!' replied the girl; 'ah, to be sure; what's the odds,
+eh?'--'Come!  In with you,' interrupted the driver.  'Don't you be in a
+hurry, coachman,' replied the girl, 'and recollect I want to be set down
+in Cold Bath Fields--large house with a high garden-wall in front; you
+can't mistake it.  Hallo.  Bella, where are you going to--you'll pull my
+precious arm off?'  This was addressed to the younger girl, who, in her
+anxiety to hide herself in the caravan, had ascended the steps first, and
+forgotten the strain upon the handcuff.  'Come down, and let's show you
+the way.'  And after jerking the miserable girl down with a force which
+made her stagger on the pavement, she got into the vehicle, and was
+followed by her wretched companion.
+
+These two girls had been thrown upon London streets, their vices and
+debauchery, by a sordid and rapacious mother.  What the younger girl was
+then, the elder had been once; and what the elder then was, the younger
+must soon become.  A melancholy prospect, but how surely to be realised;
+a tragic drama, but how often acted!  Turn to the prisons and police
+offices of London--nay, look into the very streets themselves.  These
+things pass before our eyes, day after day, and hour after hour--they
+have become such matters of course, that they are utterly disregarded.
+The progress of these girls in crime will be as rapid as the flight of a
+pestilence, resembling it too in its baneful influence and wide-spreading
+infection.  Step by step, how many wretched females, within the sphere of
+every man's observation, have become involved in a career of vice,
+frightful to contemplate; hopeless at its commencement, loathsome and
+repulsive in its course; friendless, forlorn, and unpitied, at its
+miserable conclusion!
+
+There were other prisoners--boys of ten, as hardened in vice as men of
+fifty--a houseless vagrant, going joyfully to prison as a place of food
+and shelter, handcuffed to a man whose prospects were ruined, character
+lost, and family rendered destitute, by his first offence.  Our
+curiosity, however, was satisfied.  The first group had left an
+impression on our mind we would gladly have avoided, and would willingly
+have effaced.
+
+The crowd dispersed; the vehicle rolled away with its load of guilt and
+misfortune; and we saw no more of the Prisoners' Van.
+
+
+
+
+TALES
+
+
+CHAPTER I--THE BOARDING-HOUSE
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Mrs. Tibbs was, beyond all dispute, the most tidy, fidgety, thrifty
+little personage that ever inhaled the smoke of London; and the house of
+Mrs. Tibbs was, decidedly, the neatest in all Great Coram-street.  The
+area and the area-steps, and the street-door and the street-door steps,
+and the brass handle, and the door-plate, and the knocker, and the
+fan-light, were all as clean and bright, as indefatigable white-washing,
+and hearth-stoning, and scrubbing and rubbing, could make them.  The
+wonder was, that the brass door-plate, with the interesting inscription
+'MRS. TIBBS,' had never caught fire from constant friction, so
+perseveringly was it polished.  There were meat-safe-looking blinds in
+the parlour-windows, blue and gold curtains in the drawing-room, and
+spring-roller blinds, as Mrs. Tibbs was wont in the pride of her heart to
+boast, 'all the way up.' The bell-lamp in the passage looked as clear as
+a soap-bubble; you could see yourself in all the tables, and
+French-polish yourself on any one of the chairs.  The banisters were
+bees-waxed; and the very stair-wires made your eyes wink, they were so
+glittering.
+
+Mrs. Tibbs was somewhat short of stature, and Mr. Tibbs was by no means a
+large man.  He had, moreover, very short legs, but, by way of
+indemnification, his face was peculiarly long.  He was to his wife what
+the 0 is in 90--he was of some importance _with_ her--he was nothing
+without her.  Mrs. Tibbs was always talking.  Mr. Tibbs rarely spoke;
+but, if it were at any time possible to put in a word, when he should
+have said nothing at all, he had that talent.  Mrs. Tibbs detested long
+stories, and Mr. Tibbs had one, the conclusion of which had never been
+heard by his most intimate friends.  It always began, 'I recollect when I
+was in the volunteer corps, in eighteen hundred and six,'--but, as he
+spoke very slowly and softly, and his better half very quickly and
+loudly, he rarely got beyond the introductory sentence.  He was a
+melancholy specimen of the story-teller.   He was the wandering Jew of
+Joe Millerism.
+
+Mr. Tibbs enjoyed a small independence from the pension-list--about
+43_l._ 15_s._ 10_d._ a year.  His father, mother, and five interesting
+scions from the same stock, drew a like sum from the revenue of a
+grateful country, though for what particular service was never known.
+But, as this said independence was not quite sufficient to furnish two
+people with _all_ the luxuries of this life, it had occurred to the busy
+little spouse of Tibbs, that the best thing she could do with a legacy of
+700_l._, would be to take and furnish a tolerable house--somewhere in
+that partially-explored tract of country which lies between the British
+Museum, and a remote village called Somers-town--for the reception of
+boarders.  Great Coram-street was the spot pitched upon.  The house had
+been furnished accordingly; two female servants and a boy engaged; and an
+advertisement inserted in the morning papers, informing the public that
+'Six individuals would meet with all the comforts of a cheerful musical
+home in a select private family, residing within ten minutes' walk
+of'--everywhere.  Answers out of number were received, with all sorts of
+initials; all the letters of the alphabet seemed to be seized with a
+sudden wish to go out boarding and lodging; voluminous was the
+correspondence between Mrs. Tibbs and the applicants; and most profound
+was the secrecy observed.  'E.' didn't like this; 'I.' couldn't think of
+putting up with that; 'I. O. U.' didn't think the terms would suit him;
+and 'G. R.' had never slept in a French bed.  The result, however, was,
+that three gentlemen became inmates of Mrs. Tibbs's house, on terms which
+were 'agreeable to all parties.'  In went the advertisement again, and a
+lady with her two daughters, proposed to increase--not their families,
+but Mrs. Tibbs's.
+
+'Charming woman, that Mrs. Maplesone!' said Mrs. Tibbs, as she and her
+spouse were sitting by the fire after breakfast; the gentlemen having
+gone out on their several avocations.  'Charming woman, indeed!' repeated
+little Mrs. Tibbs, more by way of soliloquy than anything else, for she
+never thought of consulting her husband.  'And the two daughters are
+delightful.  We must have some fish to-day; they'll join us at dinner for
+the first time.'
+
+Mr. Tibbs placed the poker at right angles with the fire shovel, and
+essayed to speak, but recollected he had nothing to say.
+
+'The young ladies,' continued Mrs. T., 'have kindly volunteered to bring
+their own piano.'
+
+Tibbs thought of the volunteer story, but did not venture it.
+
+A bright thought struck him--
+
+'It's very likely--' said he.
+
+'Pray don't lean your head against the paper,' interrupted Mrs. Tibbs;
+'and don't put your feet on the steel fender; that's worse.'
+
+Tibbs took his head from the paper, and his feet from the fender, and
+proceeded.  'It's very likely one of the young ladies may set her cap at
+young Mr. Simpson, and you know a marriage--'
+
+'A what!' shrieked Mrs. Tibbs.  Tibbs modestly repeated his former
+suggestion.
+
+'I beg you won't mention such a thing,' said Mrs. T.  'A marriage, indeed
+to rob me of my boarders--no, not for the world.'
+
+Tibbs thought in his own mind that the event was by no means unlikely,
+but, as he never argued with his wife, he put a stop to the dialogue, by
+observing it was 'time to go to business.'  He always went out at ten
+o'clock in the morning, and returned at five in the afternoon, with an
+exceedingly dirty face, and smelling mouldy.  Nobody knew what he was, or
+where he went; but Mrs. Tibbs used to say with an air of great
+importance, that he was engaged in the City.
+
+The Miss Maplesones and their accomplished parent arrived in the course
+of the afternoon in a hackney-coach, and accompanied by a most
+astonishing number of packages.  Trunks, bonnet-boxes, muff-boxes and
+parasols, guitar-cases, and parcels of all imaginable shapes, done up in
+brown paper, and fastened with pins, filled the passage.  Then, there was
+such a running up and down with the luggage, such scampering for warm
+water for the ladies to wash in, and such a bustle, and confusion, and
+heating of servants, and curling-irons, as had never been known in Great
+Coram-street before.  Little Mrs. Tibbs was quite in her element,
+bustling about, talking incessantly, and distributing towels and soap,
+like a head nurse in a hospital.  The house was not restored to its usual
+state of quiet repose, until the ladies were safely shut up in their
+respective bedrooms, engaged in the important occupation of dressing for
+dinner.
+
+'Are these gals 'andsome?' inquired Mr. Simpson of Mr. Septimus Hicks,
+another of the boarders, as they were amusing themselves in the
+drawing-room, before dinner, by lolling on sofas, and contemplating their
+pumps.
+
+'Don't know,' replied Mr. Septimus Hicks, who was a tallish, white-faced
+young man, with spectacles, and a black ribbon round his neck instead of
+a neckerchief--a most interesting person; a poetical walker of the
+hospitals, and a 'very talented young man.'  He was fond of 'lugging'
+into conversation all sorts of quotations from Don Juan, without
+fettering himself by the propriety of their application; in which
+particular he was remarkably independent.  The other, Mr. Simpson, was
+one of those young men, who are in society what walking gentlemen are on
+the stage, only infinitely worse skilled in his vocation than the most
+indifferent artist.  He was as empty-headed as the great bell of St.
+Paul's; always dressed according to the caricatures published in the
+monthly fashion; and spelt Character with a K.
+
+'I saw a devilish number of parcels in the passage when I came home,'
+simpered Mr. Simpson.
+
+'Materials for the toilet, no doubt,' rejoined the Don Juan reader.
+
+   --'Much linen, lace, and several pair
+   Of stockings, slippers, brushes, combs, complete;
+   With other articles of ladies fair,
+   To keep them beautiful, or leave them neat.'
+
+'Is that from Milton?' inquired Mr. Simpson.
+
+'No--from Byron,' returned Mr. Hicks, with a look of contempt.  He was
+quite sure of his author, because he had never read any other.  'Hush!
+Here come the gals,' and they both commenced talking in a very loud key.
+
+'Mrs. Maplesone and the Miss Maplesones, Mr. Hicks.  Mr. Hicks--Mrs.
+Maplesone and the Miss Maplesones,' said Mrs. Tibbs, with a very red
+face, for she had been superintending the cooking operations below
+stairs, and looked like a wax doll on a sunny day.  'Mr. Simpson, I beg
+your pardon--Mr. Simpson--Mrs. Maplesone and the Miss Maplesones'--and
+_vice versa_.  The gentlemen immediately began to slide about with much
+politeness, and to look as if they wished their arms had been legs, so
+little did they know what to do with them.  The ladies smiled, curtseyed,
+and glided into chairs, and dived for dropped pocket-handkerchiefs: the
+gentlemen leant against two of the curtain-pegs; Mrs. Tibbs went through
+an admirable bit of serious pantomime with a servant who had come up to
+ask some question about the fish-sauce; and then the two young ladies
+looked at each other; and everybody else appeared to discover something
+very attractive in the pattern of the fender.
+
+'Julia, my love,' said Mrs. Maplesone to her youngest daughter, in a tone
+loud enough for the remainder of the company to hear--'Julia.'
+
+'Yes, Ma.'
+
+'Don't stoop.'--This was said for the purpose of directing general
+attention to Miss Julia's figure, which was undeniable.  Everybody looked
+at her, accordingly, and there was another pause.
+
+'We had the most uncivil hackney-coachman to-day, you can imagine,' said
+Mrs. Maplesone to Mrs. Tibbs, in a confidential tone.
+
+'Dear me!' replied the hostess, with an air of great commiseration.  She
+couldn't say more, for the servant again appeared at the door, and
+commenced telegraphing most earnestly to her 'Missis.'
+
+'I think hackney-coachmen generally _are_ uncivil,' said Mr. Hicks in his
+most insinuating tone.
+
+'Positively I think they are,' replied Mrs. Maplesone, as if the idea had
+never struck her before.
+
+'And cabmen, too,' said Mr. Simpson.  This remark was a failure, for no
+one intimated, by word or sign, the slightest knowledge of the manners
+and customs of cabmen.
+
+'Robinson, what _do_ you want?' said Mrs. Tibbs to the servant, who, by
+way of making her presence known to her mistress, had been giving sundry
+hems and sniffs outside the door during the preceding five minutes.
+
+'Please, ma'am, master wants his clean things,' replied the servant,
+taken off her guard.  The two young men turned their faces to the window,
+and 'went off' like a couple of bottles of ginger-beer; the ladies put
+their handkerchiefs to their mouths; and little Mrs. Tibbs bustled out of
+the room to give Tibbs his clean linen,--and the servant warning.
+
+Mr. Calton, the remaining boarder, shortly afterwards made his
+appearance, and proved a surprising promoter of the conversation.  Mr.
+Calton was a superannuated beau--an old boy.  He used to say of himself
+that although his features were not regularly handsome, they were
+striking.  They certainly were.  It was impossible to look at his face
+without being reminded of a chubby street-door knocker, half-lion
+half-monkey; and the comparison might be extended to his whole character
+and conversation.  He had stood still, while everything else had been
+moving.  He never originated a conversation, or started an idea; but if
+any commonplace topic were broached, or, to pursue the comparison, if
+anybody _lifted him up_, he would hammer away with surprising rapidity.
+He had the tic-douloureux occasionally, and then he might be said to be
+muffled, because he did not make quite as much noise as at other times,
+when he would go on prosing, rat-tat-tat the same thing over and over
+again.  He had never been married; but he was still on the look-out for a
+wife with money.  He had a life interest worth about 300_l._ a year--he
+was exceedingly vain, and inordinately selfish.  He had acquired the
+reputation of being the very pink of politeness, and he walked round the
+park, and up Regent-street, every day.
+
+This respectable personage had made up his mind to render himself
+exceedingly agreeable to Mrs. Maplesone--indeed, the desire of being as
+amiable as possible extended itself to the whole party; Mrs. Tibbs having
+considered it an admirable little bit of management to represent to the
+gentlemen that she had _some_ reason to believe the ladies were fortunes,
+and to hint to the ladies, that all the gentlemen were 'eligible.'  A
+little flirtation, she thought, might keep her house full, without
+leading to any other result.
+
+Mrs. Maplesone was an enterprising widow of about fifty: shrewd,
+scheming, and good-looking.  She was amiably anxious on behalf of her
+daughters; in proof whereof she used to remark, that she would have no
+objection to marry again, if it would benefit her dear girls--she could
+have no other motive.  The 'dear girls' themselves were not at all
+insensible to the merits of 'a good establishment.'  One of them was
+twenty-five; the other, three years younger.  They had been at different
+watering-places, for four seasons; they had gambled at libraries, read
+books in balconies, sold at fancy fairs, danced at assemblies, talked
+sentiment--in short, they had done all that industrious girls could
+do--but, as yet, to no purpose.
+
+'What a magnificent dresser Mr. Simpson is!' whispered Matilda Maplesone
+to her sister Julia.
+
+'Splendid!' returned the youngest.  The magnificent individual alluded to
+wore a maroon-coloured dress-coat, with a velvet collar and cuffs of the
+same tint--very like that which usually invests the form of the
+distinguished unknown who condescends to play the 'swell' in the
+pantomime at 'Richardson's Show.'
+
+'What whiskers!' said Miss Julia.
+
+'Charming!' responded her sister; 'and what hair!'  His hair was like a
+wig, and distinguished by that insinuating wave which graces the shining
+locks of those _chef-d'oeuvres_ of art surmounting the waxen images in
+Bartellot's window in Regent-street; his whiskers meeting beneath his
+chin, seemed strings wherewith to tie it on, ere science had rendered
+them unnecessary by her patent invisible springs.
+
+'Dinner's on the table, ma'am, if you please,' said the boy, who now
+appeared for the first time, in a revived black coat of his master's.
+
+'Oh!  Mr. Calton, will you lead Mrs. Maplesone?--Thank you.'  Mr. Simpson
+offered his arm to Miss Julia; Mr. Septimus Hicks escorted the lovely
+Matilda; and the procession proceeded to the dining-room.  Mr. Tibbs was
+introduced, and Mr. Tibbs bobbed up and down to the three ladies like a
+figure in a Dutch clock, with a powerful spring in the middle of his
+body, and then dived rapidly into his seat at the bottom of the table,
+delighted to screen himself behind a soup-tureen, which he could just see
+over, and that was all.  The boarders were seated, a lady and gentleman
+alternately, like the layers of bread and meat in a plate of sandwiches;
+and then Mrs. Tibbs directed James to take off the covers.  Salmon,
+lobster-sauce, giblet-soup, and the usual accompaniments were discovered:
+potatoes like petrifactions, and bits of toasted bread, the shape and
+size of blank dice.
+
+'Soup for Mrs. Maplesone, my dear,' said the bustling Mrs. Tibbs.  She
+always called her husband 'my dear' before company.  Tibbs, who had been
+eating his bread, and calculating how long it would be before he should
+get any fish, helped the soup in a hurry, made a small island on the
+table-cloth, and put his glass upon it, to hide it from his wife.
+
+'Miss Julia, shall I assist you to some fish?'
+
+'If you please--very little--oh! plenty, thank you' (a bit about the size
+of a walnut put upon the plate).
+
+'Julia is a _very_ little eater,' said Mrs. Maplesone to Mr. Calton.
+
+The knocker gave a single rap.  He was busy eating the fish with his
+eyes: so he only ejaculated, 'Ah!'
+
+'My dear,' said Mrs. Tibbs to her spouse after every one else had been
+helped, 'what do _you_ take?'  The inquiry was accompanied with a look
+intimating that he mustn't say fish, because there was not much left.
+Tibbs thought the frown referred to the island on the table-cloth; he
+therefore coolly replied, 'Why--I'll take a little--fish, I think.'
+
+'Did you say fish, my dear?' (another frown).
+
+'Yes, dear,' replied the villain, with an expression of acute hunger
+depicted in his countenance.  The tears almost started to Mrs. Tibbs's
+eyes, as she helped her 'wretch of a husband,' as she inwardly called
+him, to the last eatable bit of salmon on the dish.
+
+'James, take this to your master, and take away your master's knife.'
+This was deliberate revenge, as Tibbs never could eat fish without one.
+He was, however, constrained to chase small particles of salmon round and
+round his plate with a piece of bread and a fork, the number of
+successful attempts being about one in seventeen.
+
+'Take away, James,' said Mrs. Tibbs, as Tibbs swallowed the fourth
+mouthful--and away went the plates like lightning.
+
+'I'll take a bit of bread, James,' said the poor 'master of the house,'
+more hungry than ever.
+
+'Never mind your master now, James,' said Mrs. Tibbs, 'see about the
+meat.'  This was conveyed in the tone in which ladies usually give
+admonitions to servants in company, that is to say, a low one; but which,
+like a stage whisper, from its peculiar emphasis, is most distinctly
+heard by everybody present.
+
+A pause ensued, before the table was replenished--a sort of parenthesis
+in which Mr. Simpson, Mr. Calton, and Mr. Hicks, produced respectively a
+bottle of sauterne, bucellas, and sherry, and took wine with
+everybody--except Tibbs.  No one ever thought of him.
+
+Between the fish and an intimated sirloin, there was a prolonged
+interval.
+
+Here was an opportunity for Mr. Hicks.  He could not resist the
+singularly appropriate quotation--
+
+   'But beef is rare within these oxless isles;
+   Goats' flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton,
+   And when a holiday upon them smiles,
+   A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on.'
+
+'Very ungentlemanly behaviour,' thought little Mrs. Tibbs, 'to talk in
+that way.'
+
+'Ah,' said Mr. Calton, filling his glass.  'Tom Moore is my poet.'
+
+'And mine,' said Mrs. Maplesone.
+
+'And mine,' said Miss Julia.
+
+'And mine,' added Mr. Simpson.
+
+'Look at his compositions,' resumed the knocker.
+
+'To be sure,' said Simpson, with confidence.
+
+'Look at Don Juan,' replied Mr. Septimus Hicks.
+
+'Julia's letter,' suggested Miss Matilda.
+
+'Can anything be grander than the Fire Worshippers?' inquired Miss Julia.
+
+'To be sure,' said Simpson.
+
+'Or Paradise and the Peri,' said the old beau.
+
+'Yes; or Paradise and the Peer,' repeated Simpson, who thought he was
+getting through it capitally.
+
+'It's all very well,' replied Mr. Septimus Hicks, who, as we have before
+hinted, never had read anything but Don Juan.  'Where will you find
+anything finer than the description of the siege, at the commencement of
+the seventh canto?'
+
+'Talking of a siege,' said Tibbs, with a mouthful of bread--'when I was
+in the volunteer corps, in eighteen hundred and six, our commanding
+officer was Sir Charles Rampart; and one day, when we were exercising on
+the ground on which the London University now stands, he says, says he,
+Tibbs (calling me from the ranks), Tibbs--'
+
+'Tell your master, James,' interrupted Mrs. Tibbs, in an awfully distinct
+tone, 'tell your master if he _won't_ carve those fowls, to send them to
+me.'  The discomfited volunteer instantly set to work, and carved the
+fowls almost as expeditiously as his wife operated on the haunch of
+mutton.  Whether he ever finished the story is not known but, if he did,
+nobody heard it.
+
+As the ice was now broken, and the new inmates more at home, every member
+of the company felt more at ease.  Tibbs himself most certainly did,
+because he went to sleep immediately after dinner.  Mr. Hicks and the
+ladies discoursed most eloquently about poetry, and the theatres, and
+Lord Chesterfield's Letters; and Mr. Calton followed up what everybody
+said, with continuous double knocks.  Mrs. Tibbs highly approved of every
+observation that fell from Mrs. Maplesone; and as Mr. Simpson sat with a
+smile upon his face and said 'Yes,' or 'Certainly,' at intervals of about
+four minutes each, he received full credit for understanding what was
+going forward.  The gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room
+very shortly after they had left the dining-parlour.  Mrs. Maplesone and
+Mr. Calton played cribbage, and the 'young people' amused themselves with
+music and conversation.  The Miss Maplesones sang the most fascinating
+duets, and accompanied themselves on guitars, ornamented with bits of
+ethereal blue ribbon.  Mr. Simpson put on a pink waistcoat, and said he
+was in raptures; and Mr. Hicks felt in the seventh heaven of poetry or
+the seventh canto of Don Juan--it was the same thing to him.  Mrs. Tibbs
+was quite charmed with the newcomers; and Mr. Tibbs spent the evening in
+his usual way--he went to sleep, and woke up, and went to sleep again,
+and woke at supper-time.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+We are not about to adopt the licence of novel-writers, and to let 'years
+roll on;' but we will take the liberty of requesting the reader to
+suppose that six months have elapsed, since the dinner we have described,
+and that Mrs. Tibbs's boarders have, during that period, sang, and
+danced, and gone to theatres and exhibitions, together, as ladies and
+gentlemen, wherever they board, often do.  And we will beg them, the
+period we have mentioned having elapsed, to imagine farther, that Mr.
+Septimus Hicks received, in his own bedroom (a front attic), at an early
+hour one morning, a note from Mr. Calton, requesting the favour of seeing
+him, as soon as convenient to himself, in his (Calton's) dressing-room on
+the second-floor back.
+
+'Tell Mr. Calton I'll come down directly,' said Mr. Septimus to the boy.
+'Stop--is Mr. Calton unwell?' inquired this excited walker of hospitals,
+as he put on a bed-furniture-looking dressing-gown.
+
+'Not as I knows on, sir,' replied the boy.  ' Please, sir, he looked
+rather rum, as it might be.'
+
+'Ah, that's no proof of his being ill,' returned Hicks, unconsciously.
+'Very well: I'll be down directly.'  Downstairs ran the boy with the
+message, and down went the excited Hicks himself, almost as soon as the
+message was delivered.  'Tap, tap.'  'Come in.'--Door opens, and
+discovers Mr. Calton sitting in an easy chair.  Mutual shakes of the hand
+exchanged, and Mr. Septimus Hicks motioned to a seat.  A short pause.
+Mr. Hicks coughed, and Mr. Calton took a pinch of snuff.  It was one of
+those interviews where neither party knows what to say.  Mr. Septimus
+Hicks broke silence.
+
+'I received a note--' he said, very tremulously, in a voice like a Punch
+with a cold.
+
+'Yes,' returned the other, 'you did.'
+
+'Exactly.'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+Now, although this dialogue must have been satisfactory, both gentlemen
+felt there was something more important to be said; therefore they did as
+most men in such a situation would have done--they looked at the table
+with a determined aspect.  The conversation had been opened, however, and
+Mr. Calton had made up his mind to continue it with a regular double
+knock.  He always spoke very pompously.
+
+'Hicks,' said he, 'I have sent for you, in consequence of certain
+arrangements which are pending in this house, connected with a marriage.'
+
+'With a marriage!' gasped Hicks, compared with whose expression of
+countenance, Hamlet's, when he sees his father's ghost, is pleasing and
+composed.
+
+'With a marriage,' returned the knocker.  'I have sent for you to prove
+the great confidence I can repose in you.'
+
+'And will you betray me?' eagerly inquired Hicks, who in his alarm had
+even forgotten to quote.
+
+'_I_ betray _you_!  Won't _you_ betray_ me_?'
+
+'Never: no one shall know, to my dying day, that you had a hand in the
+business,' responded the agitated Hicks, with an inflamed countenance,
+and his hair standing on end as if he were on the stool of an
+electrifying machine in full operation.
+
+'People must know that, some time or other--within a year, I imagine,'
+said Mr. Calton, with an air of great self-complacency.   'We _may_ have
+a family.'
+
+'_We_!--That won't affect you, surely?'
+
+'The devil it won't!'
+
+'No! how can it?' said the bewildered Hicks.  Calton was too much
+inwrapped in the contemplation of his happiness to see the equivoque
+between Hicks and himself; and threw himself back in his chair.  'Oh,
+Matilda!' sighed the antique beau, in a lack-a-daisical voice, and
+applying his right hand a little to the left of the fourth button of his
+waistcoat, counting from the bottom.  'Oh, Matilda!'
+
+'What Matilda?' inquired Hicks, starting up.
+
+'Matilda Maplesone,' responded the other, doing the same.
+
+'I marry her to-morrow morning,' said Hicks.
+
+'It's false,' rejoined his companion: 'I marry her!'
+
+'You marry her?'
+
+'I marry her!'
+
+'You marry Matilda Maplesone?'
+
+'Matilda Maplesone.'
+
+'_Miss_ Maplesone marry _you_?'
+
+'Miss Maplesone!  No; Mrs. Maplesone.'
+
+'Good Heaven!' said Hicks, falling into his chair: 'You marry the mother,
+and I the daughter!'
+
+'Most extraordinary circumstance!' replied Mr. Calton, 'and rather
+inconvenient too; for the fact is, that owing to Matilda's wishing to
+keep her intention secret from her daughters until the ceremony had taken
+place, she doesn't like applying to any of her friends to give her away.
+I entertain an objection to making the affair known to my acquaintance
+just now; and the consequence is, that I sent to you to know whether
+you'd oblige me by acting as father.'
+
+'I should have been most happy, I assure you,' said Hicks, in a tone of
+condolence; 'but, you see, I shall be acting as bridegroom.  One
+character is frequently a consequence of the other; but it is not usual
+to act in both at the same time.  There's Simpson--I have no doubt he'll
+do it for you.'
+
+'I don't like to ask him,' replied Calton, 'he's such a donkey.'
+
+Mr. Septimus Hicks looked up at the ceiling, and down at the floor; at
+last an idea struck him.  'Let the man of the house, Tibbs, be the
+father,' he suggested; and then he quoted, as peculiarly applicable to
+Tibbs and the pair--
+
+    'Oh Powers of Heaven! what dark eyes meets she there?
+    'Tis--'tis her father's--fixed upon the pair.'
+
+'The idea has struck me already,' said Mr. Calton: 'but, you see,
+Matilda, for what reason I know not, is very anxious that Mrs. Tibbs
+should know nothing about it, till it's all over.  It's a natural
+delicacy, after all, you know.'
+
+'He's the best-natured little man in existence, if you manage him
+properly,' said Mr. Septimus Hicks.  'Tell him not to mention it to his
+wife, and assure him she won't mind it, and he'll do it directly.  My
+marriage is to be a secret one, on account of the mother and _my_ father;
+therefore he must be enjoined to secrecy.'
+
+A small double knock, like a presumptuous single one, was that instant
+heard at the street-door.  It was Tibbs; it could be no one else; for no
+one else occupied five minutes in rubbing his shoes.  He had been out to
+pay the baker's bill.
+
+'Mr. Tibbs,' called Mr. Calton in a very bland tone, looking over the
+banisters.
+
+'Sir!' replied he of the dirty face.
+
+'Will you have the kindness to step up-stairs for a moment?'
+
+'Certainly, sir,' said Tibbs, delighted to be taken notice of.  The
+bedroom-door was carefully closed, and Tibbs, having put his hat on the
+floor (as most timid men do), and been accommodated with a seat, looked
+as astounded as if he were suddenly summoned before the familiars of the
+Inquisition.
+
+'A rather unpleasant occurrence, Mr. Tibbs,' said Calton, in a very
+portentous manner, 'obliges me to consult you, and to beg you will not
+communicate what I am about to say, to your wife.'
+
+Tibbs acquiesced, wondering in his own mind what the deuce the other
+could have done, and imagining that at least he must have broken the best
+decanters.
+
+Mr. Calton resumed; 'I am placed, Mr. Tibbs, in rather an unpleasant
+situation.'
+
+Tibbs looked at Mr. Septimus Hicks, as if he thought Mr. H.'s being in
+the immediate vicinity of his fellow-boarder might constitute the
+unpleasantness of his situation; but as he did not exactly know what to
+say, he merely ejaculated the monosyllable 'Lor!'
+
+'Now,' continued the knocker, 'let me beg you will exhibit no
+manifestations of surprise, which may be overheard by the domestics, when
+I tell you--command your feelings of astonishment--that two inmates of
+this house intend to be married to-morrow morning.'  And he drew back his
+chair, several feet, to perceive the effect of the unlooked-for
+announcement.
+
+If Tibbs had rushed from the room, staggered down-stairs, and fainted in
+the passage--if he had instantaneously jumped out of the window into the
+mews behind the house, in an agony of surprise--his behaviour would have
+been much less inexplicable to Mr. Calton than it was, when he put his
+hands into his inexpressible-pockets, and said with a half-chuckle, 'Just
+so.'
+
+'You are not surprised, Mr. Tibbs?' inquired Mr. Calton.
+
+'Bless you, no, sir,' returned Tibbs; 'after all, its very natural.  When
+two young people get together, you know--'
+
+'Certainly, certainly,' said Calton, with an indescribable air of
+self-satisfaction.
+
+'You don't think it's at all an out-of-the-way affair then?' asked Mr.
+Septimus Hicks, who had watched the countenance of Tibbs in mute
+astonishment.
+
+'No, sir,' replied Tibbs; 'I was just the same at his age.'  He actually
+smiled when he said this.
+
+'How devilish well I must carry my years!' thought the delighted old
+beau, knowing he was at least ten years older than Tibbs at that moment.
+
+'Well, then, to come to the point at once,' he continued, 'I have to ask
+you whether you will object to act as father on the occasion?'
+
+'Certainly not,' replied Tibbs; still without evincing an atom of
+surprise.
+
+'You will not?'
+
+'Decidedly not,' reiterated Tibbs, still as calm as a pot of porter with
+the head off.
+
+Mr. Calton seized the hand of the petticoat-governed little man, and
+vowed eternal friendship from that hour.  Hicks, who was all admiration
+and surprise, did the same.
+
+'Now, confess,' asked Mr. Calton of Tibbs, as he picked up his hat, 'were
+you not a little surprised?'
+
+'I b'lieve you!' replied that illustrious person, holding up one hand; 'I
+b'lieve you!  When I first heard of it.'
+
+'So sudden,' said Septimus Hicks.
+
+'So strange to ask _me_, you know,' said Tibbs.
+
+'So odd altogether!' said the superannuated love-maker; and then all
+three laughed.
+
+'I say,' said Tibbs, shutting the door which he had previously opened,
+and giving full vent to a hitherto corked-up giggle, 'what bothers me is,
+what _will_ his father say?'
+
+Mr. Septimus Hicks looked at Mr. Calton.
+
+'Yes; but the best of it is,' said the latter, giggling in his turn, 'I
+haven't got a father--he! he! he!'
+
+'You haven't got a father.  No; but _he_ has,' said Tibbs.
+
+'_Who_ has?' inquired Septimus Hicks.
+
+'Why, _him_.'
+
+'Him, who?  Do you know my secret?  Do you mean me?'
+
+'You!  No; you know who I mean,' returned Tibbs with a knowing wink.
+
+'For Heaven's sake, whom do you mean?' inquired Mr. Calton, who, like
+Septimus Hicks, was all but out of his senses at the strange confusion.
+
+'Why Mr. Simpson, of course,' replied Tibbs; 'who else could I mean?'
+
+'I see it all,' said the Byron-quoter; 'Simpson marries Julia Maplesone
+to-morrow morning!'
+
+'Undoubtedly,' replied Tibbs, thoroughly satisfied, 'of course he does.'
+
+It would require the pencil of Hogarth to illustrate--our feeble pen is
+inadequate to describe--the expression which the countenances of Mr.
+Calton and Mr. Septimus Hicks respectively assumed, at this unexpected
+announcement.  Equally impossible is it to describe, although perhaps it
+is easier for our lady readers to imagine, what arts the three ladies
+could have used, so completely to entangle their separate partners.
+Whatever they were, however, they were successful.  The mother was
+perfectly aware of the intended marriage of both daughters; and the young
+ladies were equally acquainted with the intention of their estimable
+parent.  They agreed, however, that it would have a much better
+appearance if each feigned ignorance of the other's engagement; and it
+was equally desirable that all the marriages should take place on the
+same day, to prevent the discovery of one clandestine alliance, operating
+prejudicially on the others.  Hence, the mystification of Mr. Calton and
+Mr. Septimus Hicks, and the pre-engagement of the unwary Tibbs.
+
+On the following morning, Mr. Septimus Hicks was united to Miss Matilda
+Maplesone.  Mr. Simpson also entered into a 'holy alliance' with Miss
+Julia; Tibbs acting as father, 'his first appearance in that character.'
+Mr. Calton, not being quite so eager as the two young men, was rather
+struck by the double discovery; and as he had found some difficulty in
+getting any one to give the lady away, it occurred to him that the best
+mode of obviating the inconvenience would be not to take her at all.  The
+lady, however, 'appealed,' as her counsel said on the trial of the cause,
+_Maplesone_ v. _Calton_, for a breach of promise, 'with a broken heart,
+to the outraged laws of her country.'  She recovered damages to the
+amount of 1,000_l._ which the unfortunate knocker was compelled to pay.
+Mr. Septimus Hicks having walked the hospitals, took it into his head to
+walk off altogether.  His injured wife is at present residing with her
+mother at Boulogne.  Mr. Simpson, having the misfortune to lose his wife
+six weeks after marriage (by her eloping with an officer during his
+temporary sojourn in the Fleet Prison, in consequence of his inability to
+discharge her little mantua-maker's bill), and being disinherited by his
+father, who died soon afterwards, was fortunate enough to obtain a
+permanent engagement at a fashionable haircutter's; hairdressing being a
+science to which he had frequently directed his attention.  In this
+situation he had necessarily many opportunities of making himself
+acquainted with the habits, and style of thinking, of the exclusive
+portion of the nobility of this kingdom.  To this fortunate circumstance
+are we indebted for the production of those brilliant efforts of genius,
+his fashionable novels, which so long as good taste, unsullied by
+exaggeration, cant, and quackery, continues to exist, cannot fail to
+instruct and amuse the thinking portion of the community.
+
+It only remains to add, that this complication of disorders completely
+deprived poor Mrs. Tibbs of all her inmates, except the one whom she
+could have best spared--her husband.  That wretched little man returned
+home, on the day of the wedding, in a state of partial intoxication; and,
+under the influence of wine, excitement, and despair, actually dared to
+brave the anger of his wife.  Since that ill-fated hour he has constantly
+taken his meals in the kitchen, to which apartment, it is understood, his
+witticisms will be in future confined: a turn-up bedstead having been
+conveyed there by Mrs. Tibbs's order for his exclusive accommodation.  It
+is possible that he will be enabled to finish, in that seclusion, his
+story of the volunteers.
+
+The advertisement has again appeared in the morning papers.  Results must
+be reserved for another chapter.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SECOND.
+
+
+'Well!' said little Mrs. Tibbs to herself, as she sat in the front
+parlour of the Coram-street mansion one morning, mending a piece of
+stair-carpet off the first Landings;--'Things have not turned out so
+badly, either, and if I only get a favourable answer to the
+advertisement, we shall be full again.'
+
+Mrs. Tibbs resumed her occupation of making worsted lattice-work in the
+carpet, anxiously listening to the twopenny postman, who was hammering
+his way down the street, at the rate of a penny a knock.  The house was
+as quiet as possible.  There was only one low sound to be heard--it was
+the unhappy Tibbs cleaning the gentlemen's boots in the back kitchen, and
+accompanying himself with a buzzing noise, in wretched mockery of humming
+a tune.
+
+The postman drew near the house.  He paused--so did Mrs. Tibbs.  A
+knock--a bustle--a letter--post-paid.
+
+    'T. I. presents compt. to I. T. and T. I. begs To say that i see the
+    advertisement And she will Do Herself the pleasure of calling On you
+    at 12 o'clock to-morrow morning.
+
+    'T. I. as To apologise to I. T. for the shortness Of the notice But i
+    hope it will not unconvenience you.
+
+                                                     'I remain yours Truly
+                                                      'Wednesday evening.'
+
+Little Mrs. Tibbs perused the document, over and over again; and the more
+she read it, the more was she confused by the mixture of the first and
+third person; the substitution of the 'i' for the 'T. I.;' and the
+transition from the 'I.  T.' to the 'You.'  The writing looked like a
+skein of thread in a tangle, and the note was ingeniously folded into a
+perfect square, with the direction squeezed up into the right-hand
+corner, as if it were ashamed of itself.  The back of the epistle was
+pleasingly ornamented with a large red wafer, which, with the addition of
+divers ink-stains, bore a marvellous resemblance to a black beetle
+trodden upon.  One thing, however, was perfectly clear to the perplexed
+Mrs. Tibbs.  Somebody was to call at twelve.  The drawing-room was
+forthwith dusted for the third time that morning; three or four chairs
+were pulled out of their places, and a corresponding number of books
+carefully upset, in order that there might be a due absence of formality.
+Down went the piece of stair-carpet before noticed, and up ran Mrs. Tibbs
+'to make herself tidy.'
+
+The clock of New Saint Pancras Church struck twelve, and the Foundling,
+with laudable politeness, did the same ten minutes afterwards, Saint
+something else struck the quarter, and then there arrived a single lady
+with a double knock, in a pelisse the colour of the interior of a damson
+pie; a bonnet of the same, with a regular conservatory of artificial
+flowers; a white veil, and a green parasol, with a cobweb border.
+
+The visitor (who was very fat and red-faced) was shown into the
+drawing-room; Mrs. Tibbs presented herself, and the negotiation
+commenced.
+
+'I called in consequence of an advertisement,' said the stranger, in a
+voice as if she had been playing a set of Pan's pipes for a fortnight
+without leaving off.
+
+'Yes!' said Mrs. Tibbs, rubbing her hands very slowly, and looking the
+applicant full in the face--two things she always did on such occasions.
+
+'Money isn't no object whatever to me,' said the lady, 'so much as living
+in a state of retirement and obtrusion.'
+
+Mrs. Tibbs, as a matter of course, acquiesced in such an exceedingly
+natural desire.
+
+'I am constantly attended by a medical man,' resumed the pelisse wearer;
+'I have been a shocking unitarian for some time--I, indeed, have had very
+little peace since the death of Mr. Bloss.'
+
+Mrs. Tibbs looked at the relict of the departed Bloss, and thought he
+must have had very little peace in his time.  Of course she could not say
+so; so she looked very sympathising.
+
+'I shall be a good deal of trouble to you,' said Mrs. Bloss; 'but, for
+that trouble I am willing to pay.  I am going through a course of
+treatment which renders attention necessary.  I have one mutton-chop in
+bed at half-past eight, and another at ten, every morning.'
+
+Mrs. Tibbs, as in duty bound, expressed the pity she felt for anybody
+placed in such a distressing situation; and the carnivorous Mrs. Bloss
+proceeded to arrange the various preliminaries with wonderful despatch.
+'Now mind,' said that lady, after terms were arranged; 'I am to have the
+second-floor front, for my bed-room?'
+
+'Yes, ma'am.'
+
+'And you'll find room for my little servant Agnes?'
+
+'Oh! certainly.'
+
+'And I can have one of the cellars in the area for my bottled porter.'
+
+'With the greatest pleasure;--James shall get it ready for you by
+Saturday.'
+
+'And I'll join the company at the breakfast-table on Sunday morning,'
+said Mrs. Bloss.  'I shall get up on purpose.'
+
+'Very well,' returned Mrs. Tibbs, in her most amiable tone; for
+satisfactory references had 'been given and required,' and it was quite
+certain that the new-comer had plenty of money.  'It's rather singular,'
+continued Mrs. Tibbs, with what was meant for a most bewitching smile,
+'that we have a gentleman now with us, who is in a very delicate state of
+health--a Mr. Gobler.--His apartment is the back drawing-room.'
+
+'The next room?' inquired Mrs. Bloss.
+
+'The next room,' repeated the hostess.
+
+'How very promiscuous!' ejaculated the widow.
+
+'He hardly ever gets up,' said Mrs. Tibbs in a whisper.
+
+'Lor!' cried Mrs. Bloss, in an equally low tone.
+
+'And when he is up,' said Mrs. Tibbs, 'we never can persuade him to go to
+bed again.'
+
+'Dear me!' said the astonished Mrs. Bloss, drawing her chair nearer Mrs.
+Tibbs.  'What is his complaint?'
+
+'Why, the fact is,' replied Mrs. Tibbs, with a most communicative air,
+'he has no stomach whatever.'
+
+'No what?' inquired Mrs. Bloss, with a look of the most indescribable
+alarm.
+
+'No stomach,' repeated Mrs. Tibbs, with a shake of the head.
+
+'Lord bless us! what an extraordinary case!' gasped Mrs. Bloss, as if she
+understood the communication in its literal sense, and was astonished at
+a gentleman without a stomach finding it necessary to board anywhere.
+
+'When I say he has no stomach,' explained the chatty little Mrs. Tibbs,
+'I mean that his digestion is so much impaired, and his interior so
+deranged, that his stomach is not of the least use to him;--in fact, it's
+an inconvenience.'
+
+'Never heard such a case in my life!' exclaimed Mrs. Bloss.  'Why, he's
+worse than I am.'
+
+'Oh, yes!' replied Mrs. Tibbs;--'certainly.'  She said this with great
+confidence, for the damson pelisse suggested that Mrs. Bloss, at all
+events, was not suffering under Mr. Gobler's complaint.
+
+'You have quite incited my curiosity,' said Mrs. Bloss, as she rose to
+depart.  'How I long to see him!'
+
+'He generally comes down, once a week,' replied Mrs. Tibbs; 'I dare say
+you'll see him on Sunday.'  With this consolatory promise Mrs. Bloss was
+obliged to be contented.  She accordingly walked slowly down the stairs,
+detailing her complaints all the way; and Mrs. Tibbs followed her,
+uttering an exclamation of compassion at every step.  James (who looked
+very gritty, for he was cleaning the knives) fell up the kitchen-stairs,
+and opened the street-door; and, after mutual farewells, Mrs. Bloss
+slowly departed, down the shady side of the street.
+
+It is almost superfluous to say, that the lady whom we have just shown
+out at the street-door (and whom the two female servants are now
+inspecting from the second-floor windows) was exceedingly vulgar,
+ignorant, and selfish.  Her deceased better-half had been an eminent
+cork-cutter, in which capacity he had amassed a decent fortune.  He had
+no relative but his nephew, and no friend but his cook.  The former had
+the insolence one morning to ask for the loan of fifteen pounds; and, by
+way of retaliation, he married the latter next day; he made a will
+immediately afterwards, containing a burst of honest indignation against
+his nephew (who supported himself and two sisters on 100_l._ a year), and
+a bequest of his whole property to his wife.  He felt ill after
+breakfast, and died after dinner.  There is a mantelpiece-looking tablet
+in a civic parish church, setting forth his virtues, and deploring his
+loss.  He never dishonoured a bill, or gave away a halfpenny.
+
+The relict and sole executrix of this noble-minded man was an odd mixture
+of shrewdness and simplicity, liberality and meanness.  Bred up as she
+had been, she knew no mode of living so agreeable as a boarding-house:
+and having nothing to do, and nothing to wish for, she naturally imagined
+she must be ill--an impression which was most assiduously promoted by her
+medical attendant, Dr. Wosky, and her handmaid Agnes: both of whom,
+doubtless for good reasons, encouraged all her extravagant notions.
+
+Since the catastrophe recorded in the last chapter, Mrs. Tibbs had been
+very shy of young-lady boarders.  Her present inmates were all lords of
+the creation, and she availed herself of the opportunity of their
+assemblage at the dinner-table, to announce the expected arrival of Mrs.
+Bloss.  The gentlemen received the communication with stoical
+indifference, and Mrs. Tibbs devoted all her energies to prepare for the
+reception of the valetudinarian.  The second-floor front was scrubbed,
+and washed, and flannelled, till the wet went through to the drawing-room
+ceiling.  Clean white counterpanes, and curtains, and napkins,
+water-bottles as clear as crystal, blue jugs, and mahogany furniture,
+added to the splendour, and increased the comfort, of the apartment.  The
+warming-pan was in constant requisition, and a fire lighted in the room
+every day.  The chattels of Mrs. Bloss were forwarded by instalments.
+First, there came a large hamper of Guinness's stout, and an umbrella;
+then, a train of trunks; then, a pair of clogs and a bandbox; then, an
+easy chair with an air-cushion; then, a variety of suspicious-looking
+packages; and--'though last not least'--Mrs. Bloss and Agnes: the latter
+in a cherry-coloured merino dress, open-work stockings, and shoes with
+sandals: like a disguised Columbine.
+
+The installation of the Duke of Wellington, as Chancellor of the
+University of Oxford, was nothing, in point of bustle and turmoil, to the
+installation of Mrs. Bloss in her new quarters.  True, there was no
+bright doctor of civil law to deliver a classical address on the
+occasion; but there were several other old women present, who spoke quite
+as much to the purpose, and understood themselves equally well.  The
+chop-eater was so fatigued with the process of removal that she declined
+leaving her room until the following morning; so a mutton-chop, pickle, a
+pill, a pint bottle of stout, and other medicines, were carried up-stairs
+for her consumption.
+
+'Why, what _do_ you think, ma'am?' inquired the inquisitive Agnes of her
+mistress, after they had been in the house some three hours; 'what _do_
+you think, ma'am? the lady of the house is married.'
+
+'Married!' said Mrs. Bloss, taking the pill and a draught of
+Guinness--'married!  Unpossible!'
+
+'She is indeed, ma'am,' returned the Columbine; 'and her husband, ma'am,
+lives--he--he--he--lives in the kitchen, ma'am.'
+
+'In the kitchen!'
+
+'Yes, ma'am: and he--he--he--the housemaid says, he never goes into the
+parlour except on Sundays; and that Ms. Tibbs makes him clean the
+gentlemen's boots; and that he cleans the windows, too, sometimes; and
+that one morning early, when he was in the front balcony cleaning the
+drawing-room windows, he called out to a gentleman on the opposite side
+of the way, who used to live here--"Ah!  Mr. Calton, sir, how are you?"'
+Here the attendant laughed till Mrs. Bloss was in serious apprehension of
+her chuckling herself into a fit.
+
+'Well, I never!' said Mrs. Bloss.
+
+'Yes.  And please, ma'am, the servants gives him gin-and-water sometimes;
+and then he cries, and says he hates his wife and the boarders, and wants
+to tickle them.'
+
+'Tickle the boarders!' exclaimed Mrs. Bloss, seriously alarmed.
+
+'No, ma'am, not the boarders, the servants.'
+
+'Oh, is that all!' said Mrs. Bloss, quite satisfied.
+
+'He wanted to kiss me as I came up the kitchen-stairs, just now,' said
+Agnes, indignantly; 'but I gave it him--a little wretch!'
+
+This intelligence was but too true.  A long course of snubbing and
+neglect; his days spent in the kitchen, and his nights in the turn-up
+bedstead, had completely broken the little spirit that the unfortunate
+volunteer had ever possessed.  He had no one to whom he could detail his
+injuries but the servants, and they were almost of necessity his chosen
+confidants.  It is no less strange than true, however, that the little
+weaknesses which he had incurred, most probably during his military
+career, seemed to increase as his comforts diminished.  He was actually a
+sort of journeyman Giovanni of the basement story.
+
+The next morning, being Sunday, breakfast was laid in the front parlour
+at ten o'clock.  Nine was the usual time, but the family always
+breakfasted an hour later on sabbath.  Tibbs enrobed himself in his
+Sunday costume--a black coat, and exceedingly short, thin trousers; with
+a very large white waistcoat, white stockings and cravat, and Blucher
+boots--and mounted to the parlour aforesaid.  Nobody had come down, and
+he amused himself by drinking the contents of the milkpot with a
+teaspoon.
+
+A pair of slippers were heard descending the stairs.  Tibbs flew to a
+chair; and a stern-looking man, of about fifty, with very little hair on
+his head, and a Sunday paper in his hand, entered the room.
+
+'Good morning, Mr. Evenson,' said Tibbs, very humbly, with something
+between a nod and a bow.
+
+'How do you do, Mr. Tibbs?' replied he of the slippers, as he sat himself
+down, and began to read his paper without saying another word.
+
+'Is Mr. Wisbottle in town to-day, do you know, sir?' inquired Tibbs, just
+for the sake of saying something.
+
+'I should think he was,' replied the stern gentleman.  'He was whistling
+"The Light Guitar," in the next room to mine, at five o'clock this
+morning.'
+
+'He's very fond of whistling,' said Tibbs, with a slight smirk.
+
+'Yes--I ain't,' was the laconic reply.
+
+Mr. John Evenson was in the receipt of an independent income, arising
+chiefly from various houses he owned in the different suburbs.  He was
+very morose and discontented.  He was a thorough radical, and used to
+attend a great variety of public meetings, for the express purpose of
+finding fault with everything that was proposed.  Mr. Wisbottle, on the
+other hand, was a high Tory.  He was a clerk in the Woods and Forests
+Office, which he considered rather an aristocratic employment; he knew
+the peerage by heart, and, could tell you, off-hand, where any
+illustrious personage lived.  He had a good set of teeth, and a capital
+tailor.  Mr. Evenson looked on all these qualifications with profound
+contempt; and the consequence was that the two were always disputing,
+much to the edification of the rest of the house.  It should be added,
+that, in addition to his partiality for whistling, Mr. Wisbottle had a
+great idea of his singing powers.  There were two other boarders, besides
+the gentleman in the back drawing-room--Mr. Alfred Tomkins and Mr.
+Frederick O'Bleary.  Mr. Tomkins was a clerk in a wine-house; he was a
+connoisseur in paintings, and had a wonderful eye for the picturesque.
+Mr. O'Bleary was an Irishman, recently imported; he was in a perfectly
+wild state; and had come over to England to be an apothecary, a clerk in
+a government office, an actor, a reporter, or anything else that turned
+up--he was not particular.  He was on familiar terms with two small Irish
+members, and got franks for everybody in the house.  He felt convinced
+that his intrinsic merits must procure him a high destiny.  He wore
+shepherd's-plaid inexpressibles, and used to look under all the ladies'
+bonnets as he walked along the streets.  His manners and appearance
+reminded one of Orson.
+
+'Here comes Mr. Wisbottle,' said Tibbs; and Mr. Wisbottle forthwith
+appeared in blue slippers, and a shawl dressing-gown, whistling '_Di
+piacer_.'
+
+'Good morning, sir,' said Tibbs again.  It was almost the only thing he
+ever said to anybody.
+
+'How are you, Tibbs?' condescendingly replied the amateur; and he walked
+to the window, and whistled louder than ever.
+
+'Pretty air, that!' said Evenson, with a snarl, and without taking his
+eyes off the paper.
+
+'Glad you like it,' replied Wisbottle, highly gratified.
+
+'Don't you think it would sound better, if you whistled it a little
+louder?' inquired the mastiff.
+
+'No; I don't think it would,' rejoined the unconscious Wisbottle.
+
+'I'll tell you what, Wisbottle,' said Evenson, who had been bottling up
+his anger for some hours--'the next time you feel disposed to whistle
+"The Light Guitar" at five o'clock in the morning, I'll trouble you to
+whistle it with your head out o' window.  If you don't, I'll learn the
+triangle--I will, by--'
+
+The entrance of Mrs. Tibbs (with the keys in a little basket) interrupted
+the threat, and prevented its conclusion.
+
+Mrs. Tibbs apologised for being down rather late; the bell was rung;
+James brought up the urn, and received an unlimited order for dry toast
+and bacon.  Tibbs sat down at the bottom of the table, and began eating
+water-cresses like a Nebuchadnezzar.  Mr. O'Bleary appeared, and Mr.
+Alfred Tomkins.  The compliments of the morning were exchanged, and the
+tea was made.
+
+'God bless me!' exclaimed Tomkins, who had been looking out at the
+window.  'Here--Wisbottle--pray come here--make haste.'
+
+Mr. Wisbottle started from the table, and every one looked up.
+
+'Do you see,' said the connoisseur, placing Wisbottle in the right
+position--'a little more this way: there--do you see how splendidly the
+light falls upon the left side of that broken chimney-pot at No. 48?'
+
+'Dear me!  I see,' replied Wisbottle, in a tone of admiration.
+
+'I never saw an object stand out so beautifully against the clear sky in
+my life,' ejaculated Alfred.  Everybody (except John Evenson) echoed the
+sentiment; for Mr. Tomkins had a great character for finding out beauties
+which no one else could discover--he certainly deserved it.
+
+'I have frequently observed a chimney-pot in College-green, Dublin, which
+has a much better effect,' said the patriotic O'Bleary, who never allowed
+Ireland to be outdone on any point.
+
+The assertion was received with obvious incredulity, for Mr. Tomkins
+declared that no other chimney-pot in the United Kingdom, broken or
+unbroken, could be so beautiful as the one at No. 48.
+
+The room-door was suddenly thrown open, and Agnes appeared, leading in
+Mrs. Bloss, who was dressed in a geranium-coloured muslin gown, and
+displayed a gold watch of huge dimensions; a chain to match; and a
+splendid assortment of rings, with enormous stones.  A general rush was
+made for a chair, and a regular introduction took place.  Mr. John
+Evenson made a slight inclination of the head; Mr. Frederick O'Bleary,
+Mr. Alfred Tomkins, and Mr. Wisbottle, bowed like the mandarins in a
+grocer's shop; Tibbs rubbed hands, and went round in circles.  He was
+observed to close one eye, and to assume a clock-work sort of expression
+with the other; this has been considered as a wink, and it has been
+reported that Agnes was its object.  We repel the calumny, and challenge
+contradiction.
+
+Mrs. Tibbs inquired after Mrs. Bloss's health in a low tone.  Mrs. Bloss,
+with a supreme contempt for the memory of Lindley Murray, answered the
+various questions in a most satisfactory manner; and a pause ensued,
+during which the eatables disappeared with awful rapidity.
+
+'You must have been very much pleased with the appearance of the ladies
+going to the Drawing-room the other day, Mr. O'Bleary?' said Mrs. Tibbs,
+hoping to start a topic.
+
+'Yes,' replied Orson, with a mouthful of toast.
+
+'Never saw anything like it before, I suppose?' suggested Wisbottle.
+
+'No--except the Lord Lieutenant's levees,' replied O'Bleary.
+
+'Are they at all equal to our drawing-rooms?'
+
+'Oh, infinitely superior!'
+
+'Gad!  I don't know,' said the aristocratic Wisbottle, 'the Dowager
+Marchioness of Publiccash was most magnificently dressed, and so was the
+Baron Slappenbachenhausen.'
+
+'What was he presented on?' inquired Evenson.
+
+'On his arrival in England.'
+
+'I thought so,' growled the radical; 'you never hear of these fellows
+being presented on their going away again.  They know better than that.'
+
+'Unless somebody pervades them with an apintment,' said Mrs. Bloss,
+joining in the conversation in a faint voice.
+
+'Well,' said Wisbottle, evading the point, 'it's a splendid sight.'
+
+'And did it never occur to you,' inquired the radical, who never would be
+quiet; 'did it never occur to you, that you pay for these precious
+ornaments of society?'
+
+'It certainly _has_ occurred to me,' said Wisbottle, who thought this
+answer was a poser; 'it _has_ occurred to me, and I am willing to pay for
+them.'
+
+'Well, and it has occurred to me too,' replied John Evenson, 'and I ain't
+willing to pay for 'em.  Then why should I?--I say, why should I?'
+continued the politician, laying down the paper, and knocking his
+knuckles on the table.  'There are two great principles--demand--'
+
+'A cup of tea if you please, dear,' interrupted Tibbs.
+
+'And supply--'
+
+'May I trouble you to hand this tea to Mr. Tibbs?' said Mrs. Tibbs,
+interrupting the argument, and unconsciously illustrating it.
+
+The thread of the orator's discourse was broken.  He drank his tea and
+resumed the paper.
+
+'If it's very fine,' said Mr. Alfred Tomkins, addressing the company in
+general, 'I shall ride down to Richmond to-day, and come back by the
+steamer.  There are some splendid effects of light and shade on the
+Thames; the contrast between the blueness of the sky and the yellow water
+is frequently exceedingly beautiful.'  Mr. Wisbottle hummed, 'Flow on,
+thou shining river.'
+
+'We have some splendid steam-vessels in Ireland,' said O'Bleary.
+
+'Certainly,' said Mrs. Bloss, delighted to find a subject broached in
+which she could take part.
+
+'The accommodations are extraordinary,' said O'Bleary.
+
+'Extraordinary indeed,' returned Mrs. Bloss.  'When Mr. Bloss was alive,
+he was promiscuously obligated to go to Ireland on business.  I went with
+him, and raly the manner in which the ladies and gentlemen were
+accommodated with berths, is not creditable.'
+
+Tibbs, who had been listening to the dialogue, looked aghast, and evinced
+a strong inclination to ask a question, but was checked by a look from
+his wife.  Mr. Wisbottle laughed, and said Tomkins had made a pun; and
+Tomkins laughed too, and said he had not.
+
+The remainder of the meal passed off as breakfasts usually do.
+Conversation flagged, and people played with their teaspoons.  The
+gentlemen looked out at the window; walked about the room; and, when they
+got near the door, dropped off one by one.  Tibbs retired to the back
+parlour by his wife's orders, to check the green-grocer's weekly account;
+and ultimately Mrs. Tibbs and Mrs. Bloss were left alone together.
+
+'Oh dear!' said the latter, 'I feel alarmingly faint; it's very
+singular.'  (It certainly was, for she had eaten four pounds of solids
+that morning.)  'By-the-bye,' said Mrs. Bloss, 'I have not seen Mr.
+What's-his-name yet.'
+
+'Mr. Gobler?' suggested Mrs. Tibbs.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Oh!' said Mrs. Tibbs, 'he is a most mysterious person.  He has his meals
+regularly sent up-stairs, and sometimes don't leave his room for weeks
+together.'
+
+'I haven't seen or heard nothing of him,' repeated Mrs. Bloss.
+
+'I dare say you'll hear him to-night,' replied Mrs. Tibbs; 'he generally
+groans a good deal on Sunday evenings.'
+
+'I never felt such an interest in any one in my life,' ejaculated Mrs.
+Bloss.  A little double-knock interrupted the conversation; Dr. Wosky was
+announced, and duly shown in.  He was a little man with a red
+face--dressed of course in black, with a stiff white neckerchief.  He had
+a very good practice, and plenty of money, which he had amassed by
+invariably humouring the worst fancies of all the females of all the
+families he had ever been introduced into.  Mrs. Tibbs offered to retire,
+but was entreated to stay.
+
+'Well, my dear ma'am, and how are we?' inquired Wosky, in a soothing
+tone.
+
+'Very ill, doctor--very ill,' said Mrs. Bloss, in a whisper
+
+'Ah! we must take care of ourselves;--we must, indeed,' said the
+obsequious Wosky, as he felt the pulse of his interesting patient.
+
+'How is our appetite?'
+
+Mrs. Bloss shook her head.
+
+'Our friend requires great care,' said Wosky, appealing to Mrs. Tibbs,
+who of course assented.  'I hope, however, with the blessing of
+Providence, that we shall be enabled to make her quite stout again.'
+Mrs. Tibbs wondered in her own mind what the patient would be when she
+was made quite stout.
+
+'We must take stimulants,' said the cunning Wosky--'plenty of
+nourishment, and, above all, we must keep our nerves quiet; we positively
+must not give way to our sensibilities.  We must take all we can get,'
+concluded the doctor, as he pocketed his fee, 'and we must keep quiet.'
+
+'Dear man!' exclaimed Mrs. Bloss, as the doctor stepped into the
+carriage.
+
+'Charming creature indeed--quite a lady's man!' said Mrs. Tibbs, and Dr.
+Wosky rattled away to make fresh gulls of delicate females, and pocket
+fresh fees.
+
+As we had occasion, in a former paper, to describe a dinner at Mrs.
+Tibbs's; and as one meal went off very like another on all ordinary
+occasions; we will not fatigue our readers by entering into any other
+detailed account of the domestic economy of the establishment.  We will
+therefore proceed to events, merely premising that the mysterious tenant
+of the back drawing-room was a lazy, selfish hypochondriac; always
+complaining and never ill.  As his character in many respects closely
+assimilated to that of Mrs. Bloss, a very warm friendship soon sprung up
+between them.  He was tall, thin, and pale; he always fancied he had a
+severe pain somewhere or other, and his face invariably wore a pinched,
+screwed-up expression; he looked, indeed, like a man who had got his feet
+in a tub of exceedingly hot water, against his will.
+
+For two or three months after Mrs. Bloss's first appearance in
+Coram-street, John Evenson was observed to become, every day, more
+sarcastic and more ill-natured; and there was a degree of additional
+importance in his manner, which clearly showed that he fancied he had
+discovered something, which he only wanted a proper opportunity of
+divulging.  He found it at last.
+
+One evening, the different inmates of the house were assembled in the
+drawing-room engaged in their ordinary occupations.  Mr. Gobler and Mrs.
+Bloss were sitting at a small card-table near the centre window, playing
+cribbage; Mr. Wisbottle was describing semicircles on the music-stool,
+turning over the leaves of a book on the piano, and humming most
+melodiously; Alfred Tomkins was sitting at the round table, with his
+elbows duly squared, making a pencil sketch of a head considerably larger
+than his own; O'Bleary was reading Horace, and trying to look as if he
+understood it; and John Evenson had drawn his chair close to Mrs. Tibbs's
+work-table, and was talking to her very earnestly in a low tone.
+
+'I can assure you, Mrs. Tibbs,' said the radical, laying his forefinger
+on the muslin she was at work on; 'I can assure you, Mrs. Tibbs, that
+nothing but the interest I take in your welfare would induce me to make
+this communication.  I repeat, I fear Wisbottle is endeavouring to gain
+the affections of that young woman, Agnes, and that he is in the habit of
+meeting her in the store-room on the first floor, over the leads.  From
+my bedroom I distinctly heard voices there, last night.  I opened my door
+immediately, and crept very softly on to the landing; there I saw Mr.
+Tibbs, who, it seems, had been disturbed also.--Bless me, Mrs. Tibbs, you
+change colour!'
+
+'No, no--it's nothing,' returned Mrs. T. in a hurried manner; 'it's only
+the heat of the room.'
+
+'A flush!' ejaculated Mrs. Bloss from the card-table; 'that's good for
+four.'
+
+'If I thought it was Mr. Wisbottle,' said Mrs. Tibbs, after a pause, 'he
+should leave this house instantly.'
+
+'Go!' said Mrs. Bloss again.
+
+'And if I thought,' continued the hostess with a most threatening air,
+'if I thought he was assisted by Mr. Tibbs--'
+
+'One for his nob!' said Gobler.
+
+'Oh,' said Evenson, in a most soothing tone--he liked to make
+mischief--'I should hope Mr. Tibbs was not in any way implicated.  He
+always appeared to me very harmless.'
+
+'I have generally found him so,' sobbed poor little Mrs. Tibbs; crying
+like a watering-pot.
+
+'Hush! hush! pray--Mrs. Tibbs--consider--we shall be observed--pray,
+don't!' said John Evenson, fearing his whole plan would be interrupted.
+'We will set the matter at rest with the utmost care, and I shall be most
+happy to assist you in doing so.'  Mrs. Tibbs murmured her thanks.
+
+'When you think every one has retired to rest to-night,' said Evenson
+very pompously, 'if you'll meet me without a light, just outside my
+bedroom door, by the staircase window, I think we can ascertain who the
+parties really are, and you will afterwards be enabled to proceed as you
+think proper.'
+
+Mrs. Tibbs was easily persuaded; her curiosity was excited, her jealousy
+was roused, and the arrangement was forthwith made.  She resumed her
+work, and John Evenson walked up and down the room with his hands in his
+pockets, looking as if nothing had happened.  The game of cribbage was
+over, and conversation began again.
+
+'Well, Mr. O'Bleary,' said the humming-top, turning round on his pivot,
+and facing the company, 'what did you think of Vauxhall the other night?'
+
+'Oh, it's very fair,' replied Orson, who had been enthusiastically
+delighted with the whole exhibition.
+
+'Never saw anything like that Captain Ross's set-out--eh?'
+
+'No,' returned the patriot, with his usual reservation--'except in
+Dublin.'
+
+'I saw the Count de Canky and Captain Fitzthompson in the Gardens,' said
+Wisbottle; 'they appeared much delighted.'
+
+'Then it _must_ be beautiful,' snarled Evenson.
+
+'I think the white bears is partickerlerly well done,' suggested Mrs.
+Bloss.  'In their shaggy white coats, they look just like Polar
+bears--don't you think they do, Mr. Evenson?'
+
+'I think they look a great deal more like omnibus cads on all fours,'
+replied the discontented one.
+
+'Upon the whole, I should have liked our evening very well,' gasped
+Gobler; 'only I caught a desperate cold which increased my pain
+dreadfully!  I was obliged to have several shower-baths, before I could
+leave my room.'
+
+'Capital things those shower-baths!' ejaculated Wisbottle.
+
+'Excellent!' said Tomkins.
+
+'Delightful!' chimed in O'Bleary.  (He had once seen one, outside a
+tinman's.)
+
+'Disgusting machines!' rejoined Evenson, who extended his dislike to
+almost every created object, masculine, feminine, or neuter.
+
+'Disgusting, Mr. Evenson!' said Gobler, in a tone of strong
+indignation.--'Disgusting!  Look at their utility--consider how many
+lives they have saved by promoting perspiration.'
+
+'Promoting perspiration, indeed,' growled John Evenson, stopping short in
+his walk across the large squares in the pattern of the carpet--'I was
+ass enough to be persuaded some time ago to have one in my bedroom.
+'Gad, I was in it once, and it effectually cured _me_, for the mere sight
+of it threw me into a profuse perspiration for six months afterwards.'
+
+A titter followed this announcement, and before it had subsided James
+brought up 'the tray,' containing the remains of a leg of lamb which had
+made its _debut_ at dinner; bread; cheese; an atom of butter in a forest
+of parsley; one pickled walnut and the third of another; and so forth.
+The boy disappeared, and returned again with another tray, containing
+glasses and jugs of hot and cold water.  The gentlemen brought in their
+spirit-bottles; the housemaid placed divers plated bedroom candlesticks
+under the card-table; and the servants retired for the night.
+
+Chairs were drawn round the table, and the conversation proceeded in the
+customary manner.  John Evenson, who never ate supper, lolled on the
+sofa, and amused himself by contradicting everybody.  O'Bleary ate as
+much as he could conveniently carry, and Mrs. Tibbs felt a due degree of
+indignation thereat; Mr. Gobler and Mrs. Bloss conversed most
+affectionately on the subject of pill-taking, and other innocent
+amusements; and Tomkins and Wisbottle 'got into an argument;' that is to
+say, they both talked very loudly and vehemently, each flattering himself
+that he had got some advantage about something, and neither of them
+having more than a very indistinct idea of what they were talking about.
+An hour or two passed away; and the boarders and the plated candlesticks
+retired in pairs to their respective bedrooms.  John Evenson pulled off
+his boots, locked his door, and determined to sit up until Mr. Gobler had
+retired.  He always sat in the drawing-room an hour after everybody else
+had left it, taking medicine, and groaning.
+
+Great Coram-street was hushed into a state of profound repose: it was
+nearly two o'clock.  A hackney-coach now and then rumbled slowly by; and
+occasionally some stray lawyer's clerk, on his way home to Somers-town,
+struck his iron heel on the top of the coal-cellar with a noise
+resembling the click of a smoke-Jack.  A low, monotonous, gushing sound
+was heard, which added considerably to the romantic dreariness of the
+scene.  It was the water 'coming in' at number eleven.
+
+'He must be asleep by this time,' said John Evenson to himself, after
+waiting with exemplary patience for nearly an hour after Mr. Gobler had
+left the drawing-room.  He listened for a few moments; the house was
+perfectly quiet; he extinguished his rushlight, and opened his bedroom
+door.  The staircase was so dark that it was impossible to see anything.
+
+'S-s-s!' whispered the mischief-maker, making a noise like the first
+indication a catherine-wheel gives of the probability of its going off.
+
+'Hush!' whispered somebody else.
+
+'Is that you, Mrs. Tibbs?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Where?'
+
+'Here;' and the misty outline of Mrs. Tibbs appeared at the staircase
+window, like the ghost of Queen Anne in the tent scene in Richard.
+
+'This way, Mrs. Tibbs,' whispered the delighted busybody: 'give me your
+hand--there!  Whoever these people are, they are in the store-room now,
+for I have been looking down from my window, and I could see that they
+accidentally upset their candlestick, and are now in darkness.  You have
+no shoes on, have you?'
+
+'No,' said little Mrs. Tibbs, who could hardly speak for trembling.
+
+'Well; I have taken my boots off, so we can go down, close to the
+store-room door, and listen over the banisters;' and down-stairs they
+both crept accordingly, every board creaking like a patent mangle on a
+Saturday afternoon.
+
+'It's Wisbottle and somebody, I'll swear,' exclaimed the radical in an
+energetic whisper, when they had listened for a few moments.
+
+'Hush--pray let's hear what they say!' exclaimed Mrs. Tibbs, the
+gratification of whose curiosity was now paramount to every other
+consideration.
+
+'Ah! if I could but believe you,' said a female voice coquettishly, 'I'd
+be bound to settle my missis for life.'
+
+'What does she say?' inquired Mr. Evenson, who was not quite so well
+situated as his companion.
+
+'She says she'll settle her missis's life,' replied Mrs. Tibbs.  'The
+wretch! they're plotting murder.'
+
+'I know you want money,' continued the voice, which belonged to Agnes;
+'and if you'd secure me the five hundred pound, I warrant she should take
+fire soon enough.'
+
+'What's that?' inquired Evenson again.  He could just hear enough to want
+to hear more.
+
+'I think she says she'll set the house on fire,' replied the affrighted
+Mrs. Tibbs.  'But thank God I'm insured in the Phoenix!'
+
+'The moment I have secured your mistress, my dear,' said a man's voice in
+a strong Irish brogue, 'you may depend on having the money.'
+
+'Bless my soul, it's Mr. O'Bleary!' exclaimed Mrs. Tibbs, in a
+parenthesis.
+
+'The villain!' said the indignant Mr. Evenson.
+
+'The first thing to be done,' continued the Hibernian, 'is to poison Mr.
+Gobler's mind.'
+
+'Oh, certainly,' returned Agnes.
+
+'What's that?' inquired Evenson again, in an agony of curiosity and a
+whisper.
+
+'He says she's to mind and poison Mr. Gobler,' replied Mrs. Tibbs, aghast
+at this sacrifice of human life.
+
+'And in regard of Mrs. Tibbs,' continued O'Bleary.--Mrs. Tibbs shuddered.
+
+'Hush!' exclaimed Agnes, in a tone of the greatest alarm, just as Mrs.
+Tibbs was on the extreme verge of a fainting fit.  'Hush!'
+
+'Hush!' exclaimed Evenson, at the same moment to Mrs. Tibbs.
+
+'There's somebody coming _up_-stairs,' said Agnes to O'Bleary.
+
+'There's somebody coming _down_-stairs,' whispered Evenson to Mrs. Tibbs.
+
+'Go into the parlour, sir,' said Agnes to her companion.  'You will get
+there, before whoever it is, gets to the top of the kitchen stairs.'
+
+'The drawing-room, Mrs. Tibbs!' whispered the astonished Evenson to his
+equally astonished companion; and for the drawing-room they both made,
+plainly hearing the rustling of two persons, one coming down-stairs, and
+one coming up.
+
+'What can it be?' exclaimed Mrs. Tibbs.  'It's like a dream.  I wouldn't
+be found in this situation for the world!'
+
+'Nor I,' returned Evenson, who could never bear a joke at his own
+expense.  'Hush! here they are at the door.'
+
+'What fun!' whispered one of the new-comers.--It was Wisbottle.
+
+'Glorious!' replied his companion, in an equally low tone.--This was
+Alfred Tomkins.  'Who would have thought it?'
+
+'I told you so,' said Wisbottle, in a most knowing whisper.  'Lord bless
+you, he has paid her most extraordinary attention for the last two
+months.  I saw 'em when I was sitting at the piano to-night.'
+
+'Well, do you know I didn't notice it?' interrupted Tomkins.
+
+'Not notice it!' continued Wisbottle.  'Bless you; I saw him whispering
+to her, and she crying; and then I'll swear I heard him say something
+about to-night when we were all in bed.'
+
+'They're talking of _us_!' exclaimed the agonised Mrs. Tibbs, as the
+painful suspicion, and a sense of their situation, flashed upon her mind.
+
+'I know it--I know it,' replied Evenson, with a melancholy consciousness
+that there was no mode of escape.
+
+'What's to be done? we cannot both stop here!' ejaculated Mrs. Tibbs, in
+a state of partial derangement.
+
+'I'll get up the chimney,' replied Evenson, who really meant what he
+said.
+
+'You can't,' said Mrs. Tibbs, in despair.  'You can't--it's a register
+stove.'
+
+'Hush!' repeated John Evenson.
+
+'Hush--hush!' cried somebody down-stairs.
+
+'What a d-d hushing!' said Alfred Tomkins, who began to get rather
+bewildered.
+
+'There they are!' exclaimed the sapient Wisbottle, as a rustling noise
+was heard in the store-room.
+
+'Hark!' whispered both the young men.
+
+'Hark!' repeated Mrs. Tibbs and Evenson.
+
+'Let me alone, sir,' said a female voice in the store-room.
+
+'Oh, Hagnes!' cried another voice, which clearly belonged to Tibbs, for
+nobody else ever owned one like it, 'Oh, Hagnes--lovely creature!'
+
+'Be quiet, sir!'  (A bounce.)
+
+'Hag--'
+
+'Be quiet, sir--I am ashamed of you.  Think of your wife, Mr. Tibbs.  Be
+quiet, sir!'
+
+'My wife!' exclaimed the valorous Tibbs, who was clearly under the
+influence of gin-and-water, and a misplaced attachment; 'I ate her!  Oh,
+Hagnes! when I was in the volunteer corps, in eighteen hundred and--'
+
+'I declare I'll scream.  Be quiet, sir, will you?'  (Another bounce and a
+scuffle.)
+
+'What's that?' exclaimed Tibbs, with a start.
+
+'What's what?' said Agnes, stopping short.
+
+'Why that!'
+
+'Ah! you have done it nicely now, sir,' sobbed the frightened Agnes, as a
+tapping was heard at Mrs. Tibbs's bedroom door, which would have beaten
+any dozen woodpeckers hollow.
+
+'Mrs. Tibbs!  Mrs. Tibbs!' called out Mrs. Bloss.  'Mrs. Tibbs, pray get
+up.'  (Here the imitation of a woodpecker was resumed with tenfold
+violence.)
+
+'Oh, dear--dear!' exclaimed the wretched partner of the depraved Tibbs.
+'She's knocking at my door.  We must be discovered!  What will they
+think?'
+
+'Mrs. Tibbs!  Mrs. Tibbs!' screamed the woodpecker again.
+
+'What's the matter!' shouted Gobler, bursting out of the back
+drawing-room, like the dragon at Astley's.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Gobler!' cried Mrs. Bloss, with a proper approximation to
+hysterics; 'I think the house is on fire, or else there's thieves in it.
+I have heard the most dreadful noises!'
+
+'The devil you have!' shouted Gobler again, bouncing back into his den,
+in happy imitation of the aforesaid dragon, and returning immediately
+with a lighted candle.  'Why, what's this?  Wisbottle!  Tomkins!
+O'Bleary!  Agnes!  What the deuce! all up and dressed?'
+
+'Astonishing!' said Mrs. Bloss, who had run down-stairs, and taken Mr.
+Gobler's arm.
+
+'Call Mrs. Tibbs directly, somebody,' said Gobler, turning into the front
+drawing-room.--'What!  Mrs. Tibbs and Mr. Evenson!!'
+
+'Mrs. Tibbs and Mr. Evenson!' repeated everybody, as that unhappy pair
+were discovered: Mrs. Tibbs seated in an arm-chair by the fireplace, and
+Mr. Evenson standing by her side.
+
+We must leave the scene that ensued to the reader's imagination.  We
+could tell, how Mrs. Tibbs forthwith fainted away, and how it required
+the united strength of Mr. Wisbottle and Mr. Alfred Tomkins to hold her
+in her chair; how Mr. Evenson explained, and how his explanation was
+evidently disbelieved; how Agnes repelled the accusations of Mrs. Tibbs
+by proving that she was negotiating with Mr. O'Bleary to influence her
+mistress's affections in his behalf; and how Mr. Gobler threw a damp
+counterpane on the hopes of Mr. O'Bleary by avowing that he (Gobler) had
+already proposed to, and been accepted by, Mrs. Bloss; how Agnes was
+discharged from that lady's service; how Mr. O'Bleary discharged himself
+from Mrs. Tibbs's house, without going through the form of previously
+discharging his bill; and how that disappointed young gentleman rails
+against England and the English, and vows there is no virtue or fine
+feeling extant, 'except in Ireland.'  We repeat that we _could_ tell all
+this, but we love to exercise our self-denial, and we therefore prefer
+leaving it to be imagined.
+
+The lady whom we have hitherto described as Mrs. Bloss, is no more.  Mrs.
+Gobler exists: Mrs. Bloss has left us for ever.  In a secluded retreat in
+Newington Butts, far, far removed from the noisy strife of that great
+boarding-house, the world, the enviable Gobler and his pleasing wife
+revel in retirement: happy in their complaints, their table, and their
+medicine, wafted through life by the grateful prayers of all the
+purveyors of animal food within three miles round.
+
+We would willingly stop here, but we have a painful duty imposed upon us,
+which we must discharge.  Mr. and Mrs. Tibbs have separated by mutual
+consent, Mrs. Tibbs receiving one moiety of 43_l._ 15_s._ 10_d._, which
+we before stated to be the amount of her husband's annual income, and Mr.
+Tibbs the other.  He is spending the evening of his days in retirement;
+and he is spending also, annually, that small but honourable
+independence.  He resides among the original settlers at Walworth; and it
+has been stated, on unquestionable authority, that the conclusion of the
+volunteer story has been heard in a small tavern in that respectable
+neighbourhood.
+
+The unfortunate Mrs. Tibbs has determined to dispose of the whole of her
+furniture by public auction, and to retire from a residence in which she
+has suffered so much.  Mr. Robins has been applied to, to conduct the
+sale, and the transcendent abilities of the literary gentlemen connected
+with his establishment are now devoted to the task of drawing up the
+preliminary advertisement.  It is to contain, among a variety of
+brilliant matter, seventy-eight words in large capitals, and six original
+quotations in inverted commas.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN
+
+
+Mr. Augustus Minns was a bachelor, of about forty as he said--of about
+eight-and-forty as his friends said.  He was always exceedingly clean,
+precise, and tidy; perhaps somewhat priggish, and the most retiring man
+in the world.  He usually wore a brown frock-coat without a wrinkle,
+light inexplicables without a spot, a neat neckerchief with a remarkably
+neat tie, and boots without a fault; moreover, he always carried a brown
+silk umbrella with an ivory handle.  He was a clerk in Somerset-house,
+or, as he said himself, he held 'a responsible situation under
+Government.'  He had a good and increasing salary, in addition to some
+10,000_l._ of his own (invested in the funds), and he occupied a first
+floor in Tavistock-street, Covent-garden, where he had resided for twenty
+years, having been in the habit of quarrelling with his landlord the
+whole time: regularly giving notice of his intention to quit on the first
+day of every quarter, and as regularly countermanding it on the second.
+There were two classes of created objects which he held in the deepest
+and most unmingled horror; these were dogs, and children.  He was not
+unamiable, but he could, at any time, have viewed the execution of a dog,
+or the assassination of an infant, with the liveliest satisfaction.
+Their habits were at variance with his love of order; and his love of
+order was as powerful as his love of life.  Mr. Augustus Minns had no
+relations, in or near London, with the exception of his cousin, Mr.
+Octavius Budden, to whose son, whom he had never seen (for he disliked
+the father), he had consented to become godfather by proxy.  Mr. Budden
+having realised a moderate fortune by exercising the trade or calling of
+a corn-chandler, and having a great predilection for the country, had
+purchased a cottage in the vicinity of Stamford-hill, whither he retired
+with the wife of his bosom, and his only son, Master Alexander Augustus
+Budden.  One evening, as Mr. and Mrs. B. were admiring their son,
+discussing his various merits, talking over his education, and disputing
+whether the classics should be made an essential part thereof, the lady
+pressed so strongly upon her husband the propriety of cultivating the
+friendship of Mr. Minns in behalf of their son, that Mr. Budden at last
+made up his mind, that it should not be his fault if he and his cousin
+were not in future more intimate.
+
+'I'll break the ice, my love,' said Mr. Budden, stirring up the sugar at
+the bottom of his glass of brandy-and-water, and casting a sidelong look
+at his spouse to see the effect of the announcement of his determination,
+'by asking Minns down to dine with us, on Sunday.'
+
+'Then pray, Budden, write to your cousin at once,' replied Mrs. Budden.
+'Who knows, if we could only get him down here, but he might take a fancy
+to our Alexander, and leave him his property?--Alick, my dear, take your
+legs off the rail of the chair!'
+
+'Very true,' said Mr. Budden, musing, 'very true indeed, my love!'  On
+the following morning, as Mr. Minns was sitting at his breakfast-table,
+alternately biting his dry toast and casting a look upon the columns of
+his morning paper, which he always read from the title to the printer's
+name, he heard a loud knock at the street-door; which was shortly
+afterwards followed by the entrance of his servant, who put into his
+hands a particularly small card, on which was engraven in immense
+letters, 'Mr. Octavius Budden, Amelia Cottage (Mrs. B.'s name was
+Amelia), Poplar-walk, Stamford-hill.'
+
+'Budden!' ejaculated Minns, 'what can bring that vulgar man here!--say
+I'm asleep--say I'm out, and shall never be home again--anything to keep
+him down-stairs.'
+
+'But please, sir, the gentleman's coming up,' replied the servant, and
+the fact was made evident, by an appalling creaking of boots on the
+staircase accompanied by a pattering noise; the cause of which, Minns
+could not, for the life of him, divine.
+
+'Hem--show the gentleman in,' said the unfortunate bachelor.  Exit
+servant, and enter Octavius preceded by a large white dog, dressed in a
+suit of fleecy hosiery, with pink eyes, large ears, and no perceptible
+tail.
+
+The cause of the pattering on the stairs was but too plain.  Mr. Augustus
+Minns staggered beneath the shock of the dog's appearance.
+
+'My dear fellow, how are you?' said Budden, as he entered.
+
+He always spoke at the top of his voice, and always said the same thing
+half-a-dozen times.
+
+'How are you, my hearty?'
+
+'How do you do, Mr. Budden?--pray take a chair!' politely stammered the
+discomfited Minns.
+
+'Thank you--thank you--well--how are you, eh?'
+
+'Uncommonly well, thank you,' said Minns, casting a diabolical look at
+the dog, who, with his hind legs on the floor, and his fore paws resting
+on the table, was dragging a bit of bread and butter out of a plate,
+preparatory to devouring it, with the buttered side next the carpet.
+
+'Ah, you rogue!' said Budden to his dog; 'you see, Minns, he's like me,
+always at home, eh, my boy!--Egad, I'm precious hot and hungry!  I've
+walked all the way from Stamford-hill this morning.'
+
+'Have you breakfasted?' inquired Minns.
+
+'Oh, no!--came to breakfast with you; so ring the bell, my dear fellow,
+will you? and let's have another cup and saucer, and the cold ham.--Make
+myself at home, you see!' continued Budden, dusting his boots with a
+table-napkin.  'Ha!--ha!--ha!--'pon my life, I'm hungry.'
+
+Minns rang the bell, and tried to smile.
+
+'I decidedly never was so hot in my life,' continued Octavius, wiping his
+forehead; 'well, but how are you, Minns?  'Pon my soul, you wear
+capitally!'
+
+'D'ye think so?' said Minns; and he tried another smile.
+
+''Pon my life, I do!'
+
+'Mrs. B. and--what's his name--quite well?'
+
+'Alick--my son, you mean; never better--never better.  But at such a
+place as we've got at Poplar-walk, you know, he couldn't be ill if he
+tried.  When I first saw it, by Jove! it looked so knowing, with the
+front garden, and the green railings and the brass knocker, and all
+that--I really thought it was a cut above me.'
+
+'Don't you think you'd like the ham better,' interrupted Minns, 'if you
+cut it the other way?'  He saw, with feelings which it is impossible to
+describe, that his visitor was cutting or rather maiming the ham, in
+utter violation of all established rules.
+
+'No, thank ye,' returned Budden, with the most barbarous indifference to
+crime, 'I prefer it this way, it eats short.  But I say, Minns, when will
+you come down and see us?  You will be delighted with the place; I know
+you will.  Amelia and I were talking about you the other night, and
+Amelia said--another lump of sugar, please; thank ye--she said, don't you
+think you could contrive, my dear, to say to Mr. Minns, in a friendly
+way--come down, sir--damn the dog! he's spoiling your curtains,
+Minns--ha!--ha!--ha!'  Minns leaped from his seat as though he had
+received the discharge from a galvanic battery.
+
+'Come out, sir!--go out, hoo!' cried poor Augustus, keeping,
+nevertheless, at a very respectful distance from the dog; having read of
+a case of hydrophobia in the paper of that morning.  By dint of great
+exertion, much shouting, and a marvellous deal of poking under the tables
+with a stick and umbrella, the dog was at last dislodged, and placed on
+the landing outside the door, where he immediately commenced a most
+appalling howling; at the same time vehemently scratching the paint off
+the two nicely-varnished bottom panels, until they resembled the interior
+of a backgammon-board.
+
+'A good dog for the country that!' coolly observed Budden to the
+distracted Minns, 'but he's not much used to confinement.  But now,
+Minns, when will you come down?  I'll take no denial, positively.  Let's
+see, to-day's Thursday.--Will you come on Sunday?  We dine at five, don't
+say no--do.'
+
+After a great deal of pressing, Mr. Augustus Minns, driven to despair,
+accepted the invitation, and promised to be at Poplar-walk on the ensuing
+Sunday, at a quarter before five to the minute.
+
+'Now mind the direction,' said Budden: 'the coach goes from the
+Flower-pot, in Bishopsgate-street, every half hour.  When the coach stops
+at the Swan, you'll see, immediately opposite you, a white house.'
+
+'Which is your house--I understand,' said Minns, wishing to cut short the
+visit, and the story, at the same time.
+
+'No, no, that's not mine; that's Grogus's, the great ironmonger's.  I was
+going to say--you turn down by the side of the white house till you can't
+go another step further--mind that!--and then you turn to your right, by
+some stables--well; close to you, you'll see a wall with "Beware of the
+Dog" written on it in large letters--(Minns shuddered)--go along by the
+side of that wall for about a quarter of a mile--and anybody will show
+you which is my place.'
+
+'Very well--thank ye--good-bye.'
+
+'Be punctual.'
+
+'Certainly: good morning.'
+
+'I say, Minns, you've got a card.'
+
+'Yes, I have; thank ye.'  And Mr. Octavius Budden departed, leaving his
+cousin looking forward to his visit on the following Sunday, with the
+feelings of a penniless poet to the weekly visit of his Scotch landlady.
+
+Sunday arrived; the sky was bright and clear; crowds of people were
+hurrying along the streets, intent on their different schemes of pleasure
+for the day; everything and everybody looked cheerful and happy except
+Mr. Augustus Minns.
+
+The day was fine, but the heat was considerable; when Mr. Minns had
+fagged up the shady side of Fleet-street, Cheapside, and
+Threadneedle-street, he had become pretty warm, tolerably dusty, and it
+was getting late into the bargain.  By the most extraordinary good
+fortune, however, a coach was waiting at the Flower-pot, into which Mr.
+Augustus Minns got, on the solemn assurance of the cad that the vehicle
+would start in three minutes--that being the very utmost extremity of
+time it was allowed to wait by Act of Parliament.  A quarter of an hour
+elapsed, and there were no signs of moving.  Minns looked at his watch
+for the sixth time.
+
+'Coachman, are you going or not?' bawled Mr. Minns, with his head and
+half his body out of the coach window.
+
+'Di-rectly, sir,' said the coachman, with his hands in his pockets,
+looking as much unlike a man in a hurry as possible.
+
+'Bill, take them cloths off.'  Five minutes more elapsed: at the end of
+which time the coachman mounted the box, from whence he looked down the
+street, and up the street, and hailed all the pedestrians for another
+five minutes.
+
+'Coachman! if you don't go this moment, I shall get out,' said Mr. Minns,
+rendered desperate by the lateness of the hour, and the impossibility of
+being in Poplar-walk at the appointed time.
+
+'Going this minute, sir,' was the reply;--and, accordingly, the machine
+trundled on for a couple of hundred yards, and then stopped again.  Minns
+doubled himself up in a corner of the coach, and abandoned himself to his
+fate, as a child, a mother, a bandbox and a parasol, became his
+fellow-passengers.
+
+The child was an affectionate and an amiable infant; the little dear
+mistook Minns for his other parent, and screamed to embrace him.
+
+'Be quiet, dear,' said the mamma, restraining the impetuosity of the
+darling, whose little fat legs were kicking, and stamping, and twining
+themselves into the most complicated forms, in an ecstasy of impatience.
+'Be quiet, dear, that's not your papa.'
+
+'Thank Heaven I am not!' thought Minns, as the first gleam of pleasure he
+had experienced that morning shone like a meteor through his
+wretchedness.
+
+Playfulness was agreeably mingled with affection in the disposition of
+the boy.  When satisfied that Mr. Minns was not his parent, he
+endeavoured to attract his notice by scraping his drab trousers with his
+dirty shoes, poking his chest with his mamma's parasol, and other
+nameless endearments peculiar to infancy, with which he beguiled the
+tediousness of the ride, apparently very much to his own satisfaction.
+
+When the unfortunate gentleman arrived at the Swan, he found to his great
+dismay, that it was a quarter past five.  The white house, the stables,
+the 'Beware of the Dog,'--every landmark was passed, with a rapidity not
+unusual to a gentleman of a certain age when too late for dinner.  After
+the lapse of a few minutes, Mr. Minns found himself opposite a yellow
+brick house with a green door, brass knocker, and door-plate, green
+window-frames and ditto railings, with 'a garden' in front, that is to
+say, a small loose bit of gravelled ground, with one round and two
+scalene triangular beds, containing a fir-tree, twenty or thirty bulbs,
+and an unlimited number of marigolds.  The taste of Mr. and Mrs. Budden
+was further displayed by the appearance of a Cupid on each side of the
+door, perched upon a heap of large chalk flints, variegated with pink
+conch-shells.  His knock at the door was answered by a stumpy boy, in
+drab livery, cotton stockings and high-lows, who, after hanging his hat
+on one of the dozen brass pegs which ornamented the passage, denominated
+by courtesy 'The Hall,' ushered him into a front drawing-room commanding
+a very extensive view of the backs of the neighbouring houses.  The usual
+ceremony of introduction, and so forth, over, Mr. Minns took his seat:
+not a little agitated at finding that he was the last comer, and, somehow
+or other, the Lion of about a dozen people, sitting together in a small
+drawing-room, getting rid of that most tedious of all time, the time
+preceding dinner.
+
+'Well, Brogson,' said Budden, addressing an elderly gentleman in a black
+coat, drab knee-breeches, and long gaiters, who, under pretence of
+inspecting the prints in an Annual, had been engaged in satisfying
+himself on the subject of Mr. Minns's general appearance, by looking at
+him over the tops of the leaves--'Well, Brogson, what do ministers mean
+to do?  Will they go out, or what?'
+
+'Oh--why--really, you know, I'm the last person in the world to ask for
+news.  Your cousin, from his situation, is the most likely person to
+answer the question.'
+
+Mr. Minns assured the last speaker, that although he was in
+Somerset-house, he possessed no official communication relative to the
+projects of his Majesty's Ministers.  But his remark was evidently
+received incredulously; and no further conjectures being hazarded on the
+subject, a long pause ensued, during which the company occupied
+themselves in coughing and blowing their noses, until the entrance of
+Mrs. Budden caused a general rise.
+
+The ceremony of introduction being over, dinner was announced, and
+down-stairs the party proceeded accordingly--Mr. Minns escorting Mrs.
+Budden as far as the drawing-room door, but being prevented, by the
+narrowness of the staircase, from extending his gallantry any farther.
+The dinner passed off as such dinners usually do.  Ever and anon, amidst
+the clatter of knives and forks, and the hum of conversation, Mr. B.'s
+voice might be heard, asking a friend to take wine, and assuring him he
+was glad to see him; and a great deal of by-play took place between Mrs.
+B. and the servants, respecting the removal of the dishes, during which
+her countenance assumed all the variations of a weather-glass, from
+'stormy' to 'set fair.'
+
+Upon the dessert and wine being placed on the table, the servant, in
+compliance with a significant look from Mrs. B., brought down 'Master
+Alexander,' habited in a sky-blue suit with silver buttons; and
+possessing hair of nearly the same colour as the metal.  After sundry
+praises from his mother, and various admonitions as to his behaviour from
+his father, he was introduced to his godfather.
+
+'Well, my little fellow--you are a fine boy, ain't you?' said Mr. Minns,
+as happy as a tomtit on birdlime.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'How old are you?'
+
+'Eight, next We'nsday.  How old are _you_?'
+
+'Alexander,' interrupted his mother, 'how dare you ask Mr. Minns how old
+he is!'
+
+'He asked me how old _I_ was,' said the precocious child, to whom Minns
+had from that moment internally resolved that he never would bequeath one
+shilling.  As soon as the titter occasioned by the observation had
+subsided, a little smirking man with red whiskers, sitting at the bottom
+of the table, who during the whole of dinner had been endeavouring to
+obtain a listener to some stories about Sheridan, called, out, with a
+very patronising air, 'Alick, what part of speech is _be_.'
+
+'A verb.'
+
+'That's a good boy,' said Mrs. Budden, with all a mother's pride.
+
+'Now, you know what a verb is?'
+
+'A verb is a word which signifies to be, to do, or to suffer; as, I am--I
+rule--I am ruled.  Give me an apple, Ma.'
+
+'I'll give you an apple,' replied the man with the red whiskers, who was
+an established friend of the family, or in other words was always invited
+by Mrs. Budden, whether Mr. Budden liked it or not, 'if you'll tell me
+what is the meaning of _be_.'
+
+'Be?' said the prodigy, after a little hesitation--'an insect that
+gathers honey.'
+
+'No, dear,' frowned Mrs. Budden; 'B double E is the substantive.'
+
+'I don't think he knows much yet about _common_ substantives,' said the
+smirking gentleman, who thought this an admirable opportunity for letting
+off a joke.  'It's clear he's not very well acquainted with _proper
+names_.  He! he! he!'
+
+'Gentlemen,' called out Mr. Budden, from the end of the table, in a
+stentorian voice, and with a very important air, 'will you have the
+goodness to charge your glasses?  I have a toast to propose.'
+
+'Hear! hear!' cried the gentlemen, passing the decanters.  After they had
+made the round of the table, Mr. Budden proceeded--'Gentlemen; there is
+an individual present--'
+
+'Hear! hear!' said the little man with red whiskers.
+
+'_Pray_ be quiet, Jones,' remonstrated Budden.
+
+'I say, gentlemen, there is an individual present,' resumed the host, 'in
+whose society, I am sure we must take great delight--and--and--the
+conversation of that individual must have afforded to every one present,
+the utmost pleasure.'  ['Thank Heaven, he does not mean me!' thought
+Minns, conscious that his diffidence and exclusiveness had prevented his
+saying above a dozen words since he entered the house.]  'Gentlemen, I am
+but a humble individual myself, and I perhaps ought to apologise for
+allowing any individual feeling of friendship and affection for the
+person I allude to, to induce me to venture to rise, to propose the
+health of that person--a person that, I am sure--that is to say, a person
+whose virtues must endear him to those who know him--and those who have
+not the pleasure of knowing him, cannot dislike him.'
+
+'Hear! hear!' said the company, in a tone of encouragement and approval.
+
+'Gentlemen,' continued Budden, 'my cousin is a man who--who is a relation
+of my own.'  (Hear! hear!)  Minns groaned audibly.  'Who I am most happy
+to see here, and who, if he were not here, would certainly have deprived
+us of the great pleasure we all feel in seeing him.  (Loud cries of
+hear!)  Gentlemen, I feel that I have already trespassed on your
+attention for too long a time.  With every feeling--of--with every
+sentiment of--of--'
+
+'Gratification'--suggested the friend of the family.
+
+'--Of gratification, I beg to propose the health of Mr. Minns.'
+
+'Standing, gentlemen!' shouted the indefatigable little man with the
+whiskers--'and with the honours.  Take your time from me, if you please.
+Hip! hip! hip!--Za!--Hip! hip! hip!--Za!--Hip hip!--Za-a-a!'
+
+All eyes were now fixed on the subject of the toast, who by gulping down
+port wine at the imminent hazard of suffocation, endeavoured to conceal
+his confusion.  After as long a pause as decency would admit, he rose,
+but, as the newspapers sometimes say in their reports, 'we regret that we
+are quite unable to give even the substance of the honourable gentleman's
+observations.'  The words 'present company--honour--present occasion,'
+and 'great happiness'--heard occasionally, and repeated at intervals,
+with a countenance expressive of the utmost confusion and misery,
+convinced the company that he was making an excellent speech; and,
+accordingly, on his resuming his seat, they cried 'Bravo!' and manifested
+tumultuous applause.  Jones, who had been long watching his opportunity,
+then darted up.
+
+'Budden,' said he, 'will you allow _me_ to propose a toast?'
+
+'Certainly,' replied Budden, adding in an under-tone to Minns right
+across the table, 'Devilish sharp fellow that: you'll be very much
+pleased with his speech.  He talks equally well on any subject.'  Minns
+bowed, and Mr. Jones proceeded:
+
+'It has on several occasions, in various instances, under many
+circumstances, and in different companies, fallen to my lot to propose a
+toast to those by whom, at the time, I have had the honour to be
+surrounded, I have sometimes, I will cheerfully own--for why should I
+deny it?--felt the overwhelming nature of the task I have undertaken, and
+my own utter incapability to do justice to the subject.  If such have
+been my feelings, however, on former occasions, what must they be
+now--now--under the extraordinary circumstances in which I am placed.
+(Hear! hear!)  To describe my feelings accurately, would be impossible;
+but I cannot give you a better idea of them, gentlemen, than by referring
+to a circumstance which happens, oddly enough, to occur to my mind at the
+moment.  On one occasion, when that truly great and illustrious man,
+Sheridan, was--'
+
+Now, there is no knowing what new villainy in the form of a joke would
+have been heaped on the grave of that very ill-used man, Mr. Sheridan, if
+the boy in drab had not at that moment entered the room in a breathless
+state, to report that, as it was a very wet night, the nine o'clock stage
+had come round, to know whether there was anybody going to town, as, in
+that case, he (the nine o'clock) had room for one inside.
+
+Mr. Minns started up; and, despite countless exclamations of surprise,
+and entreaties to stay, persisted in his determination to accept the
+vacant place.  But, the brown silk umbrella was nowhere to be found; and
+as the coachman couldn't wait, he drove back to the Swan, leaving word
+for Mr. Minns to 'run round' and catch him.  However, as it did not occur
+to Mr. Minns for some ten minutes or so, that he had left the brown silk
+umbrella with the ivory handle in the other coach, coming down; and,
+moreover, as he was by no means remarkable for speed, it is no matter of
+surprise that when he accomplished the feat of 'running round' to the
+Swan, the coach--the last coach--had gone without him.
+
+It was somewhere about three o'clock in the morning, when Mr. Augustus
+Minns knocked feebly at the street-door of his lodgings in
+Tavistock-street, cold, wet, cross, and miserable.  He made his will next
+morning, and his professional man informs us, in that strict confidence
+in which we inform the public, that neither the name of Mr. Octavius
+Budden, nor of Mrs. Amelia Budden, nor of Master Alexander Augustus
+Budden, appears therein.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--SENTIMENT
+
+
+The Miss Crumptons, or to quote the authority of the inscription on the
+garden-gate of Minerva House, Hammersmith, 'The Misses Crumpton,' were
+two unusually tall, particularly thin, and exceedingly skinny personages:
+very upright, and very yellow.  Miss Amelia Crumpton owned to
+thirty-eight, and Miss Maria Crumpton admitted she was forty; an
+admission which was rendered perfectly unnecessary by the self-evident
+fact of her being at least fifty.  They dressed in the most interesting
+manner--like twins! and looked as happy and comfortable as a couple of
+marigolds run to seed.  They were very precise, had the strictest
+possible ideas of propriety, wore false hair, and always smelt very
+strongly of lavender.
+
+Minerva House, conducted under the auspices of the two sisters, was a
+'finishing establishment for young ladies,' where some twenty girls of
+the ages of from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of
+everything, and a knowledge of nothing; instruction in French and
+Italian, dancing lessons twice a-week; and other necessaries of life.
+The house was a white one, a little removed from the roadside, with close
+palings in front.  The bedroom windows were always left partly open, to
+afford a bird's-eye view of numerous little bedsteads with very white
+dimity furniture, and thereby impress the passer-by with a due sense of
+the luxuries of the establishment; and there was a front parlour hung
+round with highly varnished maps which nobody ever looked at, and filled
+with books which no one ever read, appropriated exclusively to the
+reception of parents, who, whenever they called, could not fail to be
+struck with the very deep appearance of the place.
+
+'Amelia, my dear,' said Miss Maria Crumpton, entering the school-room one
+morning, with her false hair in papers: as she occasionally did, in order
+to impress the young ladies with a conviction of its reality.  'Amelia,
+my dear, here is a most gratifying note I have just received.  You
+needn't mind reading it aloud.'
+
+Miss Amelia, thus advised, proceeded to read the following note with an
+air of great triumph:
+
+    'Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M.P., presents his compliments to
+    Miss Crumpton, and will feel much obliged by Miss Crumpton's calling
+    on him, if she conveniently can, to-morrow morning at one o'clock, as
+    Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M.P., is anxious to see Miss Crumpton
+    on the subject of placing Miss Brook Dingwall under her charge.
+
+    'Adelphi.
+
+    'Monday morning.'
+
+'A Member of Parliament's daughter!' ejaculated Amelia, in an ecstatic
+tone.
+
+'A Member of Parliament's daughter!' repeated Miss Maria, with a smile of
+delight, which, of course, elicited a concurrent titter of pleasure from
+all the young ladies.
+
+'It's exceedingly delightful!' said Miss Amelia; whereupon all the young
+ladies murmured their admiration again.  Courtiers are but school-boys,
+and court-ladies school-girl's.
+
+So important an announcement at once superseded the business of the day.
+A holiday was declared, in commemoration of the great event; the Miss
+Crumptons retired to their private apartment to talk it over; the smaller
+girls discussed the probable manners and customs of the daughter of a
+Member of Parliament; and the young ladies verging on eighteen wondered
+whether she was engaged, whether she was pretty, whether she wore much
+bustle, and many other _whethers_ of equal importance.
+
+The two Miss Crumptons proceeded to the Adelphi at the appointed time
+next day, dressed, of course, in their best style, and looking as amiable
+as they possibly could--which, by-the-bye, is not saying much for them.
+Having sent in their cards, through the medium of a red-hot looking
+footman in bright livery, they were ushered into the august presence of
+the profound Dingwall.
+
+Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M.P., was very haughty, solemn, and
+portentous.  He had, naturally, a somewhat spasmodic expression of
+countenance, which was not rendered the less remarkable by his wearing an
+extremely stiff cravat.  He was wonderfully proud of the M.P. attached to
+his name, and never lost an opportunity of reminding people of his
+dignity.  He had a great idea of his own abilities, which must have been
+a great comfort to him, as no one else had; and in diplomacy, on a small
+scale, in his own family arrangements, he considered himself unrivalled.
+He was a county magistrate, and discharged the duties of his station with
+all due justice and impartiality; frequently committing poachers, and
+occasionally committing himself.  Miss Brook Dingwall was one of that
+numerous class of young ladies, who, like adverbs, may be known by their
+answering to a commonplace question, and doing nothing else.
+
+On the present occasion, this talented individual was seated in a small
+library at a table covered with papers, doing nothing, but trying to look
+busy, playing at shop.  Acts of Parliament, and letters directed to
+'Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M.P.,' were ostentatiously scattered
+over the table; at a little distance from which, Mrs. Brook Dingwall was
+seated at work.  One of those public nuisances, a spoiled child, was
+playing about the room, dressed after the most approved fashion--in a
+blue tunic with a black belt--a quarter of a yard wide, fastened with an
+immense buckle--looking like a robber in a melodrama, seen through a
+diminishing glass.
+
+After a little pleasantry from the sweet child, who amused himself by
+running away with Miss Maria Crumpton's chair as fast as it was placed
+for her, the visitors were seated, and Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq.,
+opened the conversation.
+
+He had sent for Miss Crumpton, he said, in consequence of the high
+character he had received of her establishment from his friend, Sir
+Alfred Muggs.
+
+Miss Crumpton murmured her acknowledgments to him (Muggs), and Cornelius
+proceeded.
+
+'One of my principal reasons, Miss Crumpton, for parting with my
+daughter, is, that she has lately acquired some sentimental ideas, which
+it is most desirable to eradicate from her young mind.'  (Here the little
+innocent before noticed, fell out of an arm-chair with an awful crash.)
+
+'Naughty boy!' said his mamma, who appeared more surprised at his taking
+the liberty of falling down, than at anything else; 'I'll ring the bell
+for James to take him away.'
+
+'Pray don't check him, my love,' said the diplomatist, as soon as he
+could make himself heard amidst the unearthly howling consequent upon the
+threat and the tumble.  'It all arises from his great flow of spirits.'
+This last explanation was addressed to Miss Crumpton.
+
+'Certainly, sir,' replied the antique Maria: not exactly seeing, however,
+the connexion between a flow of animal spirits, and a fall from an
+arm-chair.
+
+Silence was restored, and the M.P. resumed: 'Now, I know nothing so
+likely to effect this object, Miss Crumpton, as her mixing constantly in
+the society of girls of her own age; and, as I know that in your
+establishment she will meet such as are not likely to contaminate her
+young mind, I propose to send her to you.'
+
+The youngest Miss Crumpton expressed the acknowledgments of the
+establishment generally.  Maria was rendered speechless by bodily pain.
+The dear little fellow, having recovered his animal spirits, was standing
+upon her most tender foot, by way of getting his face (which looked like
+a capital O in a red-lettered play-bill) on a level with the
+writing-table.
+
+'Of course, Lavinia will be a parlour boarder,' continued the enviable
+father; 'and on one point I wish my directions to be strictly observed.
+The fact is, that some ridiculous love affair, with a person much her
+inferior in life, has been the cause of her present state of mind.
+Knowing that of course, under your care, she can have no opportunity of
+meeting this person, I do not object to--indeed, I should rather
+prefer--her mixing with such society as you see yourself.'
+
+This important statement was again interrupted by the high-spirited
+little creature, in the excess of his joyousness breaking a pane of
+glass, and nearly precipitating himself into an adjacent area.  James was
+rung for; considerable confusion and screaming succeeded; two little blue
+legs were seen to kick violently in the air as the man left the room, and
+the child was gone.
+
+'Mr. Brook Dingwall would like Miss Brook Dingwall to learn everything,'
+said Mrs. Brook Dingwall, who hardly ever said anything at all.
+
+'Certainly,' said both the Miss Crumptons together.
+
+'And as I trust the plan I have devised will be effectual in weaning my
+daughter from this absurd idea, Miss Crumpton,' continued the legislator,
+'I hope you will have the goodness to comply, in all respects, with any
+request I may forward to you.'
+
+The promise was of course made; and after a lengthened discussion,
+conducted on behalf of the Dingwalls with the most becoming diplomatic
+gravity, and on that of the Crumptons with profound respect, it was
+finally arranged that Miss Lavinia should be forwarded to Hammersmith on
+the next day but one, on which occasion the half-yearly ball given at the
+establishment was to take place.  It might divert the dear girl's mind.
+This, by the way, was another bit of diplomacy.
+
+Miss Lavinia was introduced to her future governess, and both the Miss
+Crumptons pronounced her 'a most charming girl;' an opinion which, by a
+singular coincidence, they always entertained of any new pupil.
+
+Courtesies were exchanged, acknowledgments expressed, condescension
+exhibited, and the interview terminated.
+
+Preparations, to make use of theatrical phraseology, 'on a scale of
+magnitude never before attempted,' were incessantly made at Minerva House
+to give every effect to the forthcoming ball.  The largest room in the
+house was pleasingly ornamented with blue calico roses, plaid tulips, and
+other equally natural-looking artificial flowers, the work of the young
+ladies themselves.  The carpet was taken up, the folding-doors were taken
+down, the furniture was taken out, and rout-seats were taken in.  The
+linen-drapers of Hammersmith were astounded at the sudden demand for blue
+sarsenet ribbon, and long white gloves.  Dozens of geraniums were
+purchased for bouquets, and a harp and two violins were bespoke from
+town, in addition to the grand piano already on the premises.  The young
+ladies who were selected to show off on the occasion, and do credit to
+the establishment, practised incessantly, much to their own satisfaction,
+and greatly to the annoyance of the lame old gentleman over the way; and
+a constant correspondence was kept up, between the Misses Crumpton and
+the Hammersmith pastrycook.
+
+The evening came; and then there was such a lacing of stays, and tying of
+sandals, and dressing of hair, as never can take place with a proper
+degree of bustle out of a boarding-school.  The smaller girls managed to
+be in everybody's way, and were pushed about accordingly; and the elder
+ones dressed, and tied, and flattered, and envied, one another, as
+earnestly and sincerely as if they had actually _come out_.
+
+'How do I look, dear?' inquired Miss Emily Smithers, the belle of the
+house, of Miss Caroline Wilson, who was her bosom friend, because she was
+the ugliest girl in Hammersmith, or out of it.
+
+'Oh! charming, dear.  How do I?'
+
+'Delightful! you never looked so handsome,' returned the belle, adjusting
+her own dress, and not bestowing a glance on her poor companion.
+
+'I hope young Hilton will come early,' said another young lady to Miss
+somebody else, in a fever of expectation.
+
+'I'm sure he'd be highly flattered if he knew it,' returned the other,
+who was practising _l'ete_.
+
+'Oh! he's so handsome,' said the first.
+
+'Such a charming person!' added a second.
+
+'Such a _distingue_ air!' said a third.
+
+'Oh, what _do_ you think?' said another girl, running into the room;
+'Miss Crumpton says her cousin's coming.'
+
+'What!  Theodosius Butler?' said everybody in raptures.
+
+'Is _he_ handsome?' inquired a novice.
+
+'No, not particularly handsome,' was the general reply; 'but, oh, so
+clever!'
+
+Mr. Theodosius Butler was one of those immortal geniuses who are to be
+met with in almost every circle.  They have, usually, very deep,
+monotonous voices.  They always persuade themselves that they are
+wonderful persons, and that they ought to be very miserable, though they
+don't precisely know why.  They are very conceited, and usually possess
+half an idea; but, with enthusiastic young ladies, and silly young
+gentlemen, they are very wonderful persons.  The individual in question,
+Mr. Theodosius, had written a pamphlet containing some very weighty
+considerations on the expediency of doing something or other; and as
+every sentence contained a good many words of four syllables, his
+admirers took it for granted that he meant a good deal.
+
+'Perhaps that's he,' exclaimed several young ladies, as the first pull of
+the evening threatened destruction to the bell of the gate.
+
+An awful pause ensued.  Some boxes arrived and a young lady--Miss Brook
+Dingwall, in full ball costume, with an immense gold chain round her
+neck, and her dress looped up with a single rose; an ivory fan in her
+hand, and a most interesting expression of despair in her face.
+
+The Miss Crumptons inquired after the family, with the most excruciating
+anxiety, and Miss Brook Dingwall was formally introduced to her future
+companions.  The Miss Crumptons conversed with the young ladies in the
+most mellifluous tones, in order that Miss Brook Dingwall might be
+properly impressed with their amiable treatment.
+
+Another pull at the bell.  Mr. Dadson the writing-master, and his wife.
+The wife in green silk, with shoes and cap-trimmings to correspond: the
+writing-master in a white waistcoat, black knee-shorts, and ditto silk
+stockings, displaying a leg large enough for two writing-masters.  The
+young ladies whispered one another, and the writing-master and his wife
+flattered the Miss Crumptons, who were dressed in amber, with long
+sashes, like dolls.
+
+Repeated pulls at the bell, and arrivals too numerous to particularise:
+papas and mammas, and aunts and uncles, the owners and guardians of the
+different pupils; the singing-master, Signor Lobskini, in a black wig;
+the piano-forte player and the violins; the harp, in a state of
+intoxication; and some twenty young men, who stood near the door, and
+talked to one another, occasionally bursting into a giggle.  A general
+hum of conversation.  Coffee handed round, and plentifully partaken of by
+fat mammas, who looked like the stout people who come on in pantomimes
+for the sole purpose of being knocked down.
+
+The popular Mr. Hilton was the next arrival; and he having, at the
+request of the Miss Crumptons, undertaken the office of Master of the
+Ceremonies, the quadrilles commenced with considerable spirit.  The young
+men by the door gradually advanced into the middle of the room, and in
+time became sufficiently at ease to consent to be introduced to partners.
+The writing-master danced every set, springing about with the most
+fearful agility, and his wife played a rubber in the back-parlour--a
+little room with five book-shelves, dignified by the name of the study.
+Setting her down to whist was a half-yearly piece of generalship on the
+part of the Miss Crumptons; it was necessary to hide her somewhere, on
+account of her being a fright.
+
+The interesting Lavinia Brook Dingwall was the only girl present, who
+appeared to take no interest in the proceedings of the evening.  In vain
+was she solicited to dance; in vain was the universal homage paid to her
+as the daughter of a member of parliament.  She was equally unmoved by
+the splendid tenor of the inimitable Lobskini, and the brilliant
+execution of Miss Laetitia Parsons, whose performance of 'The
+Recollections of Ireland' was universally declared to be almost equal to
+that of Moscheles himself.  Not even the announcement of the arrival of
+Mr. Theodosius Butler could induce her to leave the corner of the back
+drawing-room in which she was seated.
+
+'Now, Theodosius,' said Miss Maria Crumpton, after that enlightened
+pamphleteer had nearly run the gauntlet of the whole company, 'I must
+introduce you to our new pupil.'
+
+Theodosius looked as if he cared for nothing earthly.
+
+'She's the daughter of a member of parliament,' said Maria.--Theodosius
+started.
+
+'And her name is--?' he inquired.
+
+'Miss Brook Dingwall.'
+
+'Great Heaven!' poetically exclaimed Theodosius, in a low tone.
+
+Miss Crumpton commenced the introduction in due form.  Miss Brook
+Dingwall languidly raised her head.
+
+'Edward!' she exclaimed, with a half-shriek, on seeing the well-known
+nankeen legs.
+
+Fortunately, as Miss Maria Crumpton possessed no remarkable share of
+penetration, and as it was one of the diplomatic arrangements that no
+attention was to be paid to Miss Lavinia's incoherent exclamations, she
+was perfectly unconscious of the mutual agitation of the parties; and
+therefore, seeing that the offer of his hand for the next quadrille was
+accepted, she left him by the side of Miss Brook Dingwall.
+
+'Oh, Edward!' exclaimed that most romantic of all romantic young ladies,
+as the light of science seated himself beside her, 'Oh, Edward, is it
+you?'
+
+Mr. Theodosius assured the dear creature, in the most impassioned manner,
+that he was not conscious of being anybody but himself.
+
+'Then why--why--this disguise?  Oh!  Edward M'Neville Walter, what have I
+not suffered on your account?'
+
+'Lavinia, hear me,' replied the hero, in his most poetic strain.  'Do not
+condemn me unheard.  If anything that emanates from the soul of such a
+wretch as I, can occupy a place in your recollection--if any being, so
+vile, deserve your notice--you may remember that I once published a
+pamphlet (and paid for its publication) entitled "Considerations on the
+Policy of Removing the Duty on Bees'-wax."'
+
+'I do--I do!' sobbed Lavinia.
+
+'That,' continued the lover, 'was a subject to which your father was
+devoted heart and soul.'
+
+'He was--he was!' reiterated the sentimentalist.
+
+'I knew it,' continued Theodosius, tragically; 'I knew it--I forwarded
+him a copy.  He wished to know me.  Could I disclose my real name?
+Never!  No, I assumed that name which you have so often pronounced in
+tones of endearment.  As M'Neville Walter, I devoted myself to the
+stirring cause; as M'Neville Walter I gained your heart; in the same
+character I was ejected from your house by your father's domestics; and
+in no character at all have I since been enabled to see you.  We now meet
+again, and I proudly own that I am--Theodosius Butler.'
+
+The young lady appeared perfectly satisfied with this argumentative
+address, and bestowed a look of the most ardent affection on the immortal
+advocate of bees'-wax.
+
+'May I hope,' said he, 'that the promise your father's violent behaviour
+interrupted, may be renewed?'
+
+'Let us join this set,' replied Lavinia, coquettishly--for girls of
+nineteen _can_ coquette.
+
+'No,' ejaculated he of the nankeens.  'I stir not from this spot,
+writhing under this torture of suspense.  May I--may I--hope?'
+
+'You may.'
+
+'The promise is renewed?'
+
+'It is.'
+
+'I have your permission?'
+
+'You have.'
+
+'To the fullest extent?'
+
+'You know it,' returned the blushing Lavinia.  The contortions of the
+interesting Butler's visage expressed his raptures.
+
+We could dilate upon the occurrences that ensued.  How Mr. Theodosius and
+Miss Lavinia danced, and talked, and sighed for the remainder of the
+evening--how the Miss Crumptons were delighted thereat.  How the
+writing-master continued to frisk about with one-horse power, and how his
+wife, from some unaccountable freak, left the whist-table in the little
+back-parlour, and persisted in displaying her green head-dress in the
+most conspicuous part of the drawing-room.  How the supper consisted of
+small triangular sandwiches in trays, and a tart here and there by way of
+variety; and how the visitors consumed warm water disguised with lemon,
+and dotted with nutmeg, under the denomination of negus.  These, and
+other matters of as much interest, however, we pass over, for the purpose
+of describing a scene of even more importance.
+
+A fortnight after the date of the ball, Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq.,
+M.P., was seated at the same library-table, and in the same room, as we
+have before described.  He was alone, and his face bore an expression of
+deep thought and solemn gravity--he was drawing up 'A Bill for the better
+observance of Easter Monday.'
+
+The footman tapped at the door--the legislator started from his reverie,
+and 'Miss Crumpton' was announced.  Permission was given for Miss
+Crumpton to enter the _sanctum_; Maria came sliding in, and having taken
+her seat with a due portion of affectation, the footman retired, and the
+governess was left alone with the M.P.  Oh! how she longed for the
+presence of a third party!  Even the facetious young gentleman would have
+been a relief.
+
+Miss Crumpton began the duet.  She hoped Mrs. Brook Dingwall and the
+handsome little boy were in good health.
+
+They were.  Mrs. Brook Dingwall and little Frederick were at Brighton.
+
+'Much obliged to you, Miss Crumpton,' said Cornelius, in his most
+dignified manner, 'for your attention in calling this morning.  I should
+have driven down to Hammersmith, to see Lavinia, but your account was so
+very satisfactory, and my duties in the House occupy me so much, that I
+determined to postpone it for a week.  How has she gone on?'
+
+'Very well indeed, sir,' returned Maria, dreading to inform the father
+that she had gone off.
+
+'Ah, I thought the plan on which I proceeded would be a match for her.'
+
+Here was a favourable opportunity to say that somebody else had been a
+match for her.  But the unfortunate governess was unequal to the task.
+
+'You have persevered strictly in the line of conduct I prescribed, Miss
+Crumpton?'
+
+'Strictly, sir.'
+
+'You tell me in your note that her spirits gradually improved.'
+
+'Very much indeed, sir.'
+
+'To be sure.  I was convinced they would.'
+
+'But I fear, sir,' said Miss Crumpton, with visible emotion, 'I fear the
+plan has not succeeded, quite so well as we could have wished.'
+
+No!' exclaimed the prophet.  'Bless me!  Miss Crumpton, you look alarmed.
+What has happened?'
+
+'Miss Brook Dingwall, sir--'
+
+'Yes, ma'am?'
+
+'Has gone, sir'--said Maria, exhibiting a strong inclination to faint.
+
+'Gone!'
+
+'Eloped, sir.'
+
+'Eloped!--Who with--when--where--how?' almost shrieked the agitated
+diplomatist.
+
+The natural yellow of the unfortunate Maria's face changed to all the
+hues of the rainbow, as she laid a small packet on the member's table.
+
+He hurriedly opened it.  A letter from his daughter, and another from
+Theodosius.  He glanced over their contents--'Ere this reaches you, far
+distant--appeal to feelings--love to distraction--bees'-wax--slavery,'
+&c., &c.  He dashed his hand to his forehead, and paced the room with
+fearfully long strides, to the great alarm of the precise Maria.
+
+'Now mind; from this time forward,' said Mr. Brook Dingwall, suddenly
+stopping at the table, and beating time upon it with his hand; 'from this
+time forward, I never will, under any circumstances whatever, permit a
+man who writes pamphlets to enter any other room of this house but the
+kitchen.--I'll allow my daughter and her husband one hundred and fifty
+pounds a-year, and never see their faces again: and, damme! ma'am, I'll
+bring in a bill for the abolition of finishing-schools.'
+
+Some time has elapsed since this passionate declaration.  Mr. and Mrs.
+Butler are at present rusticating in a small cottage at Ball's-pond,
+pleasantly situated in the immediate vicinity of a brick-field.  They
+have no family.  Mr. Theodosius looks very important, and writes
+incessantly; but, in consequence of a gross combination on the part of
+publishers, none of his productions appear in print.  His young wife
+begins to think that ideal misery is preferable to real unhappiness; and
+that a marriage, contracted in haste, and repented at leisure, is the
+cause of more substantial wretchedness than she ever anticipated.
+
+On cool reflection, Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M.P., was reluctantly
+compelled to admit that the untoward result of his admirable arrangements
+was attributable, not to the Miss Crumptons, but his own diplomacy.  He,
+however, consoles himself, like some other small diplomatists, by
+satisfactorily proving that if his plans did not succeed, they ought to
+have done so.  Minerva House is _in status quo_, and 'The Misses
+Crumpton' remain in the peaceable and undisturbed enjoyment of all the
+advantages resulting from their Finishing-School.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--THE TUGGSES AT RAMSGATE
+
+
+Once upon a time there dwelt, in a narrow street on the Surrey side of
+the water, within three minutes' walk of old London Bridge, Mr. Joseph
+Tuggs--a little dark-faced man, with shiny hair, twinkling eyes, short
+legs, and a body of very considerable thickness, measuring from the
+centre button of his waistcoat in front, to the ornamental buttons of his
+coat behind.  The figure of the amiable Mrs. Tuggs, if not perfectly
+symmetrical, was decidedly comfortable; and the form of her only
+daughter, the accomplished Miss Charlotte Tuggs, was fast ripening into
+that state of luxuriant plumpness which had enchanted the eyes, and
+captivated the heart, of Mr. Joseph Tuggs in his earlier days.  Mr. Simon
+Tuggs, his only son, and Miss Charlotte Tuggs's only brother, was as
+differently formed in body, as he was differently constituted in mind,
+from the remainder of his family.  There was that elongation in his
+thoughtful face, and that tendency to weakness in his interesting legs,
+which tell so forcibly of a great mind and romantic disposition.  The
+slightest traits of character in such a being, possess no mean interest
+to speculative minds.  He usually appeared in public, in capacious shoes
+with black cotton stockings; and was observed to be particularly attached
+to a black glazed stock, without tie or ornament of any description.
+
+There is perhaps no profession, however useful; no pursuit, however
+meritorious; which can escape the petty attacks of vulgar minds.  Mr.
+Joseph Tuggs was a grocer.  It might be supposed that a grocer was beyond
+the breath of calumny; but no--the neighbours stigmatised him as a
+chandler; and the poisonous voice of envy distinctly asserted that he
+dispensed tea and coffee by the quartern, retailed sugar by the ounce,
+cheese by the slice, tobacco by the screw, and butter by the pat.  These
+taunts, however, were lost upon the Tuggses.  Mr. Tuggs attended to the
+grocery department; Mrs. Tuggs to the cheesemongery; and Miss Tuggs to
+her education.  Mr. Simon Tuggs kept his father's books, and his own
+counsel.
+
+One fine spring afternoon, the latter gentleman was seated on a tub of
+weekly Dorset, behind the little red desk with a wooden rail, which
+ornamented a corner of the counter; when a stranger dismounted from a
+cab, and hastily entered the shop.  He was habited in black cloth, and
+bore with him, a green umbrella, and a blue bag.
+
+'Mr. Tuggs?' said the stranger, inquiringly.
+
+'_My_ name is Tuggs,' replied Mr. Simon.
+
+'It's the other Mr. Tuggs,' said the stranger, looking towards the glass
+door which led into the parlour behind the shop, and on the inside of
+which, the round face of Mr. Tuggs, senior, was distinctly visible,
+peeping over the curtain.
+
+Mr. Simon gracefully waved his pen, as if in intimation of his wish that
+his father would advance.  Mr. Joseph Tuggs, with considerable celerity,
+removed his face from the curtain and placed it before the stranger.
+
+'I come from the Temple,' said the man with the bag.
+
+'From the Temple!' said Mrs. Tuggs, flinging open the door of the little
+parlour and disclosing Miss Tuggs in perspective.
+
+'From the Temple!' said Miss Tuggs and Mr. Simon Tuggs at the same
+moment.
+
+'From the Temple!' said Mr. Joseph Tuggs, turning as pale as a Dutch
+cheese.
+
+'From the Temple,' repeated the man with the bag; 'from Mr. Cower's, the
+solicitor's.  Mr. Tuggs, I congratulate you, sir.  Ladies, I wish you joy
+of your prosperity!  We have been successful.'  And the man with the bag
+leisurely divested himself of his umbrella and glove, as a preliminary to
+shaking hands with Mr. Joseph Tuggs.
+
+Now the words 'we have been successful,' had no sooner issued from the
+mouth of the man with the bag, than Mr. Simon Tuggs rose from the tub of
+weekly Dorset, opened his eyes very wide, gasped for breath, made figures
+of eight in the air with his pen, and finally fell into the arms of his
+anxious mother, and fainted away without the slightest ostensible cause
+or pretence.
+
+'Water!' screamed Mrs. Tuggs.
+
+'Look up, my son,' exclaimed Mr. Tuggs.
+
+'Simon! dear Simon!' shrieked Miss Tuggs.
+
+'I'm better now,' said Mr. Simon Tuggs.  'What! successful!'  And then,
+as corroborative evidence of his being better, he fainted away again, and
+was borne into the little parlour by the united efforts of the remainder
+of the family, and the man with the bag.
+
+To a casual spectator, or to any one unacquainted with the position of
+the family, this fainting would have been unaccountable.  To those who
+understood the mission of the man with the bag, and were moreover
+acquainted with the excitability of the nerves of Mr. Simon Tuggs, it was
+quite comprehensible.  A long-pending lawsuit respecting the validity of
+a will, had been unexpectedly decided; and Mr. Joseph Tuggs was the
+possessor of twenty thousand pounds.
+
+A prolonged consultation took place, that night, in the little parlour--a
+consultation that was to settle the future destinies of the Tuggses.  The
+shop was shut up, at an unusually early hour; and many were the
+unavailing kicks bestowed upon the closed door by applicants for
+quarterns of sugar, or half-quarterns of bread, or penn'orths of pepper,
+which were to have been 'left till Saturday,' but which fortune had
+decreed were to be left alone altogether.
+
+'We must certainly give up business,' said Miss Tuggs.
+
+'Oh, decidedly,' said Mrs. Tuggs.
+
+'Simon shall go to the bar,' said Mr. Joseph Tuggs.
+
+'And I shall always sign myself "Cymon" in future,' said his son.
+
+'And I shall call myself Charlotta,' said Miss Tuggs.
+
+'And you must always call _me_ "Ma," and father "Pa,"' said Mrs. Tuggs.
+
+'Yes, and Pa must leave off all his vulgar habits,' interposed Miss
+Tuggs.
+
+'I'll take care of all that,' responded Mr. Joseph Tuggs, complacently.
+He was, at that very moment, eating pickled salmon with a pocket-knife.
+
+'We must leave town immediately,' said Mr. Cymon Tuggs.
+
+Everybody concurred that this was an indispensable preliminary to being
+genteel.  The question then arose, Where should they go?
+
+'Gravesend?' mildly suggested Mr. Joseph Tuggs.  The idea was unanimously
+scouted.  Gravesend was _low_.
+
+'Margate?' insinuated Mrs. Tuggs.  Worse and worse--nobody there, but
+tradespeople.
+
+'Brighton?'  Mr. Cymon Tuggs opposed an insurmountable objection.  All
+the coaches had been upset, in turn, within the last three weeks; each
+coach had averaged two passengers killed, and six wounded; and, in every
+case, the newspapers had distinctly understood that 'no blame whatever
+was attributable to the coachman.'
+
+'Ramsgate?' ejaculated Mr. Cymon, thoughtfully.  To be sure; how stupid
+they must have been, not to have thought of that before!  Ramsgate was
+just the place of all others.
+
+Two months after this conversation, the City of London Ramsgate steamer
+was running gaily down the river.  Her flag was flying, her band was
+playing, her passengers were conversing; everything about her seemed gay
+and lively.--No wonder--the Tuggses were on board.
+
+'Charming, ain't it?' said Mr. Joseph Tuggs, in a bottle-green
+great-coat, with a velvet collar of the same, and a blue travelling-cap
+with a gold band.
+
+'Soul-inspiring,' replied Mr. Cymon Tuggs--he was entered at the bar.
+'Soul-inspiring!'
+
+'Delightful morning, sir!' said a stoutish, military-looking gentleman in
+a blue surtout buttoned up to his chin, and white trousers chained down
+to the soles of his boots.
+
+Mr. Cymon Tuggs took upon himself the responsibility of answering the
+observation.  'Heavenly!' he replied.
+
+'You are an enthusiastic admirer of the beauties of Nature, sir?' said
+the military gentleman.
+
+'I am, sir,' replied Mr. Cymon Tuggs.
+
+'Travelled much, sir?' inquired the military gentleman.
+
+'Not much,' replied Mr. Cymon Tuggs.
+
+'You've been on the continent, of course?' inquired the military
+gentleman.
+
+'Not exactly,' replied Mr. Cymon Tuggs--in a qualified tone, as if he
+wished it to be implied that he had gone half-way and come back again.
+
+'You of course intend your son to make the grand tour, sir?' said the
+military gentleman, addressing Mr. Joseph Tuggs.
+
+As Mr. Joseph Tuggs did not precisely understand what the grand tour was,
+or how such an article was manufactured, he replied, 'Of course.'  Just
+as he said the word, there came tripping up, from her seat at the stern
+of the vessel, a young lady in a puce-coloured silk cloak, and boots of
+the same; with long black ringlets, large black eyes, brief petticoats,
+and unexceptionable ankles.
+
+'Walter, my dear,' said the young lady to the military gentleman.
+
+'Yes, Belinda, my love,' responded the military gentleman to the
+black-eyed young lady.
+
+'What have you left me alone so long for?' said the young lady.  'I have
+been stared out of countenance by those rude young men.'
+
+'What! stared at?' exclaimed the military gentleman, with an emphasis
+which made Mr. Cymon Tuggs withdraw his eyes from the young lady's face
+with inconceivable rapidity.  'Which young men--where?' and the military
+gentleman clenched his fist, and glared fearfully on the cigar-smokers
+around.
+
+'Be calm, Walter, I entreat,' said the young lady.
+
+'I won't,' said the military gentleman.
+
+'Do, sir,' interposed Mr. Cymon Tuggs.  'They ain't worth your notice.'
+
+'No--no--they are not, indeed,' urged the young lady.
+
+'I _will_ be calm,' said the military gentleman.  'You speak truly, sir.
+I thank you for a timely remonstrance, which may have spared me the guilt
+of manslaughter.'  Calming his wrath, the military gentleman wrung Mr.
+Cymon Tuggs by the hand.
+
+'My sister, sir!' said Mr. Cymon Tuggs; seeing that the military
+gentleman was casting an admiring look towards Miss Charlotta.
+
+'My wife, ma'am--Mrs. Captain Waters,' said the military gentleman,
+presenting the black-eyed young lady.
+
+'My mother, ma'am--Mrs. Tuggs,' said Mr. Cymon.  The military gentleman
+and his wife murmured enchanting courtesies; and the Tuggses looked as
+unembarrassed as they could.
+
+'Walter, my dear,' said the black-eyed young lady, after they had sat
+chatting with the Tuggses some half-hour.
+
+'Yes, my love,' said the military gentleman.
+
+'Don't you think this gentleman (with an inclination of the head towards
+Mr. Cymon Tuggs) is very much like the Marquis Carriwini?'
+
+'Lord bless me, very!' said the military gentleman.
+
+'It struck me, the moment I saw him,' said the young lady, gazing
+intently, and with a melancholy air, on the scarlet countenance of Mr.
+Cymon Tuggs.  Mr. Cymon Tuggs looked at everybody; and finding that
+everybody was looking at him, appeared to feel some temporary difficulty
+in disposing of his eyesight.
+
+'So exactly the air of the marquis,' said the military gentleman.
+
+'Quite extraordinary!' sighed the military gentleman's lady.
+
+'You don't know the marquis, sir?' inquired the military gentleman.
+
+Mr. Cymon Tuggs stammered a negative.
+
+'If you did,' continued Captain Walter Waters, 'you would feel how much
+reason you have to be proud of the resemblance--a most elegant man, with
+a most prepossessing appearance.'
+
+'He is--he is indeed!' exclaimed Belinda Waters energetically.  As her
+eye caught that of Mr. Cymon Tuggs, she withdrew it from his features in
+bashful confusion.
+
+All this was highly gratifying to the feelings of the Tuggses; and when,
+in the course of farther conversation, it was discovered that Miss
+Charlotta Tuggs was the _fac simile_ of a titled relative of Mrs. Belinda
+Waters, and that Mrs. Tuggs herself was the very picture of the Dowager
+Duchess of Dobbleton, their delight in the acquisition of so genteel and
+friendly an acquaintance, knew no bounds.  Even the dignity of Captain
+Walter Waters relaxed, to that degree, that he suffered himself to be
+prevailed upon by Mr. Joseph Tuggs, to partake of cold pigeon-pie and
+sherry, on deck; and a most delightful conversation, aided by these
+agreeable stimulants, was prolonged, until they ran alongside Ramsgate
+Pier.
+
+'Good-bye, dear!' said Mrs. Captain Waters to Miss Charlotta Tuggs, just
+before the bustle of landing commenced; 'we shall see you on the sands in
+the morning; and, as we are sure to have found lodgings before then, I
+hope we shall be inseparables for many weeks to come.'
+
+'Oh! I hope so,' said Miss Charlotta Tuggs, emphatically.
+
+'Tickets, ladies and gen'lm'n,' said the man on the paddle-box.
+
+'Want a porter, sir?' inquired a dozen men in smock-frocks.
+
+'Now, my dear!' said Captain Waters.
+
+'Good-bye!' said Mrs. Captain Waters--'good-bye, Mr. Cymon!' and with a
+pressure of the hand which threw the amiable young man's nerves into a
+state of considerable derangement, Mrs. Captain Waters disappeared among
+the crowd.  A pair of puce-coloured boots were seen ascending the steps,
+a white handkerchief fluttered, a black eye gleamed.  The Waterses were
+gone, and Mr. Cymon Tuggs was alone in a heartless world.
+
+Silently and abstractedly, did that too sensitive youth follow his
+revered parents, and a train of smock-frocks and wheelbarrows, along the
+pier, until the bustle of the scene around, recalled him to himself.  The
+sun was shining brightly; the sea, dancing to its own music, rolled
+merrily in; crowds of people promenaded to and fro; young ladies
+tittered; old ladies talked; nursemaids displayed their charms to the
+greatest possible advantage; and their little charges ran up and down,
+and to and fro, and in and out, under the feet, and between the legs, of
+the assembled concourse, in the most playful and exhilarating manner.
+There were old gentlemen, trying to make out objects through long
+telescopes; and young ones, making objects of themselves in open
+shirt-collars; ladies, carrying about portable chairs, and portable
+chairs carrying about invalids; parties, waiting on the pier for parties
+who had come by the steam-boat; and nothing was to be heard but talking,
+laughing, welcoming, and merriment.
+
+'Fly, sir?' exclaimed a chorus of fourteen men and six boys, the moment
+Mr. Joseph Tuggs, at the head of his little party, set foot in the
+street.
+
+'Here's the gen'lm'n at last!' said one, touching his hat with mock
+politeness.  'Werry glad to see you, sir,--been a-waitin' for you these
+six weeks.  Jump in, if you please, sir!'
+
+'Nice light fly and a fast trotter, sir,' said another: 'fourteen mile a
+hour, and surroundin' objects rendered inwisible by ex-treme welocity!'
+
+'Large fly for your luggage, sir,' cried a third.  'Werry large fly here,
+sir--reg'lar bluebottle!'
+
+'Here's _your_ fly, sir!' shouted another aspiring charioteer, mounting
+the box, and inducing an old grey horse to indulge in some imperfect
+reminiscences of a canter.  'Look at him, sir!--temper of a lamb and
+haction of a steam-ingein!'
+
+Resisting even the temptation of securing the services of so valuable a
+quadruped as the last named, Mr. Joseph Tuggs beckoned to the proprietor
+of a dingy conveyance of a greenish hue, lined with faded striped calico;
+and, the luggage and the family having been deposited therein, the animal
+in the shafts, after describing circles in the road for a quarter of an
+hour, at last consented to depart in quest of lodgings.
+
+'How many beds have you got?' screamed Mrs. Tuggs out of the fly, to the
+woman who opened the door of the first house which displayed a bill
+intimating that apartments were to be let within.
+
+'How many did you want, ma'am?' was, of course, the reply.
+
+'Three.'
+
+'Will you step in, ma'am?'  Down got Mrs. Tuggs.  The family were
+delighted.  Splendid view of the sea from the front windows--charming!  A
+short pause.  Back came Mrs. Tuggs again.--One parlour and a mattress.
+
+'Why the devil didn't they say so at first?' inquired Mr. Joseph Tuggs,
+rather pettishly.
+
+'Don't know,' said Mrs. Tuggs.
+
+'Wretches!' exclaimed the nervous Cymon.  Another bill--another stoppage.
+Same question--same answer--similar result.
+
+'What do they mean by this?' inquired Mr. Joseph Tuggs, thoroughly out of
+temper.
+
+'Don't know,' said the placid Mrs. Tuggs.
+
+'Orvis the vay here, sir,' said the driver, by way of accounting for the
+circumstance in a satisfactory manner; and off they went again, to make
+fresh inquiries, and encounter fresh disappointments.
+
+It had grown dusk when the 'fly'--the rate of whose progress greatly
+belied its name--after climbing up four or five perpendicular hills,
+stopped before the door of a dusty house, with a bay window, from which
+you could obtain a beautiful glimpse of the sea--if you thrust half of
+your body out of it, at the imminent peril of falling into the area.
+Mrs. Tuggs alighted.  One ground-floor sitting-room, and three cells with
+beds in them up-stairs.  A double-house.  Family on the opposite side.
+Five children milk-and-watering in the parlour, and one little boy,
+expelled for bad behaviour, screaming on his back in the passage.
+
+'What's the terms?' said Mrs. Tuggs.  The mistress of the house was
+considering the expediency of putting on an extra guinea; so, she coughed
+slightly, and affected not to hear the question.
+
+'What's the terms?' said Mrs. Tuggs, in a louder key.
+
+'Five guineas a week, ma'am, _with_ attendance,' replied the
+lodging-house keeper.  (Attendance means the privilege of ringing the
+bell as often as you like, for your own amusement.)
+
+'Rather dear,' said Mrs. Tuggs.  'Oh dear, no, ma'am!' replied the
+mistress of the house, with a benign smile of pity at the ignorance of
+manners and customs, which the observation betrayed.  'Very cheap!'
+
+Such an authority was indisputable.  Mrs. Tuggs paid a week's rent in
+advance, and took the lodgings for a month.  In an hour's time, the
+family were seated at tea in their new abode.
+
+'Capital srimps!' said Mr. Joseph Tuggs.
+
+Mr. Cymon eyed his father with a rebellious scowl, as he emphatically
+said '_Shrimps_.'
+
+'Well, then, shrimps,' said Mr. Joseph Tuggs.  'Srimps or shrimps, don't
+much matter.'
+
+There was pity, blended with malignity, in Mr. Cymon's eye, as he
+replied, 'Don't matter, father!  What would Captain Waters say, if he
+heard such vulgarity?'
+
+'Or what would dear Mrs. Captain Waters say,' added Charlotta, 'if she
+saw mother--ma, I mean--eating them whole, heads and all!'
+
+'It won't bear thinking of!' ejaculated Mr. Cymon, with a shudder.  'How
+different,' he thought, 'from the Dowager Duchess of Dobbleton!'
+
+'Very pretty woman, Mrs. Captain Waters, is she not, Cymon?' inquired
+Miss Charlotta.
+
+A glow of nervous excitement passed over the countenance of Mr. Cymon
+Tuggs, as he replied, 'An angel of beauty!'
+
+'Hallo!' said Mr. Joseph Tuggs.  'Hallo, Cymon, my boy, take care.
+Married lady, you know;' and he winked one of his twinkling eyes
+knowingly.
+
+'Why,' exclaimed Cymon, starting up with an ebullition of fury, as
+unexpected as alarming, 'why am I to be reminded of that blight of my
+happiness, and ruin of my hopes?  Why am I to be taunted with the
+miseries which are heaped upon my head?  Is it not enough to--to--to--'
+and the orator paused; but whether for want of words, or lack of breath,
+was never distinctly ascertained.
+
+There was an impressive solemnity in the tone of this address, and in the
+air with which the romantic Cymon, at its conclusion, rang the bell, and
+demanded a flat candlestick, which effectually forbade a reply.  He
+stalked dramatically to bed, and the Tuggses went to bed too, half an
+hour afterwards, in a state of considerable mystification and perplexity.
+
+If the pier had presented a scene of life and bustle to the Tuggses on
+their first landing at Ramsgate, it was far surpassed by the appearance
+of the sands on the morning after their arrival.  It was a fine, bright,
+clear day, with a light breeze from the sea.  There were the same ladies
+and gentlemen, the same children, the same nursemaids, the same
+telescopes, the same portable chairs.  The ladies were employed in
+needlework, or watch-guard making, or knitting, or reading novels; the
+gentlemen were reading newspapers and magazines; the children were
+digging holes in the sand with wooden spades, and collecting water
+therein; the nursemaids, with their youngest charges in their arms, were
+running in after the waves, and then running back with the waves after
+them; and, now and then, a little sailing-boat either departed with a gay
+and talkative cargo of passengers, or returned with a very silent and
+particularly uncomfortable-looking one.
+
+'Well, I never!' exclaimed Mrs. Tuggs, as she and Mr. Joseph Tuggs, and
+Miss Charlotta Tuggs, and Mr. Cymon Tuggs, with their eight feet in a
+corresponding number of yellow shoes, seated themselves on four
+rush-bottomed chairs, which, being placed in a soft part of the sand,
+forthwith sunk down some two feet and a half--'Well, I never!'
+
+Mr. Cymon, by an exertion of great personal strength, uprooted the
+chairs, and removed them further back.
+
+'Why, I'm blessed if there ain't some ladies a-going in!' exclaimed Mr.
+Joseph Tuggs, with intense astonishment.
+
+'Lor, pa!' exclaimed Miss Charlotta.
+
+'There _is_, my dear,' said Mr. Joseph Tuggs.  And, sure enough, four
+young ladies, each furnished with a towel, tripped up the steps of a
+bathing-machine.  In went the horse, floundering about in the water;
+round turned the machine; down sat the driver; and presently out burst
+the young ladies aforesaid, with four distinct splashes.
+
+'Well, that's sing'ler, too!' ejaculated Mr. Joseph Tuggs, after an
+awkward pause.  Mr. Cymon coughed slightly.
+
+'Why, here's some gentlemen a-going in on this side!' exclaimed Mrs.
+Tuggs, in a tone of horror.
+
+Three machines--three horses--three flounderings--three turnings
+round--three splashes--three gentlemen, disporting themselves in the
+water like so many dolphins.
+
+'Well, _that's_ sing'ler!' said Mr. Joseph Tuggs again.  Miss Charlotta
+coughed this time, and another pause ensued.  It was agreeably broken.
+
+'How d'ye do, dear?  We have been looking for you, all the morning,' said
+a voice to Miss Charlotta Tuggs.  Mrs. Captain Waters was the owner of
+it.
+
+'How d'ye do?' said Captain Walter Waters, all suavity; and a most
+cordial interchange of greetings ensued.
+
+'Belinda, my love,' said Captain Walter Waters, applying his glass to his
+eye, and looking in the direction of the sea.
+
+'Yes, my dear,' replied Mrs. Captain Waters.
+
+'There's Harry Thompson!'
+
+'Where?' said Belinda, applying her glass to her eye.
+
+'Bathing.'
+
+'Lor, so it is!  He don't see us, does he?'
+
+'No, I don't think he does' replied the captain.  'Bless my soul, how
+very singular!'
+
+'What?' inquired Belinda.
+
+'There's Mary Golding, too.'
+
+'Lor!--where?'  (Up went the glass again.)
+
+'There!' said the captain, pointing to one of the young ladies before
+noticed, who, in her bathing costume, looked as if she was enveloped in a
+patent Mackintosh, of scanty dimensions.
+
+'So it is, I declare!' exclaimed Mrs. Captain Waters.  'How very curious
+we should see them both!'
+
+'Very,' said the captain, with perfect coolness.
+
+'It's the reg'lar thing here, you see,' whispered Mr. Cymon Tuggs to his
+father.
+
+'I see it is,' whispered Mr. Joseph Tuggs in reply.  'Queer,
+though--ain't it?'  Mr. Cymon Tuggs nodded assent.
+
+'What do you think of doing with yourself this morning?' inquired the
+captain.  'Shall we lunch at Pegwell?'
+
+'I should like that very much indeed,' interposed Mrs. Tuggs.  She had
+never heard of Pegwell; but the word 'lunch' had reached her ears, and it
+sounded very agreeably.
+
+'How shall we go?' inquired the captain; 'it's too warm to walk.'
+
+'A shay?' suggested Mr. Joseph Tuggs.
+
+'Chaise,' whispered Mr. Cymon.
+
+'I should think one would be enough,' said Mr. Joseph Tuggs aloud, quite
+unconscious of the meaning of the correction.  'However, two shays if you
+like.'
+
+'I should like a donkey _so_ much,' said Belinda.
+
+'Oh, so should I!' echoed Charlotta Tuggs.
+
+'Well, we can have a fly,' suggested the captain, 'and you can have a
+couple of donkeys.'
+
+A fresh difficulty arose.  Mrs. Captain Waters declared it would be
+decidedly improper for two ladies to ride alone.  The remedy was obvious.
+Perhaps young Mr. Tuggs would be gallant enough to accompany them.
+
+Mr. Cymon Tuggs blushed, smiled, looked vacant, and faintly protested
+that he was no horseman.  The objection was at once overruled.  A fly was
+speedily found; and three donkeys--which the proprietor declared on his
+solemn asseveration to be 'three parts blood, and the other corn'--were
+engaged in the service.
+
+'Kim up!' shouted one of the two boys who followed behind, to propel the
+donkeys, when Belinda Waters and Charlotta Tuggs had been hoisted, and
+pushed, and pulled, into their respective saddles.
+
+'Hi--hi--hi!' groaned the other boy behind Mr. Cymon Tuggs.  Away went
+the donkey, with the stirrups jingling against the heels of Cymon's
+boots, and Cymon's boots nearly scraping the ground.
+
+'Way--way!  Wo--o--o--!' cried Mr. Cymon Tuggs as well as he could, in
+the midst of the jolting.
+
+'Don't make it gallop!' screamed Mrs. Captain Waters, behind.
+
+'My donkey _will_ go into the public-house!' shrieked Miss Tuggs in the
+rear.
+
+'Hi--hi--hi!' groaned both the boys together; and on went the donkeys as
+if nothing would ever stop them.
+
+Everything has an end, however; even the galloping of donkeys will cease
+in time.  The animal which Mr. Cymon Tuggs bestrode, feeling sundry
+uncomfortable tugs at the bit, the intent of which he could by no means
+divine, abruptly sidled against a brick wall, and expressed his
+uneasiness by grinding Mr. Cymon Tuggs's leg on the rough surface.  Mrs.
+Captain Waters's donkey, apparently under the influence of some
+playfulness of spirit, rushed suddenly, head first, into a hedge, and
+declined to come out again: and the quadruped on which Miss Tuggs was
+mounted, expressed his delight at this humorous proceeding by firmly
+planting his fore-feet against the ground, and kicking up his hind-legs
+in a very agile, but somewhat alarming manner.
+
+This abrupt termination to the rapidity of the ride, naturally occasioned
+some confusion.  Both the ladies indulged in vehement screaming for
+several minutes; and Mr. Cymon Tuggs, besides sustaining intense bodily
+pain, had the additional mental anguish of witnessing their distressing
+situation, without having the power to rescue them, by reason of his leg
+being firmly screwed in between the animal and the wall.  The efforts of
+the boys, however, assisted by the ingenious expedient of twisting the
+tail of the most rebellious donkey, restored order in a much shorter time
+than could have reasonably been expected, and the little party jogged
+slowly on together.
+
+'Now let 'em walk,' said Mr. Cymon Tuggs.  'It's cruel to overdrive 'em.'
+
+'Werry well, sir,' replied the boy, with a grin at his companion, as if
+he understood Mr. Cymon to mean that the cruelty applied less to the
+animals than to their riders.
+
+'What a lovely day, dear!' said Charlotta.
+
+'Charming; enchanting, dear!' responded Mrs. Captain Waters.
+
+'What a beautiful prospect, Mr. Tuggs!'
+
+Cymon looked full in Belinda's face, as he responded--'Beautiful,
+indeed!'  The lady cast down her eyes, and suffered the animal she was
+riding to fall a little back.  Cymon Tuggs instinctively did the same.
+
+There was a brief silence, broken only by a sigh from Mr. Cymon Tuggs.
+
+'Mr. Cymon,' said the lady suddenly, in a low tone, 'Mr. Cymon--I am
+another's.'
+
+Mr. Cymon expressed his perfect concurrence in a statement which it was
+impossible to controvert.
+
+'If I had not been--' resumed Belinda; and there she stopped.
+
+'What--what?' said Mr. Cymon earnestly.  'Do not torture me.  What would
+you say?'
+
+'If I had not been'--continued Mrs. Captain Waters--'if, in earlier life,
+it had been my fate to have known, and been beloved by, a noble youth--a
+kindred soul--a congenial spirit--one capable of feeling and appreciating
+the sentiments which--'
+
+'Heavens! what do I hear?' exclaimed Mr. Cymon Tuggs.  'Is it possible!
+can I believe my--Come up!'  (This last unsentimental parenthesis was
+addressed to the donkey, who, with his head between his fore-legs,
+appeared to be examining the state of his shoes with great anxiety.)
+
+'Hi--hi--hi,' said the boys behind.  'Come up,' expostulated Cymon Tuggs
+again.  'Hi--hi--hi,' repeated the boys.  And whether it was that the
+animal felt indignant at the tone of Mr. Tuggs's command, or felt alarmed
+by the noise of the deputy proprietor's boots running behind him; or
+whether he burned with a noble emulation to outstrip the other donkeys;
+certain it is that he no sooner heard the second series of 'hi--hi's,'
+than he started away, with a celerity of pace which jerked Mr. Cymon's
+hat off, instantaneously, and carried him to the Pegwell Bay hotel in no
+time, where he deposited his rider without giving him the trouble of
+dismounting, by sagaciously pitching him over his head, into the very
+doorway of the tavern.
+
+Great was the confusion of Mr. Cymon Tuggs, when he was put right end
+uppermost, by two waiters; considerable was the alarm of Mrs. Tuggs in
+behalf of her son; agonizing were the apprehensions of Mrs. Captain
+Waters on his account.  It was speedily discovered, however, that he had
+not sustained much more injury than the donkey--he was grazed, and the
+animal was grazing--and then it _was_ a delightful party to be sure!  Mr.
+and Mrs. Tuggs, and the captain, had ordered lunch in the little garden
+behind:--small saucers of large shrimps, dabs of butter, crusty loaves,
+and bottled ale.  The sky was without a cloud; there were flower-pots and
+turf before them; the sea, from the foot of the cliff, stretching away as
+far as the eye could discern anything at all; vessels in the distance
+with sails as white, and as small, as nicely-got-up cambric
+handkerchiefs.  The shrimps were delightful, the ale better, and the
+captain even more pleasant than either.  Mrs. Captain Waters was in
+_such_ spirits after lunch!--chasing, first the captain across the turf,
+and among the flower-pots; and then Mr. Cymon Tuggs; and then Miss Tuggs;
+and laughing, too, quite boisterously.  But as the captain said, it
+didn't matter; who knew what they were, there?  For all the people of the
+house knew, they might be common people.  To which Mr. Joseph Tuggs
+responded, 'To be sure.'  And then they went down the steep wooden steps
+a little further on, which led to the bottom of the cliff; and looked at
+the crabs, and the seaweed, and the eels, till it was more than fully
+time to go back to Ramsgate again.  Finally, Mr. Cymon Tuggs ascended the
+steps last, and Mrs. Captain Waters last but one; and Mr. Cymon Tuggs
+discovered that the foot and ankle of Mrs. Captain Waters, were even more
+unexceptionable than he had at first supposed.
+
+Taking a donkey towards his ordinary place of residence, is a very
+different thing, and a feat much more easily to be accomplished, than
+taking him from it.  It requires a great deal of foresight and presence
+of mind in the one case, to anticipate the numerous flights of his
+discursive imagination; whereas, in the other, all you have to do, is, to
+hold on, and place a blind confidence in the animal.  Mr. Cymon Tuggs
+adopted the latter expedient on his return; and his nerves were so little
+discomposed by the journey, that he distinctly understood they were all
+to meet again at the library in the evening.
+
+The library was crowded.  There were the same ladies, and the same
+gentlemen, who had been on the sands in the morning, and on the pier the
+day before.  There were young ladies, in maroon-coloured gowns and black
+velvet bracelets, dispensing fancy articles in the shop, and presiding
+over games of chance in the concert-room.  There were marriageable
+daughters, and marriage-making mammas, gaming and promenading, and
+turning over music, and flirting.  There were some male beaux doing the
+sentimental in whispers, and others doing the ferocious in moustache.
+There were Mrs. Tuggs in amber, Miss Tuggs in sky-blue, Mrs. Captain
+Waters in pink.  There was Captain Waters in a braided surtout; there was
+Mr. Cymon Tuggs in pumps and a gilt waistcoat; there was Mr. Joseph Tuggs
+in a blue coat and a shirt-frill.
+
+'Numbers three, eight, and eleven!' cried one of the young ladies in the
+maroon-coloured gowns.
+
+'Numbers three, eight, and eleven!' echoed another young lady in the same
+uniform.
+
+'Number three's gone,' said the first young lady.  'Numbers eight and
+eleven!'
+
+'Numbers eight and eleven!' echoed the second young lady.
+
+'Number eight's gone, Mary Ann,' said the first young lady.
+
+'Number eleven!' screamed the second.
+
+'The numbers are all taken now, ladies, if you please,' said the first.
+The representatives of numbers three, eight, and eleven, and the rest of
+the numbers, crowded round the table.
+
+'Will you throw, ma'am?' said the presiding goddess, handing the dice-box
+to the eldest daughter of a stout lady, with four girls.
+
+There was a profound silence among the lookers-on.
+
+'Throw, Jane, my dear,' said the stout lady.  An interesting display of
+bashfulness--a little blushing in a cambric handkerchief--a whispering to
+a younger sister.
+
+'Amelia, my dear, throw for your sister,' said the stout lady; and then
+she turned to a walking advertisement of Rowlands' Macassar Oil, who
+stood next her, and said, 'Jane is so _very_ modest and retiring; but I
+can't be angry with her for it.  An artless and unsophisticated girl is
+_so_ truly amiable, that I often wish Amelia was more like her sister!'
+
+The gentleman with the whiskers whispered his admiring approval.
+
+'Now, my dear!' said the stout lady.  Miss Amelia threw--eight for her
+sister, ten for herself.
+
+'Nice figure, Amelia,' whispered the stout lady to a thin youth beside
+her.
+
+'Beautiful!'
+
+'And _such_ a spirit!  I am like you in that respect.  I can _not_ help
+admiring that life and vivacity.  Ah! (a sigh) I wish I could make poor
+Jane a little more like my dear Amelia!'
+
+The young gentleman cordially acquiesced in the sentiment; both he, and
+the individual first addressed, were perfectly contented.
+
+'Who's this?' inquired Mr. Cymon Tuggs of Mrs. Captain Waters, as a short
+female, in a blue velvet hat and feathers, was led into the orchestra, by
+a fat man in black tights and cloudy Berlins.
+
+'Mrs. Tippin, of the London theatres,' replied Belinda, referring to the
+programme of the concert.
+
+The talented Tippin having condescendingly acknowledged the clapping of
+hands, and shouts of 'bravo!' which greeted her appearance, proceeded to
+sing the popular cavatina of 'Bid me discourse,' accompanied on the piano
+by Mr. Tippin; after which, Mr. Tippin sang a comic song, accompanied on
+the piano by Mrs. Tippin: the applause consequent upon which, was only to
+be exceeded by the enthusiastic approbation bestowed upon an air with
+variations on the guitar, by Miss Tippin, accompanied on the chin by
+Master Tippin.
+
+Thus passed the evening; thus passed the days and evenings of the
+Tuggses, and the Waterses, for six weeks.  Sands in the morning--donkeys
+at noon--pier in the afternoon--library at night--and the same people
+everywhere.
+
+On that very night six weeks, the moon was shining brightly over the calm
+sea, which dashed against the feet of the tall gaunt cliffs, with just
+enough noise to lull the old fish to sleep, without disturbing the young
+ones, when two figures were discernible--or would have been, if anybody
+had looked for them--seated on one of the wooden benches which are
+stationed near the verge of the western cliff.  The moon had climbed
+higher into the heavens, by two hours' journeying, since those figures
+first sat down--and yet they had moved not.  The crowd of loungers had
+thinned and dispersed; the noise of itinerant musicians had died away;
+light after light had appeared in the windows of the different houses in
+the distance; blockade-man after blockade-man had passed the spot,
+wending his way towards his solitary post; and yet those figures had
+remained stationary.  Some portions of the two forms were in deep shadow,
+but the light of the moon fell strongly on a puce-coloured boot and a
+glazed stock.  Mr. Cymon Tuggs and Mrs. Captain Waters were seated on
+that bench.  They spoke not, but were silently gazing on the sea.
+
+'Walter will return to-morrow,' said Mrs. Captain Waters, mournfully
+breaking silence.
+
+Mr. Cymon Tuggs sighed like a gust of wind through a forest of gooseberry
+bushes, as he replied, 'Alas! he will.'
+
+'Oh, Cymon!' resumed Belinda, 'the chaste delight, the calm happiness, of
+this one week of Platonic love, is too much for me!'  Cymon was about to
+suggest that it was too little for him, but he stopped himself, and
+murmured unintelligibly.
+
+'And to think that even this gleam of happiness, innocent as it is,'
+exclaimed Belinda, 'is now to be lost for ever!'
+
+'Oh, do not say for ever, Belinda,' exclaimed the excitable Cymon, as two
+strongly-defined tears chased each other down his pale face--it was so
+long that there was plenty of room for a chase.  'Do not say for ever!'
+
+'I must,' replied Belinda.
+
+'Why?' urged Cymon, 'oh why?  Such Platonic acquaintance as ours is so
+harmless, that even your husband can never object to it.'
+
+'My husband!' exclaimed Belinda.  'You little know him.  Jealous and
+revengeful; ferocious in his revenge--a maniac in his jealousy!  Would
+you be assassinated before my eyes?'  Mr. Cymon Tuggs, in a voice broken
+by emotion, expressed his disinclination to undergo the process of
+assassination before the eyes of anybody.
+
+'Then leave me,' said Mrs. Captain Waters.  'Leave me, this night, for
+ever.  It is late: let us return.'
+
+Mr. Cymon Tuggs sadly offered the lady his arm, and escorted her to her
+lodgings.  He paused at the door--he felt a Platonic pressure of his
+hand.  'Good night,' he said, hesitating.
+
+'Good night,' sobbed the lady.  Mr. Cymon Tuggs paused again.
+
+'Won't you walk in, sir?' said the servant.  Mr. Tuggs hesitated.  Oh,
+that hesitation!  He _did_ walk in.
+
+'Good night!' said Mr. Cymon Tuggs again, when he reached the
+drawing-room.
+
+'Good night!' replied Belinda; 'and, if at any period of my life,
+I--Hush!'  The lady paused and stared with a steady gaze of horror, on
+the ashy countenance of Mr. Cymon Tuggs.  There was a double knock at the
+street-door.
+
+'It is my husband!' said Belinda, as the captain's voice was heard below.
+
+'And my family!' added Cymon Tuggs, as the voices of his relatives
+floated up the staircase.
+
+'The curtain!  The curtain!' gasped Mrs. Captain Waters, pointing to the
+window, before which some chintz hangings were closely drawn.
+
+'But I have done nothing wrong,' said the hesitating Cymon.
+
+'The curtain!' reiterated the frantic lady: 'you will be murdered.'  This
+last appeal to his feelings was irresistible.  The dismayed Cymon
+concealed himself behind the curtain with pantomimic suddenness.
+
+Enter the captain, Joseph Tuggs, Mrs. Tuggs, and Charlotta.
+
+'My dear,' said the captain, 'Lieutenant, Slaughter.'  Two iron-shod
+boots and one gruff voice were heard by Mr. Cymon to advance, and
+acknowledge the honour of the introduction.  The sabre of the lieutenant
+rattled heavily upon the floor, as he seated himself at the table.  Mr.
+Cymon's fears almost overcame his reason.
+
+'The brandy, my dear!' said the captain.  Here was a situation!  They
+were going to make a night of it!  And Mr. Cymon Tuggs was pent up behind
+the curtain and afraid to breathe!
+
+'Slaughter,' said the captain, 'a cigar?'
+
+Now, Mr. Cymon Tuggs never could smoke without feeling it indispensably
+necessary to retire, immediately, and never could smell smoke without a
+strong disposition to cough.  The cigars were introduced; the captain was
+a professed smoker; so was the lieutenant; so was Joseph Tuggs.  The
+apartment was small, the door was closed, the smoke powerful: it hung in
+heavy wreaths over the room, and at length found its way behind the
+curtain.  Cymon Tuggs held his nose, his mouth, his breath.  It was all
+of no use--out came the cough.
+
+'Bless my soul!' said the captain, 'I beg your pardon, Miss Tuggs.  You
+dislike smoking?'
+
+'Oh, no; I don't indeed,' said Charlotta.
+
+'It makes you cough.'
+
+'Oh dear no.'
+
+'You coughed just now.'
+
+'Me, Captain Waters!  Lor! how can you say so?'
+
+'Somebody coughed,' said the captain.
+
+'I certainly thought so,' said Slaughter.  No; everybody denied it.
+
+'Fancy,' said the captain.
+
+'Must be,' echoed Slaughter.
+
+Cigars resumed--more smoke--another cough--smothered, but violent.
+
+'Damned odd!' said the captain, staring about him.
+
+'Sing'ler!' ejaculated the unconscious Mr. Joseph Tuggs.
+
+Lieutenant Slaughter looked first at one person mysteriously, then at
+another: then, laid down his cigar, then approached the window on tiptoe,
+and pointed with his right thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of
+the curtain.
+
+'Slaughter!' ejaculated the captain, rising from table, 'what do you
+mean?'
+
+The lieutenant, in reply, drew back the curtain and discovered Mr. Cymon
+Tuggs behind it: pallid with apprehension, and blue with wanting to
+cough.
+
+'Aha!' exclaimed the captain, furiously.  'What do I see?  Slaughter,
+your sabre!'
+
+'Cymon!' screamed the Tuggses.
+
+'Mercy!' said Belinda.
+
+'Platonic!' gasped Cymon.
+
+'Your sabre!' roared the captain: 'Slaughter--unhand me--the villain's
+life!'
+
+'Murder!' screamed the Tuggses.
+
+'Hold him fast, sir!' faintly articulated Cymon.
+
+'Water!' exclaimed Joseph Tuggs--and Mr. Cymon Tuggs and all the ladies
+forthwith fainted away, and formed a tableau.
+
+Most willingly would we conceal the disastrous termination of the six
+weeks' acquaintance.  A troublesome form, and an arbitrary custom,
+however, prescribe that a story should have a conclusion, in addition to
+a commencement; we have therefore no alternative.  Lieutenant Slaughter
+brought a message--the captain brought an action.  Mr. Joseph Tuggs
+interposed--the lieutenant negotiated.  When Mr. Cymon Tuggs recovered
+from the nervous disorder into which misplaced affection, and exciting
+circumstances, had plunged him, he found that his family had lost their
+pleasant acquaintance; that his father was minus fifteen hundred pounds;
+and the captain plus the precise sum.  The money was paid to hush the
+matter up, but it got abroad notwithstanding; and there are not wanting
+some who affirm that three designing impostors never found more easy
+dupes, than did Captain Waters, Mrs. Waters, and Lieutenant Slaughter, in
+the Tuggses at Ramsgate.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--HORATIO SPARKINS
+
+
+'Indeed, my love, he paid Teresa very great attention on the last
+assembly night,' said Mrs. Malderton, addressing her spouse, who, after
+the fatigues of the day in the City, was sitting with a silk handkerchief
+over his head, and his feet on the fender, drinking his port;--'very
+great attention; and I say again, every possible encouragement ought to
+be given him.  He positively must be asked down here to dine.'
+
+'Who must?' inquired Mr. Malderton.
+
+'Why, you know whom I mean, my dear--the young man with the black
+whiskers and the white cravat, who has just come out at our assembly, and
+whom all the girls are talking about.  Young--dear me! what's his
+name?--Marianne, what _is_ his name?' continued Mrs. Malderton,
+addressing her youngest daughter, who was engaged in netting a purse, and
+looking sentimental.
+
+'Mr. Horatio Sparkins, ma,' replied Miss Marianne, with a sigh.
+
+'Oh! yes, to be sure--Horatio Sparkins,' said Mrs. Malderton.  'Decidedly
+the most gentleman-like young man I ever saw.  I am sure in the
+beautifully-made coat he wore the other night, he looked like--like--'
+
+'Like Prince Leopold, ma--so noble, so full of sentiment!' suggested
+Marianne, in a tone of enthusiastic admiration.
+
+'You should recollect, my dear,' resumed Mrs. Malderton, 'that Teresa is
+now eight-and-twenty; and that it really is very important that something
+should be done.'
+
+Miss Teresa Malderton was a very little girl, rather fat, with vermilion
+cheeks, but good-humoured, and still disengaged, although, to do her
+justice, the misfortune arose from no lack of perseverance on her part.
+In vain had she flirted for ten years; in vain had Mr. and Mrs. Malderton
+assiduously kept up an extensive acquaintance among the young eligible
+bachelors of Camberwell, and even of Wandsworth and Brixton; to say
+nothing of those who 'dropped in' from town.  Miss Malderton was as well
+known as the lion on the top of Northumberland House, and had an equal
+chance of 'going off.'
+
+'I am quite sure you'd like him,' continued Mrs. Malderton, 'he is so
+gentlemanly!'
+
+'So clever!' said Miss Marianne.
+
+'And has such a flow of language!' added Miss Teresa.
+
+'He has a great respect for you, my dear,' said Mrs. Malderton to her
+husband.  Mr. Malderton coughed, and looked at the fire.
+
+'Yes I'm sure he's very much attached to pa's society,' said Miss
+Marianne.
+
+'No doubt of it,' echoed Miss Teresa.
+
+'Indeed, he said as much to me in confidence,' observed Mrs. Malderton.
+
+'Well, well,' returned Mr. Malderton, somewhat flattered; 'if I see him
+at the assembly to-morrow, perhaps I'll ask him down.  I hope he knows we
+live at Oak Lodge, Camberwell, my dear?'
+
+'Of course--and that you keep a one-horse carriage.'
+
+'I'll see about it,' said Mr. Malderton, composing himself for a nap;
+'I'll see about it.'
+
+Mr. Malderton was a man whose whole scope of ideas was limited to
+Lloyd's, the Exchange, the India House, and the Bank.  A few successful
+speculations had raised him from a situation of obscurity and comparative
+poverty, to a state of affluence.  As frequently happens in such cases,
+the ideas of himself and his family became elevated to an extraordinary
+pitch as their means increased; they affected fashion, taste, and many
+other fooleries, in imitation of their betters, and had a very decided
+and becoming horror of anything which could, by possibility, be
+considered low.  He was hospitable from ostentation, illiberal from
+ignorance, and prejudiced from conceit.  Egotism and the love of display
+induced him to keep an excellent table: convenience, and a love of good
+things of this life, ensured him plenty of guests.  He liked to have
+clever men, or what he considered such, at his table, because it was a
+great thing to talk about; but he never could endure what he called
+'sharp fellows.'  Probably, he cherished this feeling out of compliment
+to his two sons, who gave their respected parent no uneasiness in that
+particular.  The family were ambitious of forming acquaintances and
+connexions in some sphere of society superior to that in which they
+themselves moved; and one of the necessary consequences of this desire,
+added to their utter ignorance of the world beyond their own small
+circle, was, that any one who could lay claim to an acquaintance with
+people of rank and title, had a sure passport to the table at Oak Lodge,
+Camberwell.
+
+The appearance of Mr. Horatio Sparkins at the assembly, had excited no
+small degree of surprise and curiosity among its regular frequenters.
+Who could he be?  He was evidently reserved, and apparently melancholy.
+Was he a clergyman?--He danced too well.  A barrister?--He said he was
+not called.  He used very fine words, and talked a great deal.  Could he
+be a distinguished foreigner, come to England for the purpose of
+describing the country, its manners and customs; and frequenting public
+balls and public dinners, with the view of becoming acquainted with high
+life, polished etiquette, and English refinement?--No, he had not a
+foreign accent.  Was he a surgeon, a contributor to the magazines, a
+writer of fashionable novels, or an artist?--No; to each and all of these
+surmises, there existed some valid objection.--'Then,' said everybody,
+'he must be _somebody_.'--'I should think he must be,' reasoned Mr.
+Malderton, within himself, 'because he perceives our superiority, and
+pays us so much attention.'
+
+The night succeeding the conversation we have just recorded, was
+'assembly night.'  The double-fly was ordered to be at the door of Oak
+Lodge at nine o'clock precisely.  The Miss Maldertons were dressed in
+sky-blue satin trimmed with artificial flowers; and Mrs. M. (who was a
+little fat woman), in ditto ditto, looked like her eldest daughter
+multiplied by two.  Mr. Frederick Malderton, the eldest son, in
+full-dress costume, was the very _beau ideal_ of a smart waiter; and Mr.
+Thomas Malderton, the youngest, with his white dress-stock, blue coat,
+bright buttons, and red watch-ribbon, strongly resembled the portrait of
+that interesting, but rash young gentleman, George Barnwell.  Every
+member of the party had made up his or her mind to cultivate the
+acquaintance of Mr. Horatio Sparkins.  Miss Teresa, of course, was to be
+as amiable and interesting as ladies of eight-and-twenty on the look-out
+for a husband, usually are.  Mrs. Malderton would be all smiles and
+graces.  Miss Marianne would request the favour of some verses for her
+album.  Mr. Malderton would patronise the great unknown by asking him to
+dinner.  Tom intended to ascertain the extent of his information on the
+interesting topics of snuff and cigars.  Even Mr. Frederick Malderton
+himself, the family authority on all points of taste, dress, and
+fashionable arrangement; who had lodgings of his own in town; who had a
+free admission to Covent-garden theatre; who always dressed according to
+the fashions of the months; who went up the water twice a-week in the
+season; and who actually had an intimate friend who once knew a gentleman
+who formerly lived in the Albany,--even he had determined that Mr.
+Horatio Sparkins must be a devilish good fellow, and that he would do him
+the honour of challenging him to a game at billiards.
+
+The first object that met the anxious eyes of the expectant family on
+their entrance into the ball-room, was the interesting Horatio, with his
+hair brushed off his forehead, and his eyes fixed on the ceiling,
+reclining in a contemplative attitude on one of the seats.
+
+'There he is, my dear,' whispered Mrs. Malderton to Mr. Malderton.
+
+'How like Lord Byron!' murmured Miss Teresa.
+
+'Or Montgomery!' whispered Miss Marianne.
+
+'Or the portraits of Captain Cook!' suggested Tom.
+
+'Tom--don't be an ass!' said his father, who checked him on all
+occasions, probably with a view to prevent his becoming 'sharp'--which
+was very unnecessary.
+
+The elegant Sparkins attitudinised with admirable effect, until the
+family had crossed the room.  He then started up, with the most natural
+appearance of surprise and delight; accosted Mrs. Malderton with the
+utmost cordiality; saluted the young ladies in the most enchanting
+manner; bowed to, and shook hands with Mr. Malderton, with a degree of
+respect amounting almost to veneration; and returned the greetings of the
+two young men in a half-gratified, half-patronising manner, which fully
+convinced them that he must be an important, and, at the same time,
+condescending personage.
+
+'Miss Malderton,' said Horatio, after the ordinary salutations, and
+bowing very low, 'may I be permitted to presume to hope that you will
+allow me to have the pleasure--'
+
+'I don't _think_ I am engaged,' said Miss Teresa, with a dreadful
+affectation of indifference--'but, really--so many--'
+
+Horatio looked handsomely miserable.
+
+'I shall be most happy,' simpered the interesting Teresa, at last.
+Horatio's countenance brightened up, like an old hat in a shower of rain.
+
+'A very genteel young man, certainly!' said the gratified Mr. Malderton,
+as the obsequious Sparkins and his partner joined the quadrille which was
+just forming.
+
+'He has a remarkably good address,' said Mr. Frederick.
+
+'Yes, he is a prime fellow,' interposed Tom, who always managed to put
+his foot in it--'he talks just like an auctioneer.'
+
+'Tom!' said his father solemnly, 'I think I desired you, before, not to
+be a fool.'  Tom looked as happy as a cock on a drizzly morning.
+
+'How delightful!' said the interesting Horatio to his partner, as they
+promenaded the room at the conclusion of the set--'how delightful, how
+refreshing it is, to retire from the cloudy storms, the vicissitudes, and
+the troubles, of life, even if it be but for a few short fleeting
+moments: and to spend those moments, fading and evanescent though they
+be, in the delightful, the blessed society of one individual--whose
+frowns would be death, whose coldness would be madness, whose falsehood
+would be ruin, whose constancy would be bliss; the possession of whose
+affection would be the brightest and best reward that Heaven could bestow
+on man?'
+
+'What feeling! what sentiment!' thought Miss Teresa, as she leaned more
+heavily on her companion's arm.
+
+'But enough--enough!' resumed the elegant Sparkins, with a theatrical
+air.  'What have I said? what have I--I--to do with sentiments like
+these!  Miss Malderton'--here he stopped short--'may I hope to be
+permitted to offer the humble tribute of--'
+
+'Really, Mr. Sparkins,' returned the enraptured Teresa, blushing in the
+sweetest confusion, 'I must refer you to papa.  I never can, without his
+consent, venture to--'
+
+'Surely he cannot object--'
+
+'Oh, yes.  Indeed, indeed, you know him not!' interrupted Miss Teresa,
+well knowing there was nothing to fear, but wishing to make the interview
+resemble a scene in some romantic novel.
+
+'He cannot object to my offering you a glass of negus,' returned the
+adorable Sparkins, with some surprise.
+
+'Is that all?' thought the disappointed Teresa.  'What a fuss about
+nothing!'
+
+'It will give me the greatest pleasure, sir, to see you to dinner at Oak
+Lodge, Camberwell, on Sunday next at five o'clock, if you have no better
+engagement,' said Mr. Malderton, at the conclusion of the evening, as he
+and his sons were standing in conversation with Mr. Horatio Sparkins.
+
+Horatio bowed his acknowledgments, and accepted the flattering
+invitation.
+
+'I must confess,' continued the father, offering his snuff-box to his new
+acquaintance, 'that I don't enjoy these assemblies half so much as the
+comfort--I had almost said the luxury--of Oak Lodge.  They have no great
+charms for an elderly man.'
+
+'And after all, sir, what is man?' said the metaphysical Sparkins.  'I
+say, what is man?'
+
+'Ah! very true,' said Mr. Malderton; 'very true.'
+
+'We know that we live and breathe,' continued Horatio; 'that we have
+wants and wishes, desires and appetites--'
+
+'Certainly,' said Mr. Frederick Malderton, looking profound.
+
+'I say, we know that we exist,' repeated Horatio, raising his voice, 'but
+there we stop; there, is an end to our knowledge; there, is the summit of
+our attainments; there, is the termination of our ends.  What more do we
+know?'
+
+'Nothing,' replied Mr. Frederick--than whom no one was more capable of
+answering for himself in that particular.  Tom was about to hazard
+something, but, fortunately for his reputation, he caught his father's
+angry eye, and slunk off like a puppy convicted of petty larceny.
+
+'Upon my word,' said Mr. Malderton the elder, as they were returning home
+in the fly, 'that Mr. Sparkins is a wonderful young man.  Such surprising
+knowledge! such extraordinary information! and such a splendid mode of
+expressing himself!'
+
+'I think he must be somebody in disguise,' said Miss Marianne.  'How
+charmingly romantic!'
+
+'He talks very loud and nicely,' timidly observed Tom, 'but I don't
+exactly understand what he means.'
+
+'I almost begin to despair of your understanding anything, Tom,' said his
+father, who, of course, had been much enlightened by Mr. Horatio
+Sparkins's conversation.
+
+'It strikes me, Tom,' said Miss Teresa, 'that you have made yourself very
+ridiculous this evening.'
+
+'No doubt of it,' cried everybody--and the unfortunate Tom reduced
+himself into the least possible space.  That night, Mr. and Mrs.
+Malderton had a long conversation respecting their daughter's prospects
+and future arrangements.  Miss Teresa went to bed, considering whether,
+in the event of her marrying a title, she could conscientiously encourage
+the visits of her present associates; and dreamed, all night, of
+disguised noblemen, large routs, ostrich plumes, bridal favours, and
+Horatio Sparkins.
+
+Various surmises were hazarded on the Sunday morning, as to the mode of
+conveyance which the anxiously-expected Horatio would adopt.  Did he keep
+a gig?--was it possible he could come on horseback?--or would he
+patronize the stage?  These, and other various conjectures of equal
+importance, engrossed the attention of Mrs. Malderton and her daughters
+during the whole morning after church.
+
+'Upon my word, my dear, it's a most annoying thing that that vulgar
+brother of yours should have invited himself to dine here to-day,' said
+Mr. Malderton to his wife.  'On account of Mr. Sparkins's coming down, I
+purposely abstained from asking any one but Flamwell.  And then to think
+of your brother--a tradesman--it's insufferable!  I declare I wouldn't
+have him mention his shop, before our new guest--no, not for a thousand
+pounds!  I wouldn't care if he had the good sense to conceal the disgrace
+he is to the family; but he's so fond of his horrible business, that he
+_will_ let people know what he is.'
+
+Mr. Jacob Barton, the individual alluded to, was a large grocer; so
+vulgar, and so lost to all sense of feeling, that he actually never
+scrupled to avow that he wasn't above his business: 'he'd made his money
+by it, and he didn't care who know'd it.'
+
+'Ah! Flamwell, my dear fellow, how d'ye do?' said Mr. Malderton, as a
+little spoffish man, with green spectacles, entered the room.  'You got
+my note?'
+
+'Yes, I did; and here I am in consequence.'
+
+'You don't happen to know this Mr. Sparkins by name?  You know
+everybody?'
+
+Mr. Flamwell was one of those gentlemen of remarkably extensive
+information whom one occasionally meets in society, who pretend to know
+everybody, but in reality know nobody.  At Malderton's, where any stories
+about great people were received with a greedy ear, he was an especial
+favourite; and, knowing the kind of people he had to deal with, he
+carried his passion of claiming acquaintance with everybody, to the most
+immoderate length.  He had rather a singular way of telling his greatest
+lies in a parenthesis, and with an air of self-denial, as if he feared
+being thought egotistical.
+
+'Why, no, I don't know him by that name,' returned Flamwell, in a low
+tone, and with an air of immense importance.  'I have no doubt I know
+him, though.  Is he tall?'
+
+'Middle-sized,' said Miss Teresa.
+
+'With black hair?' inquired Flamwell, hazarding a bold guess.
+
+'Yes,' returned Miss Teresa, eagerly.
+
+'Rather a snub nose?'
+
+'No,' said the disappointed Teresa, 'he has a Roman nose.'
+
+'I said a Roman nose, didn't I?' inquired Flamwell.  'He's an elegant
+young man?'
+
+'Oh, certainly.'
+
+'With remarkably prepossessing manners?'
+
+'Oh, yes!' said all the family together.  'You must know him.'
+
+'Yes, I thought you knew him, if he was anybody,' triumphantly exclaimed
+Mr. Malderton.  'Who d'ye think he is?'
+
+'Why, from your description,' said Flamwell, ruminating, and sinking his
+voice, almost to a whisper, 'he bears a strong resemblance to the
+Honourable Augustus Fitz-Edward Fitz-John Fitz-Osborne.  He's a very
+talented young man, and rather eccentric.  It's extremely probable he may
+have changed his name for some temporary purpose.'
+
+Teresa's heart beat high.  Could he be the Honourable Augustus
+Fitz-Edward Fitz-John Fitz-Osborne!  What a name to be elegantly engraved
+upon two glazed cards, tied together with a piece of white satin ribbon!
+'The Honourable Mrs. Augustus Fitz-Edward Fitz-John Fitz-Osborne!'  The
+thought was transport.
+
+'It's five minutes to five,' said Mr. Malderton, looking at his watch: 'I
+hope he's not going to disappoint us.'
+
+'There he is!' exclaimed Miss Teresa, as a loud double-knock was heard at
+the door.  Everybody endeavoured to look--as people when they
+particularly expect a visitor always do--as if they were perfectly
+unsuspicious of the approach of anybody.
+
+The room-door opened--'Mr. Barton!' said the servant.
+
+'Confound the man!' murmured Malderton.  'Ah! my dear sir, how d'ye do!
+Any news?'
+
+'Why no,' returned the grocer, in his usual bluff manner.  'No, none
+partickler.  None that I am much aware of.  How d'ye do, gals and boys?
+Mr. Flamwell, sir--glad to see you.'
+
+'Here's Mr. Sparkins!' said Tom, who had been looking out at the window,
+'on _such_ a black horse!'  There was Horatio, sure enough, on a large
+black horse, curvetting and prancing along, like an Astley's
+supernumerary.  After a great deal of reining in, and pulling up, with
+the accompaniments of snorting, rearing, and kicking, the animal
+consented to stop at about a hundred yards from the gate, where Mr.
+Sparkins dismounted, and confided him to the care of Mr. Malderton's
+groom.  The ceremony of introduction was gone through, in all due form.
+Mr. Flamwell looked from behind his green spectacles at Horatio with an
+air of mysterious importance; and the gallant Horatio looked unutterable
+things at Teresa.
+
+'Is he the Honourable Mr. Augustus What's-his-name?' whispered Mrs.
+Malderton to Flamwell, as he was escorting her to the dining-room.
+
+'Why, no--at least not exactly,' returned that great authority--'not
+exactly.'
+
+'Who _is_ he then?'
+
+'Hush!' said Flamwell, nodding his head with a grave air, importing that
+he knew very well; but was prevented, by some grave reasons of state,
+from disclosing the important secret.  It might be one of the ministers
+making himself acquainted with the views of the people.
+
+'Mr. Sparkins,' said the delighted Mrs. Malderton, 'pray divide the
+ladies.  John, put a chair for the gentleman between Miss Teresa and Miss
+Marianne.'  This was addressed to a man who, on ordinary occasions, acted
+as half-groom, half-gardener; but who, as it was important to make an
+impression on Mr. Sparkins, had been forced into a white neckerchief and
+shoes, and touched up, and brushed, to look like a second footman.
+
+The dinner was excellent; Horatio was most attentive to Miss Teresa, and
+every one felt in high spirits, except Mr. Malderton, who, knowing the
+propensity of his brother-in-law, Mr. Barton, endured that sort of agony
+which the newspapers inform us is experienced by the surrounding
+neighbourhood when a pot-boy hangs himself in a hay-loft, and which is
+'much easier to be imagined than described.'
+
+'Have you seen your friend, Sir Thomas Noland, lately, Flamwell?'
+inquired Mr. Malderton, casting a sidelong look at Horatio, to see what
+effect the mention of so great a man had upon him.
+
+'Why, no--not very lately.  I saw Lord Gubbleton the day before
+yesterday.'
+
+'All!  I hope his lordship is very well?' said Malderton, in a tone of
+the greatest interest.  It is scarcely necessary to say that, until that
+moment, he had been quite innocent of the existence of such a person.
+
+'Why, yes; he was very well--very well indeed.  He's a devilish good
+fellow.  I met him in the City, and had a long chat with him.  Indeed,
+I'm rather intimate with him.  I couldn't stop to talk to him as long as
+I could wish, though, because I was on my way to a banker's, a very rich
+man, and a member of Parliament, with whom I am also rather, indeed I may
+say very, intimate.'
+
+'I know whom you mean,' returned the host, consequentially--in reality
+knowing as much about the matter as Flamwell himself.--'He has a capital
+business.'
+
+This was touching on a dangerous topic.
+
+'Talking of business,' interposed Mr. Barton, from the centre of the
+table.  'A gentleman whom you knew very well, Malderton, before you made
+that first lucky spec of yours, called at our shop the other day, and--'
+
+'Barton, may I trouble you for a potato?' interrupted the wretched master
+of the house, hoping to nip the story in the bud.
+
+'Certainly,' returned the grocer, quite insensible of his
+brother-in-law's object--'and he said in a very plain manner--'
+
+'_Floury_, if you please,' interrupted Malderton again; dreading the
+termination of the anecdote, and fearing a repetition of the word 'shop.'
+
+'He said, says he,' continued the culprit, after despatching the potato;
+'says he, how goes on your business?  So I said, jokingly--you know my
+way--says I, I'm never above my business, and I hope my business will
+never be above me.  Ha, ha!'
+
+'Mr. Sparkins,' said the host, vainly endeavouring to conceal his dismay,
+'a glass of wine?'
+
+'With the utmost pleasure, sir.'
+
+'Happy to see you.'
+
+'Thank you.'
+
+'We were talking the other evening,' resumed the host, addressing
+Horatio, partly with the view of displaying the conversational powers of
+his new acquaintance, and partly in the hope of drowning the grocer's
+stories--'we were talking the other night about the nature of man.  Your
+argument struck me very forcibly.'
+
+'And me,' said Mr. Frederick.  Horatio made a graceful inclination of the
+head.
+
+'Pray, what is your opinion of woman, Mr. Sparkins?' inquired Mrs.
+Malderton.  The young ladies simpered.
+
+'Man,' replied Horatio, 'man, whether he ranged the bright, gay, flowery
+plains of a second Eden, or the more sterile, barren, and I may say,
+commonplace regions, to which we are compelled to accustom ourselves, in
+times such as these; man, under any circumstances, or in any
+place--whether he were bending beneath the withering blasts of the frigid
+zone, or scorching under the rays of a vertical sun--man, without woman,
+would be--alone.'
+
+'I am very happy to find you entertain such honourable opinions, Mr.
+Sparkins,' said Mrs. Malderton.
+
+'And I,' added Miss Teresa.  Horatio looked his delight, and the young
+lady blushed.
+
+'Now, it's my opinion--' said Mr. Barton.
+
+'I know what you're going to say,' interposed Malderton, determined not
+to give his relation another opportunity, 'and I don't agree with you.'
+
+'What!' inquired the astonished grocer.
+
+'I am sorry to differ from you, Barton,' said the host, in as positive a
+manner as if he really were contradicting a position which the other had
+laid down, 'but I cannot give my assent to what I consider a very
+monstrous proposition.'
+
+'But I meant to say--'
+
+'You never can convince me,' said Malderton, with an air of obstinate
+determination.  'Never.'
+
+'And I,' said Mr. Frederick, following up his father's attack, 'cannot
+entirely agree in Mr. Sparkins's argument.'
+
+'What!' said Horatio, who became more metaphysical, and more
+argumentative, as he saw the female part of the family listening in
+wondering delight--'what!  Is effect the consequence of cause?  Is cause
+the precursor of effect?'
+
+'That's the point,' said Flamwell.
+
+'To be sure,' said Mr. Malderton.
+
+'Because, if effect is the consequence of cause, and if cause does
+precede effect, I apprehend you are wrong,' added Horatio.
+
+'Decidedly,' said the toad-eating Flamwell.
+
+'At least, I apprehend that to be the just and logical deduction?' said
+Sparkins, in a tone of interrogation.
+
+'No doubt of it,' chimed in Flamwell again.  'It settles the point.'
+
+'Well, perhaps it does,' said Mr. Frederick; 'I didn't see it before.'
+
+'I don't exactly see it now,' thought the grocer; 'but I suppose it's all
+right.'
+
+'How wonderfully clever he is!' whispered Mrs. Malderton to her
+daughters, as they retired to the drawing-room.
+
+'Oh, he's quite a love!' said both the young ladies together; 'he talks
+like an oracle.  He must have seen a great deal of life.'
+
+The gentlemen being left to themselves, a pause ensued, during which
+everybody looked very grave, as if they were quite overcome by the
+profound nature of the previous discussion.  Flamwell, who had made up
+his mind to find out who and what Mr. Horatio Sparkins really was, first
+broke silence.
+
+'Excuse me, sir,' said that distinguished personage, 'I presume you have
+studied for the bar?  I thought of entering once, myself--indeed, I'm
+rather intimate with some of the highest ornaments of that distinguished
+profession.'
+
+'N-no!' said Horatio, with a little hesitation; 'not exactly.'
+
+'But you have been much among the silk gowns, or I mistake?' inquired
+Flamwell, deferentially.
+
+'Nearly all my life,' returned Sparkins.
+
+The question was thus pretty well settled in the mind of Mr. Flamwell.
+He was a young gentleman 'about to be called.'
+
+'I shouldn't like to be a barrister,' said Tom, speaking for the first
+time, and looking round the table to find somebody who would notice the
+remark.
+
+No one made any reply.
+
+'I shouldn't like to wear a wig,' said Tom, hazarding another
+observation.
+
+'Tom, I beg you will not make yourself ridiculous,' said his father.
+'Pray listen, and improve yourself by the conversation you hear, and
+don't be constantly making these absurd remarks.'
+
+'Very well, father,' replied the unfortunate Tom, who had not spoken a
+word since he had asked for another slice of beef at a quarter-past five
+o'clock, P.M., and it was then eight.
+
+'Well, Tom,' observed his good-natured uncle, 'never mind!  _I_ think
+with you.  I shouldn't like to wear a wig.  I'd rather wear an apron.'
+
+Mr. Malderton coughed violently.  Mr. Barton resumed--'For if a man's
+above his business--'
+
+The cough returned with tenfold violence, and did not cease until the
+unfortunate cause of it, in his alarm, had quite forgotten what he
+intended to say.
+
+'Mr. Sparkins,' said Flamwell, returning to the charge, 'do you happen to
+know Mr. Delafontaine, of Bedford-square?'
+
+'I have exchanged cards with him; since which, indeed, I have had an
+opportunity of serving him considerably,' replied Horatio, slightly
+colouring; no doubt, at having been betrayed into making the
+acknowledgment.
+
+'You are very lucky, if you have had an opportunity of obliging that
+great man,' observed Flamwell, with an air of profound respect.
+
+'I don't know who he is,' he whispered to Mr. Malderton, confidentially,
+as they followed Horatio up to the drawing-room.  'It's quite clear,
+however, that he belongs to the law, and that he is somebody of great
+importance, and very highly connected.'
+
+'No doubt, no doubt,' returned his companion.
+
+The remainder of the evening passed away most delightfully.  Mr.
+Malderton, relieved from his apprehensions by the circumstance of Mr.
+Barton's falling into a profound sleep, was as affable and gracious as
+possible.  Miss Teresa played the 'Fall of Paris,' as Mr. Sparkins
+declared, in a most masterly manner, and both of them, assisted by Mr.
+Frederick, tried over glees and trios without number; they having made
+the pleasing discovery that their voices harmonised beautifully.  To be
+sure, they all sang the first part; and Horatio, in addition to the
+slight drawback of having no ear, was perfectly innocent of knowing a
+note of music; still, they passed the time very agreeably, and it was
+past twelve o'clock before Mr. Sparkins ordered the
+mourning-coach-looking steed to be brought out--an order which was only
+complied with, on the distinct understanding that he was to repeat his
+visit on the following Sunday.
+
+'But, perhaps, Mr. Sparkins will form one of our party to-morrow
+evening?' suggested Mrs. M.  'Mr. Malderton intends taking the girls to
+see the pantomime.'  Mr. Sparkins bowed, and promised to join the party
+in box 48, in the course of the evening.
+
+'We will not tax you for the morning,' said Miss Teresa, bewitchingly;
+'for ma is going to take us to all sorts of places, shopping.  I know
+that gentlemen have a great horror of that employment.'  Mr. Sparkins
+bowed again, and declared that he should be delighted, but business of
+importance occupied him in the morning.  Flamwell looked at Malderton
+significantly.--'It's term time!' he whispered.
+
+At twelve o'clock on the following morning, the 'fly' was at the door of
+Oak Lodge, to convey Mrs. Malderton and her daughters on their expedition
+for the day.  They were to dine and dress for the play at a friend's
+house.  First, driving thither with their band-boxes, they departed on
+their first errand to make some purchases at Messrs. Jones, Spruggins,
+and Smith's, of Tottenham-court-road; after which, they were to go to
+Redmayne's in Bond-street; thence, to innumerable places that no one ever
+heard of.  The young ladies beguiled the tediousness of the ride by
+eulogising Mr. Horatio Sparkins, scolding their mamma for taking them so
+far to save a shilling, and wondering whether they should ever reach
+their destination.  At length, the vehicle stopped before a dirty-looking
+ticketed linen-draper's shop, with goods of all kinds, and labels of all
+sorts and sizes, in the window.  There were dropsical figures of seven
+with a little three-farthings in the corner; 'perfectly invisible to the
+naked eye;' three hundred and fifty thousand ladies' boas, _from_ one
+shilling and a penny halfpenny; real French kid shoes, at two and
+ninepence per pair; green parasols, at an equally cheap rate; and 'every
+description of goods,' as the proprietors said--and they must know
+best--'fifty per cent. under cost price.'
+
+'Lor! ma, what a place you have brought us to!' said Miss Teresa; 'what
+_would_ Mr. Sparkins say if he could see us!'
+
+'Ah! what, indeed!' said Miss Marianne, horrified at the idea.
+
+'Pray be seated, ladies.  What is the first article?' inquired the
+obsequious master of the ceremonies of the establishment, who, in his
+large white neckcloth and formal tie, looked like a bad 'portrait of a
+gentleman' in the Somerset-house exhibition.
+
+'I want to see some silks,' answered Mrs. Malderton.
+
+'Directly, ma'am.--Mr. Smith!  Where _is_ Mr. Smith?'
+
+'Here, sir,' cried a voice at the back of the shop.
+
+'Pray make haste, Mr. Smith,' said the M.C.  'You never are to be found
+when you're wanted, sir.'
+
+Mr. Smith, thus enjoined to use all possible despatch, leaped over the
+counter with great agility, and placed himself before the newly-arrived
+customers.  Mrs. Malderton uttered a faint scream; Miss Teresa, who had
+been stooping down to talk to her sister, raised her head, and
+beheld--Horatio Sparkins!
+
+'We will draw a veil,' as novel-writers say, over the scene that ensued.
+The mysterious, philosophical, romantic, metaphysical Sparkins--he who,
+to the interesting Teresa, seemed like the embodied idea of the young
+dukes and poetical exquisites in blue silk dressing-gowns, and ditto
+ditto slippers, of whom she had read and dreamed, but had never expected
+to behold, was suddenly converted into Mr. Samuel Smith, the assistant at
+a 'cheap shop;' the junior partner in a slippery firm of some three
+weeks' existence.  The dignified evanishment of the hero of Oak Lodge, on
+this unexpected recognition, could only be equalled by that of a furtive
+dog with a considerable kettle at his tail.  All the hopes of the
+Maldertons were destined at once to melt away, like the lemon ices at a
+Company's dinner; Almack's was still to them as distant as the North
+Pole; and Miss Teresa had as much chance of a husband as Captain Ross had
+of the north-west passage.
+
+Years have elapsed since the occurrence of this dreadful morning.  The
+daisies have thrice bloomed on Camberwell-green; the sparrows have thrice
+repeated their vernal chirps in Camberwell-grove; but the Miss Maldertons
+are still unmated.  Miss Teresa's case is more desperate than ever; but
+Flamwell is yet in the zenith of his reputation; and the family have the
+same predilection for aristocratic personages, with an increased aversion
+to anything _low_.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--THE BLACK VEIL
+
+
+One winter's evening, towards the close of the year 1800, or within a
+year or two of that time, a young medical practitioner, recently
+established in business, was seated by a cheerful fire in his little
+parlour, listening to the wind which was beating the rain in pattering
+drops against the window, or rumbling dismally in the chimney.  The night
+was wet and cold; he had been walking through mud and water the whole
+day, and was now comfortably reposing in his dressing-gown and slippers,
+more than half asleep and less than half awake, revolving a thousand
+matters in his wandering imagination.  First, he thought how hard the
+wind was blowing, and how the cold, sharp rain would be at that moment
+beating in his face, if he were not comfortably housed at home.  Then,
+his mind reverted to his annual Christmas visit to his native place and
+dearest friends; he thought how glad they would all be to see him, and
+how happy it would make Rose if he could only tell her that he had found
+a patient at last, and hoped to have more, and to come down again, in a
+few months' time, and marry her, and take her home to gladden his lonely
+fireside, and stimulate him to fresh exertions.  Then, he began to wonder
+when his first patient would appear, or whether he was destined, by a
+special dispensation of Providence, never to have any patients at all;
+and then, he thought about Rose again, and dropped to sleep and dreamed
+about her, till the tones of her sweet merry voice sounded in his ears,
+and her soft tiny hand rested on his shoulder.
+
+There _was_ a hand upon his shoulder, but it was neither soft nor tiny;
+its owner being a corpulent round-headed boy, who, in consideration of
+the sum of one shilling per week and his food, was let out by the parish
+to carry medicine and messages.  As there was no demand for the medicine,
+however, and no necessity for the messages, he usually occupied his
+unemployed hours--averaging fourteen a day--in abstracting peppermint
+drops, taking animal nourishment, and going to sleep.
+
+'A lady, sir--a lady!' whispered the boy, rousing his master with a
+shake.
+
+'What lady?' cried our friend, starting up, not quite certain that his
+dream was an illusion, and half expecting that it might be Rose
+herself.--'What lady?  Where?'
+
+'_There_, sir!' replied the boy, pointing to the glass door leading into
+the surgery, with an expression of alarm which the very unusual
+apparition of a customer might have tended to excite.
+
+The surgeon looked towards the door, and started himself, for an instant,
+on beholding the appearance of his unlooked-for visitor.
+
+It was a singularly tall woman, dressed in deep mourning, and standing so
+close to the door that her face almost touched the glass.  The upper part
+of her figure was carefully muffled in a black shawl, as if for the
+purpose of concealment; and her face was shrouded by a thick black veil.
+She stood perfectly erect, her figure was drawn up to its full height,
+and though the surgeon felt that the eyes beneath the veil were fixed on
+him, she stood perfectly motionless, and evinced, by no gesture whatever,
+the slightest consciousness of his having turned towards her.
+
+'Do you wish to consult me?' he inquired, with some hesitation, holding
+open the door.  It opened inwards, and therefore the action did not alter
+the position of the figure, which still remained motionless on the same
+spot.
+
+She slightly inclined her head, in token of acquiescence.
+
+'Pray walk in,' said the surgeon.
+
+The figure moved a step forward; and then, turning its head in the
+direction of the boy--to his infinite horror--appeared to hesitate.
+
+'Leave the room, Tom,' said the young man, addressing the boy, whose
+large round eyes had been extended to their utmost width during this
+brief interview.  'Draw the curtain, and shut the door.'
+
+The boy drew a green curtain across the glass part of the door, retired
+into the surgery, closed the door after him, and immediately applied one
+of his large eyes to the keyhole on the other side.
+
+The surgeon drew a chair to the fire, and motioned the visitor to a seat.
+The mysterious figure slowly moved towards it.  As the blaze shone upon
+the black dress, the surgeon observed that the bottom of it was saturated
+with mud and rain.
+
+'You are very wet,' be said.
+
+'I am,' said the stranger, in a low deep voice.
+
+'And you are ill?' added the surgeon, compassionately, for the tone was
+that of a person in pain.
+
+'I am,' was the reply--'very ill; not bodily, but mentally.  It is not
+for myself, or on my own behalf,' continued the stranger, 'that I come to
+you.  If I laboured under bodily disease, I should not be out, alone, at
+such an hour, or on such a night as this; and if I were afflicted with
+it, twenty-four hours hence, God knows how gladly I would lie down and
+pray to die.  It is for another that I beseech your aid, sir.  I may be
+mad to ask it for him--I think I am; but, night after night, through the
+long dreary hours of watching and weeping, the thought has been ever
+present to my mind; and though even _I_ see the hopelessness of human
+assistance availing him, the bare thought of laying him in his grave
+without it makes my blood run cold!'  And a shudder, such as the surgeon
+well knew art could not produce, trembled through the speaker's frame.
+
+There was a desperate earnestness in this woman's manner, that went to
+the young man's heart.  He was young in his profession, and had not yet
+witnessed enough of the miseries which are daily presented before the
+eyes of its members, to have grown comparatively callous to human
+suffering.
+
+'If,' he said, rising hastily, 'the person of whom you speak, be in so
+hopeless a condition as you describe, not a moment is to be lost.  I will
+go with you instantly.  Why did you not obtain medical advice before?'
+
+'Because it would have been useless before--because it is useless even
+now,' replied the woman, clasping her hands passionately.
+
+The surgeon gazed, for a moment, on the black veil, as if to ascertain
+the expression of the features beneath it: its thickness, however,
+rendered such a result impossible.
+
+'You _are_ ill,' he said, gently, 'although you do not know it.  The
+fever which has enabled you to bear, without feeling it, the fatigue you
+have evidently undergone, is burning within you now.  Put that to your
+lips,' he continued, pouring out a glass of water--'compose yourself for
+a few moments, and then tell me, as calmly as you can, what the disease
+of the patient is, and how long he has been ill.  When I know what it is
+necessary I should know, to render my visit serviceable to him, I am
+ready to accompany you.'
+
+The stranger lifted the glass of water to her mouth, without raising the
+veil; put it down again untasted; and burst into tears.
+
+'I know,' she said, sobbing aloud, 'that what I say to you now, seems
+like the ravings of fever.  I have been told so before, less kindly than
+by you.  I am not a young woman; and they do say, that as life steals on
+towards its final close, the last short remnant, worthless as it may seem
+to all beside, is dearer to its possessor than all the years that have
+gone before, connected though they be with the recollection of old
+friends long since dead, and young ones--children perhaps--who have
+fallen off from, and forgotten one as completely as if they had died too.
+My natural term of life cannot be many years longer, and should be dear
+on that account; but I would lay it down without a sigh--with
+cheerfulness--with joy--if what I tell you now, were only false, or
+imaginary.  To-morrow morning he of whom I speak will be, I _know_,
+though I would fain think otherwise, beyond the reach of human aid; and
+yet, to-night, though he is in deadly peril, you must not see, and could
+not serve, him.'
+
+'I am unwilling to increase your distress,' said the surgeon, after a
+short pause, 'by making any comment on what you have just said, or
+appearing desirous to investigate a subject you are so anxious to
+conceal; but there is an inconsistency in your statement which I cannot
+reconcile with probability.  This person is dying to-night, and I cannot
+see him when my assistance might possibly avail; you apprehend it will be
+useless to-morrow, and yet you would have me see him then!  If he be,
+indeed, as dear to you, as your words and manner would imply, why not try
+to save his life before delay and the progress of his disease render it
+impracticable?'
+
+'God help me!' exclaimed the woman, weeping bitterly, 'how can I hope
+strangers will believe what appears incredible, even to myself?  You will
+_not_ see him then, sir?' she added, rising suddenly.
+
+'I did not say that I declined to see him,' replied the surgeon; 'but I
+warn you, that if you persist in this extraordinary procrastination, and
+the individual dies, a fearful responsibility rests with you.'
+
+'The responsibility will rest heavily somewhere,' replied the stranger
+bitterly.  'Whatever responsibility rests with me, I am content to bear,
+and ready to answer.'
+
+'As I incur none,' continued the surgeon, 'by acceding to your request, I
+will see him in the morning, if you leave me the address.  At what hour
+can he be seen?'
+
+'_Nine_,' replied the stranger.
+
+'You must excuse my pressing these inquiries,' said the surgeon.  'But is
+he in your charge now?'
+
+'He is not,' was the rejoinder.
+
+'Then, if I gave you instructions for his treatment through the night,
+you could not assist him?'
+
+The woman wept bitterly, as she replied, 'I could not.'
+
+Finding that there was but little prospect of obtaining more information
+by prolonging the interview; and anxious to spare the woman's feelings,
+which, subdued at first by a violent effort, were now irrepressible and
+most painful to witness; the surgeon repeated his promise of calling in
+the morning at the appointed hour.  His visitor, after giving him a
+direction to an obscure part of Walworth, left the house in the same
+mysterious manner in which she had entered it.
+
+It will be readily believed that so extraordinary a visit produced a
+considerable impression on the mind of the young surgeon; and that he
+speculated a great deal and to very little purpose on the possible
+circumstances of the case.  In common with the generality of people, he
+had often heard and read of singular instances, in which a presentiment
+of death, at a particular day, or even minute, had been entertained and
+realised.  At one moment he was inclined to think that the present might
+be such a case; but, then, it occurred to him that all the anecdotes of
+the kind he had ever heard, were of persons who had been troubled with a
+foreboding of their own death.  This woman, however, spoke of another
+person--a man; and it was impossible to suppose that a mere dream or
+delusion of fancy would induce her to speak of his approaching
+dissolution with such terrible certainty as she had spoken.  It could not
+be that the man was to be murdered in the morning, and that the woman,
+originally a consenting party, and bound to secrecy by an oath, had
+relented, and, though unable to prevent the commission of some outrage on
+the victim, had determined to prevent his death if possible, by the
+timely interposition of medical aid?  The idea of such things happening
+within two miles of the metropolis appeared too wild and preposterous to
+be entertained beyond the instant.  Then, his original impression that
+the woman's intellects were disordered, recurred; and, as it was the only
+mode of solving the difficulty with any degree of satisfaction, he
+obstinately made up his mind to believe that she was mad.  Certain
+misgivings upon this point, however, stole upon his thoughts at the time,
+and presented themselves again and again through the long dull course of
+a sleepless night; during which, in spite of all his efforts to the
+contrary, he was unable to banish the black veil from his disturbed
+imagination.
+
+The back part of Walworth, at its greatest distance from town, is a
+straggling miserable place enough, even in these days; but,
+five-and-thirty years ago, the greater portion of it was little better
+than a dreary waste, inhabited by a few scattered people of questionable
+character, whose poverty prevented their living in any better
+neighbourhood, or whose pursuits and mode of life rendered its solitude
+desirable.  Very many of the houses which have since sprung up on all
+sides, were not built until some years afterwards; and the great majority
+even of those which were sprinkled about, at irregular intervals, were of
+the rudest and most miserable description.
+
+The appearance of the place through which he walked in the morning, was
+not calculated to raise the spirits of the young surgeon, or to dispel
+any feeling of anxiety or depression which the singular kind of visit he
+was about to make, had awakened.  Striking off from the high road, his
+way lay across a marshy common, through irregular lanes, with here and
+there a ruinous and dismantled cottage fast falling to pieces with decay
+and neglect.  A stunted tree, or pool of stagnant water, roused into a
+sluggish action by the heavy rain of the preceding night, skirted the
+path occasionally; and, now and then, a miserable patch of garden-ground,
+with a few old boards knocked together for a summer-house, and old
+palings imperfectly mended with stakes pilfered from the neighbouring
+hedges, bore testimony, at once to the poverty of the inhabitants, and
+the little scruple they entertained in appropriating the property of
+other people to their own use.  Occasionally, a filthy-looking woman
+would make her appearance from the door of a dirty house, to empty the
+contents of some cooking utensil into the gutter in front, or to scream
+after a little slip-shod girl, who had contrived to stagger a few yards
+from the door under the weight of a sallow infant almost as big as
+herself; but, scarcely anything was stirring around: and so much of the
+prospect as could be faintly traced through the cold damp mist which hung
+heavily over it, presented a lonely and dreary appearance perfectly in
+keeping with the objects we have described.
+
+After plodding wearily through the mud and mire; making many inquiries
+for the place to which he had been directed; and receiving as many
+contradictory and unsatisfactory replies in return; the young man at
+length arrived before the house which had been pointed out to him as the
+object of his destination.  It was a small low building, one story above
+the ground, with even a more desolate and unpromising exterior than any
+he had yet passed.  An old yellow curtain was closely drawn across the
+window up-stairs, and the parlour shutters were closed, but not fastened.
+The house was detached from any other, and, as it stood at an angle of a
+narrow lane, there was no other habitation in sight.
+
+When we say that the surgeon hesitated, and walked a few paces beyond the
+house, before he could prevail upon himself to lift the knocker, we say
+nothing that need raise a smile upon the face of the boldest reader.  The
+police of London were a very different body in that day; the isolated
+position of the suburbs, when the rage for building and the progress of
+improvement had not yet begun to connect them with the main body of the
+city and its environs, rendered many of them (and this in particular) a
+place of resort for the worst and most depraved characters.  Even the
+streets in the gayest parts of London were imperfectly lighted, at that
+time; and such places as these, were left entirely to the mercy of the
+moon and stars.  The chances of detecting desperate characters, or of
+tracing them to their haunts, were thus rendered very few, and their
+offences naturally increased in boldness, as the consciousness of
+comparative security became the more impressed upon them by daily
+experience.  Added to these considerations, it must be remembered that
+the young man had spent some time in the public hospitals of the
+metropolis; and, although neither Burke nor Bishop had then gained a
+horrible notoriety, his own observation might have suggested to him how
+easily the atrocities to which the former has since given his name, might
+be committed.  Be this as it may, whatever reflection made him hesitate,
+he _did_ hesitate: but, being a young man of strong mind and great
+personal courage, it was only for an instant;--he stepped briskly back
+and knocked gently at the door.
+
+A low whispering was audible, immediately afterwards, as if some person
+at the end of the passage were conversing stealthily with another on the
+landing above.  It was succeeded by the noise of a pair of heavy boots
+upon the bare floor.  The door-chain was softly unfastened; the door
+opened; and a tall, ill-favoured man, with black hair, and a face, as the
+surgeon often declared afterwards, as pale and haggard, as the
+countenance of any dead man he ever saw, presented himself.
+
+'Walk in, sir,' he said in a low tone.
+
+The surgeon did so, and the man having secured the door again, by the
+chain, led the way to a small back parlour at the extremity of the
+passage.
+
+'Am I in time?'
+
+'Too soon!' replied the man.  The surgeon turned hastily round, with a
+gesture of astonishment not unmixed with alarm, which he found it
+impossible to repress.
+
+'If you'll step in here, sir,' said the man, who had evidently noticed
+the action--'if you'll step in here, sir, you won't be detained five
+minutes, I assure you.'
+
+The surgeon at once walked into the room.  The man closed the door, and
+left him alone.
+
+It was a little cold room, with no other furniture than two deal chairs,
+and a table of the same material.  A handful of fire, unguarded by any
+fender, was burning in the grate, which brought out the damp if it served
+no more comfortable purpose, for the unwholesome moisture was stealing
+down the walls, in long slug-like tracks.  The window, which was broken
+and patched in many places, looked into a small enclosed piece of ground,
+almost covered with water.  Not a sound was to be heard, either within
+the house, or without.  The young surgeon sat down by the fireplace, to
+await the result of his first professional visit.
+
+He had not remained in this position many minutes, when the noise of some
+approaching vehicle struck his ear.  It stopped; the street-door was
+opened; a low talking succeeded, accompanied with a shuffling noise of
+footsteps, along the passage and on the stairs, as if two or three men
+were engaged in carrying some heavy body to the room above.  The creaking
+of the stairs, a few seconds afterwards, announced that the new-comers
+having completed their task, whatever it was, were leaving the house.
+The door was again closed, and the former silence was restored.
+
+Another five minutes had elapsed, and the surgeon had resolved to explore
+the house, in search of some one to whom he might make his errand known,
+when the room-door opened, and his last night's visitor, dressed in
+exactly the same manner, with the veil lowered as before, motioned him to
+advance.  The singular height of her form, coupled with the circumstance
+of her not speaking, caused the idea to pass across his brain for an
+instant, that it might be a man disguised in woman's attire.  The
+hysteric sobs which issued from beneath the veil, and the convulsive
+attitude of grief of the whole figure, however, at once exposed the
+absurdity of the suspicion; and he hastily followed.
+
+The woman led the way up-stairs to the front room, and paused at the
+door, to let him enter first.  It was scantily furnished with an old deal
+box, a few chairs, and a tent bedstead, without hangings or cross-rails,
+which was covered with a patchwork counterpane.  The dim light admitted
+through the curtain which he had noticed from the outside, rendered the
+objects in the room so indistinct, and communicated to all of them so
+uniform a hue, that he did not, at first, perceive the object on which
+his eye at once rested when the woman rushed frantically past him, and
+flung herself on her knees by the bedside.
+
+Stretched upon the bed, closely enveloped in a linen wrapper, and covered
+with blankets, lay a human form, stiff and motionless.  The head and
+face, which were those of a man, were uncovered, save by a bandage which
+passed over the head and under the chin.  The eyes were closed.  The left
+arm lay heavily across the bed, and the woman held the passive hand.
+
+The surgeon gently pushed the woman aside, and took the hand in his.
+
+'My God!' he exclaimed, letting it fall involuntarily--'the man is dead!'
+
+The woman started to her feet and beat her hands together.
+
+'Oh! don't say so, sir,' she exclaimed, with a burst of passion,
+amounting almost to frenzy.  'Oh! don't say so, sir!  I can't bear it!
+Men have been brought to life, before, when unskilful people have given
+them up for lost; and men have died, who might have been restored, if
+proper means had been resorted to.  Don't let him lie here, sir, without
+one effort to save him!  This very moment life may be passing away.  Do
+try, sir,--do, for Heaven's sake!'--And while speaking, she hurriedly
+chafed, first the forehead, and then the breast, of the senseless form
+before her; and then, wildly beat the cold hands, which, when she ceased
+to hold them, fell listlessly and heavily back on the coverlet.
+
+'It is of no use, my good woman,' said the surgeon, soothingly, as he
+withdrew his hand from the man's breast.  'Stay--undraw that curtain!'
+
+'Why?' said the woman, starting up.
+
+'Undraw that curtain!' repeated the surgeon in an agitated tone.
+
+'I darkened the room on purpose,' said the woman, throwing herself before
+him as he rose to undraw it.--'Oh! sir, have pity on me!  If it can be of
+no use, and he is really dead, do not expose that form to other eyes than
+mine!'
+
+'This man died no natural or easy death,' said the surgeon.  'I _must_
+see the body!'  With a motion so sudden, that the woman hardly knew that
+he had slipped from beside her, he tore open the curtain, admitted the
+full light of day, and returned to the bedside.
+
+'There has been violence here,' he said, pointing towards the body, and
+gazing intently on the face, from which the black veil was now, for the
+first time, removed.  In the excitement of a minute before, the female
+had thrown off the bonnet and veil, and now stood with her eyes fixed
+upon him.  Her features were those of a woman about fifty, who had once
+been handsome.  Sorrow and weeping had left traces upon them which not
+time itself would ever have produced without their aid; her face was
+deadly pale; and there was a nervous contortion of the lip, and an
+unnatural fire in her eye, which showed too plainly that her bodily and
+mental powers had nearly sunk, beneath an accumulation of misery.
+
+'There has been violence here,' said the surgeon, preserving his
+searching glance.
+
+'There has!' replied the woman.
+
+'This man has been murdered.'
+
+'That I call God to witness he has,' said the woman, passionately;
+'pitilessly, inhumanly murdered!'
+
+'By whom?' said the surgeon, seizing the woman by the arm.
+
+'Look at the butchers' marks, and then ask me!' she replied.
+
+The surgeon turned his face towards the bed, and bent over the body which
+now lay full in the light of the window.  The throat was swollen, and a
+livid mark encircled it.  The truth flashed suddenly upon him.
+
+'This is one of the men who were hanged this morning!' he exclaimed,
+turning away with a shudder.
+
+'It is,' replied the woman, with a cold, unmeaning stare.
+
+'Who was he?' inquired the surgeon.
+
+'_My son_,' rejoined the woman; and fell senseless at his feet.
+
+It was true.  A companion, equally guilty with himself, had been
+acquitted for want of evidence; and this man had been left for death, and
+executed.  To recount the circumstances of the case, at this distant
+period, must be unnecessary, and might give pain to some persons still
+alive.  The history was an every-day one.  The mother was a widow without
+friends or money, and had denied herself necessaries to bestow them on
+her orphan boy.  That boy, unmindful of her prayers, and forgetful of the
+sufferings she had endured for him--incessant anxiety of mind, and
+voluntary starvation of body--had plunged into a career of dissipation
+and crime.  And this was the result; his own death by the hangman's
+hands, and his mother's shame, and incurable insanity.
+
+For many years after this occurrence, and when profitable and arduous
+avocations would have led many men to forget that such a miserable being
+existed, the young surgeon was a daily visitor at the side of the
+harmless mad woman; not only soothing her by his presence and kindness,
+but alleviating the rigour of her condition by pecuniary donations for
+her comfort and support, bestowed with no sparing hand.  In the transient
+gleam of recollection and consciousness which preceded her death, a
+prayer for his welfare and protection, as fervent as mortal ever
+breathed, rose from the lips of this poor friendless creature.  That
+prayer flew to Heaven, and was heard.  The blessings he was instrumental
+in conferring, have been repaid to him a thousand-fold; but, amid all the
+honours of rank and station which have since been heaped upon him, and
+which he has so well earned, he can have no reminiscence more gratifying
+to his heart than that connected with The Black Veil.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--THE STEAM EXCURSION
+
+
+Mr. Percy Noakes was a law student, inhabiting a set of chambers on the
+fourth floor, in one of those houses in Gray's-inn-square which command
+an extensive view of the gardens, and their usual adjuncts--flaunting
+nursery-maids, and town-made children, with parenthetical legs.  Mr.
+Percy Noakes was what is generally termed--'a devilish good fellow.'  He
+had a large circle of acquaintance, and seldom dined at his own expense.
+He used to talk politics to papas, flatter the vanity of mammas, do the
+amiable to their daughters, make pleasure engagements with their sons,
+and romp with the younger branches.  Like those paragons of perfection,
+advertising footmen out of place, he was always 'willing to make himself
+generally useful.'  If any old lady, whose son was in India, gave a ball,
+Mr. Percy Noakes was master of the ceremonies; if any young lady made a
+stolen match, Mr. Percy Noakes gave her away; if a juvenile wife
+presented her husband with a blooming cherub, Mr. Percy Noakes was either
+godfather, or deputy-godfather; and if any member of a friend's family
+died, Mr. Percy Noakes was invariably to be seen in the second mourning
+coach, with a white handkerchief to his eyes, sobbing--to use his own
+appropriate and expressive description--'like winkin'!'
+
+It may readily be imagined that these numerous avocations were rather
+calculated to interfere with Mr. Percy Noakes's professional studies.
+Mr. Percy Noakes was perfectly aware of the fact, and had, therefore,
+after mature reflection, made up his mind not to study at all--a laudable
+determination, to which he adhered in the most praiseworthy manner.  His
+sitting-room presented a strange chaos of dress-gloves, boxing-gloves,
+caricatures, albums, invitation-cards, foils, cricket-bats, cardboard
+drawings, paste, gum, and fifty other miscellaneous articles, heaped
+together in the strangest confusion.  He was always making something for
+somebody, or planning some party of pleasure, which was his great
+_forte_.  He invariably spoke with astonishing rapidity; was smart,
+spoffish, and eight-and-twenty.
+
+'Splendid idea, 'pon my life!' soliloquised Mr. Percy Noakes, over his
+morning coffee, as his mind reverted to a suggestion which had been
+thrown out on the previous night, by a lady at whose house he had spent
+the evening.  'Glorious idea!--Mrs. Stubbs.'
+
+'Yes, sir,' replied a dirty old woman with an inflamed countenance,
+emerging from the bedroom, with a barrel of dirt and cinders.--This was
+the laundress.  'Did you call, sir?'
+
+'Oh!  Mrs. Stubbs, I'm going out.  If that tailor should call again,
+you'd better say--you'd better say I'm out of town, and shan't be back
+for a fortnight; and if that bootmaker should come, tell him I've lost
+his address, or I'd have sent him that little amount.  Mind he writes it
+down; and if Mr. Hardy should call--you know Mr. Hardy?'
+
+'The funny gentleman, sir?'
+
+'Ah! the funny gentleman.  If Mr. Hardy should call, say I've gone to
+Mrs. Taunton's about that water-party.'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'And if any fellow calls, and says he's come about a steamer, tell him to
+be here at five o'clock this afternoon, Mrs. Stubbs.'
+
+'Very well, sir.'
+
+Mr. Percy Noakes brushed his hat, whisked the crumbs off his
+inexpressibles with a silk handkerchief, gave the ends of his hair a
+persuasive roll round his forefinger, and sallied forth for Mrs.
+Taunton's domicile in Great Marlborough-street, where she and her
+daughters occupied the upper part of a house.  She was a good-looking
+widow of fifty, with the form of a giantess and the mind of a child.  The
+pursuit of pleasure, and some means of killing time, were the sole end of
+her existence.  She doted on her daughters, who were as frivolous as
+herself.
+
+A general exclamation of satisfaction hailed the arrival of Mr. Percy
+Noakes, who went through the ordinary salutations, and threw himself into
+an easy chair near the ladies' work-table, with the ease of a regularly
+established friend of the family.  Mrs. Taunton was busily engaged in
+planting immense bright bows on every part of a smart cap on which it was
+possible to stick one; Miss Emily Taunton was making a watch-guard; Miss
+Sophia was at the piano, practising a new song--poetry by the young
+officer, or the police-officer, or the custom-house officer, or some
+other interesting amateur.
+
+'You good creature!' said Mrs. Taunton, addressing the gallant Percy.
+'You really are a good soul!  You've come about the water-party, I know.'
+
+'I should rather suspect I had,' replied Mr. Noakes, triumphantly.  'Now,
+come here, girls, and I'll tell you all about it.'  Miss Emily and Miss
+Sophia advanced to the table.
+
+'Now,' continued Mr. Percy Noakes, 'it seems to me that the best way will
+be, to have a committee of ten, to make all the arrangements, and manage
+the whole set-out.  Then, I propose that the expenses shall be paid by
+these ten fellows jointly.'
+
+'Excellent, indeed!' said Mrs. Taunton, who highly approved of this part
+of the arrangements.
+
+'Then, my plan is, that each of these ten fellows shall have the power of
+asking five people.  There must be a meeting of the committee, at my
+chambers, to make all the arrangements, and these people shall be then
+named; every member of the committee shall have the power of
+black-balling any one who is proposed; and one black ball shall exclude
+that person.  This will ensure our having a pleasant party, you know.'
+
+'What a manager you are!' interrupted Mrs. Taunton again.
+
+'Charming!' said the lovely Emily.
+
+'I never did!' ejaculated Sophia.
+
+'Yes, I think it'll do,' replied Mr. Percy Noakes, who was now quite in
+his element.  'I think it'll do.  Then you know we shall go down to the
+Nore, and back, and have a regular capital cold dinner laid out in the
+cabin before we start, so that everything may be ready without any
+confusion; and we shall have the lunch laid out, on deck, in those little
+tea-garden-looking concerns by the paddle-boxes--I don't know what you
+call 'em.  Then, we shall hire a steamer expressly for our party, and a
+band, and have the deck chalked, and we shall be able to dance quadrilles
+all day; and then, whoever we know that's musical, you know, why they'll
+make themselves useful and agreeable; and--and--upon the whole, I really
+hope we shall have a glorious day, you know!'
+
+The announcement of these arrangements was received with the utmost
+enthusiasm.  Mrs. Taunton, Emily, and Sophia, were loud in their praises.
+
+'Well, but tell me, Percy,' said Mrs. Taunton, 'who are the ten gentlemen
+to be?'
+
+'Oh!  I know plenty of fellows who'll be delighted with the scheme,'
+replied Mr. Percy Noakes; 'of course we shall have--'
+
+'Mr. Hardy!' interrupted the servant, announcing a visitor.  Miss Sophia
+and Miss Emily hastily assumed the most interesting attitudes that could
+be adopted on so short a notice.
+
+'How are you?' said a stout gentleman of about forty, pausing at the door
+in the attitude of an awkward harlequin.  This was Mr. Hardy, whom we
+have before described, on the authority of Mrs. Stubbs, as 'the funny
+gentleman.'  He was an Astley-Cooperish Joe Miller--a practical joker,
+immensely popular with married ladies, and a general favourite with young
+men.  He was always engaged in some pleasure excursion or other, and
+delighted in getting somebody into a scrape on such occasions.  He could
+sing comic songs, imitate hackney-coachmen and fowls, play airs on his
+chin, and execute concertos on the Jews'-harp.  He always eat and drank
+most immoderately, and was the bosom friend of Mr. Percy Noakes.  He had
+a red face, a somewhat husky voice, and a tremendous laugh.
+
+'How _are_ you?' said this worthy, laughing, as if it were the finest
+joke in the world to make a morning call, and shaking hands with the
+ladies with as much vehemence as if their arms had been so many
+pump-handles.
+
+'You're just the very man I wanted,' said Mr. Percy Noakes, who proceeded
+to explain the cause of his being in requisition.
+
+'Ha! ha! ha!' shouted Hardy, after hearing the statement, and receiving a
+detailed account of the proposed excursion.  'Oh, capital! glorious!
+What a day it will be! what fun!--But, I say, when are you going to begin
+making the arrangements?'
+
+'No time like the present--at once, if you please.'
+
+'Oh, charming!' cried the ladies.  'Pray, do!'
+
+Writing materials were laid before Mr. Percy Noakes, and the names of the
+different members of the committee were agreed on, after as much
+discussion between him and Mr. Hardy as if the fate of nations had
+depended on their appointment.  It was then agreed that a meeting should
+take place at Mr. Percy Noakes's chambers on the ensuing Wednesday
+evening at eight o'clock, and the visitors departed.
+
+Wednesday evening arrived; eight o'clock came, and eight members of the
+committee were punctual in their attendance.  Mr. Loggins, the solicitor,
+of Boswell-court, sent an excuse, and Mr. Samuel Briggs, the ditto of
+Furnival's Inn, sent his brother: much to his (the brother's)
+satisfaction, and greatly to the discomfiture of Mr. Percy Noakes.
+Between the Briggses and the Tauntons there existed a degree of
+implacable hatred, quite unprecedented.  The animosity between the
+Montagues and Capulets, was nothing to that which prevailed between these
+two illustrious houses.  Mrs. Briggs was a widow, with three daughters
+and two sons; Mr. Samuel, the eldest, was an attorney, and Mr. Alexander,
+the youngest, was under articles to his brother.  They resided in
+Portland-street, Oxford-street, and moved in the same orbit as the
+Tauntons--hence their mutual dislike.  If the Miss Briggses appeared in
+smart bonnets, the Miss Tauntons eclipsed them with smarter.  If Mrs.
+Taunton appeared in a cap of all the hues of the rainbow, Mrs. Briggs
+forthwith mounted a toque, with all the patterns of the kaleidoscope.  If
+Miss Sophia Taunton learnt a new song, two of the Miss Briggses came out
+with a new duet.  The Tauntons had once gained a temporary triumph with
+the assistance of a harp, but the Briggses brought three guitars into the
+field, and effectually routed the enemy.  There was no end to the rivalry
+between them.
+
+Now, as Mr. Samuel Briggs was a mere machine, a sort of self-acting legal
+walking-stick; and as the party was known to have originated, however
+remotely, with Mrs. Taunton, the female branches of the Briggs family had
+arranged that Mr. Alexander should attend, instead of his brother; and as
+the said Mr. Alexander was deservedly celebrated for possessing all the
+pertinacity of a bankruptcy-court attorney, combined with the obstinacy
+of that useful animal which browses on the thistle, he required but
+little tuition.  He was especially enjoined to make himself as
+disagreeable as possible; and, above all, to black-ball the Tauntons at
+every hazard.
+
+The proceedings of the evening were opened by Mr. Percy Noakes.  After
+successfully urging on the gentlemen present the propriety of their
+mixing some brandy-and-water, he briefly stated the object of the
+meeting, and concluded by observing that the first step must be the
+selection of a chairman, necessarily possessing some arbitrary--he
+trusted not unconstitutional--powers, to whom the personal direction of
+the whole of the arrangements (subject to the approval of the committee)
+should be confided.  A pale young gentleman, in a green stock and
+spectacles of the same, a member of the honourable society of the Inner
+Temple, immediately rose for the purpose of proposing Mr. Percy Noakes.
+He had known him long, and this he would say, that a more honourable, a
+more excellent, or a better-hearted fellow, never existed.--(Hear, hear!)
+The young gentleman, who was a member of a debating society, took this
+opportunity of entering into an examination of the state of the English
+law, from the days of William the Conqueror down to the present period;
+he briefly adverted to the code established by the ancient Druids;
+slightly glanced at the principles laid down by the Athenian law-givers;
+and concluded with a most glowing eulogium on pic-nics and constitutional
+rights.
+
+Mr. Alexander Briggs opposed the motion.  He had the highest esteem for
+Mr. Percy Noakes as an individual, but he did consider that he ought not
+to be intrusted with these immense powers--(oh, oh!)--He believed that in
+the proposed capacity Mr. Percy Noakes would not act fairly, impartially,
+or honourably; but he begged it to be distinctly understood, that he said
+this, without the slightest personal disrespect.  Mr. Hardy defended his
+honourable friend, in a voice rendered partially unintelligible by
+emotion and brandy-and-water.  The proposition was put to the vote, and
+there appearing to be only one dissentient voice, Mr. Percy Noakes was
+declared duly elected, and took the chair accordingly.
+
+The business of the meeting now proceeded with rapidity.  The chairman
+delivered in his estimate of the probable expense of the excursion, and
+every one present subscribed his portion thereof.  The question was put
+that 'The Endeavour' be hired for the occasion; Mr. Alexander Briggs
+moved as an amendment, that the word 'Fly' be substituted for the word
+'Endeavour'; but after some debate consented to withdraw his opposition.
+The important ceremony of balloting then commenced.  A tea-caddy was
+placed on a table in a dark corner of the apartment, and every one was
+provided with two backgammon men, one black and one white.
+
+The chairman with great solemnity then read the following list of the
+guests whom he proposed to introduce:--Mrs. Taunton and two daughters,
+Mr. Wizzle, Mr. Simson.  The names were respectively balloted for, and
+Mrs. Taunton and her daughters were declared to be black-balled.  Mr.
+Percy Noakes and Mr. Hardy exchanged glances.
+
+'Is your list prepared, Mr. Briggs?' inquired the chairman.
+
+'It is,' replied Alexander, delivering in the following:--'Mrs. Briggs
+and three daughters, Mr. Samuel Briggs.'  The previous ceremony was
+repeated, and Mrs. Briggs and three daughters were declared to be
+black-balled.  Mr. Alexander Briggs looked rather foolish, and the
+remainder of the company appeared somewhat overawed by the mysterious
+nature of the proceedings.
+
+The balloting proceeded; but, one little circumstance which Mr. Percy
+Noakes had not originally foreseen, prevented the system from working
+quite as well as he had anticipated.  Everybody was black-balled.  Mr.
+Alexander Briggs, by way of retaliation, exercised his power of exclusion
+in every instance, and the result was, that after three hours had been
+consumed in hard balloting, the names of only three gentlemen were found
+to have been agreed to.  In this dilemma what was to be done? either the
+whole plan must fall to the ground, or a compromise must be effected.
+The latter alternative was preferable; and Mr. Percy Noakes therefore
+proposed that the form of balloting should be dispensed with, and that
+every gentleman should merely be required to state whom he intended to
+bring.  The proposal was acceded to; the Tauntons and the Briggses were
+reinstated; and the party was formed.
+
+The next Wednesday was fixed for the eventful day, and it was unanimously
+resolved that every member of the committee should wear a piece of blue
+sarsenet ribbon round his left arm.  It appeared from the statement of
+Mr. Percy Noakes, that the boat belonged to the General Steam Navigation
+Company, and was then lying off the Custom-house; and, as he proposed
+that the dinner and wines should be provided by an eminent city purveyor,
+it was arranged that Mr. Percy Noakes should be on board by seven o'clock
+to superintend the arrangements, and that the remaining members of the
+committee, together with the company generally, should be expected to
+join her by nine o'clock.  More brandy-and-water was despatched; several
+speeches were made by the different law students present; thanks were
+voted to the chairman; and the meeting separated.
+
+The weather had been beautiful up to this period, and beautiful it
+continued to be.  Sunday passed over, and Mr. Percy Noakes became
+unusually fidgety--rushing, constantly, to and from the Steam Packet
+Wharf, to the astonishment of the clerks, and the great emolument of the
+Holborn cabmen.  Tuesday arrived, and the anxiety of Mr. Percy Noakes
+knew no bounds.  He was every instant running to the window, to look out
+for clouds; and Mr. Hardy astonished the whole square by practising a new
+comic song for the occasion, in the chairman's chambers.
+
+Uneasy were the slumbers of Mr. Percy Noakes that night; he tossed and
+tumbled about, and had confused dreams of steamers starting off, and
+gigantic clocks with the hands pointing to a quarter-past nine, and the
+ugly face of Mr. Alexander Briggs looking over the boat's side, and
+grinning, as if in derision of his fruitless attempts to move.  He made a
+violent effort to get on board, and awoke.  The bright sun was shining
+cheerfully into the bedroom, and Mr. Percy Noakes started up for his
+watch, in the dreadful expectation of finding his worst dreams realised.
+
+It was just five o'clock.  He calculated the time--he should be a good
+half-hour dressing himself; and as it was a lovely morning, and the tide
+would be then running down, he would walk leisurely to Strand-lane, and
+have a boat to the Custom-house.
+
+He dressed himself, took a hasty apology for a breakfast, and sallied
+forth.  The streets looked as lonely and deserted as if they had been
+crowded, overnight, for the last time.  Here and there, an early
+apprentice, with quenched-looking sleepy eyes, was taking down the
+shutters of a shop; and a policeman or milkwoman might occasionally be
+seen pacing slowly along; but the servants had not yet begun to clean the
+doors, or light the kitchen fires, and London looked the picture of
+desolation.  At the corner of a by-street, near Temple-bar, was stationed
+a 'street-breakfast.'  The coffee was boiling over a charcoal fire, and
+large slices of bread and butter were piled one upon the other, like
+deals in a timber-yard.  The company were seated on a form, which, with a
+view both to security and comfort, was placed against a neighbouring
+wall.  Two young men, whose uproarious mirth and disordered dress bespoke
+the conviviality of the preceding evening, were treating three 'ladies'
+and an Irish labourer.  A little sweep was standing at a short distance,
+casting a longing eye at the tempting delicacies; and a policeman was
+watching the group from the opposite side of the street.  The wan looks
+and gaudy finery of the thinly-clad women contrasted as strangely with
+the gay sunlight, as did their forced merriment with the boisterous
+hilarity of the two young men, who, now and then, varied their amusements
+by 'bonneting' the proprietor of this itinerant coffee-house.
+
+Mr. Percy Noakes walked briskly by, and when he turned down Strand-lane,
+and caught a glimpse of the glistening water, he thought he had never
+felt so important or so happy in his life.
+
+'Boat, sir?' cried one of the three watermen who were mopping out their
+boats, and all whistling.  'Boat, sir?'
+
+'No,' replied Mr. Percy Noakes, rather sharply; for the inquiry was not
+made in a manner at all suitable to his dignity.
+
+'Would you prefer a wessel, sir?' inquired another, to the infinite
+delight of the 'Jack-in-the-water.'
+
+Mr. Percy Noakes replied with a look of supreme contempt.
+
+'Did you want to be put on board a steamer, sir?' inquired an old
+fireman-waterman, very confidentially.  He was dressed in a faded red
+suit, just the colour of the cover of a very old Court-guide.
+
+'Yes, make haste--the Endeavour--off the Custom-house.'
+
+'Endeavour!' cried the man who had convulsed the 'Jack' before.  'Vy, I
+see the Endeavour go up half an hour ago.'
+
+'So did I,' said another; 'and I should think she'd gone down by this
+time, for she's a precious sight too full of ladies and gen'lemen.'
+
+Mr. Percy Noakes affected to disregard these representations, and stepped
+into the boat, which the old man, by dint of scrambling, and shoving, and
+grating, had brought up to the causeway.  'Shove her off!' cried Mr.
+Percy Noakes, and away the boat glided down the river; Mr. Percy Noakes
+seated on the recently mopped seat, and the watermen at the stairs
+offering to bet him any reasonable sum that he'd never reach the
+'Custum-us.'
+
+'Here she is, by Jove!' said the delighted Percy, as they ran alongside
+the Endeavour.
+
+'Hold hard!' cried the steward over the side, and Mr. Percy Noakes jumped
+on board.
+
+'Hope you will find everything as you wished, sir.  She looks uncommon
+well this morning.'
+
+'She does, indeed,' replied the manager, in a state of ecstasy which it
+is impossible to describe.  The deck was scrubbed, and the seats were
+scrubbed, and there was a bench for the band, and a place for dancing,
+and a pile of camp-stools, and an awning; and then Mr. Percy Noakes
+bustled down below, and there were the pastrycook's men, and the
+steward's wife, laying out the dinner on two tables the whole length of
+the cabin; and then Mr. Percy Noakes took off his coat and rushed
+backwards and forwards, doing nothing, but quite convinced he was
+assisting everybody; and the steward's wife laughed till she cried, and
+Mr. Percy Noakes panted with the violence of his exertions.  And then the
+bell at London-bridge wharf rang; and a Margate boat was just starting;
+and a Gravesend boat was just starting, and people shouted, and porters
+ran down the steps with luggage that would crush any men but porters; and
+sloping boards, with bits of wood nailed on them, were placed between the
+outside boat and the inside boat; and the passengers ran along them, and
+looked like so many fowls coming out of an area; and then, the bell
+ceased, and the boards were taken away, and the boats started, and the
+whole scene was one of the most delightful bustle and confusion.
+
+The time wore on; half-past eight o'clock arrived; the pastry-cook's men
+went ashore; the dinner was completely laid out; and Mr. Percy Noakes
+locked the principal cabin, and put the key in his pocket, in order that
+it might be suddenly disclosed, in all its magnificence, to the eyes of
+the astonished company.  The band came on board, and so did the wine.
+
+Ten minutes to nine, and the committee embarked in a body.  There was Mr.
+Hardy, in a blue jacket and waistcoat, white trousers, silk stockings,
+and pumps--in full aquatic costume, with a straw hat on his head, and an
+immense telescope under his arm; and there was the young gentleman with
+the green spectacles, in nankeen inexplicables, with a ditto waistcoat
+and bright buttons, like the pictures of Paul--not the saint, but he of
+Virginia notoriety.  The remainder of the committee, dressed in white
+hats, light jackets, waistcoats, and trousers, looked something between
+waiters and West India planters.
+
+Nine o'clock struck, and the company arrived in shoals.  Mr. Samuel
+Briggs, Mrs. Briggs, and the Misses Briggs, made their appearance in a
+smart private wherry.  The three guitars, in their respective dark green
+cases, were carefully stowed away in the bottom of the boat, accompanied
+by two immense portfolios of music, which it would take at least a week's
+incessant playing to get through.  The Tauntons arrived at the same
+moment with more music, and a lion--a gentleman with a bass voice and an
+incipient red moustache.  The colours of the Taunton party were pink;
+those of the Briggses a light blue.  The Tauntons had artificial flowers
+in their bonnets; here the Briggses gained a decided advantage--they wore
+feathers.
+
+'How d'ye do, dear?' said the Misses Briggs to the Misses Taunton.  (The
+word 'dear' among girls is frequently synonymous with 'wretch.')
+
+'Quite well, thank you, dear,' replied the Misses Taunton to the Misses
+Briggs; and then, there was such a kissing, and congratulating, and
+shaking of hands, as might have induced one to suppose that the two
+families were the best friends in the world, instead of each wishing the
+other overboard, as they most sincerely did.
+
+Mr. Percy Noakes received the visitors, and bowed to the strange
+gentleman, as if he should like to know who he was.  This was just what
+Mrs. Taunton wanted.  Here was an opportunity to astonish the Briggses.
+
+'Oh!  I beg your pardon,' said the general of the Taunton party, with a
+careless air.--'Captain Helves--Mr. Percy Noakes--Mrs. Briggs--Captain
+Helves.'
+
+Mr. Percy Noakes bowed very low; the gallant captain did the same with
+all due ferocity, and the Briggses were clearly overcome.
+
+'Our friend, Mr. Wizzle, being unfortunately prevented from coming,'
+resumed Mrs. Taunton, 'I did myself the pleasure of bringing the captain,
+whose musical talents I knew would be a great acquisition.'
+
+'In the name of the committee I have to thank you for doing so, and to
+offer you welcome, sir,' replied Percy.  (Here the scraping was renewed.)
+'But pray be seated--won't you walk aft?  Captain, will you conduct Miss
+Taunton?--Miss Briggs, will you allow me?'
+
+'Where could they have picked up that military man?' inquired Mrs. Briggs
+of Miss Kate Briggs, as they followed the little party.
+
+'I can't imagine,' replied Miss Kate, bursting with vexation; for the
+very fierce air with which the gallant captain regarded the company, had
+impressed her with a high sense of his importance.
+
+Boat after boat came alongside, and guest after guest arrived.  The
+invites had been excellently arranged: Mr. Percy Noakes having considered
+it as important that the number of young men should exactly tally with
+that of the young ladies, as that the quantity of knives on board should
+be in precise proportion to the forks.
+
+'Now, is every one on board?' inquired Mr. Percy Noakes.  The committee
+(who, with their bits of blue ribbon, looked as if they were all going to
+be bled) bustled about to ascertain the fact, and reported that they
+might safely start.
+
+'Go on!' cried the master of the boat from the top of one of the
+paddle-boxes.
+
+'Go on!' echoed the boy, who was stationed over the hatchway to pass the
+directions down to the engineer; and away went the vessel with that
+agreeable noise which is peculiar to steamers, and which is composed of a
+mixture of creaking, gushing, clanging, and snorting.
+
+'Hoi-oi-oi-oi-oi-oi-o-i-i-i!' shouted half-a-dozen voices from a boat, a
+quarter of a mile astern.
+
+'Ease her!' cried the captain: 'do these people belong to us, sir?'
+
+'Noakes,' exclaimed Hardy, who had been looking at every object far and
+near, through the large telescope, 'it's the Fleetwoods and the
+Wakefields--and two children with them, by Jove!'
+
+'What a shame to bring children!' said everybody; 'how very
+inconsiderate!'
+
+'I say, it would be a good joke to pretend not to see 'em, wouldn't it?'
+suggested Hardy, to the immense delight of the company generally.  A
+council of war was hastily held, and it was resolved that the newcomers
+should be taken on board, on Mr. Hardy solemnly pledging himself to tease
+the children during the whole of the day.
+
+'Stop her!' cried the captain.
+
+'Stop her!' repeated the boy; whizz went the steam, and all the young
+ladies, as in duty bound, screamed in concert.  They were only appeased
+by the assurance of the martial Helves, that the escape of steam
+consequent on stopping a vessel was seldom attended with any great loss
+of human life.
+
+Two men ran to the side; and after some shouting, and swearing, and
+angling for the wherry with a boat-hook, Mr. Fleetwood, and Mrs.
+Fleetwood, and Master Fleetwood, and Mr. Wakefield, and Mrs. Wakefield,
+and Miss Wakefield, were safely deposited on the deck.  The girl was
+about six years old, the boy about four; the former was dressed in a
+white frock with a pink sash and dog's-eared-looking little spencer: a
+straw bonnet and green veil, six inches by three and a half; the latter,
+was attired for the occasion in a nankeen frock, between the bottom of
+which, and the top of his plaid socks, a considerable portion of two
+small mottled legs was discernible.  He had a light blue cap with a gold
+band and tassel on his head, and a damp piece of gingerbread in his hand,
+with which he had slightly embossed his countenance.
+
+The boat once more started off; the band played 'Off she goes:' the major
+part of the company conversed cheerfully in groups; and the old gentlemen
+walked up and down the deck in pairs, as perseveringly and gravely as if
+they were doing a match against time for an immense stake.  They ran
+briskly down the Pool; the gentlemen pointed out the Docks, the Thames
+Police-office, and other elegant public edifices; and the young ladies
+exhibited a proper display of horror at the appearance of the
+coal-whippers and ballast-heavers.  Mr. Hardy told stories to the married
+ladies, at which they laughed very much in their pocket-handkerchiefs,
+and hit him on the knuckles with their fans, declaring him to be 'a
+naughty man--a shocking creature'--and so forth; and Captain Helves gave
+slight descriptions of battles and duels, with a most bloodthirsty air,
+which made him the admiration of the women, and the envy of the men.
+Quadrilling commenced; Captain Helves danced one set with Miss Emily
+Taunton, and another set with Miss Sophia Taunton.  Mrs. Taunton was in
+ecstasies.  The victory appeared to be complete; but alas! the
+inconstancy of man!  Having performed this necessary duty, he attached
+himself solely to Miss Julia Briggs, with whom he danced no less than
+three sets consecutively, and from whose side he evinced no intention of
+stirring for the remainder of the day.
+
+Mr. Hardy, having played one or two very brilliant fantasias on the
+Jews'-harp, and having frequently repeated the exquisitely amusing joke
+of slily chalking a large cross on the back of some member of the
+committee, Mr. Percy Noakes expressed his hope that some of their musical
+friends would oblige the company by a display of their abilities.
+
+'Perhaps,' he said in a very insinuating manner, 'Captain Helves will
+oblige us?'  Mrs. Taunton's countenance lighted up, for the captain only
+sang duets, and couldn't sing them with anybody but one of her daughters.
+
+'Really,' said that warlike individual, 'I should be very happy, 'but--'
+
+'Oh! pray do,' cried all the young ladies.
+
+'Miss Emily, have you any objection to join in a duet?'
+
+'Oh! not the slightest,' returned the young lady, in a tone which clearly
+showed she had the greatest possible objection.
+
+'Shall I accompany you, dear?' inquired one of the Miss Briggses, with
+the bland intention of spoiling the effect.
+
+'Very much obliged to you, Miss Briggs,' sharply retorted Mrs. Taunton,
+who saw through the manoeuvre; 'my daughters always sing without
+accompaniments.'
+
+'And without voices,' tittered Mrs. Briggs, in a low tone.
+
+'Perhaps,' said Mrs. Taunton, reddening, for she guessed the tenor of the
+observation, though she had not heard it clearly--'Perhaps it would be as
+well for some people, if their voices were not quite so audible as they
+are to other people.'
+
+'And, perhaps, if gentlemen who are kidnapped to pay attention to some
+persons' daughters, had not sufficient discernment to pay attention to
+other persons' daughters,' returned Mrs. Briggs, 'some persons would not
+be so ready to display that ill-temper which, thank God, distinguishes
+them from other persons.'
+
+'Persons!' ejaculated Mrs. Taunton.
+
+'Persons,' replied Mrs. Briggs.
+
+'Insolence!'
+
+'Creature!'
+
+'Hush! hush!' interrupted Mr. Percy Noakes, who was one of the very few
+by whom this dialogue had been overheard.  'Hush!--pray, silence for the
+duet.'
+
+After a great deal of preparatory crowing and humming, the captain began
+the following duet from the opera of 'Paul and Virginia,' in that
+grunting tone in which a man gets down, Heaven knows where, without the
+remotest chance of ever getting up again.  This, in private circles, is
+frequently designated 'a bass voice.'
+
+    'See (sung the captain) from o--ce--an ri--sing
+    Bright flames the or--b of d--ay.
+    From yon gro--ove, the varied so--ongs--'
+
+Here, the singer was interrupted by varied cries of the most dreadful
+description, proceeding from some grove in the immediate vicinity of the
+starboard paddle-box.
+
+'My child!' screamed Mrs. Fleetwood.  'My child! it is his voice--I know
+it.'
+
+Mr. Fleetwood, accompanied by several gentlemen, here rushed to the
+quarter from whence the noise proceeded, and an exclamation of horror
+burst from the company; the general impression being, that the little
+innocent had either got his head in the water, or his legs in the
+machinery.
+
+'What is the matter?' shouted the agonised father, as he returned with
+the child in his arms.
+
+'Oh! oh! oh!' screamed the small sufferer again.
+
+'What is the matter, dear?' inquired the father once more--hastily
+stripping off the nankeen frock, for the purpose of ascertaining whether
+the child had one bone which was not smashed to pieces.
+
+'Oh! oh!--I'm so frightened!'
+
+'What at, dear?--what at?' said the mother, soothing the sweet infant.
+
+'Oh! he's been making such dreadful faces at me,' cried the boy,
+relapsing into convulsions at the bare recollection.
+
+'He!--who?' cried everybody, crowding round him.
+
+'Oh!--him!' replied the child, pointing at Hardy, who affected to be the
+most concerned of the whole group.
+
+The real state of the case at once flashed upon the minds of all present,
+with the exception of the Fleetwoods and the Wakefields.  The facetious
+Hardy, in fulfilment of his promise, had watched the child to a remote
+part of the vessel, and, suddenly appearing before him with the most
+awful contortions of visage, had produced his paroxysm of terror.  Of
+course, he now observed that it was hardly necessary for him to deny the
+accusation; and the unfortunate little victim was accordingly led below,
+after receiving sundry thumps on the head from both his parents, for
+having the wickedness to tell a story.
+
+This little interruption having been adjusted, the captain resumed, and
+Miss Emily chimed in, in due course.  The duet was loudly applauded, and,
+certainly, the perfect independence of the parties deserved great
+commendation.  Miss Emily sung her part, without the slightest reference
+to the captain; and the captain sang so loud, that he had not the
+slightest idea what was being done by his partner.  After having gone
+through the last few eighteen or nineteen bars by himself, therefore, he
+acknowledged the plaudits of the circle with that air of self-denial
+which men usually assume when they think they have done something to
+astonish the company.
+
+'Now,' said Mr. Percy Noakes, who had just ascended from the fore-cabin,
+where he had been busily engaged in decanting the wine, 'if the Misses
+Briggs will oblige us with something before dinner, I am sure we shall be
+very much delighted.'
+
+One of those hums of admiration followed the suggestion, which one
+frequently hears in society, when nobody has the most distant notion what
+he is expressing his approval of.  The three Misses Briggs looked
+modestly at their mamma, and the mamma looked approvingly at her
+daughters, and Mrs. Taunton looked scornfully at all of them.  The Misses
+Briggs asked for their guitars, and several gentlemen seriously damaged
+the cases in their anxiety to present them.  Then, there was a very
+interesting production of three little keys for the aforesaid cases, and
+a melodramatic expression of horror at finding a string broken; and a
+vast deal of screwing and tightening, and winding, and tuning, during
+which Mrs. Briggs expatiated to those near her on the immense difficulty
+of playing a guitar, and hinted at the wondrous proficiency of her
+daughters in that mystic art.  Mrs. Taunton whispered to a neighbour that
+it was 'quite sickening!' and the Misses Taunton looked as if they knew
+how to play, but disdained to do it.
+
+At length, the Misses Briggs began in real earnest.  It was a new Spanish
+composition, for three voices and three guitars.  The effect was
+electrical.  All eyes were turned upon the captain, who was reported to
+have once passed through Spain with his regiment, and who must be well
+acquainted with the national music.  He was in raptures.  This was
+sufficient; the trio was encored; the applause was universal; and never
+had the Tauntons suffered such a complete defeat.
+
+'Bravo! bravo!' ejaculated the captain;--'bravo!'
+
+'Pretty! isn't it, sir?' inquired Mr. Samuel Briggs, with the air of a
+self-satisfied showman.  By-the-bye, these were the first words he had
+been heard to utter since he left Boswell-court the evening before.
+
+'De-lightful!' returned the captain, with a flourish, and a military
+cough;--'de-lightful!'
+
+'Sweet instrument!' said an old gentleman with a bald head, who had been
+trying all the morning to look through a telescope, inside the glass of
+which Mr. Hardy had fixed a large black wafer.
+
+'Did you ever hear a Portuguese tambourine?' inquired that jocular
+individual.
+
+'Did _you_ ever hear a tom-tom, sir?' sternly inquired the captain, who
+lost no opportunity of showing off his travels, real or pretended.
+
+'A what?' asked Hardy, rather taken aback.
+
+'A tom-tom.'
+
+'Never!'
+
+'Nor a gum-gum?'
+
+'Never!'
+
+'What _is_ a gum-gum?' eagerly inquired several young ladies.
+
+'When I was in the East Indies,' replied the captain--(here was a
+discovery--he had been in the East Indies!)--'when I was in the East
+Indies, I was once stopping a few thousand miles up the country, on a
+visit at the house of a very particular friend of mine, Ram Chowdar Doss
+Azuph Al Bowlar--a devilish pleasant fellow.  As we were enjoying our
+hookahs, one evening, in the cool verandah in front of his villa, we were
+rather surprised by the sudden appearance of thirty-four of his
+Kit-ma-gars (for he had rather a large establishment there), accompanied
+by an equal number of Con-su-mars, approaching the house with a
+threatening aspect, and beating a tom-tom.  The Ram started up--'
+
+'Who?' inquired the bald gentleman, intensely interested.
+
+'The Ram--Ram Chowdar--'
+
+'Oh!' said the old gentleman, 'beg your pardon; pray go on.'
+
+'--Started up and drew a pistol.  "Helves," said he, "my boy,"--he always
+called me, my boy--"Helves," said he, "do you hear that tom-tom?"  "I
+do," said I.  His countenance, which before was pale, assumed a most
+frightful appearance; his whole visage was distorted, and his frame
+shaken by violent emotions.  "Do you see that gum-gum?" said he.  "No,"
+said I, staring about me.  "You don't?" said he.  "No, I'll be damned if
+I do," said I; "and what's more, I don't know what a gum-gum is," said I.
+I really thought the Ram would have dropped.  He drew me aside, and with
+an expression of agony I shall never forget, said in a low whisper--'
+
+'Dinner's on the table, ladies,' interrupted the steward's wife.
+
+'Will you allow me?' said the captain, immediately suiting the action to
+the word, and escorting Miss Julia Briggs to the cabin, with as much ease
+as if he had finished the story.
+
+'What an extraordinary circumstance!' ejaculated the same old gentleman,
+preserving his listening attitude.
+
+'What a traveller!' said the young ladies.
+
+'What a singular name!' exclaimed the gentlemen, rather confused by the
+coolness of the whole affair.
+
+'I wish he had finished the story,' said an old lady.  'I wonder what a
+gum-gum really is?'
+
+'By Jove!' exclaimed Hardy, who until now had been lost in utter
+amazement, 'I don't know what it may be in India, but in England I think
+a gum-gum has very much the same meaning as a hum-bug.'
+
+'How illiberal! how envious!' cried everybody, as they made for the
+cabin, fully impressed with a belief in the captain's amazing adventures.
+Helves was the sole lion for the remainder of the day--impudence and the
+marvellous are pretty sure passports to any society.
+
+The party had by this time reached their destination, and put about on
+their return home.  The wind, which had been with them the whole day, was
+now directly in their teeth; the weather had become gradually more and
+more overcast; and the sky, water, and shore, were all of that dull,
+heavy, uniform lead-colour, which house-painters daub in the first
+instance over a street-door which is gradually approaching a state of
+convalescence.  It had been 'spitting' with rain for the last half-hour,
+and now began to pour in good earnest.  The wind was freshening very
+fast, and the waterman at the wheel had unequivocally expressed his
+opinion that there would shortly be a squall.  A slight emotion on the
+part of the vessel, now and then, seemed to suggest the possibility of
+its pitching to a very uncomfortable extent in the event of its blowing
+harder; and every timber began to creak, as if the boat were an overladen
+clothes-basket.  Sea-sickness, however, is like a belief in ghosts--every
+one entertains some misgivings on the subject, but few will acknowledge
+any.  The majority of the company, therefore, endeavoured to look
+peculiarly happy, feeling all the while especially miserable.
+
+'Don't it rain?' inquired the old gentleman before noticed, when, by dint
+of squeezing and jamming, they were all seated at table.
+
+'I think it does--a little,' replied Mr. Percy Noakes, who could hardly
+hear himself speak, in consequence of the pattering on the deck.
+
+'Don't it blow?' inquired some one else.
+
+'No, I don't think it does,' responded Hardy, sincerely wishing that he
+could persuade himself that it did not; for he sat near the door, and was
+almost blown off his seat.
+
+'It'll soon clear up,' said Mr. Percy Noakes, in a cheerful tone.
+
+'Oh, certainly!' ejaculated the committee generally.
+
+'No doubt of it!' said the remainder of the company, whose attention was
+now pretty well engrossed by the serious business of eating, carving,
+taking wine, and so forth.
+
+The throbbing motion of the engine was but too perceptible.  There was a
+large, substantial, cold boiled leg of mutton, at the bottom of the
+table, shaking like blancmange; a previously hearty sirloin of beef
+looked as if it had been suddenly seized with the palsy; and some
+tongues, which were placed on dishes rather too large for them, went
+through the most surprising evolutions; darting from side to side, and
+from end to end, like a fly in an inverted wine-glass.  Then, the sweets
+shook and trembled, till it was quite impossible to help them, and people
+gave up the attempt in despair; and the pigeon-pies looked as if the
+birds, whose legs were stuck outside, were trying to get them in.  The
+table vibrated and started like a feverish pulse, and the very legs were
+convulsed--everything was shaking and jarring.  The beams in the roof of
+the cabin seemed as if they were put there for the sole purpose of giving
+people head-aches, and several elderly gentlemen became ill-tempered in
+consequence.  As fast as the steward put the fire-irons up, they _would_
+fall down again; and the more the ladies and gentlemen tried to sit
+comfortably on their seats, the more the seats seemed to slide away from
+the ladies and gentlemen.  Several ominous demands were made for small
+glasses of brandy; the countenances of the company gradually underwent
+most extraordinary changes; one gentleman was observed suddenly to rush
+from table without the slightest ostensible reason, and dart up the steps
+with incredible swiftness: thereby greatly damaging both himself and the
+steward, who happened to be coming down at the same moment.
+
+The cloth was removed; the dessert was laid on the table; and the glasses
+were filled.  The motion of the boat increased; several members of the
+party began to feel rather vague and misty, and looked as if they had
+only just got up.  The young gentleman with the spectacles, who had been
+in a fluctuating state for some time--at one moment bright, and at
+another dismal, like a revolving light on the sea-coast--rashly announced
+his wish to propose a toast.  After several ineffectual attempts to
+preserve his perpendicular, the young gentleman, having managed to hook
+himself to the centre leg of the table with his left hand, proceeded as
+follows:
+
+'Ladies and gentlemen.  A gentleman is among us--I may say a
+stranger--(here some painful thought seemed to strike the orator; he
+paused, and looked extremely odd)--whose talents, whose travels, whose
+cheerfulness--'
+
+'I beg your pardon, Edkins,' hastily interrupted Mr. Percy
+Noakes,--'Hardy, what's the matter?'
+
+'Nothing,' replied the 'funny gentleman,' who had just life enough left
+to utter two consecutive syllables.
+
+'Will you have some brandy?'
+
+'No!' replied Hardy in a tone of great indignation, and looking as
+comfortable as Temple-bar in a Scotch mist; 'what should I want brandy
+for?'
+
+'Will you go on deck?'
+
+'No, I will _not_.'  This was said with a most determined air, and in a
+voice which might have been taken for an imitation of anything; it was
+quite as much like a guinea-pig as a bassoon.
+
+'I beg your pardon, Edkins,' said the courteous Percy; 'I thought our
+friend was ill.  Pray go on.'
+
+A pause.
+
+'Pray go on.'
+
+'Mr. Edkins _is_ gone,' cried somebody.
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,' said the steward, running up to Mr. Percy
+Noakes, 'I beg your pardon, sir, but the gentleman as just went on
+deck--him with the green spectacles--is uncommon bad, to be sure; and the
+young man as played the wiolin says, that unless he has some brandy he
+can't answer for the consequences.  He says he has a wife and two
+children, whose werry subsistence depends on his breaking a wessel, and
+he expects to do so every moment.  The flageolet's been werry ill, but
+he's better, only he's in a dreadful prusperation.'
+
+All disguise was now useless; the company staggered on deck; the
+gentlemen tried to see nothing but the clouds; and the ladies, muffled up
+in such shawls and cloaks as they had brought with them, lay about on the
+seats, and under the seats, in the most wretched condition.  Never was
+such a blowing, and raining, and pitching, and tossing, endured by any
+pleasure party before.  Several remonstrances were sent down below, on
+the subject of Master Fleetwood, but they were totally unheeded in
+consequence of the indisposition of his natural protectors.  That
+interesting child screamed at the top of his voice, until he had no voice
+left to scream with; and then, Miss Wakefield began, and screamed for the
+remainder of the passage.
+
+Mr. Hardy was observed, some hours afterwards, in an attitude which
+induced his friends to suppose that he was busily engaged in
+contemplating the beauties of the deep; they only regretted that his
+taste for the picturesque should lead him to remain so long in a
+position, very injurious at all times, but especially so, to an
+individual labouring under a tendency of blood to the head.
+
+The party arrived off the Custom-house at about two o'clock on the
+Thursday morning dispirited and worn out.  The Tauntons were too ill to
+quarrel with the Briggses, and the Briggses were too wretched to annoy
+the Tauntons.  One of the guitar-cases was lost on its passage to a
+hackney-coach, and Mrs. Briggs has not scrupled to state that the
+Tauntons bribed a porter to throw it down an area.  Mr. Alexander Briggs
+opposes vote by ballot--he says from personal experience of its
+inefficacy; and Mr. Samuel Briggs, whenever he is asked to express his
+sentiments on the point, says he has no opinion on that or any other
+subject.
+
+Mr. Edkins--the young gentleman in the green spectacles--makes a speech
+on every occasion on which a speech can possibly be made: the eloquence
+of which can only be equalled by its length.  In the event of his not
+being previously appointed to a judgeship, it is probable that he will
+practise as a barrister in the New Central Criminal Court.
+
+Captain Helves continued his attention to Miss Julia Briggs, whom he
+might possibly have espoused, if it had not unfortunately happened that
+Mr. Samuel arrested him, in the way of business, pursuant to instructions
+received from Messrs.  Scroggins and Payne, whose town-debts the gallant
+captain had condescended to collect, but whose accounts, with the
+indiscretion sometimes peculiar to military minds, he had omitted to keep
+with that dull accuracy which custom has rendered necessary.  Mrs.
+Taunton complains that she has been much deceived in him.  He introduced
+himself to the family on board a Gravesend steam-packet, and certainly,
+therefore, ought to have proved respectable.
+
+Mr. Percy Noakes is as light-hearted and careless as ever.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL
+
+
+The little town of Great Winglebury is exactly forty-two miles and
+three-quarters from Hyde Park corner.  It has a long, straggling, quiet
+High-street, with a great black and white clock at a small red Town-hall,
+half-way up--a market-place--a cage--an assembly-room--a church--a
+bridge--a chapel--a theatre--a library--an inn--a pump--and a
+Post-office.  Tradition tells of a 'Little Winglebury,' down some
+cross-road about two miles off; and, as a square mass of dirty paper,
+supposed to have been originally intended for a letter, with certain
+tremulous characters inscribed thereon, in which a lively imagination
+might trace a remote resemblance to the word 'Little,' was once stuck up
+to be owned in the sunny window of the Great Winglebury Post-office, from
+which it only disappeared when it fell to pieces with dust and extreme
+old age, there would appear to be some foundation for the legend.  Common
+belief is inclined to bestow the name upon a little hole at the end of a
+muddy lane about a couple of miles long, colonised by one wheelwright,
+four paupers, and a beer-shop; but, even this authority, slight as it is,
+must be regarded with extreme suspicion, inasmuch as the inhabitants of
+the hole aforesaid, concur in opining that it never had any name at all,
+from the earliest ages down to the present day.
+
+The Winglebury Arms, in the centre of the High-street, opposite the small
+building with the big clock, is the principal inn of Great
+Winglebury--the commercial-inn, posting-house, and excise-office; the
+'Blue' house at every election, and the judges' house at every assizes.
+It is the head-quarters of the Gentlemen's Whist Club of Winglebury Blues
+(so called in opposition to the Gentlemen's Whist Club of Winglebury
+Buffs, held at the other house, a little further down): and whenever a
+juggler, or wax-work man, or concert-giver, takes Great Winglebury in his
+circuit, it is immediately placarded all over the town that Mr.
+So-and-so, 'trusting to that liberal support which the inhabitants of
+Great Winglebury have long been so liberal in bestowing, has at a great
+expense engaged the elegant and commodious assembly-rooms, attached to
+the Winglebury Arms.'  The house is a large one, with a red brick and
+stone front; a pretty spacious hall, ornamented with evergreen plants,
+terminates in a perspective view of the bar, and a glass case, in which
+are displayed a choice variety of delicacies ready for dressing, to catch
+the eye of a new-comer the moment he enters, and excite his appetite to
+the highest possible pitch.  Opposite doors lead to the 'coffee' and
+'commercial' rooms; and a great wide, rambling staircase,--three stairs
+and a landing--four stairs and another landing--one step and another
+landing--half-a-dozen stairs and another landing--and so on--conducts to
+galleries of bedrooms, and labyrinths of sitting-rooms, denominated
+'private,' where you may enjoy yourself, as privately as you can in any
+place where some bewildered being walks into your room every five
+minutes, by mistake, and then walks out again, to open all the doors
+along the gallery until he finds his own.
+
+Such is the Winglebury Arms, at this day, and such was the Winglebury
+Arms some time since--no matter when--two or three minutes before the
+arrival of the London stage.  Four horses with cloths on--change for a
+coach--were standing quietly at the corner of the yard surrounded by a
+listless group of post-boys in shiny hats and smock-frocks, engaged in
+discussing the merits of the cattle; half a dozen ragged boys were
+standing a little apart, listening with evident interest to the
+conversation of these worthies; and a few loungers were collected round
+the horse-trough, awaiting the arrival of the coach.
+
+The day was hot and sunny, the town in the zenith of its dulness, and
+with the exception of these few idlers, not a living creature was to be
+seen.  Suddenly, the loud notes of a key-bugle broke the monotonous
+stillness of the street; in came the coach, rattling over the uneven
+paving with a noise startling enough to stop even the large-faced clock
+itself.  Down got the outsides, up went the windows in all directions,
+out came the waiters, up started the ostlers, and the loungers, and the
+post-boys, and the ragged boys, as if they were electrified--unstrapping,
+and unchaining, and unbuckling, and dragging willing horses out, and
+forcing reluctant horses in, and making a most exhilarating bustle.
+'Lady inside, here!' said the guard.  'Please to alight, ma'am,' said the
+waiter.  'Private sitting-room?' interrogated the lady.  'Certainly,
+ma'am,' responded the chamber-maid.  'Nothing but these 'ere trunks,
+ma'am?' inquired the guard.  'Nothing more,' replied the lady.  Up got
+the outsides again, and the guard, and the coachman; off came the cloths,
+with a jerk; 'All right,' was the cry; and away they went.  The loungers
+lingered a minute or two in the road, watching the coach until it turned
+the corner, and then loitered away one by one.  The street was clear
+again, and the town, by contrast, quieter than ever.
+
+'Lady in number twenty-five,' screamed the landlady.--'Thomas!'
+
+'Yes, ma'am.'
+
+'Letter just been left for the gentleman in number nineteen.  Boots at
+the Lion left it.  No answer.'
+
+'Letter for you, sir,' said Thomas, depositing the letter on number
+nineteen's table.
+
+'For me?' said number nineteen, turning from the window, out of which he
+had been surveying the scene just described.
+
+'Yes, sir,'--(waiters always speak in hints, and never utter complete
+sentences,)--'yes, sir,--Boots at the Lion, sir,--Bar, sir,--Missis said
+number nineteen, sir--Alexander Trott, Esq., sir?--Your card at the bar,
+sir, I think, sir?'
+
+'My name _is_ Trott,' replied number nineteen, breaking the seal.  'You
+may go, waiter.'  The waiter pulled down the window-blind, and then
+pulled it up again--for a regular waiter must do something before he
+leaves the room--adjusted the glasses on the side-board, brushed a place
+that was _not_ dusty, rubbed his hands very hard, walked stealthily to
+the door, and evaporated.
+
+There was, evidently, something in the contents of the letter, of a
+nature, if not wholly unexpected, certainly extremely disagreeable.  Mr.
+Alexander Trott laid it down, and took it up again, and walked about the
+room on particular squares of the carpet, and even attempted, though
+unsuccessfully, to whistle an air.  It wouldn't do.  He threw himself
+into a chair, and read the following epistle aloud:--
+
+                                            'Blue Lion and Stomach-warmer,
+                                                        'Great Winglebury.
+                                                     '_Wednesday Morning_.
+
+    'Sir.  Immediately on discovering your intentions, I left our
+    counting-house, and followed you.  I know the purport of your
+    journey;--that journey shall never be completed.
+
+    'I have no friend here, just now, on whose secrecy I can rely.  This
+    shall be no obstacle to my revenge.  Neither shall Emily Brown be
+    exposed to the mercenary solicitations of a scoundrel, odious in her
+    eyes, and contemptible in everybody else's: nor will I tamely submit
+    to the clandestine attacks of a base umbrella-maker.
+
+    'Sir.  From Great Winglebury church, a footpath leads through four
+    meadows to a retired spot known to the townspeople as Stiffun's
+    Acre.'  [Mr. Trott shuddered.]  'I shall be waiting there alone, at
+    twenty minutes before six o'clock to-morrow morning.  Should I be
+    disappointed in seeing you there, I will do myself the pleasure of
+    calling with a horsewhip.
+
+                                                           'HORACE HUNTER.
+
+    'PS.  There is a gunsmiths in the High-street; and they won't sell
+    gunpowder after dark--you understand me.
+
+    'PPS.  You had better not order your breakfast in the morning until
+    you have met me.  It may be an unnecessary expense.'
+
+'Desperate-minded villain!  I knew how it would be!' ejaculated the
+terrified Trott.  'I always told father, that once start me on this
+expedition, and Hunter would pursue me like the Wandering Jew.  It's bad
+enough as it is, to marry with the old people's commands, and without the
+girl's consent; but what will Emily think of me, if I go down there
+breathless with running away from this infernal salamander?  What _shall_
+I do?  What _can_ I do?  If I go back to the city, I'm disgraced for
+ever--lose the girl--and, what's more, lose the money too.  Even if I did
+go on to the Browns' by the coach, Hunter would be after me in a
+post-chaise; and if I go to this place, this Stiffun's Acre (another
+shudder), I'm as good as dead.  I've seen him hit the man at the
+Pall-mall shooting-gallery, in the second button-hole of the waistcoat,
+five times out of every six, and when he didn't hit him there, he hit him
+in the head.'  With this consolatory reminiscence Mr. Alexander Trott
+again ejaculated, 'What shall I do?'
+
+Long and weary were his reflections, as, burying his face in his hand, he
+sat, ruminating on the best course to be pursued.  His mental
+direction-post pointed to London.  He thought of the 'governor's' anger,
+and the loss of the fortune which the paternal Brown had promised the
+paternal Trott his daughter should contribute to the coffers of his son.
+Then the words 'To Brown's' were legibly inscribed on the said
+direction-post, but Horace Hunter's denunciation rung in his ears;--last
+of all it bore, in red letters, the words, 'To Stiffun's Acre;' and then
+Mr. Alexander Trott decided on adopting a plan which he presently
+matured.
+
+First and foremost, he despatched the under-boots to the Blue Lion and
+Stomach-warmer, with a gentlemanly note to Mr. Horace Hunter, intimating
+that he thirsted for his destruction and would do himself the pleasure of
+slaughtering him next morning, without fail.  He then wrote another
+letter, and requested the attendance of the other boots--for they kept a
+pair.  A modest knock at the room door was heard.  'Come in,' said Mr.
+Trott.  A man thrust in a red head with one eye in it, and being again
+desired to 'come in,' brought in the body and the legs to which the head
+belonged, and a fur cap which belonged to the head.
+
+'You are the upper-boots, I think?' inquired Mr. Trott.
+
+'Yes, I am the upper-boots,' replied a voice from inside a velveteen
+case, with mother-of-pearl buttons--'that is, I'm the boots as b'longs to
+the house; the other man's my man, as goes errands and does odd jobs.
+Top-boots and half-boots, I calls us.'
+
+'You're from London?' inquired Mr. Trott.
+
+'Driv a cab once,' was the laconic reply.
+
+'Why don't you drive it now?' asked Mr. Trott.
+
+'Over-driv the cab, and driv over a 'ooman,' replied the top-boots, with
+brevity.
+
+'Do you know the mayor's house?' inquired Mr. Trott.
+
+'Rather,' replied the boots, significantly, as if he had some good reason
+to remember it.
+
+'Do you think you could manage to leave a letter there?' interrogated
+Trott.
+
+'Shouldn't wonder,' responded boots.
+
+'But this letter,' said Trott, holding a deformed note with a paralytic
+direction in one hand, and five shillings in the other--'this letter is
+anonymous.'
+
+'A--what?' interrupted the boots.
+
+'Anonymous--he's not to know who it comes from.'
+
+'Oh!  I see,' responded the reg'lar, with a knowing wink, but without
+evincing the slightest disinclination to undertake the charge--'I
+see--bit o' Sving, eh?' and his one eye wandered round the room, as if in
+quest of a dark lantern and phosphorus-box.  'But, I say!' he continued,
+recalling the eye from its search, and bringing it to bear on Mr. Trott.
+'I say, he's a lawyer, our mayor, and insured in the County.  If you've a
+spite agen him, you'd better not burn his house down--blessed if I don't
+think it would be the greatest favour you could do him.'  And he chuckled
+inwardly.
+
+If Mr. Alexander Trott had been in any other situation, his first act
+would have been to kick the man down-stairs by deputy; or, in other
+words, to ring the bell, and desire the landlord to take his boots off.
+He contented himself, however, with doubling the fee and explaining that
+the letter merely related to a breach of the peace.  The top-boots
+retired, solemnly pledged to secrecy; and Mr. Alexander Trott sat down to
+a fried sole, maintenon cutlet, Madeira, and sundries, with greater
+composure than he had experienced since the receipt of Horace Hunter's
+letter of defiance.
+
+The lady who alighted from the London coach had no sooner been installed
+in number twenty-five, and made some alteration in her travelling-dress,
+than she indited a note to Joseph Overton, esquire, solicitor, and mayor
+of Great Winglebury, requesting his immediate attendance on private
+business of paramount importance--a summons which that worthy functionary
+lost no time in obeying; for after sundry openings of his eyes, divers
+ejaculations of 'Bless me!' and other manifestations of surprise, he took
+his broad-brimmed hat from its accustomed peg in his little front office,
+and walked briskly down the High-street to the Winglebury Arms; through
+the hall and up the staircase of which establishment he was ushered by
+the landlady, and a crowd of officious waiters, to the door of number
+twenty-five.
+
+'Show the gentleman in,' said the stranger lady, in reply to the foremost
+waiter's announcement.  The gentleman was shown in accordingly.
+
+The lady rose from the sofa; the mayor advanced a step from the door; and
+there they both paused, for a minute or two, looking at one another as if
+by mutual consent.  The mayor saw before him a buxom, richly-dressed
+female of about forty; the lady looked upon a sleek man, about ten years
+older, in drab shorts and continuations, black coat, neckcloth, and
+gloves.
+
+'Miss Julia Manners!' exclaimed the mayor at length, 'you astonish me.'
+
+'That's very unfair of you, Overton,' replied Miss Julia, 'for I have
+known you, long enough, not to be surprised at anything you do, and you
+might extend equal courtesy to me.'
+
+'But to run away--actually run away--with a young man!' remonstrated the
+mayor.
+
+'You wouldn't have me actually run away with an old one, I presume?' was
+the cool rejoinder.
+
+'And then to ask me--me--of all people in the world--a man of my age and
+appearance--mayor of the town--to promote such a scheme!' pettishly
+ejaculated Joseph Overton; throwing himself into an arm-chair, and
+producing Miss Julia's letter from his pocket, as if to corroborate the
+assertion that he _had_ been asked.
+
+'Now, Overton,' replied the lady, 'I want your assistance in this matter,
+and I must have it.  In the lifetime of that poor old dear, Mr.
+Cornberry, who--who--'
+
+'Who was to have married you, and didn't, because he died first; and who
+left you his property unencumbered with the addition of himself,'
+suggested the mayor.
+
+'Well,' replied Miss Julia, reddening slightly, 'in the lifetime of the
+poor old dear, the property had the incumbrance of your management; and
+all I will say of that, is, that I only wonder it didn't die of
+consumption instead of its master.  You helped yourself then:--help me
+now.'
+
+Mr. Joseph Overton was a man of the world, and an attorney; and as
+certain indistinct recollections of an odd thousand pounds or two,
+appropriated by mistake, passed across his mind he hemmed deprecatingly,
+smiled blandly, remained silent for a few seconds; and finally inquired,
+'What do you wish me to do?'
+
+'I'll tell you,' replied Miss Julia--'I'll tell you in three words.  Dear
+Lord Peter--'
+
+'That's the young man, I suppose--' interrupted the mayor.
+
+'That's the young Nobleman,' replied the lady, with a great stress on the
+last word.  'Dear Lord Peter is considerably afraid of the resentment of
+his family; and we have therefore thought it better to make the match a
+stolen one.  He left town, to avoid suspicion, on a visit to his friend,
+the Honourable Augustus Flair, whose seat, as you know, is about thirty
+miles from this, accompanied only by his favourite tiger.  We arranged
+that I should come here alone in the London coach; and that he, leaving
+his tiger and cab behind him, should come on, and arrive here as soon as
+possible this afternoon.'
+
+'Very well,' observed Joseph Overton, 'and then he can order the chaise,
+and you can go on to Gretna Green together, without requiring the
+presence or interference of a third party, can't you?'
+
+'No,' replied Miss Julia.  'We have every reason to believe--dear Lord
+Peter not being considered very prudent or sagacious by his friends, and
+they having discovered his attachment to me--that, immediately on his
+absence being observed, pursuit will be made in this direction:--to elude
+which, and to prevent our being traced, I wish it to be understood in
+this house, that dear Lord Peter is slightly deranged, though perfectly
+harmless; and that I am, unknown to him, awaiting his arrival to convey
+him in a post-chaise to a private asylum--at Berwick, say.  If I don't
+show myself much, I dare say I can manage to pass for his mother.'
+
+The thought occurred to the mayor's mind that the lady might show herself
+a good deal without fear of detection; seeing that she was about double
+the age of her intended husband.  He said nothing, however, and the lady
+proceeded.
+
+'With the whole of this arrangement dear Lord Peter is acquainted; and
+all I want you to do, is, to make the delusion more complete by giving it
+the sanction of your influence in this place, and assigning this as a
+reason to the people of the house for my taking the young gentleman away.
+As it would not be consistent with the story that I should see him until
+after he has entered the chaise, I also wish you to communicate with him,
+and inform him that it is all going on well.'
+
+'Has he arrived?' inquired Overton.
+
+'I don't know,' replied the lady.
+
+'Then how am I to know!' inquired the mayor.  'Of course he will not give
+his own name at the bar.'
+
+'I begged him, immediately on his arrival, to write you a note,' replied
+Miss Manners; 'and to prevent the possibility of our project being
+discovered through its means, I desired him to write anonymously, and in
+mysterious terms, to acquaint you with the number of his room.'
+
+'Bless me!' exclaimed the mayor, rising from his seat, and searching his
+pockets--'most extraordinary circumstance--he has arrived--mysterious
+note left at my house in a most mysterious manner, just before
+yours--didn't know what to make of it before, and certainly shouldn't
+have attended to it.--Oh! here it is.'  And Joseph Overton pulled out of
+an inner coat-pocket the identical letter penned by Alexander Trott.  'Is
+this his lordship's hand?'
+
+'Oh yes,' replied Julia; 'good, punctual creature!  I have not seen it
+more than once or twice, but I know he writes very badly and very large.
+These dear, wild young noblemen, you know, Overton--'
+
+'Ay, ay, I see,' replied the mayor.--'Horses and dogs, play and
+wine--grooms, actresses, and cigars--the stable, the green-room, the
+saloon, and the tavern; and the legislative assembly at last.'
+
+'Here's what he says,' pursued the mayor; '"Sir,--A young gentleman in
+number nineteen at the Winglebury Arms, is bent on committing a rash act
+to-morrow morning at an early hour."  (That's good--he means marrying.)
+"If you have any regard for the peace of this town, or the preservation
+of one--it may be two--human lives"--What the deuce does he mean by
+that?'
+
+'That he's so anxious for the ceremony, he will expire if it's put off,
+and that I may possibly do the same,' replied the lady with great
+complacency.
+
+'Oh!  I see--not much fear of that;--well--"two human lives, you will
+cause him to be removed to-night."  (He wants to start at once.)  "Fear
+not to do this on your responsibility: for to-morrow the absolute
+necessity of the proceeding will be but too apparent.  Remember: number
+nineteen.  The name is Trott.  No delay; for life and death depend upon
+your promptitude."  Passionate language, certainly.  Shall I see him?'
+
+'Do,' replied Miss Julia; 'and entreat him to act his part well.  I am
+half afraid of him.  Tell him to be cautious.'
+
+'I will,' said the mayor.
+
+'Settle all the arrangements.'
+
+'I will,' said the mayor again.
+
+'And say I think the chaise had better be ordered for one o'clock.'
+
+'Very well,' said the mayor once more; and, ruminating on the absurdity
+of the situation in which fate and old acquaintance had placed him, he
+desired a waiter to herald his approach to the temporary representative
+of number nineteen.
+
+The announcement, 'Gentleman to speak with you, sir,' induced Mr. Trott
+to pause half-way in the glass of port, the contents of which he was in
+the act of imbibing at the moment; to rise from his chair; and retreat a
+few paces towards the window, as if to secure a retreat, in the event of
+the visitor assuming the form and appearance of Horace Hunter.  One
+glance at Joseph Overton, however, quieted his apprehensions.  He
+courteously motioned the stranger to a seat.  The waiter, after a little
+jingling with the decanter and glasses, consented to leave the room; and
+Joseph Overton, placing the broad-brimmed hat on the chair next him, and
+bending his body gently forward, opened the business by saying in a very
+low and cautious tone,
+
+'My lord--'
+
+'Eh?' said Mr. Alexander Trott, in a loud key, with the vacant and
+mystified stare of a chilly somnambulist.
+
+'Hush--hush!' said the cautious attorney: 'to be sure--quite right--no
+titles here--my name is Overton, sir.'
+
+'Overton?'
+
+'Yes: the mayor of this place--you sent me a letter with anonymous
+information, this afternoon.'
+
+'I, sir?' exclaimed Trott with ill-dissembled surprise; for, coward as he
+was, he would willingly have repudiated the authorship of the letter in
+question.  'I, sir?'
+
+'Yes, you, sir; did you not?' responded Overton, annoyed with what he
+supposed to be an extreme degree of unnecessary suspicion.  'Either this
+letter is yours, or it is not.  If it be, we can converse securely upon
+the subject at once.  If it be not, of course I have no more to say.'
+
+'Stay, stay,' said Trott, 'it _is_ mine; I _did_ write it.  What could I
+do, sir?  I had no friend here.'
+
+'To be sure, to be sure,' said the mayor, encouragingly, 'you could not
+have managed it better.  Well, sir; it will be necessary for you to leave
+here to-night in a post-chaise and four.  And the harder the boys drive,
+the better.  You are not safe from pursuit.'
+
+'Bless me!' exclaimed Trott, in an agony of apprehension, 'can such
+things happen in a country like this?  Such unrelenting and cold-blooded
+hostility!'  He wiped off the concentrated essence of cowardice that was
+oozing fast down his forehead, and looked aghast at Joseph Overton.
+
+'It certainly is a very hard case,' replied the mayor with a smile,
+'that, in a free country, people can't marry whom they like, without
+being hunted down as if they were criminals.  However, in the present
+instance the lady is willing, you know, and that's the main point, after
+all.'
+
+'Lady willing,' repeated Trott, mechanically.  'How do you know the
+lady's willing?'
+
+'Come, that's a good one,' said the mayor, benevolently tapping Mr. Trott
+on the arm with his broad-brimmed hat; 'I have known her, well, for a
+long time; and if anybody could entertain the remotest doubt on the
+subject, I assure you I have none, nor need you have.'
+
+'Dear me!' said Mr. Trott, ruminating.  'This is _very_ extraordinary!'
+
+'Well, Lord Peter,' said the mayor, rising.
+
+'Lord Peter?' repeated Mr. Trott.
+
+'Oh--ah, I forgot.  Mr. Trott, then--Trott--very good, ha! ha!--Well,
+sir, the chaise shall be ready at half-past twelve.'
+
+'And what is to become of me until then?' inquired Mr. Trott, anxiously.
+'Wouldn't it save appearances, if I were placed under some restraint?'
+
+'Ah!' replied Overton, 'very good thought--capital idea indeed.  I'll
+send somebody up directly.  And if you make a little resistance when we
+put you in the chaise it wouldn't be amiss--look as if you didn't want to
+be taken away, you know.'
+
+'To be sure,' said Trott--'to be sure.'
+
+'Well, my lord,' said Overton, in a low tone, 'until then, I wish your
+lordship a good evening.'
+
+'Lord--lordship?' ejaculated Trott again, falling back a step or two, and
+gazing, in unutterable wonder, on the countenance of the mayor.
+
+'Ha-ha!  I see, my lord--practising the madman?--very good indeed--very
+vacant look--capital, my lord, capital--good evening, Mr.--Trott--ha! ha!
+ha!'
+
+'That mayor's decidedly drunk,' soliloquised Mr. Trott, throwing himself
+back in his chair, in an attitude of reflection.
+
+'He is a much cleverer fellow than I thought him, that young nobleman--he
+carries it off uncommonly well,' thought Overton, as he went his way to
+the bar, there to complete his arrangements.  This was soon done.  Every
+word of the story was implicitly believed, and the one-eyed boots was
+immediately instructed to repair to number nineteen, to act as custodian
+of the person of the supposed lunatic until half-past twelve o'clock.  In
+pursuance of this direction, that somewhat eccentric gentleman armed
+himself with a walking-stick of gigantic dimensions, and repaired, with
+his usual equanimity of manner, to Mr. Trott's apartment, which he
+entered without any ceremony, and mounted guard in, by quietly depositing
+himself on a chair near the door, where he proceeded to beguile the time
+by whistling a popular air with great apparent satisfaction.
+
+'What do you want here, you scoundrel?' exclaimed Mr. Alexander Trott,
+with a proper appearance of indignation at his detention.
+
+The boots beat time with his head, as he looked gently round at Mr. Trott
+with a smile of pity, and whistled an _adagio_ movement.
+
+'Do you attend in this room by Mr. Overton's desire?' inquired Trott,
+rather astonished at the man's demeanour.
+
+'Keep yourself to yourself, young feller,' calmly responded the boots,
+'and don't say nothing to nobody.'  And he whistled again.
+
+'Now mind!' ejaculated Mr. Trott, anxious to keep up the farce of wishing
+with great earnestness to fight a duel if they'd let him.  'I protest
+against being kept here.  I deny that I have any intention of fighting
+with anybody.  But as it's useless contending with superior numbers, I
+shall sit quietly down.'
+
+'You'd better,' observed the placid boots, shaking the large stick
+expressively.
+
+'Under protest, however,' added Alexander Trott, seating himself with
+indignation in his face, but great content in his heart.  'Under
+protest.'
+
+'Oh, certainly!' responded the boots; 'anything you please.  If you're
+happy, I'm transported; only don't talk too much--it'll make you worse.'
+
+'Make me worse?' exclaimed Trott, in unfeigned astonishment: 'the man's
+drunk!'
+
+'You'd better be quiet, young feller,' remarked the boots, going through
+a threatening piece of pantomime with the stick.
+
+'Or mad!' said Mr. Trott, rather alarmed.  'Leave the room, sir, and tell
+them to send somebody else.'
+
+'Won't do!' replied the boots.
+
+'Leave the room!' shouted Trott, ringing the bell violently: for he began
+to be alarmed on a new score.
+
+'Leave that 'ere bell alone, you wretched loo-nattic!' said the boots,
+suddenly forcing the unfortunate Trott back into his chair, and
+brandishing the stick aloft.  'Be quiet, you miserable object, and don't
+let everybody know there's a madman in the house.'
+
+'He _is_ a madman!  He _is_ a madman!' exclaimed the terrified Mr. Trott,
+gazing on the one eye of the red-headed boots with a look of abject
+horror.
+
+'Madman!' replied the boots, 'dam'me, I think he _is_ a madman with a
+vengeance!  Listen to me, you unfortunate.  Ah! would you?' [a slight tap
+on the head with the large stick, as Mr. Trott made another move towards
+the bell-handle] 'I caught you there! did I?'
+
+'Spare my life!' exclaimed Trott, raising his hands imploringly.
+
+'I don't want your life,' replied the boots, disdainfully, 'though I
+think it 'ud be a charity if somebody took it.'
+
+'No, no, it wouldn't,' interrupted poor Mr. Trott, hurriedly, 'no, no, it
+wouldn't!  I--I-'d rather keep it!'
+
+'O werry well,' said the boots: 'that's a mere matter of taste--ev'ry one
+to his liking.  Hows'ever, all I've got to say is this here: You sit
+quietly down in that chair, and I'll sit hoppersite you here, and if you
+keep quiet and don't stir, I won't damage you; but, if you move hand or
+foot till half-past twelve o'clock, I shall alter the expression of your
+countenance so completely, that the next time you look in the glass
+you'll ask vether you're gone out of town, and ven you're likely to come
+back again.  So sit down.'
+
+'I will--I will,' responded the victim of mistakes; and down sat Mr.
+Trott and down sat the boots too, exactly opposite him, with the stick
+ready for immediate action in case of emergency.
+
+Long and dreary were the hours that followed.  The bell of Great
+Winglebury church had just struck ten, and two hours and a half would
+probably elapse before succour arrived.
+
+For half an hour, the noise occasioned by shutting up the shops in the
+street beneath, betokened something like life in the town, and rendered
+Mr. Trott's situation a little less insupportable; but, when even these
+ceased, and nothing was heard beyond the occasional rattling of a
+post-chaise as it drove up the yard to change horses, and then drove away
+again, or the clattering of horses' hoofs in the stables behind, it
+became almost unbearable.  The boots occasionally moved an inch or two,
+to knock superfluous bits of wax off the candles, which were burning low,
+but instantaneously resumed his former position; and as he remembered to
+have heard, somewhere or other, that the human eye had an unfailing
+effect in controlling mad people, he kept his solitary organ of vision
+constantly fixed on Mr. Alexander Trott.  That unfortunate individual
+stared at his companion in his turn, until his features grew more and
+more indistinct--his hair gradually less red--and the room more misty and
+obscure.  Mr. Alexander Trott fell into a sound sleep, from which he was
+awakened by a rumbling in the street, and a cry of 'Chaise-and-four for
+number twenty-five!'  A bustle on the stairs succeeded; the room door was
+hastily thrown open; and Mr. Joseph Overton entered, followed by four
+stout waiters, and Mrs. Williamson, the stout landlady of the Winglebury
+Arms.
+
+'Mr. Overton!' exclaimed Mr. Alexander Trott, jumping up in a frenzy.
+'Look at this man, sir; consider the situation in which I have been
+placed for three hours past--the person you sent to guard me, sir, was a
+madman--a madman--a raging, ravaging, furious madman.'
+
+'Bravo!' whispered Mr. Overton.
+
+'Poor dear!' said the compassionate Mrs. Williamson, 'mad people always
+thinks other people's mad.'
+
+'Poor dear!' ejaculated Mr. Alexander Trott.  'What the devil do you mean
+by poor dear!  Are you the landlady of this house?'
+
+'Yes, yes,' replied the stout old lady, 'don't exert yourself, there's a
+dear!  Consider your health, now; do.'
+
+'Exert myself!' shouted Mr. Alexander Trott; 'it's a mercy, ma'am, that I
+have any breath to exert myself with!  I might have been assassinated
+three hours ago by that one-eyed monster with the oakum head.  How dare
+you have a madman, ma'am--how dare you have a madman, to assault and
+terrify the visitors to your house?'
+
+'I'll never have another,' said Mrs. Williamson, casting a look of
+reproach at the mayor.
+
+'Capital, capital,' whispered Overton again, as he enveloped Mr.
+Alexander Trott in a thick travelling-cloak.
+
+'Capital, sir!' exclaimed Trott, aloud; 'it's horrible.  The very
+recollection makes me shudder.  I'd rather fight four duels in three
+hours, if I survived the first three, than I'd sit for that time face to
+face with a madman.'
+
+'Keep it up, my lord, as you go down-stairs,' whispered Overton, 'your
+bill is paid, and your portmanteau in the chaise.'  And then he added
+aloud, 'Now, waiters, the gentleman's ready.'
+
+At this signal, the waiters crowded round Mr. Alexander Trott.  One took
+one arm; another, the other; a third, walked before with a candle; the
+fourth, behind with another candle; the boots and Mrs. Williamson brought
+up the rear; and down-stairs they went: Mr. Alexander Trott expressing
+alternately at the very top of his voice either his feigned reluctance to
+go, or his unfeigned indignation at being shut up with a madman.
+
+Mr. Overton was waiting at the chaise-door, the boys were ready mounted,
+and a few ostlers and stable nondescripts were standing round to witness
+the departure of 'the mad gentleman.'  Mr. Alexander Trott's foot was on
+the step, when he observed (which the dim light had prevented his doing
+before) a figure seated in the chaise, closely muffled up in a cloak like
+his own.
+
+'Who's that?' he inquired of Overton, in a whisper.
+
+'Hush, hush,' replied the mayor: 'the other party of course.'
+
+'The other party!' exclaimed Trott, with an effort to retreat.
+
+'Yes, yes; you'll soon find that out, before you go far, I should
+think--but make a noise, you'll excite suspicion if you whisper to me so
+much.'
+
+'I won't go in this chaise!' shouted Mr. Alexander Trott, all his
+original fears recurring with tenfold violence.  'I shall be
+assassinated--I shall be--'
+
+'Bravo, bravo,' whispered Overton.  'I'll push you in.'
+
+'But I won't go,' exclaimed Mr. Trott.  'Help here, help!  They're
+carrying me away against my will.  This is a plot to murder me.'
+
+'Poor dear!' said Mrs. Williamson again.
+
+'Now, boys, put 'em along,' cried the mayor, pushing Trott in and
+slamming the door.  'Off with you, as quick as you can, and stop for
+nothing till you come to the next stage--all right!'
+
+'Horses are paid, Tom,' screamed Mrs. Williamson; and away went the
+chaise, at the rate of fourteen miles an hour, with Mr. Alexander Trott
+and Miss Julia Manners carefully shut up in the inside.
+
+Mr. Alexander Trott remained coiled up in one corner of the chaise, and
+his mysterious companion in the other, for the first two or three miles;
+Mr. Trott edging more and more into his corner, as he felt his companion
+gradually edging more and more from hers; and vainly endeavouring in the
+darkness to catch a glimpse of the furious face of the supposed Horace
+Hunter.
+
+'We may speak now,' said his fellow-traveller, at length; 'the post-boys
+can neither see nor hear us.'
+
+'That's not Hunter's voice!'--thought Alexander, astonished.
+
+'Dear Lord Peter!' said Miss Julia, most winningly: putting her arm on
+Mr. Trott's shoulder.  'Dear Lord Peter.  Not a word?'
+
+'Why, it's a woman!' exclaimed Mr. Trott, in a low tone of excessive
+wonder.
+
+'Ah!  Whose voice is that?' said Julia; ''tis not Lord Peter's.'
+
+'No,--it's mine,' replied Mr. Trott.
+
+'Yours!' ejaculated Miss Julia Manners; 'a strange man!  Gracious heaven!
+How came you here!'
+
+'Whoever you are, you might have known that I came against my will,
+ma'am,' replied Alexander, 'for I made noise enough when I got in.'
+
+'Do you come from Lord Peter?' inquired Miss Manners.
+
+'Confound Lord Peter,' replied Trott pettishly.  'I don't know any Lord
+Peter.  I never heard of him before to-night, when I've been Lord Peter'd
+by one and Lord Peter'd by another, till I verily believe I'm mad, or
+dreaming--'
+
+'Whither are we going?' inquired the lady tragically.
+
+'How should _I_ know, ma'am?' replied Trott with singular coolness; for
+the events of the evening had completely hardened him.
+
+'Stop stop!' cried the lady, letting down the front glasses of the
+chaise.
+
+'Stay, my dear ma'am!' said Mr. Trott, pulling the glasses up again with
+one hand, and gently squeezing Miss Julia's waist with the other.  'There
+is some mistake here; give me till the end of this stage to explain my
+share of it.  We must go so far; you cannot be set down here alone, at
+this hour of the night.'
+
+The lady consented; the mistake was mutually explained.  Mr. Trott was a
+young man, had highly promising whiskers, an undeniable tailor, and an
+insinuating address--he wanted nothing but valour, and who wants that
+with three thousand a-year?  The lady had this, and more; she wanted a
+young husband, and the only course open to Mr. Trott to retrieve his
+disgrace was a rich wife.  So, they came to the conclusion that it would
+be a pity to have all this trouble and expense for nothing; and that as
+they were so far on the road already, they had better go to Gretna Green,
+and marry each other; and they did so.  And the very next preceding entry
+in the Blacksmith's book, was an entry of the marriage of Emily Brown
+with Horace Hunter.  Mr. Hunter took his wife home, and begged pardon,
+and _was_ pardoned; and Mr. Trott took _his_ wife home, begged pardon
+too, and was pardoned also.  And Lord Peter, who had been detained beyond
+his time by drinking champagne and riding a steeple-chase, went back to
+the Honourable Augustus Flair's, and drank more champagne, and rode
+another steeple-chase, and was thrown and killed.  And Horace Hunter took
+great credit to himself for practising on the cowardice of Alexander
+Trott; and all these circumstances were discovered in time, and carefully
+noted down; and if you ever stop a week at the Winglebury Arms, they will
+give you just this account of The Great Winglebury Duel.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--MRS. JOSEPH PORTER
+
+
+Most extensive were the preparations at Rose Villa, Clapham Rise, in the
+occupation of Mr. Gattleton (a stock-broker in especially comfortable
+circumstances), and great was the anxiety of Mr. Gattleton's interesting
+family, as the day fixed for the representation of the Private Play which
+had been 'many months in preparation,' approached.  The whole family was
+infected with the mania for Private Theatricals; the house, usually so
+clean and tidy, was, to use Mr. Gattleton's expressive description,
+'regularly turned out o' windows;' the large dining-room, dismantled of
+its furniture, and ornaments, presented a strange jumble of flats, flies,
+wings, lamps, bridges, clouds, thunder and lightning, festoons and
+flowers, daggers and foil, and various other messes in theatrical slang
+included under the comprehensive name of 'properties.'  The bedrooms were
+crowded with scenery, the kitchen was occupied by carpenters.  Rehearsals
+took place every other night in the drawing-room, and every sofa in the
+house was more or less damaged by the perseverance and spirit with which
+Mr. Sempronius Gattleton, and Miss Lucina, rehearsed the smothering scene
+in 'Othello'--it having been determined that that tragedy should form the
+first portion of the evening's entertainments.
+
+'When we're a _leetle_ more perfect, I think it will go admirably,' said
+Mr. Sempronius, addressing his _corps dramatique_, at the conclusion of
+the hundred and fiftieth rehearsal.  In consideration of his sustaining
+the trifling inconvenience of bearing all the expenses of the play, Mr.
+Sempronius had been, in the most handsome manner, unanimously elected
+stage-manager.  'Evans,' continued Mr. Gattleton, the younger, addressing
+a tall, thin, pale young gentleman, with extensive whiskers--'Evans, you
+play _Roderigo_ beautifully.'
+
+'Beautifully,' echoed the three Miss Gattletons; for Mr. Evans was
+pronounced by all his lady friends to be 'quite a dear.'  He looked so
+interesting, and had such lovely whiskers: to say nothing of his talent
+for writing verses in albums and playing the flute!  _Roderigo_ simpered
+and bowed.
+
+'But I think,' added the manager, 'you are hardly perfect in
+the--fall--in the fencing-scene, where you are--you understand?'
+
+'It's very difficult,' said Mr. Evans, thoughtfully; 'I've fallen about,
+a good deal, in our counting-house lately, for practice, only I find it
+hurts one so.  Being obliged to fall backward you see, it bruises one's
+head a good deal.'
+
+'But you must take care you don't knock a wing down,' said Mr. Gattleton,
+the elder, who had been appointed prompter, and who took as much interest
+in the play as the youngest of the company.  'The stage is very narrow,
+you know.'
+
+'Oh! don't be afraid,' said Mr. Evans, with a very self-satisfied air; 'I
+shall fall with my head "off," and then I can't do any harm.'
+
+'But, egad,' said the manager, rubbing his hands, 'we shall make a
+decided hit in "Masaniello."  Harleigh sings that music admirably.'
+
+Everybody echoed the sentiment.  Mr. Harleigh smiled, and looked
+foolish--not an unusual thing with him--hummed'  Behold how brightly
+breaks the morning,' and blushed as red as the fisherman's nightcap he
+was trying on.
+
+'Let's see,' resumed the manager, telling the number on his fingers, 'we
+shall have three dancing female peasants, besides _Fenella_, and four
+fishermen.  Then, there's our man Tom; he can have a pair of ducks of
+mine, and a check shirt of Bob's, and a red nightcap, and he'll do for
+another--that's five.  In the choruses, of course, we can sing at the
+sides; and in the market-scene we can walk about in cloaks and things.
+When the revolt takes place, Tom must keep rushing in on one side and out
+on the other, with a pickaxe, as fast as he can.  The effect will be
+electrical; it will look exactly as if there were an immense number of
+'em.  And in the eruption-scene we must burn the red fire, and upset the
+tea-trays, and make all sorts of noises--and it's sure to do.'
+
+'Sure! sure!' cried all the performers _una voce_--and away hurried Mr.
+Sempronius Gattleton to wash the burnt cork off his face, and superintend
+the 'setting up' of some of the amateur-painted, but
+never-sufficiently-to-be-admired, scenery.
+
+Mrs. Gattleton was a kind, good-tempered, vulgar soul, exceedingly fond
+of her husband and children, and entertaining only three dislikes.  In
+the first place, she had a natural antipathy to anybody else's unmarried
+daughters; in the second, she was in bodily fear of anything in the shape
+of ridicule; lastly--almost a necessary consequence of this feeling--she
+regarded, with feelings of the utmost horror, one Mrs. Joseph Porter over
+the way.  However, the good folks of Clapham and its vicinity stood very
+much in awe of scandal and sarcasm; and thus Mrs. Joseph Porter was
+courted, and flattered, and caressed, and invited, for much the same
+reason that induces a poor author, without a farthing in his pocket, to
+behave with extraordinary civility to a twopenny postman.
+
+'Never mind, ma,' said Miss Emma Porter, in colloquy with her respected
+relative, and trying to look unconcerned; 'if they had invited me, you
+know that neither you nor pa would have allowed me to take part in such
+an exhibition.'
+
+'Just what I should have thought from your high sense of propriety,'
+returned the mother.  'I am glad to see, Emma, you know how to designate
+the proceeding.'  Miss P., by-the-bye, had only the week before made 'an
+exhibition' of herself for four days, behind a counter at a fancy fair,
+to all and every of her Majesty's liege subjects who were disposed to pay
+a shilling each for the privilege of seeing some four dozen girls
+flirting with strangers, and playing at shop.
+
+'There!' said Mrs. Porter, looking out of window; 'there are two rounds
+of beef and a ham going in--clearly for sandwiches; and Thomas, the
+pastry-cook, says, there have been twelve dozen tarts ordered, besides
+blancmange and jellies.  Upon my word! think of the Miss Gattletons in
+fancy dresses, too!'
+
+'Oh, it's too ridiculous!' said Miss Porter, hysterically.
+
+'I'll manage to put them a little out of conceit with the business,
+however,' said Mrs. Porter; and out she went on her charitable errand.
+
+'Well, my dear Mrs. Gattleton,' said Mrs. Joseph Porter, after they had
+been closeted for some time, and when, by dint of indefatigable pumping,
+she had managed to extract all the news about the play, 'well, my dear,
+people may say what they please; indeed we know they will, for some folks
+are _so_ ill-natured.  Ah, my dear Miss Lucina, how d'ye do?  I was just
+telling your mamma that I have heard it said, that--'
+
+'What?'
+
+'Mrs. Porter is alluding to the play, my dear,' said Mrs. Gattleton; 'she
+was, I am sorry to say, just informing me that--'
+
+'Oh, now pray don't mention it,' interrupted Mrs. Porter; 'it's most
+absurd--quite as absurd as young What's-his-name saying he wondered how
+Miss Caroline, with such a foot and ankle, could have the vanity to play
+_Fenella_.'
+
+'Highly impertinent, whoever said it,' said Mrs. Gattleton, bridling up.
+
+'Certainly, my dear,' chimed in the delighted Mrs. Porter; 'most
+undoubtedly!  Because, as I said, if Miss Caroline _does_ play _Fenella_,
+it doesn't follow, as a matter of course, that she should think she has a
+pretty foot;--and then--such puppies as these young men are--he had the
+impudence to say, that--'
+
+How far the amiable Mrs. Porter might have succeeded in her pleasant
+purpose, it is impossible to say, had not the entrance of Mr. Thomas
+Balderstone, Mrs. Gattleton's brother, familiarly called in the family
+'Uncle Tom,' changed the course of conversation, and suggested to her
+mind an excellent plan of operation on the evening of the play.
+
+Uncle Tom was very rich, and exceedingly fond of his nephews and nieces:
+as a matter of course, therefore, he was an object of great importance in
+his own family.  He was one of the best-hearted men in existence: always
+in a good temper, and always talking.  It was his boast that he wore
+top-boots on all occasions, and had never worn a black silk neckerchief;
+and it was his pride that he remembered all the principal plays of
+Shakspeare from beginning to end--and so he did.  The result of this
+parrot-like accomplishment was, that he was not only perpetually quoting
+himself, but that he could never sit by, and hear a misquotation from the
+'Swan of Avon' without setting the unfortunate delinquent right.  He was
+also something of a wag; never missed an opportunity of saying what he
+considered a good thing, and invariably laughed until he cried at
+anything that appeared to him mirth-moving or ridiculous.
+
+'Well, girls!' said Uncle Tom, after the preparatory ceremony of kissing
+and how-d'ye-do-ing had been gone through--'how d'ye get on?  Know your
+parts, eh?--Lucina, my dear, act II., scene I--place, left-cue--"Unknown
+fate,"--What's next, eh?--Go on--"The Heavens--"'
+
+'Oh, yes,' said Miss Lucina, 'I recollect--
+
+                "The heavens forbid
+    But that our loves and comforts should increase
+    Even as our days do grow!"'
+
+'Make a pause here and there,' said the old gentleman, who was a great
+critic.  '"But that our loves and comforts should increase"--emphasis on
+the last syllable, "crease,"--loud "even,"--one, two, three, four; then
+loud again, "as our days do grow;" emphasis on _days_.  That's the way,
+my dear; trust to your uncle for emphasis.  Ah!  Sem, my boy, how are
+you?'
+
+'Very well, thankee, uncle,' returned Mr. Sempronius, who had just
+appeared, looking something like a ringdove, with a small circle round
+each eye: the result of his constant corking.  'Of course we see you on
+Thursday.'
+
+'Of course, of course, my dear boy.'
+
+'What a pity it is your nephew didn't think of making you prompter, Mr.
+Balderstone!' whispered Mrs. Joseph Porter; 'you would have been
+invaluable.'
+
+'Well, I flatter myself, I _should_ have been tolerably up to the thing,'
+responded Uncle Tom.
+
+'I must bespeak sitting next you on the night,' resumed Mrs. Porter; 'and
+then, if our dear young friends here, should be at all wrong, you will be
+able to enlighten me.  I shall be so interested.'
+
+'I am sure I shall be most happy to give you any assistance in my power'
+
+'Mind, it's a bargain.'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+'I don't know how it is,' said Mrs. Gattleton to her daughters, as they
+were sitting round the fire in the evening, looking over their parts,
+'but I really very much wish Mrs. Joseph Porter wasn't coming on
+Thursday.  I am sure she's scheming something.'
+
+'She can't make us ridiculous, however,' observed Mr. Sempronius
+Gattleton, haughtily.
+
+The long-looked-for Thursday arrived in due course, and brought with it,
+as Mr. Gattleton, senior, philosophically observed, 'no disappointments,
+to speak of.'  True, it was yet a matter of doubt whether _Cassio_ would
+be enabled to get into the dress which had been sent for him from the
+masquerade warehouse.  It was equally uncertain whether the principal
+female singer would be sufficiently recovered from the influenza to make
+her appearance; Mr. Harleigh, the _Masaniello_ of the night, was hoarse,
+and rather unwell, in consequence of the great quantity of lemon and
+sugar-candy he had eaten to improve his voice; and two flutes and a
+violoncello had pleaded severe colds.  What of that? the audience were
+all coming.  Everybody knew his part: the dresses were covered with
+tinsel and spangles; the white plumes looked beautiful; Mr. Evans had
+practised falling until he was bruised from head to foot and quite
+perfect; _Iago_ was sure that, in the stabbing-scene, he should make 'a
+decided hit.'  A self-taught deaf gentleman, who had kindly offered to
+bring his flute, would be a most valuable addition to the orchestra; Miss
+Jenkins's talent for the piano was too well known to be doubted for an
+instant; Mr. Cape had practised the violin accompaniment with her
+frequently; and Mr. Brown, who had kindly undertaken, at a few hours'
+notice, to bring his violoncello, would, no doubt, manage extremely well.
+
+Seven o'clock came, and so did the audience; all the rank and fashion of
+Clapham and its vicinity was fast filling the theatre.  There were the
+Smiths, the Gubbinses, the Nixons, the Dixons, the Hicksons, people with
+all sorts of names, two aldermen, a sheriff in perspective, Sir Thomas
+Glumper (who had been knighted in the last reign for carrying up an
+address on somebody's escaping from nothing); and last, not least, there
+were Mrs. Joseph Porter and Uncle Tom, seated in the centre of the third
+row from the stage; Mrs. P. amusing Uncle Tom with all sorts of stories,
+and Uncle Tom amusing every one else by laughing most immoderately.
+
+Ting, ting, ting! went the prompter's bell at eight o'clock precisely,
+and dash went the orchestra into the overture to 'The Men of Prometheus.'
+The pianoforte player hammered away with laudable perseverance; and the
+violoncello, which struck in at intervals, 'sounded very well,
+considering.'  The unfortunate individual, however, who had undertaken to
+play the flute accompaniment 'at sight,' found, from fatal experience,
+the perfect truth of the old adage, 'ought of sight, out of mind;' for
+being very near-sighted, and being placed at a considerable distance from
+his music-book, all he had an opportunity of doing was to play a bar now
+and then in the wrong place, and put the other performers out.  It is,
+however, but justice to Mr. Brown to say that he did this to admiration.
+The overture, in fact, was not unlike a race between the different
+instruments; the piano came in first by several bars, and the violoncello
+next, quite distancing the poor flute; for the deaf gentleman _too-too'd_
+away, quite unconscious that he was at all wrong, until apprised, by the
+applause of the audience, that the overture was concluded.  A
+considerable bustle and shuffling of feet was then heard upon the stage,
+accompanied by whispers of 'Here's a pretty go!--what's to be done?' &c.
+The audience applauded again, by way of raising the spirits of the
+performers; and then Mr. Sempronius desired the prompter, in a very
+audible voice, to 'clear the stage, and ring up.'
+
+Ting, ting, ting! went the bell again.  Everybody sat down; the curtain
+shook; rose sufficiently high to display several pair of yellow boots
+paddling about; and there remained.
+
+Ting, ting, ting! went the bell again.  The curtain was violently
+convulsed, but rose no higher; the audience tittered; Mrs. Porter looked
+at Uncle Tom; Uncle Tom looked at everybody, rubbing his hands, and
+laughing with perfect rapture.  After as much ringing with the little
+bell as a muffin-boy would make in going down a tolerably long street,
+and a vast deal of whispering, hammering, and calling for nails and cord,
+the curtain at length rose, and discovered Mr. Sempronius Gattleton
+_solus_, and decked for _Othello_.  After three distinct rounds of
+applause, during which Mr. Sempronius applied his right hand to his left
+breast, and bowed in the most approved manner, the manager advanced and
+said:
+
+'Ladies and Gentlemen--I assure you it is with sincere regret, that I
+regret to be compelled to inform you, that _Iago_ who was to have played
+Mr. Wilson--I beg your pardon, Ladies and Gentlemen, but I am naturally
+somewhat agitated (applause)--I mean, Mr. Wilson, who was to have played
+_Iago_, is--that is, has been--or, in other words, Ladies and Gentlemen,
+the fact is, that I have just received a note, in which I am informed
+that _Iago_ is unavoidably detained at the Post-office this evening.
+Under these circumstances, I trust--a--a--amateur performance--a--another
+gentleman undertaken to read the part--request indulgence for a short
+time--courtesy and kindness of a British audience.'  Overwhelming
+applause.  Exit Mr. Sempronius Gattleton, and curtain falls.
+
+The audience were, of course, exceedingly good-humoured; the whole
+business was a joke; and accordingly they waited for an hour with the
+utmost patience, being enlivened by an interlude of rout-cakes and
+lemonade.  It appeared by Mr. Sempronius's subsequent explanation, that
+the delay would not have been so great, had it not so happened that when
+the substitute _Iago_ had finished dressing, and just as the play was on
+the point of commencing, the original _Iago_ unexpectedly arrived.  The
+former was therefore compelled to undress, and the latter to dress for
+his part; which, as he found some difficulty in getting into his clothes,
+occupied no inconsiderable time.  At last, the tragedy began in real
+earnest.  It went off well enough, until the third scene of the first
+act, in which _Othello_ addresses the Senate: the only remarkable
+circumstance being, that as _Iago_ could not get on any of the stage
+boots, in consequence of his feet being violently swelled with the heat
+and excitement, he was under the necessity of playing the part in a pair
+of Wellingtons, which contrasted rather oddly with his richly embroidered
+pantaloons.  When _Othello_ started with his address to the Senate (whose
+dignity was represented by, the _Duke_, _a_ carpenter, two men engaged on
+the recommendation of the gardener, and a boy), Mrs. Porter found the
+opportunity she so anxiously sought.
+
+Mr. Sempronius proceeded:
+
+    '"Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors,
+    My very noble and approv'd good masters,
+    That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter,
+    It is most true;--rude am I in my speech--"'
+
+'Is that right?' whispered Mrs. Porter to Uncle Tom.
+
+'No.'
+
+'Tell him so, then.'
+
+'I will.  Sem!' called out Uncle Tom, 'that's wrong, my boy.'
+
+'What's wrong, uncle?' demanded _Othello_, quite forgetting the dignity
+of his situation.
+
+'You've left out something.  "True I have married--"'
+
+'Oh, ah!' said Mr. Sempronius, endeavouring to hide his confusion as much
+and as ineffectually as the audience attempted to conceal their
+half-suppressed tittering, by coughing with extraordinary violence--
+
+    --'"true I have married her;--
+    The very head and front of my offending
+    Hath this extent; no more."
+
+(_Aside_) Why don't you prompt, father?'
+
+'Because I've mislaid my spectacles,' said poor Mr. Gattleton, almost
+dead with the heat and bustle.
+
+'There, now it's "rude am I,"' said Uncle Tom.
+
+'Yes, I know it is,' returned the unfortunate manager, proceeding with
+his part.
+
+It would be useless and tiresome to quote the number of instances in
+which Uncle Tom, now completely in his element, and instigated by the
+mischievous Mrs. Porter, corrected the mistakes of the performers;
+suffice it to say, that having mounted his hobby, nothing could induce
+him to dismount; so, during the whole remainder of the play, he performed
+a kind of running accompaniment, by muttering everybody's part as it was
+being delivered, in an under-tone.  The audience were highly amused, Mrs.
+Porter delighted, the performers embarrassed; Uncle Tom never was better
+pleased in all his life; and Uncle Tom's nephews and nieces had never,
+although the declared heirs to his large property, so heartily wished him
+gathered to his fathers as on that memorable occasion.
+
+Several other minor causes, too, united to damp the ardour of the
+_dramatis personae_.  None of the performers could walk in their tights,
+or move their arms in their jackets; the pantaloons were too small, the
+boots too large, and the swords of all shapes and sizes.  Mr. Evans,
+naturally too tall for the scenery, wore a black velvet hat with immense
+white plumes, the glory of which was lost in 'the flies;' and the only
+other inconvenience of which was, that when it was off his head he could
+not put it on, and when it was on he could not take it off.
+Notwithstanding all his practice, too, he fell with his head and
+shoulders as neatly through one of the side scenes, as a harlequin would
+jump through a panel in a Christmas pantomime.  The pianoforte player,
+overpowered by the extreme heat of the room, fainted away at the
+commencement of the entertainments, leaving the music of 'Masaniello' to
+the flute and violoncello.  The orchestra complained that Mr. Harleigh
+put them out, and Mr. Harleigh declared that the orchestra prevented his
+singing a note.  The fishermen, who were hired for the occasion, revolted
+to the very life, positively refusing to play without an increased
+allowance of spirits; and, their demand being complied with, getting
+drunk in the eruption-scene as naturally as possible.  The red fire,
+which was burnt at the conclusion of the second act, not only nearly
+suffocated the audience, but nearly set the house on fire into the
+bargain; and, as it was, the remainder of the piece was acted in a thick
+fog.
+
+In short, the whole affair was, as Mrs. Joseph Porter triumphantly told
+everybody, 'a complete failure.'  The audience went home at four o'clock
+in the morning, exhausted with laughter, suffering from severe headaches,
+and smelling terribly of brimstone and gunpowder.  The Messrs. Gattleton,
+senior and junior, retired to rest, with the vague idea of emigrating to
+Swan River early in the ensuing week.
+
+Rose Villa has once again resumed its wonted appearance; the dining-room
+furniture has been replaced; the tables are as nicely polished as
+formerly; the horsehair chairs are ranged against the wall, as regularly
+as ever; Venetian blinds have been fitted to every window in the house to
+intercept the prying gaze of Mrs. Joseph Porter.  The subject of
+theatricals is never mentioned in the Gattleton family, unless, indeed,
+by Uncle Tom, who cannot refrain from sometimes expressing his surprise
+and regret at finding that his nephews and nieces appear to have lost the
+relish they once possessed for the beauties of Shakspeare, and quotations
+from the works of that immortal bard.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF MR. WATKINS TOTTLE
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIRST
+
+
+Matrimony is proverbially a serious undertaking.  Like an over-weening
+predilection for brandy-and-water, it is a misfortune into which a man
+easily falls, and from which he finds it remarkably difficult to
+extricate himself.  It is of no use telling a man who is timorous on
+these points, that it is but one plunge, and all is over.  They say the
+same thing at the Old Bailey, and the unfortunate victims derive as much
+comfort from the assurance in the one case as in the other.
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle was a rather uncommon compound of strong uxorious
+inclinations, and an unparalleled degree of anti-connubial timidity.  He
+was about fifty years of age; stood four feet six inches and
+three-quarters in his socks--for he never stood in stockings at
+all--plump, clean, and rosy.  He looked something like a vignette to one
+of Richardson's novels, and had a clean-cravatish formality of manner,
+and kitchen-pokerness of carriage, which Sir Charles Grandison himself
+might have envied.  He lived on an annuity, which was well adapted to the
+individual who received it, in one respect--it was rather small.  He
+received it in periodical payments on every alternate Monday; but he ran
+himself out, about a day after the expiration of the first week, as
+regularly as an eight-day clock; and then, to make the comparison
+complete, his landlady wound him up, and he went on with a regular tick.
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle had long lived in a state of single blessedness, as
+bachelors say, or single cursedness, as spinsters think; but the idea of
+matrimony had never ceased to haunt him.  Wrapt in profound reveries on
+this never-failing theme, fancy transformed his small parlour in
+Cecil-street, Strand, into a neat house in the suburbs; the
+half-hundredweight of coals under the kitchen-stairs suddenly sprang up
+into three tons of the best Walls-end; his small French bedstead was
+converted into a regular matrimonial four-poster; and in the empty chair
+on the opposite side of the fireplace, imagination seated a beautiful
+young lady, with a very little independence or will of her own, and a
+very large independence under a will of her father's.
+
+'Who's there?' inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle, as a gentle tap at his
+room-door disturbed these meditations one evening.
+
+'Tottle, my dear fellow, how _do_ you do?' said a short elderly gentleman
+with a gruffish voice, bursting into the room, and replying to the
+question by asking another.
+
+'Told you I should drop in some evening,' said the short gentleman, as he
+delivered his hat into Tottle's hand, after a little struggling and
+dodging.
+
+'Delighted to see you, I'm sure,' said Mr. Watkins Tottle, wishing
+internally that his visitor had 'dropped in' to the Thames at the bottom
+of the street, instead of dropping into his parlour.  The fortnight was
+nearly up, and Watkins was hard up.
+
+'How is Mrs. Gabriel Parsons?' inquired Tottle.
+
+'Quite well, thank you,' replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, for that was the
+name the short gentleman revelled in.  Here there was a pause; the short
+gentleman looked at the left hob of the fireplace; Mr. Watkins Tottle
+stared vacancy out of countenance.
+
+'Quite well,' repeated the short gentleman, when five minutes had
+expired.  'I may say remarkably well.'  And he rubbed the palms of his
+hands as hard as if he were going to strike a light by friction.
+
+'What will you take?' inquired Tottle, with the desperate suddenness of a
+man who knew that unless the visitor took his leave, he stood very little
+chance of taking anything else.
+
+'Oh, I don't know--have you any whiskey?'
+
+'Why,' replied Tottle, very slowly, for all this was gaining time, 'I
+_had_ some capital, and remarkably strong whiskey last week; but it's all
+gone--and therefore its strength--'
+
+'Is much beyond proof; or, in other words, impossible to be proved,' said
+the short gentleman; and he laughed very heartily, and seemed quite glad
+the whiskey had been drunk.  Mr. Tottle smiled--but it was the smile of
+despair.  When Mr. Gabriel Parsons had done laughing, he delicately
+insinuated that, in the absence of whiskey, he would not be averse to
+brandy.  And Mr. Watkins Tottle, lighting a flat candle very
+ostentatiously; and displaying an immense key, which belonged to the
+street-door, but which, for the sake of appearances, occasionally did
+duty in an imaginary wine-cellar; left the room to entreat his landlady
+to charge their glasses, and charge them in the bill.  The application
+was successful; the spirits were speedily called--not from the vasty
+deep, but the adjacent wine-vaults.  The two short gentlemen mixed their
+grog; and then sat cosily down before the fire--a pair of shorts, airing
+themselves.
+
+'Tottle,' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, 'you know my way--off-hand, open, say
+what I mean, mean what I say, hate reserve, and can't bear affectation.
+One, is a bad domino which only hides what good people have about 'em,
+without making the bad look better; and the other is much about the same
+thing as pinking a white cotton stocking to make it look like a silk one.
+Now listen to what I'm going to say.'
+
+Here, the little gentleman paused, and took a long pull at his
+brandy-and-water.  Mr. Watkins Tottle took a sip of his, stirred the
+fire, and assumed an air of profound attention.
+
+'It's of no use humming and ha'ing about the matter,' resumed the short
+gentleman.--'You want to get married.'
+
+'Why,' replied Mr. Watkins Tottle evasively; for he trembled violently,
+and felt a sudden tingling throughout his whole frame; 'why--I should
+certainly--at least, I _think_ I should like--'
+
+'Won't do,' said the short gentleman.--'Plain and free--or there's an end
+of the matter.  Do you want money?'
+
+'You know I do.'
+
+'You admire the sex?'
+
+'I do.'
+
+'And you'd like to be married?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+'Then you shall be.  There's an end of that.'  Thus saying, Mr. Gabriel
+Parsons took a pinch of snuff, and mixed another glass.
+
+'Let me entreat you to be more explanatory,' said Tottle.  'Really, as
+the party principally interested, I cannot consent to be disposed of, in
+this way.'
+
+'I'll tell you,' replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, warming with the subject,
+and the brandy-and-water--'I know a lady--she's stopping with my wife
+now--who is just the thing for you.  Well educated; talks French; plays
+the piano; knows a good deal about flowers, and shells, and all that sort
+of thing; and has five hundred a year, with an uncontrolled power of
+disposing of it, by her last will and testament.'
+
+'I'll pay my addresses to her,' said Mr. Watkins Tottle.  'She isn't
+_very_ young--is she?'
+
+'Not very; just the thing for you.  I've said that already.'
+
+'What coloured hair has the lady?' inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle.
+
+'Egad, I hardly recollect,' replied Gabriel, with coolness.  'Perhaps I
+ought to have observed, at first, she wears a front.'
+
+'A what?' ejaculated Tottle.
+
+'One of those things with curls, along here,' said Parsons, drawing a
+straight line across his forehead, just over his eyes, in illustration of
+his meaning.  'I know the front's black; I can't speak quite positively
+about her own hair; because, unless one walks behind her, and catches a
+glimpse of it under her bonnet, one seldom sees it; but I should say that
+it was _rather_ lighter than the front--a shade of a greyish tinge,
+perhaps.'
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle looked as if he had certain misgivings of mind.  Mr.
+Gabriel Parsons perceived it, and thought it would be safe to begin the
+next attack without delay.
+
+'Now, were you ever in love, Tottle?' he inquired.
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle blushed up to the eyes, and down to the chin, and
+exhibited a most extensive combination of colours as he confessed the
+soft impeachment.
+
+'I suppose you popped the question, more than once, when you were a
+young--I beg your pardon--a younger--man,' said Parsons.
+
+'Never in my life!' replied his friend, apparently indignant at being
+suspected of such an act.  'Never!  The fact is, that I entertain, as you
+know, peculiar opinions on these subjects.  I am not afraid of ladies,
+young or old--far from it; but, I think, that in compliance with the
+custom of the present day, they allow too much freedom of speech and
+manner to marriageable men.  Now, the fact is, that anything like this
+easy freedom I never could acquire; and as I am always afraid of going
+too far, I am generally, I dare say, considered formal and cold.'
+
+'I shouldn't wonder if you were,' replied Parsons, gravely; 'I shouldn't
+wonder.  However, you'll be all right in this case; for the strictness
+and delicacy of this lady's ideas greatly exceed your own.  Lord bless
+you, why, when she came to our house, there was an old portrait of some
+man or other, with two large, black, staring eyes, hanging up in her
+bedroom; she positively refused to go to bed there, till it was taken
+down, considering it decidedly wrong.'
+
+'I think so, too,' said Mr. Watkins Tottle; 'certainly.'
+
+'And then, the other night--I never laughed so much in my life'--resumed
+Mr. Gabriel Parsons; 'I had driven home in an easterly wind, and caught a
+devil of a face-ache.  Well; as Fanny--that's Mrs. Parsons, you know--and
+this friend of hers, and I, and Frank Ross, were playing a rubber, I
+said, jokingly, that when I went to bed I should wrap my head in Fanny's
+flannel petticoat.  She instantly threw up her cards, and left the room.'
+
+'Quite right!' said Mr. Watkins Tottle; 'she could not possibly have
+behaved in a more dignified manner.  What did you do?'
+
+'Do?--Frank took dummy; and I won sixpence.'
+
+'But, didn't you apologise for hurting her feelings?'
+
+'Devil a bit.  Next morning at breakfast, we talked it over.  She
+contended that any reference to a flannel petticoat was improper;--men
+ought not to be supposed to know that such things were.  I pleaded my
+coverture; being a married man.'
+
+'And what did the lady say to that?' inquired Tottle, deeply interested.
+
+'Changed her ground, and said that Frank being a single man, its
+impropriety was obvious.'
+
+'Noble-minded creature!' exclaimed the enraptured Tottle.
+
+'Oh! both Fanny and I said, at once, that she was regularly cut out for
+you.'
+
+A gleam of placid satisfaction shone on the circular face of Mr. Watkins
+Tottle, as he heard the prophecy.
+
+'There's one thing I can't understand,' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he
+rose to depart; 'I cannot, for the life and soul of me, imagine how the
+deuce you'll ever contrive to come together.  The lady would certainly go
+into convulsions if the subject were mentioned.'  Mr. Gabriel Parsons sat
+down again, and laughed until he was weak.  Tottle owed him money, so he
+had a perfect right to laugh at Tottle's expense.
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle feared, in his own mind, that this was another
+characteristic which he had in common with this modern Lucretia.  He,
+however, accepted the invitation to dine with the Parsonses on the next
+day but one, with great firmness: and looked forward to the introduction,
+when again left alone, with tolerable composure.
+
+The sun that rose on the next day but one, had never beheld a sprucer
+personage on the outside of the Norwood stage, than Mr. Watkins Tottle;
+and when the coach drew up before a cardboard-looking house with
+disguised chimneys, and a lawn like a large sheet of green letter-paper,
+he certainly had never lighted to his place of destination a gentleman
+who felt more uncomfortable.
+
+The coach stopped, and Mr. Watkins Tottle jumped--we beg his
+pardon--alighted, with great dignity.  'All right!' said he, and away
+went the coach up the hill with that beautiful equanimity of pace for
+which 'short' stages are generally remarkable.
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle gave a faltering jerk to the handle of the garden-gate
+bell.  He essayed a more energetic tug, and his previous nervousness was
+not at all diminished by hearing the bell ringing like a fire alarum.
+
+'Is Mr. Parsons at home?' inquired Tottle of the man who opened the gate.
+He could hardly hear himself speak, for the bell had not yet done
+tolling.
+
+'Here I am,' shouted a voice on the lawn,--and there was Mr. Gabriel
+Parsons in a flannel jacket, running backwards and forwards, from a
+wicket to two hats piled on each other, and from the two hats to the
+wicket, in the most violent manner, while another gentleman with his coat
+off was getting down the area of the house, after a ball.  When the
+gentleman without the coat had found it--which he did in less than ten
+minutes--he ran back to the hats, and Gabriel Parsons pulled up.  Then,
+the gentleman without the coat called out 'play,' very loudly, and
+bowled.  Then Mr. Gabriel Parsons knocked the ball several yards, and
+took another run.  Then, the other gentleman aimed at the wicket, and
+didn't hit it; and Mr. Gabriel Parsons, having finished running on his
+own account, laid down the bat and ran after the ball, which went into a
+neighbouring field.  They called this cricket.
+
+'Tottle, will you "go in?"' inquired Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he
+approached him, wiping the perspiration off his face.
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle declined the offer, the bare idea of accepting which
+made him even warmer than his friend.
+
+'Then we'll go into the house, as it's past four, and I shall have to
+wash my hands before dinner,' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons.  'Here, I hate
+ceremony, you know!  Timson, that's Tottle--Tottle, that's Timson; bred
+for the church, which I fear will never be bread for him;' and he
+chuckled at the old joke.  Mr. Timson bowed carelessly.  Mr. Watkins
+Tottle bowed stiffly.  Mr. Gabriel Parsons led the way to the house.  He
+was a rich sugar-baker, who mistook rudeness for honesty, and abrupt
+bluntness for an open and candid manner; many besides Gabriel mistake
+bluntness for sincerity.
+
+Mrs. Gabriel Parsons received the visitors most graciously on the steps,
+and preceded them to the drawing-room.  On the sofa, was seated a lady of
+very prim appearance, and remarkably inanimate.  She was one of those
+persons at whose age it is impossible to make any reasonable guess; her
+features might have been remarkably pretty when she was younger, and they
+might always have presented the same appearance.  Her complexion--with a
+slight trace of powder here and there--was as clear as that of a
+well-made wax doll, and her face as expressive.  She was handsomely
+dressed, and was winding up a gold watch.
+
+'Miss Lillerton, my dear, this is our friend Mr. Watkins Tottle; a very
+old acquaintance I assure you,' said Mrs. Parsons, presenting the
+Strephon of Cecil-street, Strand.  The lady rose, and made a deep
+courtesy; Mr. Watkins Tottle made a bow.
+
+'Splendid, majestic creature!' thought Tottle.
+
+Mr. Timson advanced, and Mr. Watkins Tottle began to hate him.  Men
+generally discover a rival, instinctively, and Mr. Watkins Tottle felt
+that his hate was deserved.
+
+'May I beg,' said the reverend gentleman,--'May I beg to call upon you,
+Miss Lillerton, for some trifling donation to my soup, coals, and blanket
+distribution society?'
+
+'Put my name down, for two sovereigns, if you please,' responded Miss
+Lillerton.
+
+'You are truly charitable, madam,' said the Reverend Mr. Timson, 'and we
+know that charity will cover a multitude of sins.  Let me beg you to
+understand that I do not say this from the supposition that you have many
+sins which require palliation; believe me when I say that I never yet met
+any one who had fewer to atone for, than Miss Lillerton.'
+
+Something like a bad imitation of animation lighted up the lady's face,
+as she acknowledged the compliment.  Watkins Tottle incurred the sin of
+wishing that the ashes of the Reverend Charles Timson were quietly
+deposited in the churchyard of his curacy, wherever it might be.
+
+'I'll tell you what,' interrupted Parsons, who had just appeared with
+clean hands, and a black coat, 'it's my private opinion, Timson, that
+your "distribution society" is rather a humbug.'
+
+'You are so severe,' replied Timson, with a Christian smile: he disliked
+Parsons, but liked his dinners.
+
+'So positively unjust!' said Miss Lillerton.
+
+'Certainly,' observed Tottle.  The lady looked up; her eyes met those of
+Mr. Watkins Tottle.  She withdrew them in a sweet confusion, and Watkins
+Tottle did the same--the confusion was mutual.
+
+'Why,' urged Mr. Parsons, pursuing his objections, 'what on earth is the
+use of giving a man coals who has nothing to cook, or giving him blankets
+when he hasn't a bed, or giving him soup when he requires substantial
+food?--"like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt."  Why not give
+'em a trifle of money, as I do, when I think they deserve it, and let
+them purchase what they think best?  Why?--because your subscribers
+wouldn't see their names flourishing in print on the church-door--that's
+the reason.'
+
+'Really, Mr. Parsons, I hope you don't mean to insinuate that I wish to
+see _my_ name in print, on the church-door,' interrupted Miss Lillerton.
+
+'I hope not,' said Mr. Watkins Tottle, putting in another word, and
+getting another glance.
+
+'Certainly not,' replied Parsons.  'I dare say you wouldn't mind seeing
+it in writing, though, in the church register--eh?'
+
+'Register!  What register?' inquired the lady gravely.
+
+'Why, the register of marriages, to be sure,' replied Parsons, chuckling
+at the sally, and glancing at Tottle.  Mr. Watkins Tottle thought he
+should have fainted for shame, and it is quite impossible to imagine what
+effect the joke would have had upon the lady, if dinner had not been, at
+that moment, announced.  Mr. Watkins Tottle, with an unprecedented effort
+of gallantry, offered the tip of his little finger; Miss Lillerton
+accepted it gracefully, with maiden modesty; and they proceeded in due
+state to the dinner-table, where they were soon deposited side by side.
+The room was very snug, the dinner very good, and the little party in
+spirits.  The conversation became pretty general, and when Mr. Watkins
+Tottle had extracted one or two cold observations from his neighbour, and
+had taken wine with her, he began to acquire confidence rapidly.  The
+cloth was removed; Mrs. Gabriel Parsons drank four glasses of port on the
+plea of being a nurse just then; and Miss Lillerton took about the same
+number of sips, on the plea of not wanting any at all.  At length, the
+ladies retired, to the great gratification of Mr. Gabriel Parsons, who
+had been coughing and frowning at his wife, for half-an-hour
+previously--signals which Mrs. Parsons never happened to observe, until
+she had been pressed to take her ordinary quantum, which, to avoid giving
+trouble, she generally did at once.
+
+'What do you think of her?' inquired Mr. Gabriel Parsons of Mr. Watkins
+Tottle, in an under-tone.
+
+'I dote on her with enthusiasm already!' replied Mr. Watkins Tottle.
+
+'Gentlemen, pray let us drink "the ladies,"' said the Reverend Mr.
+Timson.
+
+'The ladies!' said Mr. Watkins Tottle, emptying his glass.  In the
+fulness of his confidence, he felt as if he could make love to a dozen
+ladies, off-hand.
+
+'Ah!' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, 'I remember when I was a young man--fill
+your glass, Timson.'
+
+'I have this moment emptied it.'
+
+'Then fill again.'
+
+'I will,' said Timson, suiting the action to the word.
+
+'I remember,' resumed Mr. Gabriel Parsons, 'when I was a younger man,
+with what a strange compound of feelings I used to drink that toast, and
+how I used to think every woman was an angel.'
+
+'Was that before you were married?' mildly inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle.
+
+'Oh! certainly,' replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons.  'I have never thought so
+since; and a precious milksop I must have been, ever to have thought so
+at all.  But, you know, I married Fanny under the oddest, and most
+ridiculous circumstances possible.'
+
+'What were they, if one may inquire?' asked Timson, who had heard the
+story, on an average, twice a week for the last six months.  Mr. Watkins
+Tottle listened attentively, in the hope of picking up some suggestion
+that might be useful to him in his new undertaking.
+
+'I spent my wedding-night in a back-kitchen chimney,' said Parsons, by
+way of a beginning.
+
+'In a back-kitchen chimney!' ejaculated Watkins Tottle.  'How dreadful!'
+
+'Yes, it wasn't very pleasant,' replied the small host.  'The fact is,
+Fanny's father and mother liked me well enough as an individual, but had
+a decided objection to my becoming a husband.  You see, I hadn't any
+money in those days, and they had; and so they wanted Fanny to pick up
+somebody else.  However, we managed to discover the state of each other's
+affections somehow.  I used to meet her, at some mutual friends' parties;
+at first we danced together, and talked, and flirted, and all that sort
+of thing; then, I used to like nothing so well as sitting by her side--we
+didn't talk so much then, but I remember I used to have a great notion of
+looking at her out of the extreme corner of my left eye--and then I got
+very miserable and sentimental, and began to write verses, and use
+Macassar oil.  At last I couldn't bear it any longer, and after I had
+walked up and down the sunny side of Oxford-street in tight boots for a
+week--and a devilish hot summer it was too--in the hope of meeting her, I
+sat down and wrote a letter, and begged her to manage to see me
+clandestinely, for I wanted to hear her decision from her own mouth.  I
+said I had discovered, to my perfect satisfaction, that I couldn't live
+without her, and that if she didn't have me, I had made up my mind to
+take prussic acid, or take to drinking, or emigrate, so as to take myself
+off in some way or other.  Well, I borrowed a pound, and bribed the
+housemaid to give her the note, which she did.'
+
+'And what was the reply?' inquired Timson, who had found, before, that to
+encourage the repetition of old stories is to get a general invitation.
+
+'Oh, the usual one!  Fanny expressed herself very miserable; hinted at
+the possibility of an early grave; said that nothing should induce her to
+swerve from the duty she owed her parents; implored me to forget her, and
+find out somebody more deserving, and all that sort of thing.  She said
+she could, on no account, think of meeting me unknown to her pa and ma;
+and entreated me, as she should be in a particular part of Kensington
+Gardens at eleven o'clock next morning, not to attempt to meet her
+there.'
+
+'You didn't go, of course?' said Watkins Tottle.
+
+'Didn't I?--Of course I did.  There she was, with the identical housemaid
+in perspective, in order that there might be no interruption.  We walked
+about, for a couple of hours; made ourselves delightfully miserable; and
+were regularly engaged.  Then, we began to "correspond"--that is to say,
+we used to exchange about four letters a day; what we used to say in 'em
+I can't imagine.  And I used to have an interview, in the kitchen, or the
+cellar, or some such place, every evening.  Well, things went on in this
+way for some time; and we got fonder of each other every day.  At last,
+as our love was raised to such a pitch, and as my salary had been raised
+too, shortly before, we determined on a secret marriage.  Fanny arranged
+to sleep at a friend's, on the previous night; we were to be married
+early in the morning; and then we were to return to her home and be
+pathetic.  She was to fall at the old gentleman's feet, and bathe his
+boots with her tears; and I was to hug the old lady and call her
+"mother," and use my pocket-handkerchief as much as possible.  Married we
+were, the next morning; two girls-friends of Fanny's--acting as
+bridesmaids; and a man, who was hired for five shillings and a pint of
+porter, officiating as father.  Now, the old lady unfortunately put off
+her return from Ramsgate, where she had been paying a visit, until the
+next morning; and as we placed great reliance on her, we agreed to
+postpone our confession for four-and-twenty hours.  My newly-made wife
+returned home, and I spent my wedding-day in strolling about
+Hampstead-heath, and execrating my father-in-law.  Of course, I went to
+comfort my dear little wife at night, as much as I could, with the
+assurance that our troubles would soon be over.  I opened the
+garden-gate, of which I had a key, and was shown by the servant to our
+old place of meeting--a back kitchen, with a stone-floor and a dresser:
+upon which, in the absence of chairs, we used to sit and make love.'
+
+'Make love upon a kitchen-dresser!' interrupted Mr. Watkins Tottle, whose
+ideas of decorum were greatly outraged.
+
+'Ah!  On a kitchen-dresser!' replied Parsons.  'And let me tell you, old
+fellow, that, if you were really over head-and-ears in love, and had no
+other place to make love in, you'd be devilish glad to avail yourself of
+such an opportunity.  However, let me see;--where was I?'
+
+'On the dresser,' suggested Timson.
+
+'Oh--ah!  Well, here I found poor Fanny, quite disconsolate and
+uncomfortable.  The old boy had been very cross all day, which made her
+feel still more lonely; and she was quite out of spirits.  So, I put a
+good face on the matter, and laughed it off, and said we should enjoy the
+pleasures of a matrimonial life more by contrast; and, at length, poor
+Fanny brightened up a little.  I stopped there, till about eleven
+o'clock, and, just as I was taking my leave for the fourteenth time, the
+girl came running down the stairs, without her shoes, in a great fright,
+to tell us that the old villain--Heaven forgive me for calling him so,
+for he is dead and gone now!--prompted I suppose by the prince of
+darkness, was coming down, to draw his own beer for supper--a thing he
+had not done before, for six months, to my certain knowledge; for the
+cask stood in that very back kitchen.  If he discovered me there,
+explanation would have been out of the question; for he was so
+outrageously violent, when at all excited, that he never would have
+listened to me.  There was only one thing to be done.  The chimney was a
+very wide one; it had been originally built for an oven; went up
+perpendicularly for a few feet, and then shot backward and formed a sort
+of small cavern.  My hopes and fortune--the means of our joint existence
+almost--were at stake.  I scrambled in like a squirrel; coiled myself up
+in this recess; and, as Fanny and the girl replaced the deal
+chimney-board, I could see the light of the candle which my unconscious
+father-in-law carried in his hand.  I heard him draw the beer; and I
+never heard beer run so slowly.  He was just leaving the kitchen, and I
+was preparing to descend, when down came the infernal chimney-board with
+a tremendous crash.  He stopped and put down the candle and the jug of
+beer on the dresser; he was a nervous old fellow, and any unexpected
+noise annoyed him.  He coolly observed that the fire-place was never
+used, and sending the frightened servant into the next kitchen for a
+hammer and nails, actually nailed up the board, and locked the door on
+the outside.  So, there was I, on my wedding-night, in the light
+kerseymere trousers, fancy waistcoat, and blue coat, that I had been
+married in in the morning, in a back-kitchen chimney, the bottom of which
+was nailed up, and the top of which had been formerly raised some fifteen
+feet, to prevent the smoke from annoying the neighbours.  And there,'
+added Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he passed the bottle, 'there I remained
+till half-past seven the next morning, when the housemaid's sweetheart,
+who was a carpenter, unshelled me.  The old dog had nailed me up so
+securely, that, to this very hour, I firmly believe that no one but a
+carpenter could ever have got me out.'
+
+'And what did Mrs. Parsons's father say, when he found you were married?'
+inquired Watkins Tottle, who, although he never saw a joke, was not
+satisfied until he heard a story to the very end.
+
+'Why, the affair of the chimney so tickled his fancy, that he pardoned us
+off-hand, and allowed us something to live on till he went the way of all
+flesh.  I spent the next night in his second-floor front, much more
+comfortably than I had spent the preceding one; for, as you will probably
+guess--'
+
+'Please, sir, missis has made tea,' said a middle-aged female servant,
+bobbing into the room.
+
+'That's the very housemaid that figures in my story,' said Mr. Gabriel
+Parsons.  'She went into Fanny's service when we were first married, and
+has been with us ever since; but I don't think she has felt one atom of
+respect for me since the morning she saw me released, when she went into
+violent hysterics, to which she has been subject ever since.  Now, shall
+we join the ladies?'
+
+'If you please,' said Mr. Watkins Tottle.
+
+'By all means,' added the obsequious Mr. Timson; and the trio made for
+the drawing-room accordingly.
+
+Tea being concluded, and the toast and cups having been duly handed, and
+occasionally upset, by Mr. Watkins Tottle, a rubber was proposed.  They
+cut for partners--Mr. and Mrs. Parsons; and Mr. Watkins Tottle and Miss
+Lillerton.  Mr. Timson having conscientious scruples on the subject of
+card-playing, drank brandy-and-water, and kept up a running spar with Mr.
+Watkins Tottle.  The evening went off well; Mr. Watkins Tottle was in
+high spirits, having some reason to be gratified with his reception by
+Miss Lillerton; and before he left, a small party was made up to visit
+the Beulah Spa on the following Saturday.
+
+'It's all right, I think,' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons to Mr. Watkins Tottle
+as he opened the garden gate for him.
+
+'I hope so,' he replied, squeezing his friend's hand.
+
+'You'll be down by the first coach on Saturday,' said Mr. Gabriel
+Parsons.
+
+'Certainly,' replied Mr. Watkins Tottle.  'Undoubtedly.'
+
+But fortune had decreed that Mr. Watkins Tottle should not be down by the
+first coach on Saturday.  His adventures on that day, however, and the
+success of his wooing, are subjects for another chapter.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SECOND
+
+
+'The first coach has not come in yet, has it, Tom?' inquired Mr. Gabriel
+Parsons, as he very complacently paced up and down the fourteen feet of
+gravel which bordered the 'lawn,' on the Saturday morning which had been
+fixed upon for the Beulah Spa jaunt.
+
+'No, sir; I haven't seen it,' replied a gardener in a blue apron, who let
+himself out to do the ornamental for half-a-crown a day and his 'keep.'
+
+'Time Tottle was down,' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, ruminating--'Oh, here
+he is, no doubt,' added Gabriel, as a cab drove rapidly up the hill; and
+he buttoned his dressing-gown, and opened the gate to receive the
+expected visitor.  The cab stopped, and out jumped a man in a coarse
+Petersham great-coat, whity-brown neckerchief, faded black suit,
+gamboge-coloured top-boots, and one of those large-crowned hats, formerly
+seldom met with, but now very generally patronised by gentlemen and
+costermongers.
+
+'Mr. Parsons?' said the man, looking at the superscription of a note he
+held in his hand, and addressing Gabriel with an inquiring air.
+
+'_My_ name is Parsons,' responded the sugar-baker.
+
+'I've brought this here note,' replied the individual in the painted
+tops, in a hoarse whisper: 'I've brought this here note from a gen'lm'n
+as come to our house this mornin'.'
+
+'I expected the gentleman at my house,' said Parsons, as he broke the
+seal, which bore the impression of her Majesty's profile as it is seen on
+a sixpence.
+
+'I've no doubt the gen'lm'n would ha' been here, replied the stranger,
+'if he hadn't happened to call at our house first; but we never trusts no
+gen'lm'n furder nor we can see him--no mistake about that there'--added
+the unknown, with a facetious grin; 'beg your pardon, sir, no offence
+meant, only--once in, and I wish you may--catch the idea, sir?'
+
+Mr. Gabriel Parsons was not remarkable for catching anything suddenly,
+but a cold.  He therefore only bestowed a glance of profound astonishment
+on his mysterious companion, and proceeded to unfold the note of which he
+had been the bearer.  Once opened and the idea was caught with very
+little difficulty.  Mr. Watkins Tottle had been suddenly arrested for
+33_l._ 10_s._ 4_d._, and dated his communication from a lock-up house in
+the vicinity of Chancery-lane.
+
+'Unfortunate affair this!' said Parsons, refolding the note.
+
+'Oh! nothin' ven you're used to it,' coolly observed the man in the
+Petersham.
+
+'Tom!' exclaimed Parsons, after a few minutes' consideration, 'just put
+the horse in, will you?--Tell the gentleman that I shall be there almost
+as soon as you are,' he continued, addressing the sheriff-officer's
+Mercury.
+
+'Werry well,' replied that important functionary; adding, in a
+confidential manner, 'I'd adwise the gen'lm'n's friends to settle.  You
+see it's a mere trifle; and, unless the gen'lm'n means to go up afore the
+court, it's hardly worth while waiting for detainers, you know.  Our
+governor's wide awake, he is.  I'll never say nothin' agin him, nor no
+man; but he knows what's o'clock, he does, uncommon.'  Having delivered
+this eloquent, and, to Parsons, particularly intelligible harangue, the
+meaning of which was eked out by divers nods and winks, the gentleman in
+the boots reseated himself in the cab, which went rapidly off, and was
+soon out of sight.  Mr. Gabriel Parsons continued to pace up and down the
+pathway for some minutes, apparently absorbed in deep meditation.  The
+result of his cogitations seemed to be perfectly satisfactory to himself,
+for he ran briskly into the house; said that business had suddenly
+summoned him to town; that he had desired the messenger to inform Mr.
+Watkins Tottle of the fact; and that they would return together to
+dinner.  He then hastily equipped himself for a drive, and mounting his
+gig, was soon on his way to the establishment of Mr. Solomon Jacobs,
+situate (as Mr. Watkins Tottle had informed him) in Cursitor-street,
+Chancery-lane.
+
+When a man is in a violent hurry to get on, and has a specific object in
+view, the attainment of which depends on the completion of his journey,
+the difficulties which interpose themselves in his way appear not only to
+be innumerable, but to have been called into existence especially for the
+occasion.  The remark is by no means a new one, and Mr. Gabriel Parsons
+had practical and painful experience of its justice in the course of his
+drive.  There are three classes of animated objects which prevent your
+driving with any degree of comfort or celerity through streets which are
+but little frequented--they are pigs, children, and old women.  On the
+occasion we are describing, the pigs were luxuriating on cabbage-stalks,
+and the shuttlecocks fluttered from the little deal battledores, and the
+children played in the road; and women, with a basket in one hand, and
+the street-door key in the other, _would_ cross just before the horse's
+head, until Mr. Gabriel Parsons was perfectly savage with vexation, and
+quite hoarse with hoi-ing and imprecating.  Then, when he got into
+Fleet-street, there was 'a stoppage,' in which people in vehicles have
+the satisfaction of remaining stationary for half an hour, and envying
+the slowest pedestrians; and where policemen rush about, and seize hold
+of horses' bridles, and back them into shop-windows, by way of clearing
+the road and preventing confusion.  At length Mr. Gabriel Parsons turned
+into Chancery-lane, and having inquired for, and been directed to
+Cursitor-street (for it was a locality of which he was quite ignorant),
+he soon found himself opposite the house of Mr. Solomon Jacobs.
+Confiding his horse and gig to the care of one of the fourteen boys who
+had followed him from the other side of Blackfriars-bridge on the chance
+of his requiring their services, Mr. Gabriel Parsons crossed the road and
+knocked at an inner door, the upper part of which was of glass, grated
+like the windows of this inviting mansion with iron bars--painted white
+to look comfortable.
+
+The knock was answered by a sallow-faced, red-haired, sulky boy, who,
+after surveying Mr. Gabriel Parsons through the glass, applied a large
+key to an immense wooden excrescence, which was in reality a lock, but
+which, taken in conjunction with the iron nails with which the panels
+were studded, gave the door the appearance of being subject to warts.
+
+'I want to see Mr. Watkins Tottle,' said Parsons.
+
+'It's the gentleman that come in this morning, Jem,' screamed a voice
+from the top of the kitchen-stairs, which belonged to a dirty woman who
+had just brought her chin to a level with the passage-floor.  'The
+gentleman's in the coffee-room.'
+
+'Up-stairs, sir,' said the boy, just opening the door wide enough to let
+Parsons in without squeezing him, and double-locking it the moment he had
+made his way through the aperture--'First floor--door on the left.'
+
+Mr. Gabriel Parsons thus instructed, ascended the uncarpeted and
+ill-lighted staircase, and after giving several subdued taps at the
+before-mentioned 'door on the left,' which were rendered inaudible by the
+hum of voices within the room, and the hissing noise attendant on some
+frying operations which were carrying on below stairs, turned the handle,
+and entered the apartment.  Being informed that the unfortunate object of
+his visit had just gone up-stairs to write a letter, he had leisure to
+sit down and observe the scene before him.
+
+The room--which was a small, confined den--was partitioned off into
+boxes, like the common-room of some inferior eating-house.  The dirty
+floor had evidently been as long a stranger to the scrubbing-brush as to
+carpet or floor-cloth: and the ceiling was completely blackened by the
+flare of the oil-lamp by which the room was lighted at night.  The gray
+ashes on the edges of the tables, and the cigar ends which were
+plentifully scattered about the dusty grate, fully accounted for the
+intolerable smell of tobacco which pervaded the place; and the empty
+glasses and half-saturated slices of lemon on the tables, together with
+the porter pots beneath them, bore testimony to the frequent libations in
+which the individuals who honoured Mr. Solomon Jacobs by a temporary
+residence in his house indulged.  Over the mantel-shelf was a paltry
+looking-glass, extending about half the width of the chimney-piece; but
+by way of counterpoise, the ashes were confined by a rusty fender about
+twice as long as the hearth.
+
+From this cheerful room itself, the attention of Mr. Gabriel Parsons was
+naturally directed to its inmates.  In one of the boxes two men were
+playing at cribbage with a very dirty pack of cards, some with blue, some
+with green, and some with red backs--selections from decayed packs.  The
+cribbage board had been long ago formed on the table by some ingenious
+visitor with the assistance of a pocket-knife and a two-pronged fork,
+with which the necessary number of holes had been made in the table at
+proper distances for the reception of the wooden pegs.  In another box a
+stout, hearty-looking man, of about forty, was eating some dinner which
+his wife--an equally comfortable-looking personage--had brought him in a
+basket: and in a third, a genteel-looking young man was talking
+earnestly, and in a low tone, to a young female, whose face was concealed
+by a thick veil, but whom Mr. Gabriel Parsons immediately set down in his
+own mind as the debtor's wife.  A young fellow of vulgar manners, dressed
+in the very extreme of the prevailing fashion, was pacing up and down the
+room, with a lighted cigar in his mouth and his hands in his pockets,
+ever and anon puffing forth volumes of smoke, and occasionally applying,
+with much apparent relish, to a pint pot, the contents of which were
+'chilling' on the hob.
+
+'Fourpence more, by gum!' exclaimed one of the cribbage-players, lighting
+a pipe, and addressing his adversary at the close of the game; 'one 'ud
+think you'd got luck in a pepper-cruet, and shook it out when you wanted
+it.'
+
+'Well, that a'n't a bad un,' replied the other, who was a horse-dealer
+from Islington.
+
+'No; I'm blessed if it is,' interposed the jolly-looking fellow, who,
+having finished his dinner, was drinking out of the same glass as his
+wife, in truly conjugal harmony, some hot gin-and-water.  The faithful
+partner of his cares had brought a plentiful supply of the
+anti-temperance fluid in a large flat stone bottle, which looked like a
+half-gallon jar that had been successfully tapped for the dropsy.
+'You're a rum chap, you are, Mr. Walker--will you dip your beak into
+this, sir?'
+
+'Thank'ee, sir,' replied Mr. Walker, leaving his box, and advancing to
+the other to accept the proffered glass.  'Here's your health, sir, and
+your good 'ooman's here.  Gentlemen all--yours, and better luck still.
+Well, Mr. Willis,' continued the facetious prisoner, addressing the young
+man with the cigar, 'you seem rather down to-day--floored, as one may
+say.  What's the matter, sir?  Never say die, you know.'
+
+'Oh! I'm all right,' replied the smoker.  'I shall be bailed out
+to-morrow.'
+
+'Shall you, though?' inquired the other.  'Damme, I wish I could say the
+same.  I am as regularly over head and ears as the Royal George, and
+stand about as much chance of being _bailed out_.  Ha! ha! ha!'
+
+'Why,' said the young man, stopping short, and speaking in a very loud
+key, 'look at me.  What d'ye think I've stopped here two days for?'
+
+''Cause you couldn't get out, I suppose,' interrupted Mr. Walker, winking
+to the company.  'Not that you're exactly obliged to stop here, only you
+can't help it.  No compulsion, you know, only you must--eh?'
+
+'A'n't he a rum un?' inquired the delighted individual, who had offered
+the gin-and-water, of his wife.
+
+'Oh, he just is!' replied the lady, who was quite overcome by these
+flashes of imagination.
+
+'Why, my case,' frowned the victim, throwing the end of his cigar into
+the fire, and illustrating his argument by knocking the bottom of the pot
+on the table, at intervals,--'my case is a very singular one.  My
+father's a man of large property, and I am his son.'
+
+'That's a very strange circumstance!' interrupted the jocose Mr. Walker,
+_en passant_.
+
+'--I am his son, and have received a liberal education.  I don't owe no
+man nothing--not the value of a farthing, but I was induced, you see, to
+put my name to some bills for a friend--bills to a large amount, I may
+say a very large amount, for which I didn't receive no consideration.
+What's the consequence?'
+
+'Why, I suppose the bills went out, and you came in.  The acceptances
+weren't taken up, and you were, eh?' inquired Walker.
+
+'To be sure,' replied the liberally educated young gentleman.  'To be
+sure; and so here I am, locked up for a matter of twelve hundred pound.'
+
+'Why don't you ask your old governor to stump up?' inquired Walker, with
+a somewhat sceptical air.
+
+'Oh! bless you, he'd never do it,' replied the other, in a tone of
+expostulation--'Never!'
+
+'Well, it is very odd to--be--sure,' interposed the owner of the flat
+bottle, mixing another glass, 'but I've been in difficulties, as one may
+say, now for thirty year.  I went to pieces when I was in a milk-walk,
+thirty year ago; arterwards, when I was a fruiterer, and kept a spring
+wan; and arter that again in the coal and 'tatur line--but all that time
+I never see a youngish chap come into a place of this kind, who wasn't
+going out again directly, and who hadn't been arrested on bills which
+he'd given a friend and for which he'd received nothing whatsomever--not
+a fraction.'
+
+'Oh! it's always the cry,' said Walker.  'I can't see the use on it;
+that's what makes me so wild.  Why, I should have a much better opinion
+of an individual, if he'd say at once in an honourable and gentlemanly
+manner as he'd done everybody he possibly could.'
+
+'Ay, to be sure,' interposed the horse-dealer, with whose notions of
+bargain and sale the axiom perfectly coincided, 'so should I.'  The young
+gentleman, who had given rise to these observations, was on the point of
+offering a rather angry reply to these sneers, but the rising of the
+young man before noticed, and of the female who had been sitting by him,
+to leave the room, interrupted the conversation.  She had been weeping
+bitterly, and the noxious atmosphere of the room acting upon her excited
+feelings and delicate frame, rendered the support of her companion
+necessary as they quitted it together.
+
+There was an air of superiority about them both, and something in their
+appearance so unusual in such a place, that a respectful silence was
+observed until the _whirr--r--bang_ of the spring door announced that
+they were out of hearing.  It was broken by the wife of the ex-fruiterer.
+
+'Poor creetur!' said she, quenching a sigh in a rivulet of gin-and-water.
+'She's very young.'
+
+'She's a nice-looking 'ooman too,' added the horse-dealer.
+
+'What's he in for, Ikey?' inquired Walker, of an individual who was
+spreading a cloth with numerous blotches of mustard upon it, on one of
+the tables, and whom Mr. Gabriel Parsons had no difficulty in recognising
+as the man who had called upon him in the morning.
+
+'Vy,' responded the factotum, 'it's one of the rummiest rigs you ever
+heard on.  He come in here last Vensday, which by-the-bye he's a-going
+over the water to-night--hows'ever that's neither here nor there.  You
+see I've been a going back'ards and for'ards about his business, and ha'
+managed to pick up some of his story from the servants and them; and so
+far as I can make it out, it seems to be summat to this here effect--'
+
+'Cut it short, old fellow,' interrupted Walker, who knew from former
+experience that he of the top-boots was neither very concise nor
+intelligible in his narratives.
+
+'Let me alone,' replied Ikey, 'and I'll ha' wound up, and made my lucky
+in five seconds.  This here young gen'lm'n's father--so I'm told, mind
+ye--and the father o' the young voman, have always been on very bad,
+out-and-out, rig'lar knock-me-down sort o' terms; but somehow or another,
+when he was a wisitin' at some gentlefolk's house, as he knowed at
+college, he came into contract with the young lady.  He seed her several
+times, and then he up and said he'd keep company with her, if so be as
+she vos agreeable.  Vell, she vos as sweet upon him as he vos upon her,
+and so I s'pose they made it all right; for they got married 'bout six
+months arterwards, unbeknown, mind ye, to the two fathers--leastways so
+I'm told.  When they heard on it--my eyes, there was such a combustion!
+Starvation vos the very least that vos to be done to 'em.  The young
+gen'lm'n's father cut him off vith a bob, 'cos he'd cut himself off vith
+a wife; and the young lady's father he behaved even worser and more
+unnat'ral, for he not only blow'd her up dreadful, and swore he'd never
+see her again, but he employed a chap as I knows--and as you knows, Mr.
+Valker, a precious sight too well--to go about and buy up the bills and
+them things on which the young husband, thinking his governor 'ud come
+round agin, had raised the vind just to blow himself on vith for a time;
+besides vich, he made all the interest he could to set other people agin
+him.  Consequence vos, that he paid as long as he could; but things he
+never expected to have to meet till he'd had time to turn himself round,
+come fast upon him, and he vos nabbed.  He vos brought here, as I said
+afore, last Vensday, and I think there's about--ah, half-a-dozen
+detainers agin him down-stairs now.  I have been,' added Ikey, 'in the
+purfession these fifteen year, and I never met vith such windictiveness
+afore!'
+
+'Poor creeturs!' exclaimed the coal-dealer's wife once more: again
+resorting to the same excellent prescription for nipping a sigh in the
+bud.  'Ah! when they've seen as much trouble as I and my old man here
+have, they'll be as comfortable under it as we are.'
+
+'The young lady's a pretty creature,' said Walker, 'only she's a little
+too delicate for my taste--there ain't enough of her.  As to the young
+cove, he may be very respectable and what not, but he's too down in the
+mouth for me--he ain't game.'
+
+'Game!' exclaimed Ikey, who had been altering the position of a
+green-handled knife and fork at least a dozen times, in order that he
+might remain in the room under the pretext of having something to do.
+'He's game enough ven there's anything to be fierce about; but who could
+be game as you call it, Mr. Walker, with a pale young creetur like that,
+hanging about him?--It's enough to drive any man's heart into his boots
+to see 'em together--and no mistake at all about it.  I never shall
+forget her first comin' here; he wrote to her on the Thursday to come--I
+know he did, 'cos I took the letter.  Uncommon fidgety he was all day to
+be sure, and in the evening he goes down into the office, and he says to
+Jacobs, says he, "Sir, can I have the loan of a private room for a few
+minutes this evening, without incurring any additional expense--just to
+see my wife in?" says he.  Jacobs looked as much as to say--"Strike me
+bountiful if you ain't one of the modest sort!" but as the gen'lm'n who
+had been in the back parlour had just gone out, and had paid for it for
+that day, he says--werry grave--"Sir," says he, "it's agin our rules to
+let private rooms to our lodgers on gratis terms, but," says he, "for a
+gentleman, I don't mind breaking through them for once."  So then he
+turns round to me, and says, "Ikey, put two mould candles in the back
+parlour, and charge 'em to this gen'lm'n's account," vich I did.  Vell,
+by-and-by a hackney-coach comes up to the door, and there, sure enough,
+was the young lady, wrapped up in a hopera-cloak, as it might be, and all
+alone.  I opened the gate that night, so I went up when the coach come,
+and he vos a waitin' at the parlour door--and wasn't he a trembling,
+neither?  The poor creetur see him, and could hardly walk to meet him.
+"Oh, Harry!" she says, "that it should have come to this; and all for my
+sake," says she, putting her hand upon his shoulder.  So he puts his arm
+round her pretty little waist, and leading her gently a little way into
+the room, so that he might be able to shut the door, he says, so kind and
+soft-like--"Why, Kate," says he--'
+
+'Here's the gentleman you want,' said Ikey, abruptly breaking off in his
+story, and introducing Mr. Gabriel Parsons to the crest-fallen Watkins
+Tottle, who at that moment entered the room.  Watkins advanced with a
+wooden expression of passive endurance, and accepted the hand which Mr.
+Gabriel Parsons held out.
+
+'I want to speak to you,' said Gabriel, with a look strongly expressive
+of his dislike of the company.
+
+'This way,' replied the imprisoned one, leading the way to the front
+drawing-room, where rich debtors did the luxurious at the rate of a
+couple of guineas a day.
+
+'Well, here I am,' said Mr. Watkins, as he sat down on the sofa; and
+placing the palms of his hands on his knees, anxiously glanced at his
+friend's countenance.
+
+'Yes; and here you're likely to be,' said Gabriel, coolly, as he rattled
+the money in his unmentionable pockets, and looked out of the window.
+
+'What's the amount with the costs?' inquired Parsons, after an awkward
+pause.
+
+'Have you any money?'
+
+'Nine and sixpence halfpenny.'
+
+Mr. Gabriel Parsons walked up and down the room for a few seconds, before
+he could make up his mind to disclose the plan he had formed; he was
+accustomed to drive hard bargains, but was always most anxious to conceal
+his avarice.  At length he stopped short, and said, 'Tottle, you owe me
+fifty pounds.'
+
+'I do.'
+
+'And from all I see, I infer that you are likely to owe it to me.'
+
+'I fear I am.'
+
+'Though you have every disposition to pay me if you could?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+'Then,' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, 'listen: here's my proposition.  You
+know my way of old.  Accept it--yes or no--I will or I won't.  I'll pay
+the debt and costs, and I'll lend you 10_l._ more (which, added to your
+annuity, will enable you to carry on the war well) if you'll give me your
+note of hand to pay me one hundred and fifty pounds within six months
+after you are married to Miss Lillerton.'
+
+'My dear--'
+
+'Stop a minute--on one condition; and that is, that you propose to Miss
+Lillerton at once.'
+
+'At once!  My dear Parsons, consider.'
+
+'It's for you to consider, not me.  She knows you well from reputation,
+though she did not know you personally until lately.  Notwithstanding all
+her maiden modesty, I think she'd be devilish glad to get married out of
+hand with as little delay as possible.  My wife has sounded her on the
+subject, and she has confessed.'
+
+'What--what?' eagerly interrupted the enamoured Watkins.
+
+'Why,' replied Parsons, 'to say exactly what she has confessed, would be
+rather difficult, because they only spoke in hints, and so forth; but my
+wife, who is no bad judge in these cases, declared to me that what she
+had confessed was as good as to say that she was not insensible of your
+merits--in fact, that no other man should have her.'
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle rose hastily from his seat, and rang the bell.
+
+'What's that for?' inquired Parsons.
+
+'I want to send the man for the bill stamp,' replied Mr. Watkins Tottle.
+
+'Then you've made up your mind?'
+
+'I have,'--and they shook hands most cordially.  The note of hand was
+given--the debt and costs were paid--Ikey was satisfied for his trouble,
+and the two friends soon found themselves on that side of Mr. Solomon
+Jacobs's establishment, on which most of his visitors were very happy
+when they found themselves once again--to wit, the _out_side.
+
+'Now,' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as they drove to Norwood together--'you
+shall have an opportunity to make the disclosure to-night, and mind you
+speak out, Tottle.'
+
+'I will--I will!' replied Watkins, valorously.
+
+'How I should like to see you together,' ejaculated Mr. Gabriel
+Parsons.--'What fun!' and he laughed so long and so loudly, that he
+disconcerted Mr. Watkins Tottle, and frightened the horse.
+
+'There's Fanny and your intended walking about on the lawn,' said
+Gabriel, as they approached the house.  'Mind your eye, Tottle.'
+
+'Never fear,' replied Watkins, resolutely, as he made his way to the spot
+where the ladies were walking.
+
+'Here's Mr. Tottle, my dear,' said Mrs. Parsons, addressing Miss
+Lillerton.  The lady turned quickly round, and acknowledged his courteous
+salute with the same sort of confusion that Watkins had noticed on their
+first interview, but with something like a slight expression of
+disappointment or carelessness.
+
+'Did you see how glad she was to see you?' whispered Parsons to his
+friend.
+
+'Why, I really thought she looked as if she would rather have seen
+somebody else,' replied Tottle.
+
+'Pooh, nonsense!' whispered Parsons again--'it's always the way with the
+women, young or old.  They never show how delighted they are to see those
+whose presence makes their hearts beat.  It's the way with the whole sex,
+and no man should have lived to your time of life without knowing it.
+Fanny confessed it to me, when we were first married, over and over
+again--see what it is to have a wife.'
+
+'Certainly,' whispered Tottle, whose courage was vanishing fast.
+
+'Well, now, you'd better begin to pave the way,' said Parsons, who,
+having invested some money in the speculation, assumed the office of
+director.
+
+'Yes, yes, I will--presently,' replied Tottle, greatly flurried.
+
+'Say something to her, man,' urged Parsons again.  'Confound it! pay her
+a compliment, can't you?'
+
+'No! not till after dinner,' replied the bashful Tottle, anxious to
+postpone the evil moment.
+
+'Well, gentlemen,' said Mrs. Parsons, 'you are really very polite; you
+stay away the whole morning, after promising to take us out, and when you
+do come home, you stand whispering together and take no notice of us.'
+
+'We were talking of the _business_, my dear, which detained us this
+morning,' replied Parsons, looking significantly at Tottle.
+
+'Dear me! how very quickly the morning has gone,' said Miss Lillerton,
+referring to the gold watch, which was wound up on state occasions,
+whether it required it or not.
+
+'I think it has passed very slowly,' mildly suggested Tottle.
+
+('That's right--bravo!') whispered Parsons.
+
+'Indeed!' said Miss Lillerton, with an air of majestic surprise.
+
+'I can only impute it to my unavoidable absence from your society,
+madam,' said Watkins, 'and that of Mrs. Parsons.'
+
+During this short dialogue, the ladies had been leading the way to the
+house.
+
+'What the deuce did you stick Fanny into that last compliment for?'
+inquired Parsons, as they followed together; 'it quite spoilt the
+effect.'
+
+'Oh! it really would have been too broad without,' replied Watkins
+Tottle, 'much too broad!'
+
+'He's mad!' Parsons whispered his wife, as they entered the drawing-room,
+'mad from modesty.'
+
+'Dear me!' ejaculated the lady, 'I never heard of such a thing.'
+
+'You'll find we have quite a family dinner, Mr. Tottle,' said Mrs.
+Parsons, when they sat down to table: 'Miss Lillerton is one of us, and,
+of course, we make no stranger of you.'
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle expressed a hope that the Parsons family never would
+make a stranger of him; and wished internally that his bashfulness would
+allow him to feel a little less like a stranger himself.
+
+'Take off the covers, Martha,' said Mrs. Parsons, directing the shifting
+of the scenery with great anxiety.  The order was obeyed, and a pair of
+boiled fowls, with tongue and et ceteras, were displayed at the top, and
+a fillet of veal at the bottom.  On one side of the table two green
+sauce-tureens, with ladles of the same, were setting to each other in a
+green dish; and on the other was a curried rabbit, in a brown suit,
+turned up with lemon.
+
+'Miss Lillerton, my dear,' said Mrs. Parsons, 'shall I assist you?'
+
+'Thank you, no; I think I'll trouble Mr. Tottle.'
+
+Watkins started--trembled--helped the rabbit--and broke a tumbler.  The
+countenance of the lady of the house, which had been all smiles
+previously, underwent an awful change.
+
+'Extremely sorry,' stammered Watkins, assisting himself to currie and
+parsley and butter, in the extremity of his confusion.
+
+'Not the least consequence,' replied Mrs. Parsons, in a tone which
+implied that it was of the greatest consequence possible,--directing
+aside the researches of the boy, who was groping under the table for the
+bits of broken glass.
+
+'I presume,' said Miss Lillerton, 'that Mr. Tottle is aware of the
+interest which bachelors usually pay in such cases; a dozen glasses for
+one is the lowest penalty.'
+
+Mr. Gabriel Parsons gave his friend an admonitory tread on the toe.  Here
+was a clear hint that the sooner he ceased to be a bachelor and
+emancipated himself from such penalties, the better.  Mr. Watkins Tottle
+viewed the observation in the same light, and challenged Mrs. Parsons to
+take wine, with a degree of presence of mind, which, under all the
+circumstances, was really extraordinary.
+
+'Miss Lillerton,' said Gabriel, 'may I have the pleasure?'
+
+'I shall be most happy.'
+
+'Tottle, will you assist Miss Lillerton, and pass the decanter.  Thank
+you.'  (The usual pantomimic ceremony of nodding and sipping gone
+through)--
+
+'Tottle, were you ever in Suffolk?' inquired the master of the house, who
+was burning to tell one of his seven stock stories.
+
+'No,' responded Watkins, adding, by way of a saving clause, 'but I've
+been in Devonshire.'
+
+'Ah!' replied Gabriel, 'it was in Suffolk that a rather singular
+circumstance happened to me many years ago.  Did you ever happen to hear
+me mention it?'
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle _had_ happened to hear his friend mention it some four
+hundred times.  Of course he expressed great curiosity, and evinced the
+utmost impatience to hear the story again.  Mr. Gabriel Parsons forthwith
+attempted to proceed, in spite of the interruptions to which, as our
+readers must frequently have observed, the master of the house is often
+exposed in such cases.  We will attempt to give them an idea of our
+meaning.
+
+'When I was in Suffolk--' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons.
+
+'Take off the fowls first, Martha,' said Mrs. Parsons.  'I beg your
+pardon, my dear.'
+
+'When I was in Suffolk,' resumed Mr. Parsons, with an impatient glance at
+his wife, who pretended not to observe it, 'which is now years ago,
+business led me to the town of Bury St. Edmund's.  I had to stop at the
+principal places in my way, and therefore, for the sake of convenience, I
+travelled in a gig.  I left Sudbury one dark night--it was winter
+time--about nine o'clock; the rain poured in torrents, the wind howled
+among the trees that skirted the roadside, and I was obliged to proceed
+at a foot-pace, for I could hardly see my hand before me, it was so
+dark--'
+
+'John,' interrupted Mrs. Parsons, in a low, hollow voice, 'don't spill
+that gravy.'
+
+'Fanny,' said Parsons impatiently, 'I wish you'd defer these domestic
+reproofs to some more suitable time.  Really, my dear, these constant
+interruptions are very annoying.'
+
+'My dear, I didn't interrupt you,' said Mrs. Parsons.
+
+'But, my dear, you _did_ interrupt me,' remonstrated Mr. Parsons.
+
+'How very absurd you are, my love!  I must give directions to the
+servants; I am quite sure that if I sat here and allowed John to spill
+the gravy over the new carpet, you'd be the first to find fault when you
+saw the stain to-morrow morning.'
+
+'Well,' continued Gabriel with a resigned air, as if he knew there was no
+getting over the point about the carpet, 'I was just saying, it was so
+dark that I could hardly see my hand before me.  The road was very
+lonely, and I assure you, Tottle (this was a device to arrest the
+wandering attention of that individual, which was distracted by a
+confidential communication between Mrs. Parsons and Martha, accompanied
+by the delivery of a large bunch of keys), I assure you, Tottle, I became
+somehow impressed with a sense of the loneliness of my situation--'
+
+'Pie to your master,' interrupted Mrs. Parsons, again directing the
+servant.
+
+'Now, pray, my dear,' remonstrated Parsons once more, very pettishly.
+Mrs. P. turned up her hands and eyebrows, and appealed in dumb show to
+Miss Lillerton.  'As I turned a corner of the road,' resumed Gabriel,
+'the horse stopped short, and reared tremendously.  I pulled up, jumped
+out, ran to his head, and found a man lying on his back in the middle of
+the road, with his eyes fixed on the sky.  I thought he was dead; but no,
+he was alive, and there appeared to be nothing the matter with him.  He
+jumped up, and putting his hand to his chest, and fixing upon me the most
+earnest gaze you can imagine, exclaimed--'
+
+'Pudding here,' said Mrs. Parsons.
+
+'Oh! it's no use,' exclaimed the host, now rendered desperate.  'Here,
+Tottle; a glass of wine.  It's useless to attempt relating anything when
+Mrs. Parsons is present.'
+
+This attack was received in the usual way.  Mrs. Parsons talked _to_ Miss
+Lillerton and _at_ her better half; expatiated on the impatience of men
+generally; hinted that her husband was peculiarly vicious in this
+respect, and wound up by insinuating that she must be one of the best
+tempers that ever existed, or she never could put up with it.  Really
+what she had to endure sometimes, was more than any one who saw her in
+every-day life could by possibility suppose.--The story was now a painful
+subject, and therefore Mr. Parsons declined to enter into any details,
+and contented himself by stating that the man was a maniac, who had
+escaped from a neighbouring mad-house.
+
+The cloth was removed; the ladies soon afterwards retired, and Miss
+Lillerton played the piano in the drawing-room overhead, very loudly, for
+the edification of the visitor.  Mr. Watkins Tottle and Mr. Gabriel
+Parsons sat chatting comfortably enough, until the conclusion of the
+second bottle, when the latter, in proposing an adjournment to the
+drawing-room, informed Watkins that he had concerted a plan with his
+wife, for leaving him and Miss Lillerton alone, soon after tea.
+
+'I say,' said Tottle, as they went up-stairs, 'don't you think it would
+be better if we put it off till-till-to-morrow?'
+
+'Don't _you_ think it would have been much better if I had left you in
+that wretched hole I found you in this morning?' retorted Parsons
+bluntly.
+
+'Well--well--I only made a suggestion,' said poor Watkins Tottle, with a
+deep sigh.
+
+Tea was soon concluded, and Miss Lillerton, drawing a small work-table on
+one side of the fire, and placing a little wooden frame upon it,
+something like a miniature clay-mill without the horse, was soon busily
+engaged in making a watch-guard with brown silk.
+
+'God bless me!' exclaimed Parsons, starting up with well-feigned
+surprise, 'I've forgotten those confounded letters.  Tottle, I know
+you'll excuse me.'
+
+If Tottle had been a free agent, he would have allowed no one to leave
+the room on any pretence, except himself.  As it was, however, he was
+obliged to look cheerful when Parsons quitted the apartment.
+
+He had scarcely left, when Martha put her head into the room,
+with--'Please, ma'am, you're wanted.'
+
+Mrs. Parsons left the room, shut the door carefully after her, and Mr.
+Watkins Tottle was left alone with Miss Lillerton.
+
+For the first five minutes there was a dead silence.--Mr. Watkins Tottle
+was thinking how he should begin, and Miss Lillerton appeared to be
+thinking of nothing.  The fire was burning low; Mr. Watkins Tottle
+stirred it, and put some coals on.
+
+'Hem!' coughed Miss Lillerton; Mr. Watkins Tottle thought the fair
+creature had spoken.  'I beg your pardon,' said he.
+
+'Eh?'
+
+'I thought you spoke.'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'There are some books on the sofa, Mr. Tottle, if you would like to look
+at them,' said Miss Lillerton, after the lapse of another five minutes.
+
+'No, thank you,' returned Watkins; and then he added, with a courage
+which was perfectly astonishing, even to himself, 'Madam, that is Miss
+Lillerton, I wish to speak to you.'
+
+'To me!' said Miss Lillerton, letting the silk drop from her hands, and
+sliding her chair back a few paces.--'Speak--to me!'
+
+'To you, madam--and on the subject of the state of your affections.'  The
+lady hastily rose and would have left the room; but Mr. Watkins Tottle
+gently detained her by the hand, and holding it as far from him as the
+joint length of their arms would permit, he thus proceeded: 'Pray do not
+misunderstand me, or suppose that I am led to address you, after so short
+an acquaintance, by any feeling of my own merits--for merits I have none
+which could give me a claim to your hand.  I hope you will acquit me of
+any presumption when I explain that I have been acquainted through Mrs.
+Parsons, with the state--that is, that Mrs. Parsons has told me--at
+least, not Mrs. Parsons, but--' here Watkins began to wander, but Miss
+Lillerton relieved him.
+
+'Am I to understand, Mr. Tottle, that Mrs. Parsons has acquainted you
+with my feeling--my affection--I mean my respect, for an individual of
+the opposite sex?'
+
+'She has.'
+
+'Then, what?' inquired Miss Lillerton, averting her face, with a girlish
+air, 'what could induce _you_ to seek such an interview as this?  What
+can your object be?  How can I promote your happiness, Mr. Tottle?'
+
+Here was the time for a flourish--'By allowing me,' replied Watkins,
+falling bump on his knees, and breaking two brace-buttons and a
+waistcoat-string, in the act--'By allowing me to be your slave, your
+servant--in short, by unreservedly making me the confidant of your
+heart's feelings--may I say for the promotion of your own happiness--may
+I say, in order that you may become the wife of a kind and affectionate
+husband?'
+
+'Disinterested creature!' exclaimed Miss Lillerton, hiding her face in a
+white pocket-handkerchief with an eyelet-hole border.
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle thought that if the lady knew all, she might possibly
+alter her opinion on this last point.  He raised the tip of her middle
+finger ceremoniously to his lips, and got off his knees, as gracefully as
+he could.  'My information was correct?' he tremulously inquired, when he
+was once more on his feet.
+
+'It was.'  Watkins elevated his hands, and looked up to the ornament in
+the centre of the ceiling, which had been made for a lamp, by way of
+expressing his rapture.
+
+'Our situation, Mr. Tottle,' resumed the lady, glancing at him through
+one of the eyelet-holes, 'is a most peculiar and delicate one.'
+
+'It is,' said Mr. Tottle.
+
+'Our acquaintance has been of _so_ short duration,' said Miss Lillerton.
+
+'Only a week,' assented Watkins Tottle.
+
+'Oh! more than that,' exclaimed the lady, in a tone of surprise.
+
+'Indeed!' said Tottle.
+
+'More than a month--more than two months!' said Miss Lillerton.
+
+'Rather odd, this,' thought Watkins.
+
+'Oh!' he said, recollecting Parsons's assurance that she had known him
+from report, 'I understand.  But, my dear madam, pray, consider.  The
+longer this acquaintance has existed, the less reason is there for delay
+now.  Why not at once fix a period for gratifying the hopes of your
+devoted admirer?'
+
+'It has been represented to me again and again that this is the course I
+ought to pursue,' replied Miss Lillerton, 'but pardon my feelings of
+delicacy, Mr. Tottle--pray excuse this embarrassment--I have peculiar
+ideas on such subjects, and I am quite sure that I never could summon up
+fortitude enough to name the day to my future husband.'
+
+'Then allow _me_ to name it,' said Tottle eagerly.
+
+'I should like to fix it myself,' replied Miss Lillerton, bashfully, 'but
+I cannot do so without at once resorting to a third party.'
+
+'A third party!' thought Watkins Tottle; 'who the deuce is that to be, I
+wonder!'
+
+'Mr. Tottle,' continued Miss Lillerton, 'you have made me a most
+disinterested and kind offer--that offer I accept.  Will you at once be
+the bearer of a note from me to--to Mr. Timson?'
+
+'Mr. Timson!' said Watkins.
+
+'After what has passed between us,' responded Miss Lillerton, still
+averting her head, 'you must understand whom I mean; Mr. Timson,
+the--the--clergyman.'
+
+'Mr. Timson, the clergyman!' ejaculated Watkins Tottle, in a state of
+inexpressible beatitude, and positive wonder at his own success.  'Angel!
+Certainly--this moment!'
+
+'I'll prepare it immediately,' said Miss Lillerton, making for the door;
+'the events of this day have flurried me so much, Mr. Tottle, that I
+shall not leave my room again this evening; I will send you the note by
+the servant.'
+
+'Stay,--stay,' cried Watkins Tottle, still keeping a most respectful
+distance from the lady; 'when shall we meet again?'
+
+'Oh!  Mr. Tottle,' replied Miss Lillerton, coquettishly, 'when _we_ are
+married, I can never see you too often, nor thank you too much;' and she
+left the room.
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle flung himself into an arm-chair, and indulged in the
+most delicious reveries of future bliss, in which the idea of 'Five
+hundred pounds per annum, with an uncontrolled power of disposing of it
+by her last will and testament,' was somehow or other the foremost.  He
+had gone through the interview so well, and it had terminated so
+admirably, that he almost began to wish he had expressly stipulated for
+the settlement of the annual five hundred on himself.
+
+'May I come in?' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, peeping in at the door.
+
+'You may,' replied Watkins.
+
+'Well, have you done it?' anxiously inquired Gabriel.
+
+'Have I done it!' said Watkins Tottle.  'Hush--I'm going to the
+clergyman.'
+
+'No!' said Parsons.  'How well you have managed it!'
+
+'Where does Timson live?' inquired Watkins.
+
+'At his uncle's,' replied Gabriel, 'just round the lane.  He's waiting
+for a living, and has been assisting his uncle here for the last two or
+three months.  But how well you have done it--I didn't think you could
+have carried it off so!'
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle was proceeding to demonstrate that the Richardsonian
+principle was the best on which love could possibly be made, when he was
+interrupted by the entrance of Martha, with a little pink note folded
+like a fancy cocked-hat.
+
+'Miss Lillerton's compliments,' said Martha, as she delivered it into
+Tottle's hands, and vanished.
+
+'Do you observe the delicacy?' said Tottle, appealing to Mr. Gabriel
+Parsons.  '_Compliments_, not _love_, by the servant, eh?'
+
+Mr. Gabriel Parsons didn't exactly know what reply to make, so he poked
+the forefinger of his right hand between the third and fourth ribs of Mr.
+Watkins Tottle.
+
+'Come,' said Watkins, when the explosion of mirth, consequent on this
+practical jest, had subsided, 'we'll be off at once--let's lose no time.'
+
+'Capital!' echoed Gabriel Parsons; and in five minutes they were at the
+garden-gate of the villa tenanted by the uncle of Mr. Timson.
+
+'Is Mr. Charles Timson at home?' inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle of Mr.
+Charles Timson's uncle's man.
+
+'Mr. Charles _is_ at home,' replied the man, stammering; 'but he desired
+me to say he couldn't be interrupted, sir, by any of the parishioners.'
+
+'_I_ am not a parishioner,' replied Watkins.
+
+'Is Mr. Charles writing a sermon, Tom?' inquired Parsons, thrusting
+himself forward.
+
+'No, Mr. Parsons, sir; he's not exactly writing a sermon, but he is
+practising the violoncello in his own bedroom, and gave strict orders not
+to be disturbed.'
+
+'Say I'm here,' replied Gabriel, leading the way across the garden; 'Mr.
+Parsons and Mr. Tottle, on private and particular business.'
+
+They were shown into the parlour, and the servant departed to deliver his
+message.  The distant groaning of the violoncello ceased; footsteps were
+heard on the stairs; and Mr. Timson presented himself, and shook hands
+with Parsons with the utmost cordiality.
+
+'Game!' exclaimed Ikey, who had been altering the position of a
+green-handled knife and fork at least a dozen times, in order that he
+might remain in the room under the pretext of having something to do.
+'He's game enough ven there's anything to be fierce about; but who could
+be game as you call it, Mr. Walker, with a pale young creetur like that,
+hanging about him?--It's enough to drive any man's heart into his boots
+to see 'em together--and no mistake at all about it.  I never shall
+forget her first comin' here; he wrote to her on the Thursday to come--I
+know he did, 'cos I took the letter.  Uncommon fidgety he was all day to
+be sure, and in the evening he goes down into the office, and he says to
+Jacobs, says he, "Sir, can I have the loan of a private room for a few
+minutes this evening, without incurring any additional expense--just to
+see my wife in?" says he.  Jacobs looked as much as to say--"Strike me
+bountiful if you ain't one of the modest sort!" but as the gen'lm'n who
+had been in the back parlour had just gone out, and had paid for it for
+that day, he says--werry grave--"Sir," says he, "it's agin our rules to
+let private rooms to our lodgers on gratis terms, but," says he, "for a
+gentleman, I don't mind breaking through them for once."  So then he
+turns found to me, and says, "Ikey, put two mould candles in the back
+parlour, and charge 'em to this gen'lm'n's account," vich I did.  Vell,
+by-and-by a hackney-coach comes up to the door, and there, sure enough,
+was the young lady, wrapped up in a hopera-cloak, as it might be, and all
+alone.  I opened the gate that night, so I went up when the coach come,
+and he vos a waitin' at the parlour door--and wasn't he a trembling,
+neither?  The poor creetur see him, and could hardly walk to meet him.
+"Oh, Harry!" she says, "that it should have come to this; and all for my
+sake," says she, putting her hand upon his shoulder.  So he puts his arm
+round her pretty little waist, and leading her gently a little way into
+the room, so that he might be able to shut the door, he says, so kind and
+soft-like--"Why, Kate," says he--'
+
+'Here's the gentleman you want,' said Ikey, abruptly breaking off in his
+story, and introducing Mr. Gabriel Parsons to the crest-fallen Watkins
+Tottle, who at that moment entered the room.  Watkins advanced with a
+wooden expression of passive endurance, and accepted the hand which Mr.
+Gabriel Parsons held out.
+
+'I want to speak to you,' said Gabriel, with a look strongly expressive
+of his dislike of the company.
+
+'This way,' replied the imprisoned one, leading the way to the front
+drawing-room, where rich debtors did the luxurious at the rate of a
+couple of guineas a day.
+
+'Well, here I am,' said Mr. Watkins, as he sat down on the sofa; and
+placing the palms of his hands on his knees, anxiously glanced at his
+friend's countenance.
+
+'Yes; and here you're likely to be,' said Gabriel, coolly, as he rattled
+the money in his unmentionable pockets, and looked out of the window.
+
+'What's the amount with the costs?' inquired Parsons, after an awkward
+pause.
+
+'Have you any money?'
+
+'Nine and sixpence halfpenny.'
+
+Mr. Gabriel Parsons walked up and down the room for a few seconds, before
+he could make up his mind to disclose the plan he had formed; he was
+accustomed to drive hard bargains, but was always most anxious to conceal
+his avarice.  At length he stopped short, and said, 'Tottle, you owe me
+fifty pounds.'
+
+'I do.'
+
+'And from all I see, I infer that you are likely to owe it to me.'
+
+'I fear I am.'
+
+'Though you have every disposition to pay me if you could?'
+
+'Certainly.'
+
+'Then,' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, 'listen: here's my proposition.  You
+know my way of old.  Accept it--yes or no--I will or I won't.  I'll pay
+the debt and costs, and I'll lend you 10_l._ more (which, added to your
+annuity, will enable you to carry on the war well) if you'll give me your
+note of hand to pay me one hundred and fifty pounds within six months
+after you are married to Miss Lillerton.'
+
+'My dear--'
+
+'Stop a minute--on one condition; and that is, that you propose to Miss
+Lillerton at once.'
+
+'At once!  My dear Parsons, consider.'
+
+'It's for you to consider, not me.  She knows you well from reputation,
+though she did not know you personally until lately.  Notwithstanding all
+her maiden modesty, I think she'd be devilish glad to get married out of
+hand with as little delay as possible.  My wife has sounded her on the
+subject, and she has confessed.'
+
+'What--what?' eagerly interrupted the enamoured Watkins.
+
+'Why,' replied Parsons, 'to say exactly what she has confessed, would be
+rather difficult, because they only spoke in hints, and so forth; but my
+wife, who is no bad judge in these cases, declared to me that what she
+had confessed was as good as to say that she was not insensible of your
+merits--in fact, that no other man should have her.'
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle rose hastily from his seat, and rang the bell.
+
+'What's that for?' inquired Parsons.
+
+'I want to send the man for the bill stamp,' replied Mr. Watkins Tottle.
+
+'Then you've made up your mind?'
+
+'I have,'--and they shook hands most cordially.  The note of hand was
+given--the debt and costs were paid--Ikey was satisfied for his trouble,
+and the two friends soon found themselves on that side of Mr. Solomon
+Jacobs's establishment, on which most of his visitors were very happy
+when they found themselves once again--to wit, the outside.
+
+'Now,' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as they drove to Norwood together--'you
+shall have an opportunity to make the disclosure to-night, and mind you
+speak out, Tottle.'
+
+'I will--I will!' replied Watkins, valorously.
+
+'How I should like to see you together,' ejaculated Mr. Gabriel
+Parsons.--'What fun!' and he laughed so long and so loudly, that he
+disconcerted Mr. Watkins Tottle, and frightened the horse.
+
+'There's Fanny and your intended walking about on the lawn,' said
+Gabriel, as they approached the house.  'Mind your eye, Tottle.'
+
+'Never fear,' replied Watkins, resolutely, as he made his way to the spot
+where the ladies were walking.
+
+'Here's Mr. Tottle, my dear,' said Mrs. Parsons, addressing Miss
+Lillerton.  The lady turned quickly round, and acknowledged his courteous
+salute with the same sort of confusion that Watkins had noticed on their
+first interview, but with something like a slight expression of
+disappointment or carelessness.
+
+'Did you see how glad she was to see you?' whispered Parsons to his
+friend.
+
+'Why, I really thought she looked as if she would rather have seen
+somebody else,' replied Tottle.
+
+'Pooh, nonsense!' whispered Parsons again--'it's always the way with the
+women, young or old.  They never show how delighted they are to see those
+whose presence makes their hearts beat.  It's the way with the whole sex,
+and no man should have lived to your time of life without knowing it.
+Fanny confessed it to me, when we were first married, over and over
+again--see what it is to have a wife.'
+
+'Certainly,' whispered Tottle, whose courage was vanishing fast.
+
+'Well, now, you'd better begin to pave the way,' said Parsons, who,
+having invested some money in the speculation, assumed the office of
+director.
+
+'Yes, yes, I will--presently,' replied Tottle, greatly flurried.
+
+'Say something to her, man,' urged Parsons again.  'Confound it! pay her
+a compliment, can't you?'
+
+'No! not till after dinner,' replied the bashful Tottle, anxious to
+postpone the evil moment.
+
+'Well, gentlemen,' said Mrs. Parsons, 'you are really very polite; you
+stay away the whole morning, after promising to take us out, and when you
+do come home, you stand whispering together and take no notice of us.'
+
+'We were talking of the _business_, my dear, which detained us this
+morning,' replied Parsons, looking significantly at Tottle.
+
+'Dear me! how very quickly the morning has gone,' said Miss Lillerton,
+referring to the gold watch, which was wound up on state occasions,
+whether it required it or not.
+
+'I think it has passed very slowly,' mildly suggested Tottle.
+
+('That's right--bravo!') whispered Parsons.
+
+'Indeed!' said Miss Lillerton, with an air of majestic surprise.
+
+'I can only impute it to my unavoidable absence from your society,
+madam,' said Watkins, 'and that of Mrs. Parsons.'
+
+During this short dialogue, the ladies had been leading the way to the
+house.
+
+'What the deuce did you stick Fanny into that last compliment for?'
+inquired Parsons, as they followed together; 'it quite spoilt the
+effect.'
+
+'Oh! it really would have been too broad without,' replied Watkins
+Tottle, 'much too broad!'
+
+'He's mad!' Parsons whispered his wife, as they entered the drawing-room,
+'mad from modesty.'
+
+'Dear me!' ejaculated the lady, 'I never heard of such a thing.'
+
+'You'll find we have quite a family dinner, Mr. Tottle,' said Mrs.
+Parsons, when they sat down to table: 'Miss Lillerton is one of us, and,
+of course, we make no stranger of you.'
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle expressed a hope that the Parsons family never would
+make a stranger of him; and wished internally that his bashfulness would
+allow him to feel a little less like a stranger himself.
+
+'Take off the covers, Martha,' said Mrs. Parsons, directing the shifting
+of the scenery with great anxiety.  The order was obeyed, and a pair of
+boiled fowls, with tongue and et ceteras, were displayed at the top, and
+a fillet of veal at the bottom.  On one side of the table two green
+sauce-tureens, with ladles of the same, were setting to each other in a
+green dish; and on the other was a curried rabbit, in a brown suit,
+turned up with lemon.
+
+'Miss Lillerton, my dear,' said Mrs. Parsons, 'shall I assist you?'
+
+'Thank you, no; I think I'll trouble Mr. Tottle.'
+
+Watkins started--trembled--helped the rabbit--and broke a tumbler.  The
+countenance of the lady of the house, which had been all smiles
+previously, underwent an awful change.
+
+'Extremely sorry,' stammered Watkins, assisting himself to currie and
+parsley and butter, in the extremity of his confusion.
+
+'Not the least consequence,' replied Mrs. Parsons, in a tone which
+implied that it was of the greatest consequence possible,--directing
+aside the researches of the boy, who was groping under the table for the
+bits of broken glass.
+
+'I presume,' said Miss Lillerton, 'that Mr. Tottle is aware of the
+interest which bachelors usually pay in such cases; a dozen glasses for
+one is the lowest penalty.'
+
+Mr. Gabriel Parsons gave his friend an admonitory tread on the toe.  Here
+was a clear hint that the sooner he ceased to be a bachelor and
+emancipated himself from such penalties, the better.  Mr. Watkins Tottle
+viewed the observation in the same light, and challenged Mrs. Parsons to
+take wine, with a degree of presence of mind, which, under all the
+circumstances, was really extraordinary.
+
+'Miss Lillerton,' said Gabriel, 'may I have the pleasure?'
+
+'I shall be most happy.'
+
+'Tottle, will you assist Miss Lillerton, and pass the decanter.  Thank
+you.'  (The usual pantomimic ceremony of nodding and sipping gone
+through)--
+
+'Tottle, were you ever in Suffolk?' inquired the master of the house, who
+was burning to tell one of his seven stock stories.
+
+'No,' responded Watkins, adding, by way of a saving clause, 'but I've
+been in Devonshire.'
+
+'Ah!' replied Gabriel, 'it was in Suffolk that a rather singular
+circumstance happened to me many years ago.  Did you ever happen to hear
+me mention it?'
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle _had_ happened to hear his friend mention it some four
+hundred times.  Of course he expressed great curiosity, and evinced the
+utmost impatience to hear the story again.  Mr. Gabriel Parsons forthwith
+attempted to proceed, in spite of the interruptions to which, as our
+readers must frequently have observed, the master of the house is often
+exposed in such cases.  We will attempt to give them an idea of our
+meaning.
+
+'When I was in Suffolk--' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons.
+
+'Take off the fowls first, Martha,' said Mrs. Parsons.  'I beg your
+pardon, my dear.'
+
+'When I was in Suffolk,' resumed Mr. Parsons, with an impatient glance at
+his wife, who pretended not to observe it, 'which is now years ago,
+business led me to the town of Bury St. Edmund's.  I had to stop at the
+principal places in my way, and therefore, for the sake of convenience, I
+travelled in a gig.  I left Sudbury one dark night--it was winter
+time--about nine o'clock; the rain poured in torrents, the wind howled
+among the trees that skirted the roadside, and I was obliged to proceed
+at a foot-pace, for I could hardly see my hand before me, it was so
+dark--'
+
+'John,' interrupted Mrs. Parsons, in a low, hollow voice, 'don't spill
+that gravy.'
+
+'Fanny,' said Parsons impatiently, 'I wish you'd defer these domestic
+reproofs to some more suitable time.  Really, my dear, these constant
+interruptions are very annoying.'
+
+'My dear, I didn't interrupt you,' said Mrs. Parsons.
+
+'But, my dear, you did interrupt me,' remonstrated Mr. Parsons.
+
+'How very absurd you are, my love!  I must give directions to the
+servants; I am quite sure that if I sat here and allowed John to spill
+the gravy over the new carpet, you'd be the first to find fault when you
+saw the stain to-morrow morning.'
+
+'Well,' continued Gabriel with a resigned air, as if he knew there was no
+getting over the point about the carpet, 'I was just saying, it was so
+dark that I could hardly see my hand before me.  The road was very
+lonely, and I assure you, Tottle (this was a device to arrest the
+wandering attention of that individual, which was distracted by a
+confidential communication between Mrs. Parsons and Martha, accompanied
+by the delivery of a large bunch of keys), I assure you, Tottle, I became
+somehow impressed with a sense of the loneliness of my situation--'
+
+'Pie to your master,' interrupted Mrs. Parsons, again directing the
+servant.
+
+'Now, pray, my dear,' remonstrated Parsons once more, very pettishly.
+Mrs. P. turned up her hands and eyebrows, and appealed in dumb show to
+Miss Lillerton.  'As I turned a corner of the road,' resumed Gabriel,
+'the horse stopped short, and reared tremendously.  I pulled up, jumped
+out, ran to his head, and found a man lying on his back in the middle of
+the road, with his eyes fixed on the sky.  I thought he was dead; but no,
+he was alive, and there appeared to be nothing the matter with him.  He
+jumped up, and potting his hand to his chest, and fixing upon me the most
+earnest gaze you can imagine, exclaimed--'Pudding here,' said Mrs.
+Parsons.
+
+'Oh! it's no use,' exclaimed the host, now rendered desperate.  'Here,
+Tottle; a glass of wine.  It's useless to attempt relating anything when
+Mrs. Parsons is present.'
+
+This attack was received in the usual way.  Mrs. Parsons talked _to_ Miss
+Lillerton and _at_ her better half; expatiated on the impatience of men
+generally; hinted that her husband was peculiarly vicious in this
+respect, and wound up by insinuating that she must be one of the best
+tempers that ever existed, or she never could put up with it.  Really
+what she had to endure sometimes, was more than any one who saw her in
+every-day life could by possibility suppose.--The story was now a painful
+subject, and therefore Mr. Parsons declined to enter into any details,
+and contented himself by stating that the man was a maniac, who had
+escaped from a neighbouring mad-house.
+
+The cloth was removed; the ladies soon afterwards retired, and Miss
+Lillerton played the piano in the drawing-room overhead, very loudly, for
+the edification of the visitor.  Mr. Watkins Tottle and Mr. Gabriel
+Parsons sat chatting comfortably enough, until the conclusion of the
+second bottle, when the latter, in proposing an adjournment to the
+drawing-room, informed Watkins that he had concerted a plan with his
+wife, for leaving him and Miss Lillerton alone, soon after tea.
+
+'I say,' said Tottle, as they went up-stairs, 'don't you think it would
+be better if we put it off till-till-to-morrow?'
+
+'Don't _you_ think it would have been much better if I had left you in
+that wretched hole I found you in this morning?' retorted Parsons
+bluntly.
+
+'Well--well--I only made a suggestion,' said poor Watkins Tottle, with a
+deep sigh.
+
+Tea was soon concluded, and Miss Lillerton, drawing a small work-table on
+one side of the fire, and placing a little wooden frame upon it,
+something like a miniature clay-mill without the horse, was soon busily
+engaged in making a watch-guard with brown silk.
+
+'God bless me!' exclaimed Parsons, starting up with well-feigned
+surprise, 'I've forgotten those confounded letters.  Tottle, I know
+you'll excuse me.'
+
+If Tottle had been a free agent, he would have allowed no one to leave
+the room on any pretence, except himself.  As it was, however, he was
+obliged to look cheerful when Parsons quitted the apartment.
+
+He had scarcely left, when Martha put her head into the room,
+with--'Please, ma'am, you're wanted.'
+
+Mrs. Parsons left the room, shut the door carefully after her, and Mr.
+Watkins Tottle was left alone with Miss Lillerton.
+
+For the first five minutes there was a dead silence.--Mr. Watkins Tottle
+was thinking how he should begin, and Miss Lillerton appeared to be
+thinking of nothing.  The fire was burning low; Mr. Watkins Tottle
+stirred it, and put some coals on.
+
+'Hem!' coughed Miss Lillerton; Mr. Watkins Tottle thought the fair
+creature had spoken.  'I beg your pardon,' said he.
+
+'Eh?'
+
+'I thought you spoke.'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'There are some books on the sofa, Mr. Tottle, if you would like to look
+at them,' said Miss Lillerton, after the lapse of another five minutes.
+
+'No, thank you,' returned Watkins; and then he added, with a courage
+which was perfectly astonishing, even to himself, 'Madam, that is Miss
+Lillerton, I wish to speak to you.'
+
+'To me!' said Miss Lillerton, letting the silk drop from her hands, and
+sliding her chair back a few paces.--'Speak--to me!'
+
+'To you, madam--and on the subject of the state of your affections.'  The
+lady hastily rose and would have left the room; but Mr. Watkins Tottle
+gently detained her by the hand, and holding it as far from him as the
+joint length of their arms would permit, he thus proceeded: 'Pray do not
+misunderstand me, or suppose that I am led to address you, after so short
+an acquaintance, by any feeling of my own merits--for merits I have none
+which could give me a claim to your hand.  I hope you will acquit me of
+any presumption when I explain that I have been acquainted through Mrs.
+Parsons, with the state--that is, that Mrs. Parsons has told me--at
+least, not Mrs. Parsons, but--' here Watkins began to wander, but Miss
+Lillerton relieved him.
+
+'Am I to understand, Mr. Tottle, that Mrs. Parsons has acquainted you
+with my feeling--my affection--I mean my respect, for an individual of
+the opposite sex?'
+
+'She has.'
+
+'Then, what?' inquired Miss Lillerton, averting her face, with a girlish
+air, 'what could induce _you_ to seek such an interview as this?  What
+can your object be?  How can I promote your happiness, Mr. Tottle?'
+
+Here was the time for a flourish--'By allowing me,' replied Watkins,
+falling bump on his knees, and breaking two brace-buttons and a
+waistcoat-string, in the act--'By allowing me to be your slave, your
+servant--in short, by unreservedly making me the confidant of your
+heart's feelings--may I say for the promotion of your own happiness--may
+I say, in order that you may become the wife of a kind and affectionate
+husband?'
+
+'Disinterested creature!' exclaimed Miss Lillerton, hiding her face in a
+white pocket-handkerchief with an eyelet-hole border.
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle thought that if the lady knew all, she might possibly
+alter her opinion on this last point.  He raised the tip of her middle
+finger ceremoniously to his lips, and got off his knees, as gracefully as
+he could.  'My information was correct?' he tremulously inquired, when he
+was once more on his feet.
+
+'It was.'  Watkins elevated his hands, and looked up to the ornament in
+the centre of the ceiling, which had been made for a lamp, by way of
+expressing his rapture.
+
+'Our situation, Mr. Tottle,' resumed the lady, glancing at him through
+one of the eyelet-holes, 'is a most peculiar. and delicate one.'
+
+'It is,' said Mr. Tottle.
+
+'Our acquaintance has been of _so_ short duration,' said Miss Lillerton.
+
+'Only a week,' assented Watkins Tottle.
+
+'Oh! more than that,' exclaimed the lady, in a tone of surprise.
+
+'Indeed!' said Tottle.
+
+'More than a month--more than two months!' said Miss Lillerton.
+
+'Rather odd, this,' thought Watkins.
+
+'Oh!' he said, recollecting Parsons's assurance that she had known him
+from report, 'I understand.  But, my dear madam, pray, consider.  The
+longer this acquaintance has existed, the less reason is I there for
+delay now.  Why not at once fix a period for gratifying the hopes of your
+devoted admirer?'
+
+'It has been represented to me again and again that this is the course I
+ought to pursue,' replied Miss Lillerton, 'but pardon my feelings of
+delicacy, Mr. Tottle--pray excuse this embarrassment--I have peculiar
+ideas on such subjects, and I am quite sure that I never could summon up
+fortitude enough to name the day to my future husband.'
+
+'Then allow _me_ to name it,' said Tottle eagerly.
+
+'I should like to fix it myself,' replied Miss Lillerton, bashfully, but
+I cannot do so without at once resorting to a third party.'
+
+'A third party!' thought Watkins Tottle; 'who the deuce is that to be, I
+wonder!'
+
+'Mr. Tottle,' continued Miss Lillerton, 'you have made me a most
+disinterested and kind offer--that offer I accept.  Will you at once be
+the bearer of a note from me to--to Mr. Timson?'
+
+'Mr. Timson!' said Watkins.
+
+'After what has passed between us,' responded Miss Lillerton, still
+averting her head, 'you must understand whom I mean; Mr. Timson,
+the--the--clergyman.'
+
+'Mr. Timson, the clergyman!' ejaculated Watkins Tottle, in a state of
+inexpressible beatitude, and positive wonder at his own success.  'Angel!
+Certainly--this moment!'
+
+'I'll prepare it immediately,' said Miss Lillerton, making for the door;
+'the events of this day have flurried me so much, Mr. Tottle, that I
+shall not leave my room again this evening; I will send you the note by
+the servant.'
+
+'Stay,--stay,' cried Watkins Tottle, still keeping a most respectful
+distance from the lady; 'when shall we meet again?'
+
+'Oh!  Mr. Tottle,' replied Miss Lillerton, coquettishly, 'when we are
+married, I can never see you too often, nor thank you too much;' and she
+left the room.
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle flung himself into an arm-chair, and indulged in the
+most delicious reveries of future bliss, in which the idea of 'Five
+hundred pounds per annum, with an uncontrolled power of disposing of it
+by her last will and testament,' was somehow or other the foremost.  He
+had gone through the interview so well, and it had terminated so
+admirably, that he almost began to wish he had expressly stipulated for
+the settlement of the annual five hundred on himself.
+
+'May I come in?' said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, peeping in at the door.
+
+'You may,' replied Watkins.
+
+'Well, have you done it?' anxiously inquired Gabriel.
+
+'Have I done it!' said Watkins Tottle.  'Hush--I'm going to the
+clergyman.'
+
+'No!' said Parsons.  'How well you have managed it!'
+
+'Where does Timson live?' inquired Watkins.
+
+'At his uncle's,' replied Gabriel, 'just round the lane.  He's waiting
+for a living, and has been assisting his uncle here for the last two or
+three months.  But how well you have done it--I didn't think you could
+have carried it off so!'
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle was proceeding to demonstrate that the Richardsonian
+principle was the best on which love could possibly be made, when he was
+interrupted by the entrance of Martha, with a little pink note folded
+like a fancy cocked-hat.
+
+'Miss Lillerton's compliments,' said Martha, as she delivered it into
+Tottle's hands, and vanished.
+
+'Do you observe the delicacy?' said Tottle, appealing to Mr. Gabriel
+Parsons.  '_Compliments_, not _love_, by the servant, eh?'
+
+Mr. Gabriel Parsons didn't exactly know what reply to make, so he poked
+the forefinger of his right hand between the third and fourth ribs of Mr.
+Watkins Tottle.
+
+'Come,' said Watkins, when the explosion of mirth, consequent on this
+practical jest, had subsided, 'we'll be off at once--let's lose no time.'
+
+'Capital!' echoed Gabriel Parsons; and in five minutes they were at the
+garden-gate of the villa tenanted by the uncle of Mr. Timson.
+
+'Is Mr. Charles Timson at home?' inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle of Mr.
+Charles Timson's uncle's man.
+
+'Mr. Charles _is_ at home,' replied the man, stammering; 'but he desired
+me to say he couldn't be interrupted, sir, by any of the parishioners.'
+
+'_I_ am not a parishioner,' replied Watkins.
+
+'Is Mr. Charles writing a sermon, Tom?' inquired Parsons, thrusting
+himself forward.
+
+'No, Mr. Parsons, sir; he's not exactly writing a sermon, but he is
+practising the violoncello in his own bedroom, and gave strict orders not
+to be disturbed.'
+
+'Say I'm here,' replied Gabriel, leading the way across the garden; 'Mr.
+Parsons and Mr. Tottle, on private and particular business.'
+
+They were shown into the parlour, and the servant departed to deliver his
+message.  The distant groaning of the violoncello ceased; footsteps were
+heard on the stairs; and Mr. Timson presented himself, and shook hands
+with Parsons with the utmost cordiality.
+
+'How do you do, sir?' said Watkins Tottle, with great solemnity.
+
+'How do _you_ do, sir?' replied Timson, with as much coldness as if it
+were a matter of perfect indifference to him how he did, as it very
+likely was.
+
+'I beg to deliver this note to you,' said Watkins Tottle, producing the
+cocked-hat.
+
+'From Miss Lillerton!' said Timson, suddenly changing colour.  'Pray sit
+down.'
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle sat down; and while Timson perused the note, fixed his
+eyes on an oyster-sauce-coloured portrait of the Archbishop of
+Canterbury, which hung over the fireplace.
+
+Mr. Timson rose from his seat when he had concluded the note, and looked
+dubiously at Parsons.  'May I ask,' he inquired, appealing to Watkins
+Tottle, 'whether our friend here is acquainted with the object of your
+visit?'
+
+'Our friend is in _my_ confidence,' replied Watkins, with considerable
+importance.
+
+'Then, sir,' said Timson, seizing both Tottle's hands, 'allow me in his
+presence to thank you most unfeignedly and cordially, for the noble part
+you have acted in this affair.'
+
+'He thinks I recommended him,' thought Tottle.  'Confound these fellows!
+they never think of anything but their fees.'
+
+'I deeply regret having misunderstood your intentions, my dear sir,'
+continued Timson.  'Disinterested and manly, indeed!  There are very few
+men who would have acted as you have done.'
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle could not help thinking that this last remark was
+anything but complimentary.  He therefore inquired, rather hastily, 'When
+is it to be?'
+
+'On Thursday,' replied Timson,--'on Thursday morning at half-past eight.'
+
+'Uncommonly early,' observed Watkins Tottle, with an air of triumphant
+self-denial.  'I shall hardly be able to get down here by that hour.'
+(This was intended for a joke.)
+
+'Never mind, my dear fellow,' replied Timson, all suavity, shaking hands
+with Tottle again most heartily, 'so long as we see you to breakfast, you
+know--'
+
+'Eh!' said Parsons, with one of the most extraordinary expressions of
+countenance that ever appeared in a human face.
+
+'What!' ejaculated Watkins Tottle, at the same moment.
+
+'I say that so long as we see you to breakfast,' replied Timson, 'we will
+excuse your being absent from the ceremony, though of course your
+presence at it would give us the utmost pleasure.'
+
+Mr. Watkins Tottle staggered against the wall, and fixed his eyes on
+Timson with appalling perseverance.
+
+'Timson,' said Parsons, hurriedly brushing his hat with his left arm,
+'when you say "us," whom do you mean?'
+
+Mr. Timson looked foolish in his turn, when he replied, 'Why--Mrs. Timson
+that will be this day week: Miss Lillerton that is--'
+
+'Now don't stare at that idiot in the corner,' angrily exclaimed Parsons,
+as the extraordinary convulsions of Watkins Tottle's countenance excited
+the wondering gaze of Timson,--'but have the goodness to tell me in three
+words the contents of that note?'
+
+'This note,' replied Timson, 'is from Miss Lillerton, to whom I have been
+for the last five weeks regularly engaged.  Her singular scruples and
+strange feeling on some points have hitherto prevented my bringing the
+engagement to that termination which I so anxiously desire.  She informs
+me here, that she sounded Mrs. Parsons with the view of making her her
+confidante and go-between, that Mrs. Parsons informed this elderly
+gentleman, Mr. Tottle, of the circumstance, and that he, in the most kind
+and delicate terms, offered to assist us in any way, and even undertook
+to convey this note, which contains the promise I have long sought in
+vain--an act of kindness for which I can never be sufficiently grateful.'
+
+'Good night, Timson,' said Parsons, hurrying off, and carrying the
+bewildered Tottle with him.
+
+'Won't you stay--and have something?' said Timson.
+
+'No, thank ye,' replied Parsons; 'I've had quite enough;' and away he
+went, followed by Watkins Tottle in a state of stupefaction.
+
+Mr. Gabriel Parsons whistled until they had walked some quarter of a mile
+past his own gate, when he suddenly stopped, and said--
+
+'You are a clever fellow, Tottle, ain't you?'
+
+'I don't know,' said the unfortunate Watkins.
+
+'I suppose you'll say this is Fanny's fault, won't you?' inquired
+Gabriel.
+
+'I don't know anything about it,' replied the bewildered Tottle.
+
+'Well,' said Parsons, turning on his heel to go home, 'the next time you
+make an offer, you had better speak plainly, and don't throw a chance
+away.  And the next time you're locked up in a spunging-house, just wait
+there till I come and take you out, there's a good fellow.'
+
+How, or at what hour, Mr. Watkins Tottle returned to Cecil-street is
+unknown.  His boots were seen outside his bedroom-door next morning; but
+we have the authority of his landlady for stating that he neither emerged
+therefrom nor accepted sustenance for four-and-twenty hours.  At the
+expiration of that period, and when a council of war was being held in
+the kitchen on the propriety of summoning the parochial beadle to break
+his door open, he rang his bell, and demanded a cup of milk-and-water.
+The next morning he went through the formalities of eating and drinking
+as usual, but a week afterwards he was seized with a relapse, while
+perusing the list of marriages in a morning paper, from which he never
+perfectly recovered.
+
+A few weeks after the last-named occurrence, the body of a gentleman
+unknown, was found in the Regent's canal.  In the trousers-pockets were
+four shillings and threepence halfpenny; a matrimonial advertisement from
+a lady, which appeared to have been cut out of a Sunday paper: a
+tooth-pick, and a card-case, which it is confidently believed would have
+led to the identification of the unfortunate gentleman, but for the
+circumstance of there being none but blank cards in it.  Mr. Watkins
+Tottle absented himself from his lodgings shortly before.  A bill, which
+has not been taken up, was presented next morning; and a bill, which has
+not been taken down, was soon afterwards affixed in his parlour-window.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING
+
+
+Mr. Nicodemus Dumps, or, as his acquaintance called him, 'long Dumps,'
+was a bachelor, six feet high, and fifty years old: cross, cadaverous,
+odd, and ill-natured.  He was never happy but when he was miserable; and
+always miserable when he had the best reason to be happy.  The only real
+comfort of his existence was to make everybody about him wretched--then
+he might be truly said to enjoy life.  He was afflicted with a situation
+in the Bank worth five hundred a-year, and he rented a 'first-floor
+furnished,' at Pentonville, which he originally took because it commanded
+a dismal prospect of an adjacent churchyard.  He was familiar with the
+face of every tombstone, and the burial service seemed to excite his
+strongest sympathy.  His friends said he was surly--he insisted he was
+nervous; they thought him a lucky dog, but he protested that he was 'the
+most unfortunate man in the world.'  Cold as he was, and wretched as he
+declared himself to be, he was not wholly unsusceptible of attachments.
+He revered the memory of Hoyle, as he was himself an admirable and
+imperturbable whist-player, and he chuckled with delight at a fretful and
+impatient adversary.  He adored King Herod for his massacre of the
+innocents; and if he hated one thing more than another, it was a child.
+However, he could hardly be said to hate anything in particular, because
+he disliked everything in general; but perhaps his greatest antipathies
+were cabs, old women, doors that would not shut, musical amateurs, and
+omnibus cads.  He subscribed to the 'Society for the Suppression of Vice'
+for the pleasure of putting a stop to any harmless amusements; and he
+contributed largely towards the support of two itinerant methodist
+parsons, in the amiable hope that if circumstances rendered any people
+happy in this world, they might perchance be rendered miserable by fears
+for the next.
+
+Mr. Dumps had a nephew who had been married about a year, and who was
+somewhat of a favourite with his uncle, because he was an admirable
+subject to exercise his misery-creating powers upon.  Mr. Charles
+Kitterbell was a small, sharp, spare man, with a very large head, and a
+broad, good-humoured countenance.  He looked like a faded giant, with the
+head and face partially restored; and he had a cast in his eye which
+rendered it quite impossible for any one with whom he conversed to know
+where he was looking.  His eyes appeared fixed on the wall, and he was
+staring you out of countenance; in short, there was no catching his eye,
+and perhaps it is a merciful dispensation of Providence that such eyes
+are not catching.  In addition to these characteristics, it may be added
+that Mr. Charles Kitterbell was one of the most credulous and
+matter-of-fact little personages that ever took _to_ himself a wife, and
+_for_ himself a house in Great Russell-street, Bedford-square.  (Uncle
+Dumps always dropped the 'Bedford-square,' and inserted in lieu thereof
+the dreadful words 'Tottenham-court-road.')
+
+'No, but, uncle, 'pon my life you must--you must promise to be
+godfather,' said Mr. Kitterbell, as he sat in conversation with his
+respected relative one morning.
+
+'I cannot, indeed I cannot,' returned Dumps.
+
+'Well, but why not?  Jemima will think it very unkind.  It's very little
+trouble.'
+
+'As to the trouble,' rejoined the most unhappy man in existence, 'I don't
+mind that; but my nerves are in that state--I cannot go through the
+ceremony.  You know I don't like going out.--For God's sake, Charles,
+don't fidget with that stool so; you'll drive me mad.'  Mr. Kitterbell,
+quite regardless of his uncle's nerves, had occupied himself for some ten
+minutes in describing a circle on the floor with one leg of the
+office-stool on which he was seated, keeping the other three up in the
+air, and holding fast on by the desk.
+
+'I beg your pardon, uncle,' said Kitterbell, quite abashed, suddenly
+releasing his hold of the desk, and bringing the three wandering legs
+back to the floor, with a force sufficient to drive them through it.
+
+'But come, don't refuse.  If it's a boy, you know, we must have two
+godfathers.'
+
+'_If_ it's a boy!' said Dumps; 'why can't you say at once whether it _is_
+a boy or not?'
+
+'I should be very happy to tell you, but it's impossible I can undertake
+to say whether it's a girl or a boy, if the child isn't born yet.'
+
+'Not born yet!' echoed Dumps, with a gleam of hope lighting up his
+lugubrious visage.  'Oh, well, it _may_ be a girl, and then you won't
+want me; or if it is a boy, it _may_ die before it is christened.'
+
+'I hope not,' said the father that expected to be, looking very grave.
+
+'I hope not,' acquiesced Dumps, evidently pleased with the subject.  He
+was beginning to get happy.  'I hope not, but distressing cases
+frequently occur during the first two or three days of a child's life;
+fits, I am told, are exceedingly common, and alarming convulsions are
+almost matters of course.'
+
+'Lord, uncle!' ejaculated little Kitterbell, gasping for breath.
+
+'Yes; my landlady was confined--let me see--last Tuesday: an uncommonly
+fine boy.  On the Thursday night the nurse was sitting with him upon her
+knee before the fire, and he was as well as possible.  Suddenly he became
+black in the face, and alarmingly spasmodic.  The medical man was
+instantly sent for, and every remedy was tried, but--'
+
+'How frightful!' interrupted the horror-stricken Kitterbell.
+
+'The child died, of course.  However, your child _may_ not die; and if it
+should be a boy, and should _live_ to be christened, why I suppose I must
+be one of the sponsors.'  Dumps was evidently good-natured on the faith
+of his anticipations.
+
+'Thank you, uncle,' said his agitated nephew, grasping his hand as warmly
+as if he had done him some essential service.  'Perhaps I had better not
+tell Mrs. K. what you have mentioned.'
+
+'Why, if she's low-spirited, perhaps you had better not mention the
+melancholy case to her,' returned Dumps, who of course had invented the
+whole story; 'though perhaps it would be but doing your duty as a husband
+to prepare her for the _worst_.'
+
+A day or two afterwards, as Dumps was perusing a morning paper at the
+chop-house which he regularly frequented, the following-paragraph met his
+eyes:--
+
+    '_Births_.--On Saturday, the 18th inst., in Great Russell-street, the
+    lady of Charles Kitterbell, Esq., of a son.'
+
+'It _is_ a boy!' he exclaimed, dashing down the paper, to the
+astonishment of the waiters.  'It _is_ a boy!'  But he speedily regained
+his composure as his eye rested on a paragraph quoting the number of
+infant deaths from the bills of mortality.
+
+Six weeks passed away, and as no communication had been received from the
+Kitterbells, Dumps was beginning to flatter himself that the child was
+dead, when the following note painfully resolved his doubts:--
+
+                                                  '_Great Russell-street_,
+                                                         _Monday morning_.
+
+    'DEAR UNCLE,--You will be delighted to hear that my dear Jemima has
+    left her room, and that your future godson is getting on capitally.
+    He was very thin at first, but he is getting much larger, and nurse
+    says he is filling out every day.  He cries a good deal, and is a
+    very singular colour, which made Jemima and me rather uncomfortable;
+    but as nurse says it's natural, and as of course we know nothing
+    about these things yet, we are quite satisfied with what nurse says.
+    We think he will be a sharp child; and nurse says she's sure he will,
+    because he never goes to sleep.  You will readily believe that we are
+    all very happy, only we're a little worn out for want of rest, as he
+    keeps us awake all night; but this we must expect, nurse says, for
+    the first six or eight months.  He has been vaccinated, but in
+    consequence of the operation being rather awkwardly performed, some
+    small particles of glass were introduced into the arm with the
+    matter.  Perhaps this may in some degree account for his being rather
+    fractious; at least, so nurse says.  We propose to have him
+    christened at twelve o'clock on Friday, at Saint George's church, in
+    Hart-street, by the name of Frederick Charles William.  Pray don't be
+    later than a quarter before twelve.  We shall have a very few friends
+    in the evening, when of course we shall see you.  I am sorry to say
+    that the dear boy appears rather restless and uneasy to-day: the
+    cause, I fear, is fever.
+
+                                                  'Believe me, dear Uncle,
+                                                    'Yours affectionately,
+                                                      'CHARLES KITTERBELL.
+
+    'P.S.--I open this note to say that we have just discovered the cause
+    of little Frederick's restlessness.  It is not fever, as I
+    apprehended, but a small pin, which nurse accidentally stuck in his
+    leg yesterday evening.  We have taken it out, and he appears more
+    composed, though he still sobs a good deal.'
+
+It is almost unnecessary to say that the perusal of the above interesting
+statement was no great relief to the mind of the hypochondriacal Dumps.
+It was impossible to recede, however, and so he put the best face--that
+is to say, an uncommonly miserable one--upon the matter; and purchased a
+handsome silver mug for the infant Kitterbell, upon which he ordered the
+initials 'F. C. W. K.,' with the customary untrained grape-vine-looking
+flourishes, and a large full stop, to be engraved forthwith.
+
+Monday was a fine day, Tuesday was delightful, Wednesday was equal to
+either, and Thursday was finer than ever; four successive fine days in
+London!  Hackney-coachmen became revolutionary, and crossing-sweepers
+began to doubt the existence of a First Cause.  The _Morning Herald_
+informed its readers that an old woman in Camden Town had been heard to
+say that the fineness of the season was 'unprecedented in the memory of
+the oldest inhabitant;' and Islington clerks, with large families and
+small salaries, left off their black gaiters, disdained to carry their
+once green cotton umbrellas, and walked to town in the conscious pride of
+white stockings and cleanly brushed Bluchers.  Dumps beheld all this with
+an eye of supreme contempt--his triumph was at hand.  He knew that if it
+had been fine for four weeks instead of four days, it would rain when he
+went out; he was lugubriously happy in the conviction that Friday would
+be a wretched day--and so it was.  'I knew how it would be,' said Dumps,
+as he turned round opposite the Mansion-house at half-past eleven o'clock
+on the Friday morning.  'I knew how it would be.  _I_ am concerned, and
+that's enough;'--and certainly the appearance of the day was sufficient
+to depress the spirits of a much more buoyant-hearted individual than
+himself.  It had rained, without a moment's cessation, since eight
+o'clock; everybody that passed up Cheapside, and down Cheapside, looked
+wet, cold, and dirty.  All sorts of forgotten and long-concealed
+umbrellas had been put into requisition.  Cabs whisked about, with the
+'fare' as carefully boxed up behind two glazed calico curtains as any
+mysterious picture in any one of Mrs. Radcliffe's castles; omnibus horses
+smoked like steam-engines; nobody thought of 'standing up' under doorways
+or arches; they were painfully convinced it was a hopeless case; and so
+everybody went hastily along, jumbling and jostling, and swearing and
+perspiring, and slipping about, like amateur skaters behind wooden chairs
+on the Serpentine on a frosty Sunday.
+
+Dumps paused; he could not think of walking, being rather smart for the
+christening.  If he took a cab he was sure to be spilt, and a
+hackney-coach was too expensive for his economical ideas.  An omnibus was
+waiting at the opposite corner--it was a desperate case--he had never
+heard of an omnibus upsetting or running away, and if the cad did knock
+him down, he could 'pull him up' in return.
+
+'Now, sir!' cried the young gentleman who officiated as 'cad' to the
+'Lads of the Village,' which was the name of the machine just noticed.
+Dumps crossed.
+
+'This vay, sir!' shouted the driver of the 'Hark-away,' pulling up his
+vehicle immediately across the door of the opposition--'This vay,
+sir--he's full.'  Dumps hesitated, whereupon the 'Lads of the Village'
+commenced pouring out a torrent of abuse against the 'Hark-away;' but the
+conductor of the 'Admiral Napier' settled the contest in a most
+satisfactory manner, for all parties, by seizing Dumps round the waist,
+and thrusting him into the middle of his vehicle which had just come up
+and only wanted the sixteenth inside.
+
+'All right,' said the 'Admiral,' and off the thing thundered, like a
+fire-engine at full gallop, with the kidnapped customer inside, standing
+in the position of a half doubled-up bootjack, and falling about with
+every jerk of the machine, first on the one side, and then on the other,
+like a 'Jack-in-the-green,' on May-day, setting to the lady with a brass
+ladle.
+
+'For Heaven's sake, where am I to sit?' inquired the miserable man of an
+old gentleman, into whose stomach he had just fallen for the fourth time.
+
+'Anywhere but on my _chest_, sir,' replied the old gentleman in a surly
+tone.
+
+'Perhaps the _box_ would suit the gentleman better,' suggested a very
+damp lawyer's clerk, in a pink shirt, and a smirking countenance.
+
+After a great deal of struggling and falling about, Dumps at last managed
+to squeeze himself into a seat, which, in addition to the slight
+disadvantage of being between a window that would not shut, and a door
+that must be open, placed him in close contact with a passenger, who had
+been walking about all the morning without an umbrella, and who looked as
+if he had spent the day in a full water-butt--only wetter.
+
+'Don't bang the door so,' said Dumps to the conductor, as he shut it
+after letting out four of the passengers; I am very nervous--it destroys
+me.'
+
+'Did any gen'lm'n say anythink?' replied the cad, thrusting in his head,
+and trying to look as if he didn't understand the request.
+
+'I told you not to bang the door so!' repeated Dumps, with an expression
+of countenance like the knave of clubs, in convulsions.
+
+'Oh! vy, it's rather a sing'ler circumstance about this here door, sir,
+that it von't shut without banging,' replied the conductor; and he opened
+the door very wide, and shut it again with a terrific bang, in proof of
+the assertion.
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,' said a little prim, wheezing old gentleman,
+sitting opposite Dumps, 'I beg your pardon; but have you ever observed,
+when you have been in an omnibus on a wet day, that four people out of
+five always come in with large cotton umbrellas, without a handle at the
+top, or the brass spike at the bottom?'
+
+'Why, sir,' returned Dumps, as he heard the clock strike twelve, 'it
+never struck me before; but now you mention it, I--Hollo! hollo!' shouted
+the persecuted individual, as the omnibus dashed past Drury-lane, where
+he had directed to be set down.--'Where is the cad?'
+
+'I think he's on the box, sir,' said the young gentleman before noticed
+in the pink shirt, which looked like a white one ruled with red ink.
+
+'I want to be set down!' said Dumps in a faint voice, overcome by his
+previous efforts.
+
+'I think these cads want to be _set down_,' returned the attorney's
+clerk, chuckling at his sally.
+
+'Hollo!' cried Dumps again.
+
+'Hollo!' echoed the passengers.  The omnibus passed St. Giles's church.
+
+'Hold hard!' said the conductor; 'I'm blowed if we ha'n't forgot the
+gen'lm'n as vas to be set down at Doory-lane.--Now, sir, make haste, if
+you please,' he added, opening the door, and assisting Dumps out with as
+much coolness as if it was 'all right.'  Dumps's indignation was for once
+getting the better of his cynical equanimity.  'Drury-lane!' he gasped,
+with the voice of a boy in a cold bath for the first time.
+
+'Doory-lane, sir?--yes, sir,--third turning on the right-hand side, sir.'
+
+Dumps's passion was paramount: he clutched his umbrella, and was striding
+off with the firm determination of not paying the fare.  The cad, by a
+remarkable coincidence, happened to entertain a directly contrary
+opinion, and Heaven knows how far the altercation would have proceeded,
+if it had not been most ably and satisfactorily brought to a close by the
+driver.
+
+'Hollo!' said that respectable person, standing up on the box, and
+leaning with one hand on the roof of the omnibus.  'Hollo, Tom! tell the
+gentleman if so be as he feels aggrieved, we will take him up to the
+Edge-er (Edgeware) Road for nothing, and set him down at Doory-lane when
+we comes back.  He can't reject that, anyhow.'
+
+The argument was irresistible: Dumps paid the disputed sixpence, and in a
+quarter of an hour was on the staircase of No. 14, Great Russell-street.
+
+Everything indicated that preparations were making for the reception of
+'a few friends' in the evening.  Two dozen extra tumblers, and four ditto
+wine-glasses--looking anything but transparent, with little bits of straw
+in them on the slab in the passage, just arrived.  There was a great
+smell of nutmeg, port wine, and almonds, on the staircase; the covers
+were taken off the stair-carpet, and the figure of Venus on the first
+landing looked as if she were ashamed of the composition-candle in her
+right hand, which contrasted beautifully with the lamp-blacked drapery of
+the goddess of love.  The female servant (who looked very warm and
+bustling) ushered Dumps into a front drawing-room, very prettily
+furnished, with a plentiful sprinkling of little baskets, paper
+table-mats, china watchmen, pink and gold albums, and rainbow-bound
+little books on the different tables.
+
+'Ah, uncle!' said Mr. Kitterbell, 'how d'ye do?  Allow me--Jemima, my
+dear--my uncle.  I think you've seen Jemima before, sir?'
+
+'Have had the _pleasure_,' returned big Dumps, his tone and look making
+it doubtful whether in his life he had ever experienced the sensation.
+
+'I'm sure,' said Mrs. Kitterbell, with a languid smile, and a slight
+cough.  'I'm sure--hem--any friend--of Charles's--hem--much less a
+relation, is--'
+
+'I knew you'd say so, my love,' said little Kitterbell, who, while he
+appeared to be gazing on the opposite houses, was looking at his wife
+with a most affectionate air: 'Bless you!'  The last two words were
+accompanied with a simper, and a squeeze of the hand, which stirred up
+all Uncle Dumps's bile.
+
+'Jane, tell nurse to bring down baby,' said Mrs. Kitterbell, addressing
+the servant.  Mrs. Kitterbell was a tall, thin young lady, with very
+light hair, and a particularly white face--one of those young women who
+almost invariably, though one hardly knows why, recall to one's mind the
+idea of a cold fillet of veal.  Out went the servant, and in came the
+nurse, with a remarkably small parcel in her arms, packed up in a blue
+mantle trimmed with white fur.--This was the baby.
+
+'Now, uncle,' said Mr. Kitterbell, lifting up that part of the mantle
+which covered the infant's face, with an air of great triumph, '_Who_ do
+you think he's like?'
+
+'He! he!  Yes, who?' said Mrs. K., putting her arm through her husband's,
+and looking up into Dumps's face with an expression of as much interest
+as she was capable of displaying.
+
+'Good God, how small he is!' cried the amiable uncle, starting back with
+well-feigned surprise; '_remarkably_ small indeed.'
+
+'Do you think so?' inquired poor little Kitterbell, rather alarmed.
+'He's a monster to what he was--ain't he, nurse?'
+
+'He's a dear,' said the nurse, squeezing the child, and evading the
+question--not because she scrupled to disguise the fact, but because she
+couldn't afford to throw away the chance of Dumps's half-crown.
+
+'Well, but who is he like?' inquired little Kitterbell.
+
+Dumps looked at the little pink heap before him, and only thought at the
+moment of the best mode of mortifying the youthful parents.
+
+'I really don't know _who_ he's like,' he answered, very well knowing the
+reply expected of him.
+
+'Don't you think he's like _me_?' inquired his nephew with a knowing air.
+
+'Oh, _decidedly_ not!' returned Dumps, with an emphasis not to be
+misunderstood.  'Decidedly not like you.--Oh, certainly not.'
+
+'Like Jemima?' asked Kitterbell, faintly.
+
+'Oh, dear no; not in the least.  I'm no judge, of course, in such cases;
+but I really think he's more like one of those little carved
+representations that one sometimes sees blowing a trumpet on a
+tombstone!'  The nurse stooped down over the child, and with great
+difficulty prevented an explosion of mirth.  Pa and ma looked almost as
+miserable as their amiable uncle.
+
+'Well!' said the disappointed little father, 'you'll be better able to
+tell what he's like by-and-by.  You shall see him this evening with his
+mantle off.'
+
+'Thank you,' said Dumps, feeling particularly grateful.
+
+'Now, my love,' said Kitterbell to his wife, 'it's time we were off.
+We're to meet the other godfather and the godmother at the church,
+uncle,--Mr. and Mrs. Wilson from over the way--uncommonly nice people.
+My love, are you well wrapped up?'
+
+'Yes, dear.'
+
+'Are you sure you won't have another shawl?' inquired the anxious
+husband.
+
+'No, sweet,' returned the charming mother, accepting Dumps's proffered
+arm; and the little party entered the hackney-coach that was to take them
+to the church; Dumps amusing Mrs. Kitterbell by expatiating largely on
+the danger of measles, thrush, teeth-cutting, and other interesting
+diseases to which children are subject.
+
+The ceremony (which occupied about five minutes) passed off without
+anything particular occurring.  The clergyman had to dine some distance
+from town, and had two churchings, three christenings, and a funeral to
+perform in something less than an hour.  The godfathers and godmother,
+therefore, promised to renounce the devil and all his works--'and all
+that sort of thing'--as little Kitterbell said--'in less than no time;'
+and with the exception of Dumps nearly letting the child fall into the
+font when he handed it to the clergyman, the whole affair went off in the
+usual business-like and matter-of-course manner, and Dumps re-entered the
+Bank-gates at two o'clock with a heavy heart, and the painful conviction
+that he was regularly booked for an evening party.
+
+Evening came--and so did Dumps's pumps, black silk stockings, and white
+cravat which he had ordered to be forwarded, per boy, from Pentonville.
+The depressed godfather dressed himself at a friend's counting-house,
+from whence, with his spirits fifty degrees below proof, he sallied
+forth--as the weather had cleared up, and the evening was tolerably
+fine--to walk to Great Russell-street.  Slowly he paced up Cheapside,
+Newgate-street, down Snow-hill, and up Holborn ditto, looking as grim as
+the figure-head of a man-of-war, and finding out fresh causes of misery
+at every step.  As he was crossing the corner of Hatton-garden, a man
+apparently intoxicated, rushed against him, and would have knocked him
+down, had he not been providentially caught by a very genteel young man,
+who happened to be close to him at the time.  The shock so disarranged
+Dumps's nerves, as well as his dress, that he could hardly stand.  The
+gentleman took his arm, and in the kindest manner walked with him as far
+as Furnival's Inn.  Dumps, for about the first time in his life, felt
+grateful and polite; and he and the gentlemanly-looking young man parted
+with mutual expressions of good will.
+
+'There are at least some well-disposed men in the world,' ruminated the
+misanthropical Dumps, as he proceeded towards his destination.
+
+Rat--tat--ta-ra-ra-ra-ra-rat--knocked a hackney-coachman at Kitterbell's
+door, in imitation of a gentleman's servant, just as Dumps reached it;
+and out came an old lady in a large toque, and an old gentleman in a blue
+coat, and three female copies of the old lady in pink dresses, and shoes
+to match.
+
+'It's a large party,' sighed the unhappy godfather, wiping the
+perspiration from his forehead, and leaning against the area-railings.
+It was some time before the miserable man could muster up courage to
+knock at the door, and when he did, the smart appearance of a
+neighbouring greengrocer (who had been hired to wait for seven and
+sixpence, and whose calves alone were worth double the money), the lamp
+in the passage, and the Venus on the landing, added to the hum of many
+voices, and the sound of a harp and two violins, painfully convinced him
+that his surmises were but too well founded.
+
+'How are you?' said little Kitterbell, in a greater bustle than ever,
+bolting out of the little back parlour with a cork-screw in his hand, and
+various particles of sawdust, looking like so many inverted commas, on
+his inexpressibles.
+
+'Good God!' said Dumps, turning into the aforesaid parlour to put his
+shoes on, which he had brought in his coat-pocket, and still more
+appalled by the sight of seven fresh-drawn corks, and a corresponding
+number of decanters.  'How many people are there up-stairs?'
+
+'Oh, not above thirty-five.  We've had the carpet taken up in the back
+drawing-room, and the piano and the card-tables are in the front.  Jemima
+thought we'd better have a regular sit-down supper in the front parlour,
+because of the speechifying, and all that.  But, Lord! uncle, what's the
+matter?' continued the excited little man, as Dumps stood with one shoe
+on, rummaging his pockets with the most frightful distortion of visage.
+'What have you lost?  Your pocket-book?'
+
+'No,' returned Dumps, diving first into one pocket and then into the
+other, and speaking in a voice like Desdemona with the pillow over her
+mouth.
+
+'Your card-case? snuff-box? the key of your lodgings?' continued
+Kitterbell, pouring question on question with the rapidity of lightning.
+
+'No! no!' ejaculated Dumps, still diving eagerly into his empty pockets.
+
+'Not--not--the _mug_ you spoke of this morning?'
+
+'Yes, the _mug_!' replied Dumps, sinking into a chair.
+
+'How _could_ you have done it?' inquired Kitterbell.  'Are you sure you
+brought it out?'
+
+'Yes! yes!  I see it all!' said Dumps, starting up as the idea flashed
+across his mind; 'miserable dog that I am--I was born to suffer.  I see
+it all: it was the gentlemanly-looking young man!'
+
+'Mr. Dumps!' shouted the greengrocer in a stentorian voice, as he ushered
+the somewhat recovered godfather into the drawing-room half an hour after
+the above declaration.  'Mr. Dumps!'--everybody looked at the door, and
+in came Dumps, feeling about as much out of place as a salmon might be
+supposed to be on a gravel-walk.
+
+'Happy to see you again,' said Mrs. Kitterbell, quite unconscious of the
+unfortunate man's confusion and misery; 'you must allow me to introduce
+you to a few of our friends:--my mamma, Mr. Dumps--my papa and sisters.'
+Dumps seized the hand of the mother as warmly as if she was his own
+parent, bowed _to_ the young ladies, and _against_ a gentleman behind
+him, and took no notice whatever of the father, who had been bowing
+incessantly for three minutes and a quarter.
+
+'Uncle,' said little Kitterbell, after Dumps had been introduced to a
+select dozen or two, 'you must let me lead you to the other end of the
+room, to introduce you to my friend Danton.  Such a splendid fellow!--I'm
+sure you'll like him--this way,'--Dumps followed as tractably as a tame
+bear.
+
+Mr. Danton was a young man of about five-and-twenty, with a considerable
+stock of impudence, and a very small share of ideas: he was a great
+favourite, especially with young ladies of from sixteen to twenty-six
+years of age, both inclusive.  He could imitate the French-horn to
+admiration, sang comic songs most inimitably, and had the most
+insinuating way of saying impertinent nothings to his doting female
+admirers.  He had acquired, somehow or other, the reputation of being a
+great wit, and, accordingly, whenever he opened his mouth, everybody who
+knew him laughed very heartily.
+
+The introduction took place in due form.  Mr. Danton bowed, and twirled a
+lady's handkerchief, which he held in his hand, in a most comic way.
+Everybody smiled.
+
+'Very warm,' said Dumps, feeling it necessary to say something.
+
+'Yes.  It was warmer yesterday,' returned the brilliant Mr. Danton.--A
+general laugh.
+
+'I have great pleasure in congratulating you on your first appearance in
+the character of a father, sir,' he continued, addressing
+Dumps--'godfather, I mean.'--The young ladies were convulsed, and the
+gentlemen in ecstasies.
+
+A general hum of admiration interrupted the conversation, and announced
+the entrance of nurse with the baby.  An universal rush of the young
+ladies immediately took place.  (Girls are always _so_ fond of babies in
+company.)
+
+'Oh, you dear!' said one.
+
+'How sweet!' cried another, in a low tone of the most enthusiastic
+admiration.
+
+'Heavenly!' added a third.
+
+'Oh! what dear little arms!' said a fourth, holding up an arm and fist
+about the size and shape of the leg of a fowl cleanly picked.
+
+'Did you ever!'--said a little coquette with a large bustle, who looked
+like a French lithograph, appealing to a gentleman in three
+waistcoats--'Did you ever!'
+
+'Never, in my life,' returned her admirer, pulling up his collar.
+
+'Oh! _do_ let me take it, nurse,' cried another young lady.  'The love!'
+
+'Can it open its eyes, nurse?' inquired another, affecting the utmost
+innocence.--Suffice it to say, that the single ladies unanimously voted
+him an angel, and that the married ones, _nem. con._, agreed that he was
+decidedly the finest baby they had ever beheld--except their own.
+
+The quadrilles were resumed with great spirit.  Mr. Danton was
+universally admitted to be beyond himself; several young ladies enchanted
+the company and gained admirers by singing 'We met'--'I saw her at the
+Fancy Fair'--and other equally sentimental and interesting ballads.  'The
+young men,' as Mrs. Kitterbell said, 'made themselves very agreeable;'
+the girls did not lose their opportunity; and the evening promised to go
+off excellently.  Dumps didn't mind it: he had devised a plan for
+himself--a little bit of fun in his own way--and he was almost happy!  He
+played a rubber and lost every point Mr. Danton said he could not have
+lost every point, because he made a point of losing: everybody laughed
+tremendously.  Dumps retorted with a better joke, and nobody smiled, with
+the exception of the host, who seemed to consider it his duty to laugh
+till he was black in the face, at everything.  There was only one
+drawback--the musicians did not play with quite as much spirit as could
+have been wished.  The cause, however, was satisfactorily explained; for
+it appeared, on the testimony of a gentleman who had come up from
+Gravesend in the afternoon, that they had been engaged on board a steamer
+all day, and had played almost without cessation all the way to
+Gravesend, and all the way back again.
+
+The 'sit-down supper' was excellent; there were four barley-sugar temples
+on the table, which would have looked beautiful if they had not melted
+away when the supper began; and a water-mill, whose only fault was that
+instead of going round, it ran over the table-cloth.  Then there were
+fowls, and tongue, and trifle, and sweets, and lobster salad, and potted
+beef--and everything.  And little Kitterbell kept calling out for clean
+plates, and the clean plates did not come: and then the gentlemen who
+wanted the plates said they didn't mind, they'd take a lady's; and then
+Mrs. Kitterbell applauded their gallantry, and the greengrocer ran about
+till he thought his seven and sixpence was very hardly earned; and the
+young ladies didn't eat much for fear it shouldn't look romantic, and the
+married ladies eat as much as possible, for fear they shouldn't have
+enough; and a great deal of wine was drunk, and everybody talked and
+laughed considerably.
+
+'Hush! hush!' said Mr. Kitterbell, rising and looking very important.
+'My love (this was addressed to his wife at the other end of the table),
+take care of Mrs. Maxwell, and your mamma, and the rest of the married
+ladies; the gentlemen will persuade the young ladies to fill their
+glasses, I am sure.'
+
+'Ladies and gentlemen,' said long Dumps, in a very sepulchral voice and
+rueful accent, rising from his chair like the ghost in Don Juan, 'will
+you have the kindness to charge your glasses?  I am desirous of proposing
+a toast.'
+
+A dead silence ensued, and the glasses were filled--everybody looked
+serious.
+
+'Ladies and gentlemen,' slowly continued the ominous Dumps, 'I'--(here
+Mr. Danton imitated two notes from the French-horn, in a very loud key,
+which electrified the nervous toast-proposer, and convulsed his
+audience).
+
+'Order! order!' said little Kitterbell, endeavouring to suppress his
+laughter.
+
+'Order!' said the gentlemen.
+
+'Danton, be quiet,' said a particular friend on the opposite side of the
+table.
+
+'Ladies and gentlemen,' resumed Dumps, somewhat recovered, and not much
+disconcerted, for he was always a pretty good hand at a speech--'In
+accordance with what is, I believe, the established usage on these
+occasions, I, as one of the godfathers of Master Frederick Charles
+William Kitterbell--(here the speaker's voice faltered, for he remembered
+the mug)--venture to rise to propose a toast.  I need hardly say that it
+is the health and prosperity of that young gentleman, the particular
+event of whose early life we are here met to celebrate--(applause).
+Ladies and gentlemen, it is impossible to suppose that our friends here,
+whose sincere well-wishers we all are, can pass through life without some
+trials, considerable suffering, severe affliction, and heavy
+losses!'--Here the arch-traitor paused, and slowly drew forth a long,
+white pocket-handkerchief--his example was followed by several ladies.
+'That these trials may be long spared them is my most earnest prayer, my
+most fervent wish (a distinct sob from the grandmother).  I hope and
+trust, ladies and gentlemen, that the infant whose christening we have
+this evening met to celebrate, may not be removed from the arms of his
+parents by premature decay (several cambrics were in requisition): that
+his young and now _apparently_ healthy form, may not be wasted by
+lingering disease.  (Here Dumps cast a sardonic glance around, for a
+great sensation was manifest among the married ladies.)  You, I am sure,
+will concur with me in wishing that he may live to be a comfort and a
+blessing to his parents.  ("Hear, hear!" and an audible sob from Mr.
+Kitterbell.)  But should he not be what we could wish--should he forget
+in after times the duty which he owes to them--should they unhappily
+experience that distracting truth, "how sharper than a serpent's tooth it
+is to have a thankless child"'--Here Mrs. Kitterbell, with her
+handkerchief to her eyes, and accompanied by several ladies, rushed from
+the room, and went into violent hysterics in the passage, leaving her
+better half in almost as bad a condition, and a general impression in
+Dumps's favour; for people like sentiment, after all.
+
+It need hardly be added, that this occurrence quite put a stop to the
+harmony of the evening.  Vinegar, hartshorn, and cold water, were now as
+much in request as negus, rout-cakes, and _bon-bons_ had been a short
+time before.  Mrs. Kitterbell was immediately conveyed to her apartment,
+the musicians were silenced, flirting ceased, and the company slowly
+departed.  Dumps left the house at the commencement of the bustle, and
+walked home with a light step, and (for him) a cheerful heart.  His
+landlady, who slept in the next room, has offered to make oath that she
+heard him laugh, in his peculiar manner, after he had locked his door.
+The assertion, however, is so improbable, and bears on the face of it
+such strong evidence of untruth, that it has never obtained credence to
+this hour.
+
+The family of Mr. Kitterbell has considerably increased since the period
+to which we have referred; he has now two sons and a daughter; and as he
+expects, at no distant period, to have another addition to his blooming
+progeny, he is anxious to secure an eligible godfather for the occasion.
+He is determined, however, to impose upon him two conditions.  He must
+bind himself, by a solemn obligation, not to make any speech after
+supper; and it is indispensable that he should be in no way connected
+with 'the most miserable man in the world.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII--THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH
+
+
+We will be bold to say, that there is scarcely a man in the constant
+habit of walking, day after day, through any of the crowded thoroughfares
+of London, who cannot recollect among the people whom he 'knows by
+sight,' to use a familiar phrase, some being of abject and wretched
+appearance whom he remembers to have seen in a very different condition,
+whom he has observed sinking lower and lower, by almost imperceptible
+degrees, and the shabbiness and utter destitution of whose appearance, at
+last, strike forcibly and painfully upon him, as he passes by.  Is there
+any man who has mixed much with society, or whose avocations have caused
+him to mingle, at one time or other, with a great number of people, who
+cannot call to mind the time when some shabby, miserable wretch, in rags
+and filth, who shuffles past him now in all the squalor of disease and
+poverty, with a respectable tradesman, or clerk, or a man following some
+thriving pursuit, with good prospects, and decent means?--or cannot any
+of our readers call to mind from among the list of their _quondam_
+acquaintance, some fallen and degraded man, who lingers about the
+pavement in hungry misery--from whom every one turns coldly away, and who
+preserves himself from sheer starvation, nobody knows how?  Alas! such
+cases are of too frequent occurrence to be rare items in any man's
+experience; and but too often arise from one cause--drunkenness--that
+fierce rage for the slow, sure poison, that oversteps every other
+consideration; that casts aside wife, children, friends, happiness, and
+station; and hurries its victims madly on to degradation and death.
+
+Some of these men have been impelled, by misfortune and misery, to the
+vice that has degraded them.  The ruin of worldly expectations, the death
+of those they loved, the sorrow that slowly consumes, but will not break
+the heart, has driven them wild; and they present the hideous spectacle
+of madmen, slowly dying by their own hands.  But by far the greater part
+have wilfully, and with open eyes, plunged into the gulf from which the
+man who once enters it never rises more, but into which he sinks deeper
+and deeper down, until recovery is hopeless.
+
+Such a man as this once stood by the bedside of his dying wife, while his
+children knelt around, and mingled loud bursts of grief with their
+innocent prayers.  The room was scantily and meanly furnished; and it
+needed but a glance at the pale form from which the light of life was
+fast passing away, to know that grief, and want, and anxious care, had
+been busy at the heart for many a weary year.  An elderly woman, with her
+face bathed in tears, was supporting the head of the dying woman--her
+daughter--on her arm.  But it was not towards her that the was face
+turned; it was not her hand that the cold and trembling fingers clasped;
+they pressed the husband's arm; the eyes so soon to be closed in death
+rested on his face, and the man shook beneath their gaze.  His dress was
+slovenly and disordered, his face inflamed, his eyes bloodshot and heavy.
+He had been summoned from some wild debauch to the bed of sorrow and
+death.
+
+A shaded lamp by the bed-side cast a dim light on the figures around, and
+left the remainder of the room in thick, deep shadow.  The silence of
+night prevailed without the house, and the stillness of death was in the
+chamber.  A watch hung over the mantel-shelf; its low ticking was the
+only sound that broke the profound quiet, but it was a solemn one, for
+well they knew, who heard it, that before it had recorded the passing of
+another hour, it would beat the knell of a departed spirit.
+
+It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the approach of death; to
+know that hope is gone, and recovery impossible; and to sit and count the
+dreary hours through long, long nights--such nights as only watchers by
+the bed of sickness know.  It chills the blood to hear the dearest
+secrets of the heart--the pent-up, hidden secrets of many years--poured
+forth by the unconscious, helpless being before you; and to think how
+little the reserve and cunning of a whole life will avail, when fever and
+delirium tear off the mask at last.  Strange tales have been told in the
+wanderings of dying men; tales so full of guilt and crime, that those who
+stood by the sick person's couch have fled in horror and affright, lest
+they should be scared to madness by what they heard and saw; and many a
+wretch has died alone, raving of deeds the very name of which has driven
+the boldest man away.
+
+But no such ravings were to be heard at the bed-side by which the
+children knelt.  Their half-stifled sobs and moaning alone broke the
+silence of the lonely chamber.  And when at last the mother's grasp
+relaxed, and, turning one look from the children to the father, she
+vainly strove to speak, and fell backward on the pillow, all was so calm
+and tranquil that she seemed to sink to sleep.  They leant over her; they
+called upon her name, softly at first, and then in the loud and piercing
+tones of desperation.  But there was no reply.  They listened for her
+breath, but no sound came.  They felt for the palpitation of the heart,
+but no faint throb responded to the touch.  That heart was broken, and
+she was dead!
+
+The husband sunk into a chair by the bed-side, and clasped his hands upon
+his burning forehead.  He gazed from child to child, but when a weeping
+eye met his, he quailed beneath its look.  No word of comfort was
+whispered in his ear, no look of kindness lighted on his face.  All
+shrunk from and avoided him; and when at last he staggered from the room,
+no one sought to follow or console the widower.
+
+The time had been when many a friend would have crowded round him in his
+affliction, and many a heartfelt condolence would have met him in his
+grief.  Where were they now?  One by one, friends, relations, the
+commonest acquaintance even, had fallen off from and deserted the
+drunkard.  His wife alone had clung to him in good and evil, in sickness
+and poverty, and how had he rewarded her?  He had reeled from the tavern
+to her bed-side in time to see her die.
+
+He rushed from the house, and walked swiftly through the streets.
+Remorse, fear, shame, all crowded on his mind.  Stupefied with drink, and
+bewildered with the scene he had just witnessed, he re-entered the tavern
+he had quitted shortly before.  Glass succeeded glass.  His blood
+mounted, and his brain whirled round.  Death!  Every one must die, and
+why not _she_?  She was too good for him; her relations had often told
+him so.  Curses on them!  Had they not deserted her, and left her to
+whine away the time at home?  Well--she was dead, and happy perhaps.  It
+was better as it was.  Another glass--one more!  Hurrah!  It was a merry
+life while it lasted; and he would make the most of it.
+
+Time went on; the three children who were left to him, grew up, and were
+children no longer.  The father remained the same--poorer, shabbier, and
+more dissolute-looking, but the same confirmed and irreclaimable
+drunkard.  The boys had, long ago, run wild in the streets, and left him;
+the girl alone remained, but she worked hard, and words or blows could
+always procure him something for the tavern.  So he went on in the old
+course, and a merry life he led.
+
+One night, as early as ten o'clock--for the girl had been sick for many
+days, and there was, consequently, little to spend at the
+public-house--he bent his steps homeward, bethinking himself that if he
+would have her able to earn money, it would be as well to apply to the
+parish surgeon, or, at all events, to take the trouble of inquiring what
+ailed her, which he had not yet thought it worth while to do.  It was a
+wet December night; the wind blew piercing cold, and the rain poured
+heavily down.  He begged a few halfpence from a passer-by, and having
+bought a small loaf (for it was his interest to keep the girl alive, if
+he could), he shuffled onwards as fast as the wind and rain would let
+him.
+
+At the back of Fleet-street, and lying between it and the water-side, are
+several mean and narrow courts, which form a portion of Whitefriars: it
+was to one of these that he directed his steps.
+
+The alley into which he turned, might, for filth and misery, have
+competed with the darkest corner of this ancient sanctuary in its
+dirtiest and most lawless time.  The houses, varying from two stories in
+height to four, were stained with every indescribable hue that long
+exposure to the weather, damp, and rottenness can impart to tenements
+composed originally of the roughest and coarsest materials.  The windows
+were patched with paper, and stuffed with the foulest rags; the doors
+were falling from their hinges; poles with lines on which to dry clothes,
+projected from every casement, and sounds of quarrelling or drunkenness
+issued from every room.
+
+The solitary oil lamp in the centre of the court had been blown out,
+either by the violence of the wind or the act of some inhabitant who had
+excellent reasons for objecting to his residence being rendered too
+conspicuous; and the only light which fell upon the broken and uneven
+pavement, was derived from the miserable candles that here and there
+twinkled in the rooms of such of the more fortunate residents as could
+afford to indulge in so expensive a luxury.  A gutter ran down the centre
+of the alley--all the sluggish odours of which had been called forth by
+the rain; and as the wind whistled through the old houses, the doors and
+shutters creaked upon their hinges, and the windows shook in their
+frames, with a violence which every moment seemed to threaten the
+destruction of the whole place.
+
+The man whom we have followed into this den, walked on in the darkness,
+sometimes stumbling into the main gutter, and at others into some branch
+repositories of garbage which had been formed by the rain, until he
+reached the last house in the court.  The door, or rather what was left
+of it, stood ajar, for the convenience of the numerous lodgers; and he
+proceeded to grope his way up the old and broken stair, to the attic
+story.
+
+He was within a step or two of his room door, when it opened, and a girl,
+whose miserable and emaciated appearance was only to be equalled by that
+of the candle which she shaded with her hand, peeped anxiously out.
+
+'Is that you, father?' said the girl.
+
+'Who else should it be?' replied the man gruffly.  'What are you
+trembling at?  It's little enough that I've had to drink to-day, for
+there's no drink without money, and no money without work.  What the
+devil's the matter with the girl?'
+
+'I am not well, father--not at all well,' said the girl, bursting into
+tears.
+
+'Ah!' replied the man, in the tone of a person who is compelled to admit
+a very unpleasant fact, to which he would rather remain blind, if he
+could.  'You must get better somehow, for we must have money.  You must
+go to the parish doctor, and make him give you some medicine.  They're
+paid for it, damn 'em.  What are you standing before the door for?  Let
+me come in, can't you?'
+
+'Father,' whispered the girl, shutting the door behind her, and placing
+herself before it, 'William has come back.'
+
+'Who!' said the man with a start.
+
+'Hush,' replied the girl, 'William; brother William.'
+
+'And what does he want?' said the man, with an effort at
+composure--'money? meat? drink?  He's come to the wrong shop for that, if
+he does.  Give me the candle--give me the candle, fool--I ain't going to
+hurt him.'  He snatched the candle from her hand, and walked into the
+room.
+
+Sitting on an old box, with his head resting on his hand, and his eyes
+fixed on a wretched cinder fire that was smouldering on the hearth, was a
+young man of about two-and-twenty, miserably clad in an old coarse jacket
+and trousers.  He started up when his father entered.
+
+'Fasten the door, Mary,' said the young man hastily--'Fasten the door.
+You look as if you didn't know me, father.  It's long enough, since you
+drove me from home; you may well forget me.'
+
+'And what do you want here, now?' said the father, seating himself on a
+stool, on the other side of the fireplace.  'What do you want here, now?'
+
+'Shelter,' replied the son.  'I'm in trouble: that's enough.  If I'm
+caught I shall swing; that's certain.  Caught I shall be, unless I stop
+here; that's _as_ certain.  And there's an end of it.'
+
+'You mean to say, you've been robbing, or murdering, then?' said the
+father.
+
+'Yes, I do,' replied the son.  'Does it surprise you, father?'  He looked
+steadily in the man's face, but he withdrew his eyes, and bent them on
+the ground.
+
+'Where's your brothers?' he said, after a long pause.
+
+'Where they'll never trouble you,' replied his son: 'John's gone to
+America, and Henry's dead.'
+
+'Dead!' said the father, with a shudder, which even he could not express.
+
+'Dead,' replied the young man.  'He died in my arms--shot like a dog, by
+a gamekeeper.  He staggered back, I caught him, and his blood trickled
+down my hands.  It poured out from his side like water.  He was weak, and
+it blinded him, but he threw himself down on his knees, on the grass, and
+prayed to God, that if his mother was in heaven, He would hear her
+prayers for pardon for her youngest son.  "I was her favourite boy,
+Will," he said, "and I am glad to think, now, that when she was dying,
+though I was a very young child then, and my little heart was almost
+bursting, I knelt down at the foot of the bed, and thanked God for having
+made me so fond of her as to have never once done anything to bring the
+tears into her eyes.  O Will, why was she taken away, and father left?"
+There's his dying words, father,' said the young man; 'make the best you
+can of 'em.  You struck him across the face, in a drunken fit, the
+morning we ran away; and here's the end of it.'
+
+The girl wept aloud; and the father, sinking his head upon his knees,
+rocked himself to and fro.
+
+'If I am taken,' said the young man, 'I shall be carried back into the
+country, and hung for that man's murder.  They cannot trace me here,
+without your assistance, father.  For aught I know, you may give me up to
+justice; but unless you do, here I stop, until I can venture to escape
+abroad.'
+
+For two whole days, all three remained in the wretched room, without
+stirring out.  On the third evening, however, the girl was worse than she
+had been yet, and the few scraps of food they had were gone.  It was
+indispensably necessary that somebody should go out; and as the girl was
+too weak and ill, the father went, just at nightfall.
+
+He got some medicine for the girl, and a trifle in the way of pecuniary
+assistance.  On his way back, he earned sixpence by holding a horse; and
+he turned homewards with enough money to supply their most pressing wants
+for two or three days to come.  He had to pass the public-house.  He
+lingered for an instant, walked past it, turned back again, lingered once
+more, and finally slunk in.  Two men whom he had not observed, were on
+the watch.  They were on the point of giving up their search in despair,
+when his loitering attracted their attention; and when he entered the
+public-house, they followed him.
+
+'You'll drink with me, master,' said one of them, proffering him a glass
+of liquor.
+
+'And me too,' said the other, replenishing the glass as soon as it was
+drained of its contents.
+
+The man thought of his hungry children, and his son's danger.  But they
+were nothing to the drunkard.  He _did_ drink; and his reason left him.
+
+'A wet night, Warden,' whispered one of the men in his ear, as he at
+length turned to go away, after spending in liquor one-half of the money
+on which, perhaps, his daughter's life depended.
+
+'The right sort of night for our friends in hiding, Master Warden,'
+whispered the other.
+
+'Sit down here,' said the one who had spoken first, drawing him into a
+corner.  'We have been looking arter the young un.  We came to tell him,
+it's all right now, but we couldn't find him 'cause we hadn't got the
+precise direction.  But that ain't strange, for I don't think he know'd
+it himself, when he come to London, did he?'
+
+'No, he didn't,' replied the father.
+
+The two men exchanged glances.
+
+'There's a vessel down at the docks, to sail at midnight, when it's high
+water,' resumed the first speaker, 'and we'll put him on board.  His
+passage is taken in another name, and what's better than that, it's paid
+for.  It's lucky we met you.'
+
+'Very,' said the second.
+
+'Capital luck,' said the first, with a wink to his companion.
+
+'Great,' replied the second, with a slight nod of intelligence.
+
+'Another glass here; quick'--said the first speaker.  And in five minutes
+more, the father had unconsciously yielded up his own son into the
+hangman's hands.
+
+Slowly and heavily the time dragged along, as the brother and sister, in
+their miserable hiding-place, listened in anxious suspense to the
+slightest sound.  At length, a heavy footstep was heard upon the stair;
+it approached nearer; it reached the landing; and the father staggered
+into the room.
+
+The girl saw that he was intoxicated, and advanced with the candle in her
+hand to meet him; she stopped short, gave a loud scream, and fell
+senseless on the ground.  She had caught sight of the shadow of a man
+reflected on the floor.  They both rushed in, and in another instant the
+young man was a prisoner, and handcuffed.
+
+'Very quietly done,' said one of the men to his companion, 'thanks to the
+old man.  Lift up the girl, Tom--come, come, it's no use crying, young
+woman.  It's all over now, and can't be helped.'
+
+The young man stooped for an instant over the girl, and then turned
+fiercely round upon his father, who had reeled against the wall, and was
+gazing on the group with drunken stupidity.
+
+'Listen to me, father,' he said, in a tone that made the drunkard's flesh
+creep.  'My brother's blood, and mine, is on your head: I never had kind
+look, or word, or care, from you, and alive or dead, I never will forgive
+you.  Die when you will, or how, I will be with you.  I speak as a dead
+man now, and I warn you, father, that as surely as you must one day stand
+before your Maker, so surely shall your children be there, hand in hand,
+to cry for judgment against you.'  He raised his manacled hands in a
+threatening attitude, fixed his eyes on his shrinking parent, and slowly
+left the room; and neither father nor sister ever beheld him more, on
+this side of the grave.
+
+When the dim and misty light of a winter's morning penetrated into the
+narrow court, and struggled through the begrimed window of the wretched
+room, Warden awoke from his heavy sleep, and found himself alone.  He
+rose, and looked round him; the old flock mattress on the floor was
+undisturbed; everything was just as he remembered to have seen it last:
+and there were no signs of any one, save himself, having occupied the
+room during the night.  He inquired of the other lodgers, and of the
+neighbours; but his daughter had not been seen or heard of.  He rambled
+through the streets, and scrutinised each wretched face among the crowds
+that thronged them, with anxious eyes.  But his search was fruitless, and
+he returned to his garret when night came on, desolate and weary.
+
+For many days he occupied himself in the same manner, but no trace of his
+daughter did he meet with, and no word of her reached his ears.  At
+length he gave up the pursuit as hopeless.  He had long thought of the
+probability of her leaving him, and endeavouring to gain her bread in
+quiet, elsewhere.  She had left him at last to starve alone.  He ground
+his teeth, and cursed her!
+
+He begged his bread from door to door.  Every halfpenny he could wring
+from the pity or credulity of those to whom he addressed himself, was
+spent in the old way.  A year passed over his head; the roof of a jail
+was the only one that had sheltered him for many months.  He slept under
+archways, and in brickfields--anywhere, where there was some warmth or
+shelter from the cold and rain.  But in the last stage of poverty,
+disease, and houseless want, he was a drunkard still.
+
+At last, one bitter night, he sunk down on a door-step faint and ill.
+The premature decay of vice and profligacy had worn him to the bone.  His
+cheeks were hollow and livid; his eyes were sunken, and their sight was
+dim.  His legs trembled beneath his weight, and a cold shiver ran through
+every limb.
+
+And now the long-forgotten scenes of a misspent life crowded thick and
+fast upon him.  He thought of the time when he had a home--a happy,
+cheerful home--and of those who peopled it, and flocked about him then,
+until the forms of his elder children seemed to rise from the grave, and
+stand about him--so plain, so clear, and so distinct they were that he
+could touch and feel them.  Looks that he had long forgotten were fixed
+upon him once more; voices long since hushed in death sounded in his ears
+like the music of village bells.  But it was only for an instant.  The
+rain beat heavily upon him; and cold and hunger were gnawing at his heart
+again.
+
+He rose, and dragged his feeble limbs a few paces further.  The street
+was silent and empty; the few passengers who passed by, at that late
+hour, hurried quickly on, and his tremulous voice was lost in the
+violence of the storm.  Again that heavy chill struck through his frame,
+and his blood seemed to stagnate beneath it.  He coiled himself up in a
+projecting doorway, and tried to sleep.
+
+But sleep had fled from his dull and glazed eyes.  His mind wandered
+strangely, but he was awake, and conscious.  The well-known shout of
+drunken mirth sounded in his ear, the glass was at his lips, the board
+was covered with choice rich food--they were before him: he could see
+them all, he had but to reach out his hand, and take them--and, though
+the illusion was reality itself, he knew that he was sitting alone in the
+deserted street, watching the rain-drops as they pattered on the stones;
+that death was coming upon him by inches--and that there were none to
+care for or help him.
+
+Suddenly he started up, in the extremity of terror.  He had heard his own
+voice shouting in the night air, he knew not what, or why.  Hark!  A
+groan!--another!  His senses were leaving him: half-formed and incoherent
+words burst from his lips; and his hands sought to tear and lacerate his
+flesh.  He was going mad, and he shrieked for help till his voice failed
+him.
+
+He raised his head, and looked up the long dismal street.  He recollected
+that outcasts like himself, condemned to wander day and night in those
+dreadful streets, had sometimes gone distracted with their own
+loneliness.  He remembered to have heard many years before that a
+homeless wretch had once been found in a solitary corner, sharpening a
+rusty knife to plunge into his own heart, preferring death to that
+endless, weary, wandering to and fro.  In an instant his resolve was
+taken, his limbs received new life; he ran quickly from the spot, and
+paused not for breath until he reached the river-side.
+
+He crept softly down the steep stone stairs that lead from the
+commencement of Waterloo Bridge, down to the water's level.  He crouched
+into a corner, and held his breath, as the patrol passed.  Never did
+prisoner's heart throb with the hope of liberty and life half so eagerly
+as did that of the wretched man at the prospect of death.  The watch
+passed close to him, but he remained unobserved; and after waiting till
+the sound of footsteps had died away in the distance, he cautiously
+descended, and stood beneath the gloomy arch that forms the landing-place
+from the river.
+
+The tide was in, and the water flowed at his feet.  The rain had ceased,
+the wind was lulled, and all was, for the moment, still and quiet--so
+quiet, that the slightest sound on the opposite bank, even the rippling
+of the water against the barges that were moored there, was distinctly
+audible to his ear.  The stream stole languidly and sluggishly on.
+Strange and fantastic forms rose to the surface, and beckoned him to
+approach; dark gleaming eyes peered from the water, and seemed to mock
+his hesitation, while hollow murmurs from behind, urged him onwards.  He
+retreated a few paces, took a short run, desperate leap, and plunged into
+the river.
+
+Not five seconds had passed when he rose to the water's surface--but what
+a change had taken place in that short time, in all his thoughts and
+feelings!  Life--life in any form, poverty, misery, starvation--anything
+but death.  He fought and struggled with the water that closed over his
+head, and screamed in agonies of terror.  The curse of his own son rang
+in his ears.  The shore--but one foot of dry ground--he could almost
+touch the step.  One hand's breadth nearer, and he was saved--but the
+tide bore him onward, under the dark arches of the bridge, and he sank to
+the bottom.
+
+Again he rose, and struggled for life.  For one instant--for one brief
+instant--the buildings on the river's banks, the lights on the bridge
+through which the current had borne him, the black water, and the
+fast-flying clouds, were distinctly visible--once more he sunk, and once
+again he rose.  Bright flames of fire shot up from earth to heaven, and
+reeled before his eyes, while the water thundered in his ears, and
+stunned him with its furious roar.
+
+A week afterwards the body was washed ashore, some miles down the river,
+a swollen and disfigured mass.  Unrecognised and unpitied, it was borne
+to the grave; and there it has long since mouldered away!
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES OF YOUNG GENTLEMEN
+
+
+                           TO THE YOUNG LADIES
+                                  OF THE
+               United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland;
+                                   ALSO
+                             THE YOUNG LADIES
+                                    OF
+                        THE PRINCIPALITY OF WALES,
+                               AND LIKEWISE
+                             THE YOUNG LADIES
+                         RESIDENT IN THE ISLES OF
+                  GUERNSEY, JERSEY, ALDERNEY, AND SARK,
+             THE HUMBLE DEDICATION OF THEIR DEVOTED ADMIRER,
+
+SHEWETH,--
+
+THAT your Dedicator has perused, with feelings of virtuous indignation, a
+work purporting to be 'Sketches of Young Ladies;' written by Quiz,
+illustrated by Phiz, and published in one volume, square twelvemo.
+
+THAT after an attentive and vigilant perusal of the said work, your
+Dedicator is humbly of opinion that so many libels, upon your Honourable
+sex, were never contained in any previously published work, in twelvemo
+or any other mo.
+
+THAT in the title page and preface to the said work, your Honourable sex
+are described and classified as animals; and although your Dedicator is
+not at present prepared to deny that you _are_ animals, still he humbly
+submits that it is not polite to call you so.
+
+THAT in the aforesaid preface, your Honourable sex are also described as
+Troglodites, which, being a hard word, may, for aught your Honourable sex
+or your Dedicator can say to the contrary, be an injurious and
+disrespectful appellation.
+
+THAT the author of the said work applied himself to his task in malice
+prepense and with wickedness aforethought; a fact which, your Dedicator
+contends, is sufficiently demonstrated, by his assuming the name of Quiz,
+which, your Dedicator submits, denotes a foregone conclusion, and implies
+an intention of quizzing.
+
+THAT in the execution of his evil design, the said Quiz, or author of the
+said work, must have betrayed some trust or confidence reposed in him by
+some members of your Honourable sex, otherwise he never could have
+acquired so much information relative to the manners and customs of your
+Honourable sex in general.
+
+THAT actuated by these considerations, and further moved by various
+slanders and insinuations respecting your Honourable sex contained in the
+said work, square twelvemo, entitled 'Sketches of Young Ladies,' your
+Dedicator ventures to produce another work, square twelvemo, entitled
+'Sketches of Young Gentlemen,' of which he now solicits your acceptance
+and approval.
+
+THAT as the Young Ladies are the best companions of the Young Gentlemen,
+so the Young Gentlemen should be the best companions of the Young Ladies;
+and extending the comparison from animals (to quote the disrespectful
+language of the said Quiz) to inanimate objects, your Dedicator humbly
+suggests, that such of your Honourable sex as purchased the bane should
+possess themselves of the antidote, and that those of your Honourable sex
+who were not rash enough to take the first, should lose no time in
+swallowing the last,--prevention being in all cases better than cure, as
+we are informed upon the authority, not only of general acknowledgment,
+but also of traditionary wisdom.
+
+THAT with reference to the said bane and antidote, your Dedicator has no
+further remarks to make, than are comprised in the printed directions
+issued with Doctor Morison's pills; namely, that whenever your Honourable
+sex take twenty-five of Number, 1, you will be pleased to take fifty of
+Number 2, without delay.
+
+                                   And your Dedicator shall ever pray, &c.
+
+
+
+THE BASHFUL YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+We found ourself seated at a small dinner party the other day, opposite a
+stranger of such singular appearance and manner, that he irresistibly
+attracted our attention.
+
+This was a fresh-coloured young gentleman, with as good a promise of
+light whisker as one might wish to see, and possessed of a very
+velvet-like, soft-looking countenance.  We do not use the latter term
+invidiously, but merely to denote a pair of smooth, plump,
+highly-coloured cheeks of capacious dimensions, and a mouth rather
+remarkable for the fresh hue of the lips than for any marked or striking
+expression it presented.  His whole face was suffused with a crimson
+blush, and bore that downcast, timid, retiring look, which betokens a man
+ill at ease with himself.
+
+There was nothing in these symptoms to attract more than a passing
+remark, but our attention had been originally drawn to the bashful young
+gentleman, on his first appearance in the drawing-room above-stairs, into
+which he was no sooner introduced, than making his way towards us who
+were standing in a window, and wholly neglecting several persons who
+warmly accosted him, he seized our hand with visible emotion, and pressed
+it with a convulsive grasp for a good couple of minutes, after which he
+dived in a nervous manner across the room, oversetting in his way a fine
+little girl of six years and a quarter old--and shrouding himself behind
+some hangings, was seen no more, until the eagle eye of the hostess
+detecting him in his concealment, on the announcement of dinner, he was
+requested to pair off with a lively single lady, of two or three and
+thirty.
+
+This most flattering salutation from a perfect stranger, would have
+gratified us not a little as a token of his having held us in high
+respect, and for that reason been desirous of our acquaintance, if we had
+not suspected from the first, that the young gentleman, in making a
+desperate effort to get through the ceremony of introduction, had, in the
+bewilderment of his ideas, shaken hands with us at random.  This
+impression was fully confirmed by the subsequent behaviour of the bashful
+young gentleman in question, which we noted particularly, with the view
+of ascertaining whether we were right in our conjecture.
+
+The young gentleman seated himself at table with evident misgivings, and
+turning sharp round to pay attention to some observation of his
+loquacious neighbour, overset his bread.  There was nothing very bad in
+this, and if he had had the presence of mind to let it go, and say
+nothing about it, nobody but the man who had laid the cloth would have
+been a bit the wiser; but the young gentleman in various semi-successful
+attempts to prevent its fall, played with it a little, as gentlemen in
+the streets may be seen to do with their hats on a windy day, and then
+giving the roll a smart rap in his anxiety to catch it, knocked it with
+great adroitness into a tureen of white soup at some distance, to the
+unspeakable terror and disturbance of a very amiable bald gentleman, who
+was dispensing the contents.  We thought the bashful young gentleman
+would have gone off in an apoplectic fit, consequent upon the violent
+rush of blood to his face at the occurrence of this catastrophe.
+
+From this moment we perceived, in the phraseology of the fancy, that it
+was 'all up' with the bashful young gentleman, and so indeed it was.
+Several benevolent persons endeavoured to relieve his embarrassment by
+taking wine with him, but finding that it only augmented his sufferings,
+and that after mingling sherry, champagne, hock, and moselle together, he
+applied the greater part of the mixture externally, instead of
+internally, they gradually dropped off, and left him to the exclusive
+care of the talkative lady, who, not noting the wildness of his eye,
+firmly believed she had secured a listener.  He broke a glass or two in
+the course of the meal, and disappeared shortly afterwards; it is
+inferred that he went away in some confusion, inasmuch as he left the
+house in another gentleman's coat, and the footman's hat.
+
+This little incident led us to reflect upon the most prominent
+characteristics of bashful young gentlemen in the abstract; and as this
+portable volume will be the great text-book of young ladies in all future
+generations, we record them here for their guidance and behoof.
+
+If the bashful young gentleman, in turning a street corner, chance to
+stumble suddenly upon two or three young ladies of his acquaintance,
+nothing can exceed his confusion and agitation.  His first impulse is to
+make a great variety of bows, and dart past them, which he does until,
+observing that they wish to stop, but are uncertain whether to do so or
+not, he makes several feints of returning, which causes them to do the
+same; and at length, after a great quantity of unnecessary dodging and
+falling up against the other passengers, he returns and shakes hands most
+affectionately with all of them, in doing which he knocks out of their
+grasp sundry little parcels, which he hastily picks up, and returns very
+muddy and disordered.  The chances are that the bashful young gentleman
+then observes it is very fine weather, and being reminded that it has
+only just left off raining for the first time these three days, he
+blushes very much, and smiles as if he had said a very good thing.  The
+young lady who was most anxious to speak, here inquires, with an air of
+great commiseration, how his dear sister Harriet is to-day; to which the
+young gentleman, without the slightest consideration, replies with many
+thanks, that she is remarkably well.  'Well, Mr. Hopkins!' cries the
+young lady, 'why, we heard she was bled yesterday evening, and have been
+perfectly miserable about her.'  'Oh, ah,' says the young gentleman, 'so
+she was.  Oh, she's very ill, very ill indeed.'  The young gentleman then
+shakes his head, and looks very desponding (he has been smiling
+perpetually up to this time), and after a short pause, gives his glove a
+great wrench at the wrist, and says, with a strong emphasis on the
+adjective, '_Good_ morning, _good_ morning.'  And making a great number
+of bows in acknowledgment of several little messages to his sister, walks
+backward a few paces, and comes with great violence against a lamp-post,
+knocking his hat off in the contact, which in his mental confusion and
+bodily pain he is going to walk away without, until a great roar from a
+carter attracts his attention, when he picks it up, and tries to smile
+cheerfully to the young ladies, who are looking back, and who, he has the
+satisfaction of seeing, are all laughing heartily.
+
+At a quadrille party, the bashful young gentleman always remains as near
+the entrance of the room as possible, from which position he smiles at
+the people he knows as they come in, and sometimes steps forward to shake
+hands with more intimate friends: a process which on each repetition
+seems to turn him a deeper scarlet than before.  He declines dancing the
+first set or two, observing, in a faint voice, that he would rather wait
+a little; but at length is absolutely compelled to allow himself to be
+introduced to a partner, when he is led, in a great heat and blushing
+furiously, across the room to a spot where half-a-dozen unknown ladies
+are congregated together.
+
+'Miss Lambert, let me introduce Mr. Hopkins for the next quadrille.'
+Miss Lambert inclines her head graciously.  Mr. Hopkins bows, and his
+fair conductress disappears, leaving Mr. Hopkins, as he too well knows,
+to make himself agreeable.  The young lady more than half expects that
+the bashful young gentleman will say something, and the bashful young
+gentleman feeling this, seriously thinks whether he has got anything to
+say, which, upon mature reflection, he is rather disposed to conclude he
+has not, since nothing occurs to him.  Meanwhile, the young lady, after
+several inspections of her _bouquet_, all made in the expectation that
+the bashful young gentleman is going to talk, whispers her mamma, who is
+sitting next her, which whisper the bashful young gentleman immediately
+suspects (and possibly with very good reason) must be about _him_.  In
+this comfortable condition he remains until it is time to 'stand up,'
+when murmuring a 'Will you allow me?' he gives the young lady his arm,
+and after inquiring where she will stand, and receiving a reply that she
+has no choice, conducts her to the remotest corner of the quadrille, and
+making one attempt at conversation, which turns out a desperate failure,
+preserves a profound silence until it is all over, when he walks her
+twice round the room, deposits her in her old seat, and retires in
+confusion.
+
+A married bashful gentleman--for these bashful gentlemen do get married
+sometimes; how it is ever brought about, is a mystery to us--a married
+bashful gentleman either causes his wife to appear bold by contrast, or
+merges her proper importance in his own insignificance.  Bashful young
+gentlemen should be cured, or avoided.  They are never hopeless, and
+never will be, while female beauty and attractions retain their
+influence, as any young lady will find, who may think it worth while on
+this confident assurance to take a patient in hand.
+
+
+
+THE OUT-AND-OUT YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+Out-and-out young gentlemen may be divided into two classes--those who
+have something to do, and those who have nothing.  I shall commence with
+the former, because that species come more frequently under the notice of
+young ladies, whom it is our province to warn and to instruct.
+
+The out-and-out young gentleman is usually no great dresser, his
+instructions to his tailor being all comprehended in the one general
+direction to 'make that what's-a-name a regular bang-up sort of thing.'
+For some years past, the favourite costume of the out-and-out young
+gentleman has been a rough pilot coat, with two gilt hooks and eyes to
+the velvet collar; buttons somewhat larger than crown-pieces; a black or
+fancy neckerchief, loosely tied; a wide-brimmed hat, with a low crown;
+tightish inexpressibles, and iron-shod boots.  Out of doors he sometimes
+carries a large ash stick, but only on special occasions, for he prefers
+keeping his hands in his coat pockets.  He smokes at all hours, of
+course, and swears considerably.
+
+The out-and-out young gentleman is employed in a city counting-house or
+solicitor's office, in which he does as little as he possibly can: his
+chief places of resort are, the streets, the taverns, and the theatres.
+In the streets at evening time, out-and-out young gentlemen have a
+pleasant custom of walking six or eight abreast, thus driving females and
+other inoffensive persons into the road, which never fails to afford them
+the highest satisfaction, especially if there be any immediate danger of
+their being run over, which enhances the fun of the thing materially.  In
+all places of public resort, the out-and-outers are careful to select
+each a seat to himself, upon which he lies at full length, and (if the
+weather be very dirty, but not in any other case) he lies with his knees
+up, and the soles of his boots planted firmly on the cushion, so that if
+any low fellow should ask him to make room for a lady, he takes ample
+revenge upon her dress, without going at all out of his way to do it.  He
+always sits with his hat on, and flourishes his stick in the air while
+the play is proceeding, with a dignified contempt of the performance; if
+it be possible for one or two out-and-out young gentlemen to get up a
+little crowding in the passages, they are quite in their element,
+squeezing, pushing, whooping, and shouting in the most humorous manner
+possible.  If they can only succeed in irritating the gentleman who has a
+family of daughters under his charge, they are like to die with laughing,
+and boast of it among their companions for a week afterwards, adding,
+that one or two of them were 'devilish fine girls,' and that they really
+thought the youngest would have fainted, which was the only thing wanted
+to render the joke complete.
+
+If the out-and-out young gentleman have a mother and sisters, of course
+he treats them with becoming contempt, inasmuch as they (poor things!)
+having no notion of life or gaiety, are far too weak-spirited and moping
+for him.  Sometimes, however, on a birth-day or at Christmas-time, he
+cannot very well help accompanying them to a party at some old friend's,
+with which view he comes home when they have been dressed an hour or two,
+smelling very strongly of tobacco and spirits, and after exchanging his
+rough coat for some more suitable attire (in which however he loses
+nothing of the out-and-outer), gets into the coach and grumbles all the
+way at his own good nature: his bitter reflections aggravated by the
+recollection, that Tom Smith has taken the chair at a little impromptu
+dinner at a fighting man's, and that a set-to was to take place on a
+dining-table, between the fighting man and his brother-in-law, which is
+probably 'coming off' at that very instant.
+
+As the out-and-out young gentleman is by no means at his ease in ladies'
+society, he shrinks into a corner of the drawing-room when they reach the
+friend's, and unless one of his sisters is kind enough to talk to him,
+remains there without being much troubled by the attentions of other
+people, until he espies, lingering outside the door, another gentleman,
+whom he at once knows, by his air and manner (for there is a kind of
+free-masonry in the craft), to be a brother out-and-outer, and towards
+whom he accordingly makes his way.  Conversation being soon opened by
+some casual remark, the second out-and-outer confidentially informs the
+first, that he is one of the rough sort and hates that kind of thing,
+only he couldn't very well be off coming; to which the other replies,
+that that's just his case--'and I'll tell you what,' continues the
+out-and-outer in a whisper, 'I should like a glass of warm brandy and
+water just now,'--'Or a pint of stout and a pipe,' suggests the other
+out-and-outer.
+
+The discovery is at once made that they are sympathetic souls; each of
+them says at the same moment, that he sees the other understands what's
+what: and they become fast friends at once, more especially when it
+appears, that the second out-and-outer is no other than a gentleman, long
+favourably known to his familiars as 'Mr. Warmint Blake,' who upon divers
+occasions has distinguished himself in a manner that would not have
+disgraced the fighting man, and who--having been a pretty long time about
+town--had the honour of once shaking hands with the celebrated Mr.
+Thurtell himself.
+
+At supper, these gentlemen greatly distinguish themselves, brightening up
+very much when the ladies leave the table, and proclaiming aloud their
+intention of beginning to spend the evening--a process which is generally
+understood to be satisfactorily performed, when a great deal of wine is
+drunk and a great deal of noise made, both of which feats the out-and-out
+young gentlemen execute to perfection.  Having protracted their sitting
+until long after the host and the other guests have adjourned to the
+drawing-room, and finding that they have drained the decanters empty,
+they follow them thither with complexions rather heightened, and faces
+rather bloated with wine; and the agitated lady of the house whispers her
+friends as they waltz together, to the great terror of the whole room,
+that 'both Mr. Blake and Mr. Dummins are very nice sort of young men in
+their way, only they are eccentric persons, and unfortunately _rather too
+wild_!'
+
+The remaining class of out-and-out young gentlemen is composed of
+persons, who, having no money of their own and a soul above earning any,
+enjoy similar pleasures, nobody knows how.  These respectable gentlemen,
+without aiming quite so much at the out-and-out in external appearance,
+are distinguished by all the same amiable and attractive characteristics,
+in an equal or perhaps greater degree, and now and then find their way
+into society, through the medium of the other class of out-and-out young
+gentlemen, who will sometimes carry them home, and who usually pay their
+tavern bills.  As they are equally gentlemanly, clever, witty,
+intelligent, wise, and well-bred, we need scarcely have recommended them
+to the peculiar consideration of the young ladies, if it were not that
+some of the gentle creatures whom we hold in such high respect, are
+perhaps a little too apt to confound a great many heavier terms with the
+light word eccentricity, which we beg them henceforth to take in a
+strictly Johnsonian sense, without any liberality or latitude of
+construction.
+
+
+
+THE VERY FRIENDLY YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+We know--and all people know--so many specimens of this class, that in
+selecting the few heads our limits enable us to take from a great number,
+we have been induced to give the very friendly young gentleman the
+preference over many others, to whose claims upon a more cursory view of
+the question we had felt disposed to assign the priority.
+
+The very friendly young gentleman is very friendly to everybody, but he
+attaches himself particularly to two, or at most to three families:
+regulating his choice by their dinners, their circle of acquaintance, or
+some other criterion in which he has an immediate interest.  He is of any
+age between twenty and forty, unmarried of course, must be fond of
+children, and is expected to make himself generally useful if possible.
+Let us illustrate our meaning by an example, which is the shortest mode
+and the clearest.
+
+We encountered one day, by chance, an old friend of whom we had lost
+sight for some years, and who--expressing a strong anxiety to renew our
+former intimacy--urged us to dine with him on an early day, that we might
+talk over old times.  We readily assented, adding, that we hoped we
+should be alone.  'Oh, certainly, certainly,' said our friend, 'not a
+soul with us but Mincin.'  'And who is Mincin?' was our natural inquiry.
+'O don't mind him,' replied our friend, 'he's a most particular friend of
+mine, and a very friendly fellow you will find him;' and so he left us.
+
+'We thought no more about Mincin until we duly presented ourselves at the
+house next day, when, after a hearty welcome, our friend motioned towards
+a gentleman who had been previously showing his teeth by the fireplace,
+and gave us to understand that it was Mr. Mincin, of whom he had spoken.
+It required no great penetration on our part to discover at once that Mr.
+Mincin was in every respect a very friendly young gentleman.
+
+'I am delighted,' said Mincin, hastily advancing, and pressing our hand
+warmly between both of his, 'I am delighted, I am sure, to make your
+acquaintance--(here he smiled)--very much delighted indeed--(here he
+exhibited a little emotion)--I assure you that I have looked forward to
+it anxiously for a very long time:' here he released our hands, and
+rubbing his own, observed, that the day was severe, but that he was
+delighted to perceive from our appearance that it agreed with us
+wonderfully; and then went on to observe, that, notwithstanding the
+coldness of the weather, he had that morning seen in the paper an
+exceedingly curious paragraph, to the effect, that there was now in the
+garden of Mr. Wilkins of Chichester, a pumpkin, measuring four feet in
+height, and eleven feet seven inches in circumference, which he looked
+upon as a very extraordinary piece of intelligence.  We ventured to
+remark, that we had a dim recollection of having once or twice before
+observed a similar paragraph in the public prints, upon which Mr. Mincin
+took us confidentially by the button, and said, Exactly, exactly, to be
+sure, we were very right, and he wondered what the editors meant by
+putting in such things.  Who the deuce, he should like to know, did they
+suppose cared about them? that struck him as being the best of it.
+
+The lady of the house appeared shortly afterwards, and Mr. Mincin's
+friendliness, as will readily be supposed, suffered no diminution in
+consequence; he exerted much strength and skill in wheeling a large
+easy-chair up to the fire, and the lady being seated in it, carefully
+closed the door, stirred the fire, and looked to the windows to see that
+they admitted no air; having satisfied himself upon all these points, he
+expressed himself quite easy in his mind, and begged to know how she
+found herself to-day.  Upon the lady's replying very well, Mr. Mincin
+(who it appeared was a medical gentleman) offered some general remarks
+upon the nature and treatment of colds in the head, which occupied us
+agreeably until dinner-time.  During the meal, he devoted himself to
+complimenting everybody, not forgetting himself, so that we were an
+uncommonly agreeable quartette.
+
+'I'll tell you what, Capper,' said Mr. Mincin to our host, as he closed
+the room door after the lady had retired, 'you have very great reason to
+be fond of your wife.  Sweet woman, Mrs. Capper, sir!'  'Nay, Mincin--I
+beg,' interposed the host, as we were about to reply that Mrs. Capper
+unquestionably was particularly sweet.  'Pray, Mincin, don't.'  'Why
+not?' exclaimed Mr. Mincin, 'why not?  Why should you feel any delicacy
+before your old friend--_our_ old friend, if I may be allowed to call you
+so, sir; why should you, I ask?'  We of course wished to know why he
+should also, upon which our friend admitted that Mrs. Capper _was_ a very
+sweet woman, at which admission Mr. Mincin cried 'Bravo!' and begged to
+propose Mrs. Capper with heartfelt enthusiasm, whereupon our host said,
+'Thank you, Mincin,' with deep feeling; and gave us, in a low voice, to
+understand, that Mincin had saved Mrs. Capper's cousin's life no less
+than fourteen times in a year and a half, which he considered no common
+circumstance--an opinion to which we most cordially subscribed.
+
+Now that we three were left to entertain ourselves with conversation, Mr.
+Mincin's extreme friendliness became every moment more apparent; he was
+so amazingly friendly, indeed, that it was impossible to talk about
+anything in which he had not the chief concern.  We happened to allude to
+some affairs in which our friend and we had been mutually engaged nearly
+fourteen years before, when Mr. Mincin was all at once reminded of a joke
+which our friend had made on that day four years, which he positively
+must insist upon telling--and which he did tell accordingly, with many
+pleasant recollections of what he said, and what Mrs. Capper said, and
+how he well remembered that they had been to the play with orders on the
+very night previous, and had seen Romeo and Juliet, and the pantomime,
+and how Mrs. Capper being faint had been led into the lobby, where she
+smiled, said it was nothing after all, and went back again, with many
+other interesting and absorbing particulars: after which the friendly
+young gentleman went on to assure us, that our friend had experienced a
+marvellously prophetic opinion of that same pantomime, which was of such
+an admirable kind, that two morning papers took the same view next day:
+to this our friend replied, with a little triumph, that in that instance
+he had some reason to think he had been correct, which gave the friendly
+young gentleman occasion to believe that our friend was always correct;
+and so we went on, until our friend, filling a bumper, said he must drink
+one glass to his dear friend Mincin, than whom he would say no man saved
+the lives of his acquaintances more, or had a more friendly heart.
+Finally, our friend having emptied his glass, said, 'God bless you,
+Mincin,'--and Mr. Mincin and he shook hands across the table with much
+affection and earnestness.
+
+But great as the friendly young gentleman is, in a limited scene like
+this, he plays the same part on a larger scale with increased _eclat_.
+Mr. Mincin is invited to an evening party with his dear friends the
+Martins, where he meets his dear friends the Cappers, and his dear
+friends the Watsons, and a hundred other dear friends too numerous to
+mention.  He is as much at home with the Martins as with the Cappers; but
+how exquisitely he balances his attentions, and divides them among his
+dear friends!  If he flirts with one of the Miss Watsons, he has one
+little Martin on the sofa pulling his hair, and the other little Martin
+on the carpet riding on his foot.  He carries Mrs. Watson down to supper
+on one arm, and Miss Martin on the other, and takes wine so judiciously,
+and in such exact order, that it is impossible for the most punctilious
+old lady to consider herself neglected.  If any young lady, being
+prevailed upon to sing, become nervous afterwards, Mr. Mincin leads her
+tenderly into the next room, and restores her with port wine, which she
+must take medicinally.  If any gentleman be standing by the piano during
+the progress of the ballad, Mr. Mincin seizes him by the arm at one point
+of the melody, and softly beating time the while with his head, expresses
+in dumb show his intense perception of the delicacy of the passage.  If
+anybody's self-love is to be flattered, Mr. Mincin is at hand.  If
+anybody's overweening vanity is to be pampered, Mr. Mincin will surfeit
+it.  What wonder that people of all stations and ages recognise Mr.
+Mincin's friendliness; that he is universally allowed to be handsome as
+amiable; that mothers think him an oracle, daughters a dear, brothers a
+beau, and fathers a wonder!  And who would not have the reputation of the
+very friendly young gentleman?
+
+
+
+THE MILITARY YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+We are rather at a loss to imagine how it has come to pass that military
+young gentlemen have obtained so much favour in the eyes of the young
+ladies of this kingdom.  We cannot think so lightly of them as to suppose
+that the mere circumstance of a man's wearing a red coat ensures him a
+ready passport to their regard; and even if this were the case, it would
+be no satisfactory explanation of the circumstance, because, although the
+analogy may in some degree hold good in the case of mail coachmen and
+guards, still general postmen wear red coats, and _they_ are not to our
+knowledge better received than other men; nor are firemen either, who
+wear (or used to wear) not only red coats, but very resplendent and
+massive badges besides--much larger than epaulettes.  Neither do the
+twopenny post-office boys, if the result of our inquiries be correct,
+find any peculiar favour in woman's eyes, although they wear very bright
+red jackets, and have the additional advantage of constantly appearing in
+public on horseback, which last circumstance may be naturally supposed to
+be greatly in their favour.
+
+We have sometimes thought that this phenomenon may take its rise in the
+conventional behaviour of captains and colonels and other gentlemen in
+red coats on the stage, where they are invariably represented as fine
+swaggering fellows, talking of nothing but charming girls, their king and
+country, their honour, and their debts, and crowing over the inferior
+classes of the community, whom they occasionally treat with a little
+gentlemanly swindling, no less to the improvement and pleasure of the
+audience, than to the satisfaction and approval of the choice spirits who
+consort with them.  But we will not devote these pages to our
+speculations upon the subject, inasmuch as our business at the present
+moment is not so much with the young ladies who are bewitched by her
+Majesty's livery as with the young gentlemen whose heads are turned by
+it.  For 'heads' we had written 'brains;' but upon consideration, we
+think the former the more appropriate word of the two.
+
+These young gentlemen may be divided into two classes--young gentlemen
+who are actually in the army, and young gentlemen who, having an intense
+and enthusiastic admiration for all things appertaining to a military
+life, are compelled by adverse fortune or adverse relations to wear out
+their existence in some ignoble counting-house.  We will take this latter
+description of military young gentlemen first.
+
+The whole heart and soul of the military young gentleman are concentrated
+in his favourite topic.  There is nothing that he is so learned upon as
+uniforms; he will tell you, without faltering for an instant, what the
+habiliments of any one regiment are turned up with, what regiment wear
+stripes down the outside and inside of the leg, and how many buttons the
+Tenth had on their coats; he knows to a fraction how many yards and odd
+inches of gold lace it takes to make an ensign in the Guards; is deeply
+read in the comparative merits of different bands, and the apparelling of
+trumpeters; and is very luminous indeed in descanting upon 'crack
+regiments,' and the 'crack' gentlemen who compose them, of whose
+mightiness and grandeur he is never tired of telling.
+
+We were suggesting to a military young gentleman only the other day,
+after he had related to us several dazzling instances of the profusion of
+half-a-dozen honourable ensign somebodies or nobodies in the articles of
+kid gloves and polished boots, that possibly 'cracked' regiments would be
+an improvement upon 'crack,' as being a more expressive and appropriate
+designation, when he suddenly interrupted us by pulling out his watch,
+and observing that he must hurry off to the Park in a cab, or he would be
+too late to hear the band play.  Not wishing to interfere with so
+important an engagement, and being in fact already slightly overwhelmed
+by the anecdotes of the honourable ensigns afore-mentioned, we made no
+attempt to detain the military young gentleman, but parted company with
+ready good-will.
+
+Some three or four hours afterwards, we chanced to be walking down
+Whitehall, on the Admiralty side of the way, when, as we drew near to one
+of the little stone places in which a couple of horse soldiers mount
+guard in the daytime, we were attracted by the motionless appearance and
+eager gaze of a young gentleman, who was devouring both man and horse
+with his eyes, so eagerly, that he seemed deaf and blind to all that was
+passing around him.  We were not much surprised at the discovery that it
+was our friend, the military young gentleman, but we _were_ a little
+astonished when we returned from a walk to South Lambeth to find him
+still there, looking on with the same intensity as before.  As it was a
+very windy day, we felt bound to awaken the young gentleman from his
+reverie, when he inquired of us with great enthusiasm, whether 'that was
+not a glorious spectacle,' and proceeded to give us a detailed account of
+the weight of every article of the spectacle's trappings, from the man's
+gloves to the horse's shoes.
+
+We have made it a practice since, to take the Horse Guards in our daily
+walk, and we find it is the custom of military young gentlemen to plant
+themselves opposite the sentries, and contemplate them at leisure, in
+periods varying from fifteen minutes to fifty, and averaging twenty-five.
+We were much struck a day or two since, by the behaviour of a very
+promising young butcher who (evincing an interest in the service, which
+cannot be too strongly commanded or encouraged), after a prolonged
+inspection of the sentry, proceeded to handle his boots with great
+curiosity, and as much composure and indifference as if the man were
+wax-work.
+
+But the really military young gentleman is waiting all this time, and at
+the very moment that an apology rises to our lips, he emerges from the
+barrack gate (he is quartered in a garrison town), and takes the way
+towards the high street.  He wears his undress uniform, which somewhat
+mars the glory of his outward man; but still how great, how grand, he is!
+What a happy mixture of ease and ferocity in his gait and carriage, and
+how lightly he carries that dreadful sword under his arm, making no more
+ado about it than if it were a silk umbrella!  The lion is sleeping: only
+think if an enemy were in sight, how soon he'd whip it out of the
+scabbard, and what a terrible fellow he would be!
+
+But he walks on, thinking of nothing less than blood and slaughter; and
+now he comes in sight of three other military young gentlemen,
+arm-in-arm, who are bearing down towards him, clanking their iron heels
+on the pavement, and clashing their swords with a noise, which should
+cause all peaceful men to quail at heart.  They stop to talk.  See how
+the flaxen-haired young gentleman with the weak legs--he who has his
+pocket-handkerchief thrust into the breast of his coat-glares upon the
+fainthearted civilians who linger to look upon his glory; how the next
+young gentleman elevates his head in the air, and majestically places his
+arms a-kimbo, while the third stands with his legs very wide apart, and
+clasps his hands behind him.  Well may we inquire--not in familiar jest,
+but in respectful earnest--if you call that nothing.  Oh! if some
+encroaching foreign power--the Emperor of Russia, for instance, or any of
+those deep fellows, could only see those military young gentlemen as they
+move on together towards the billiard-room over the way, wouldn't he
+tremble a little!
+
+And then, at the Theatre at night, when the performances are by command
+of Colonel Fitz-Sordust and the officers of the garrison--what a splendid
+sight it is!  How sternly the defenders of their country look round the
+house as if in mute assurance to the audience, that they may make
+themselves comfortable regarding any foreign invasion, for they (the
+military young gentlemen) are keeping a sharp look-out, and are ready for
+anything.  And what a contrast between them, and that stage-box full of
+grey-headed officers with tokens of many battles about them, who have
+nothing at all in common with the military young gentlemen, and who--but
+for an old-fashioned kind of manly dignity in their looks and
+bearing--might be common hard-working soldiers for anything they take the
+pains to announce to the contrary!
+
+Ah! here is a family just come in who recognise the flaxen-headed young
+gentleman; and the flaxen-headed young gentleman recognises them too,
+only he doesn't care to show it just now.  Very well done indeed!  He
+talks louder to the little group of military young gentlemen who are
+standing by him, and coughs to induce some ladies in the next box but one
+to look round, in order that their faces may undergo the same ordeal of
+criticism to which they have subjected, in not a wholly inaudible tone,
+the majority of the female portion of the audience.  Oh! a gentleman in
+the same box looks round as if he were disposed to resent this as an
+impertinence; and the flaxen-headed young gentleman sees his friends at
+once, and hurries away to them with the most charming cordiality.
+
+Three young ladies, one young man, and the mamma of the party, receive
+the military young gentleman with great warmth and politeness, and in
+five minutes afterwards the military young gentleman, stimulated by the
+mamma, introduces the two other military young gentlemen with whom he was
+walking in the morning, who take their seats behind the young ladies and
+commence conversation; whereat the mamma bestows a triumphant bow upon a
+rival mamma, who has not succeeded in decoying any military young
+gentlemen, and prepares to consider her visitors from that moment three
+of the most elegant and superior young gentlemen in the whole world.
+
+
+
+THE POLITICAL YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+Once upon a time--_not_ in the days when pigs drank wine, but in a more
+recent period of our history--it was customary to banish politics when
+ladies were present.  If this usage still prevailed, we should have had
+no chapter for political young gentlemen, for ladies would have neither
+known nor cared what kind of monster a political young gentleman was.
+But as this good custom in common with many others has 'gone out,' and
+left no word when it is likely to be home again; as political young
+ladies are by no means rare, and political young gentlemen the very
+reverse of scarce, we are bound in the strict discharge of our most
+responsible duty not to neglect this natural division of our subject.
+
+If the political young gentleman be resident in a country town (and there
+_are_ political young gentlemen in country towns sometimes), he is wholly
+absorbed in his politics; as a pair of purple spectacles communicate the
+same uniform tint to all objects near and remote, so the political
+glasses, with which the young gentleman assists his mental vision, give
+to everything the hue and tinge of party feeling.  The political young
+gentleman would as soon think of being struck with the beauty of a young
+lady in the opposite interest, as he would dream of marrying his sister
+to the opposite member.
+
+If the political young gentleman be a Conservative, he has usually some
+vague ideas about Ireland and the Pope which he cannot very clearly
+explain, but which he knows are the right sort of thing, and not to be
+very easily got over by the other side.  He has also some choice
+sentences regarding church and state, culled from the banners in use at
+the last election, with which he intersperses his conversation at
+intervals with surprising effect.  But his great topic is the
+constitution, upon which he will declaim, by the hour together, with much
+heat and fury; not that he has any particular information on the subject,
+but because he knows that the constitution is somehow church and state,
+and church and state somehow the constitution, and that the fellows on
+the other side say it isn't, which is quite a sufficient reason for him
+to say it is, and to stick to it.
+
+Perhaps his greatest topic of all, though, is the people.  If a fight
+takes place in a populous town, in which many noses are broken, and a few
+windows, the young gentleman throws down the newspaper with a triumphant
+air, and exclaims, 'Here's your precious people!'  If half-a-dozen boys
+run across the course at race time, when it ought to be kept clear, the
+young gentleman looks indignantly round, and begs you to observe the
+conduct of the people; if the gallery demand a hornpipe between the play
+and the afterpiece, the same young gentleman cries 'No' and 'Shame' till
+he is hoarse, and then inquires with a sneer what you think of popular
+moderation _now_; in short, the people form a never-failing theme for
+him; and when the attorney, on the side of his candidate, dwells upon it
+with great power of eloquence at election time, as he never fails to do,
+the young gentleman and his friends, and the body they head, cheer with
+great violence against _the other people_, with whom, of course, they
+have no possible connexion.  In much the same manner the audience at a
+theatre never fail to be highly amused with any jokes at the expense of
+the public--always laughing heartily at some other public, and never at
+themselves.
+
+If the political young gentleman be a Radical, he is usually a very
+profound person indeed, having great store of theoretical questions to
+put to you, with an infinite variety of possible cases and logical
+deductions therefrom.  If he be of the utilitarian school, too, which is
+more than probable, he is particularly pleasant company, having many
+ingenious remarks to offer upon the voluntary principle and various
+cheerful disquisitions connected with the population of the country, the
+position of Great Britain in the scale of nations, and the balance of
+power.  Then he is exceedingly well versed in all doctrines of political
+economy as laid down in the newspapers, and knows a great many
+parliamentary speeches by heart; nay, he has a small stock of aphorisms,
+none of them exceeding a couple of lines in length, which will settle the
+toughest question and leave you nothing to say.  He gives all the young
+ladies to understand, that Miss Martineau is the greatest woman that ever
+lived; and when they praise the good looks of Mr. Hawkins the new member,
+says he's very well for a representative, all things considered, but he
+wants a little calling to account, and he is more than half afraid it
+will be necessary to bring him down on his knees for that vote on the
+miscellaneous estimates.  At this, the young ladies express much
+wonderment, and say surely a Member of Parliament is not to be brought
+upon his knees so easily; in reply to which the political young gentleman
+smiles sternly, and throws out dark hints regarding the speedy arrival of
+that day, when Members of Parliament will be paid salaries, and required
+to render weekly accounts of their proceedings, at which the young ladies
+utter many expressions of astonishment and incredulity, while their
+lady-mothers regard the prophecy as little else than blasphemous.
+
+It is extremely improving and interesting to hear two political young
+gentlemen, of diverse opinions, discuss some great question across a
+dinner-table; such as, whether, if the public were admitted to
+Westminster Abbey for nothing, they would or would not convey small
+chisels and hammers in their pockets, and immediately set about chipping
+all the noses off the statues; or whether, if they once got into the
+Tower for a shilling, they would not insist upon trying the crown on
+their own heads, and loading and firing off all the small arms in the
+armoury, to the great discomposure of Whitechapel and the Minories.  Upon
+these, and many other momentous questions which agitate the public mind
+in these desperate days, they will discourse with great vehemence and
+irritation for a considerable time together, both leaving off precisely
+where they began, and each thoroughly persuaded that he has got the
+better of the other.
+
+In society, at assemblies, balls, and playhouses, these political young
+gentlemen are perpetually on the watch for a political allusion, or
+anything which can be tortured or construed into being one; when,
+thrusting themselves into the very smallest openings for their favourite
+discourse, they fall upon the unhappy company tooth and nail.  They have
+recently had many favourable opportunities of opening in churches, but as
+there the clergyman has it all his own way, and must not be contradicted,
+whatever politics he preaches, they are fain to hold their tongues until
+they reach the outer door, though at the imminent risk of bursting in the
+effort.
+
+As such discussions can please nobody but the talkative parties
+concerned, we hope they will henceforth take the hint and discontinue
+them, otherwise we now give them warning, that the ladies have our advice
+to discountenance such talkers altogether.
+
+
+
+THE DOMESTIC YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+Let us make a slight sketch of our amiable friend, Mr. Felix Nixon.  We
+are strongly disposed to think, that if we put him in this place, he will
+answer our purpose without another word of comment.
+
+Felix, then, is a young gentleman who lives at home with his mother, just
+within the twopenny-post office circle of three miles from St.
+Martin-le-Grand.  He wears Indiarubber goloshes when the weather is at
+all damp, and always has a silk handkerchief neatly folded up in the
+right-hand pocket of his great-coat, to tie over his mouth when he goes
+home at night; moreover, being rather near-sighted, he carries spectacles
+for particular occasions, and has a weakish tremulous voice, of which he
+makes great use, for he talks as much as any old lady breathing.
+
+The two chief subjects of Felix's discourse, are himself and his mother,
+both of whom would appear to be very wonderful and interesting persons.
+As Felix and his mother are seldom apart in body, so Felix and his mother
+are scarcely ever separate in spirit.  If you ask Felix how he finds
+himself to-day, he prefaces his reply with a long and minute bulletin of
+his mother's state of health; and the good lady in her turn, edifies her
+acquaintance with a circumstantial and alarming account, how he sneezed
+four times and coughed once after being out in the rain the other night,
+but having his feet promptly put into hot water, and his head into a
+flannel-something, which we will not describe more particularly than by
+this delicate allusion, was happily brought round by the next morning,
+and enabled to go to business as usual.
+
+Our friend is not a very adventurous or hot-headed person, but he has
+passed through many dangers, as his mother can testify: there is one
+great story in particular, concerning a hackney coachman who wanted to
+overcharge him one night for bringing them home from the play, upon which
+Felix gave the aforesaid coachman a look which his mother thought would
+have crushed him to the earth, but which did not crush him quite, for he
+continued to demand another sixpence, notwithstanding that Felix took out
+his pocket-book, and, with the aid of a flat candle, pointed out the fare
+in print, which the coachman obstinately disregarding, he shut the
+street-door with a slam which his mother shudders to think of; and then,
+roused to the most appalling pitch of passion by the coachman knocking a
+double knock to show that he was by no means convinced, he broke with
+uncontrollable force from his parent and the servant girl, and running
+into the street without his hat, actually shook his fist at the coachman,
+and came back again with a face as white, Mrs. Nixon says, looking about
+her for a simile, as white as that ceiling.  She never will forget his
+fury that night, Never!
+
+To this account Felix listens with a solemn face, occasionally looking at
+you to see how it affects you, and when his mother has made an end of it,
+adds that he looked at every coachman he met for three weeks afterwards,
+in hopes that he might see the scoundrel; whereupon Mrs. Nixon, with an
+exclamation of terror, requests to know what he would have done to him if
+he _had_ seen him, at which Felix smiling darkly and clenching his right
+fist, she exclaims, 'Goodness gracious!' with a distracted air, and
+insists upon extorting a promise that he never will on any account do
+anything so rash, which her dutiful son--it being something more than
+three years since the offence was committed--reluctantly concedes, and
+his mother, shaking her head prophetically, fears with a sigh that his
+spirit will lead him into something violent yet.  The discourse then, by
+an easy transition, turns upon the spirit which glows within the bosom of
+Felix, upon which point Felix himself becomes eloquent, and relates a
+thrilling anecdote of the time when he used to sit up till two o'clock in
+the morning reading French, and how his mother used to say, 'Felix, you
+will make yourself ill, I know you will;' and how _he_ used to say,
+'Mother, I don't care--I will do it;' and how at last his mother
+privately procured a doctor to come and see him, who declared, the moment
+he felt his pulse, that if he had gone on reading one night more--only
+one night more--he must have put a blister on each temple, and another
+between his shoulders; and who, as it was, sat down upon the instant, and
+writing a prescription for a blue pill, said it must be taken
+immediately, or he wouldn't answer for the consequences.  The recital of
+these and many other moving perils of the like nature, constantly harrows
+up the feelings of Mr. Nixon's friends.
+
+Mrs. Nixon has a tolerably extensive circle of female acquaintance, being
+a good-humoured, talkative, bustling little body, and to the unmarried
+girls among them she is constantly vaunting the virtues of her son,
+hinting that she will be a very happy person who wins him, but that they
+must mind their P's and Q's, for he is very particular, and terribly
+severe upon young ladies.  At this last caution the young ladies resident
+in the same row, who happen to be spending the evening there, put their
+pocket-handkerchiefs before their mouths, and are troubled with a short
+cough; just then Felix knocks at the door, and his mother drawing the
+tea-table nearer the fire, calls out to him as he takes off his boots in
+the back parlour that he needn't mind coming in in his slippers, for
+there are only the two Miss Greys and Miss Thompson, and she is quite
+sure they will excuse _him_, and nodding to the two Miss Greys, she adds,
+in a whisper, that Julia Thompson is a great favourite with Felix, at
+which intelligence the short cough comes again, and Miss Thompson in
+particular is greatly troubled with it, till Felix coming in, very faint
+for want of his tea, changes the subject of discourse, and enables her to
+laugh out boldly and tell Amelia Grey not to be so foolish.  Here they
+all three laugh, and Mrs. Nixon says they are giddy girls; in which stage
+of the proceedings, Felix, who has by this time refreshened himself with
+the grateful herb that 'cheers but not inebriates,' removes his cup from
+his countenance and says with a knowing smile, that all girls are;
+whereat his admiring mamma pats him on the back and tells him not to be
+sly, which calls forth a general laugh from the young ladies, and another
+smile from Felix, who, thinking he looks very sly indeed, is perfectly
+satisfied.
+
+Tea being over, the young ladies resume their work, and Felix insists
+upon holding a skein of silk while Miss Thompson winds it on a card.
+This process having been performed to the satisfaction of all parties, he
+brings down his flute in compliance with a request from the youngest Miss
+Grey, and plays divers tunes out of a very small music-book till
+supper-time, when he is very facetious and talkative indeed.  Finally,
+after half a tumblerful of warm sherry and water, he gallantly puts on
+his goloshes over his slippers, and telling Miss Thompson's servant to
+run on first and get the door open, escorts that young lady to her house,
+five doors off: the Miss Greys who live in the next house but one
+stopping to peep with merry faces from their own door till he comes back
+again, when they call out 'Very well, Mr. Felix,' and trip into the
+passage with a laugh more musical than any flute that was ever played.
+
+Felix is rather prim in his appearance, and perhaps a little priggish
+about his books and flute, and so forth, which have all their peculiar
+corners of peculiar shelves in his bedroom; indeed all his female
+acquaintance (and they are good judges) have long ago set him down as a
+thorough old bachelor.  He is a favourite with them however, in a certain
+way, as an honest, inoffensive, kind-hearted creature; and as his
+peculiarities harm nobody, not even himself, we are induced to hope that
+many who are not personally acquainted with him will take our good word
+in his behalf, and be content to leave him to a long continuance of his
+harmless existence.
+
+
+
+THE CENSORIOUS YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+There is an amiable kind of young gentleman going about in society, upon
+whom, after much experience of him, and considerable turning over of the
+subject in our mind, we feel it our duty to affix the above appellation.
+Young ladies mildly call him a 'sarcastic' young gentleman, or a 'severe'
+young gentleman.  We, who know better, beg to acquaint them with the
+fact, that he is merely a censorious young gentleman, and nothing else.
+
+The censorious young gentleman has the reputation among his familiars of
+a remarkably clever person, which he maintains by receiving all
+intelligence and expressing all opinions with a dubious sneer,
+accompanied with a half smile, expressive of anything you please but
+good-humour.  This sets people about thinking what on earth the
+censorious young gentleman means, and they speedily arrive at the
+conclusion that he means something very deep indeed; for they reason in
+this way--'This young gentleman looks so very knowing that he must mean
+something, and as I am by no means a dull individual, what a very deep
+meaning he must have if I can't find it out!'  It is extraordinary how
+soon a censorious young gentleman may make a reputation in his own small
+circle if he bear this in his mind, and regulate his proceedings
+accordingly.
+
+As young ladies are generally--not curious, but laudably desirous to
+acquire information, the censorious young gentleman is much talked about
+among them, and many surmises are hazarded regarding him.  'I wonder,'
+exclaims the eldest Miss Greenwood, laying down her work to turn up the
+lamp, 'I wonder whether Mr. Fairfax will ever be married.'  'Bless me,
+dear,' cries Miss Marshall, 'what ever made you think of him?'  'Really I
+hardly know,' replies Miss Greenwood; 'he is such a very mysterious
+person, that I often wonder about him.'  'Well, to tell you the truth,'
+replies Miss Marshall, 'and so do I.'  Here two other young ladies
+profess that they are constantly doing the like, and all present appear
+in the same condition except one young lady, who, not scrupling to state
+that she considers Mr. Fairfax 'a horror,' draws down all the opposition
+of the others, which having been expressed in a great many ejaculatory
+passages, such as 'Well, did I ever!'--and 'Lor, Emily, dear!' ma takes
+up the subject, and gravely states, that she must say she does not think
+Mr. Fairfax by any means a horror, but rather takes him to be a young man
+of very great ability; 'and I am quite sure,' adds the worthy lady, 'he
+always means a great deal more than he says.'
+
+The door opens at this point of the disclosure, and who of all people
+alive walks into the room, but the very Mr. Fairfax, who has been the
+subject of conversation!  'Well, it really is curious,' cries ma, 'we
+were at that very moment talking about you.'  'You did me great honour,'
+replies Mr. Fairfax; 'may I venture to ask what you were saying?'  'Why,
+if you must know,' returns the eldest girl, 'we were remarking what a
+very mysterious man you are.'  'Ay, ay!' observes Mr. Fairfax, 'Indeed!'
+Now Mr. Fairfax says this ay, ay, and indeed, which are slight words
+enough in themselves, with so very unfathomable an air, and accompanies
+them with such a very equivocal smile, that ma and the young ladies are
+more than ever convinced that he means an immensity, and so tell him he
+is a very dangerous man, and seems to be always thinking ill of somebody,
+which is precisely the sort of character the censorious young gentleman
+is most desirous to establish; wherefore he says, 'Oh, dear, no,' in a
+tone, obviously intended to mean, 'You have me there,' and which gives
+them to understand that they have hit the right nail on the very centre
+of its head.
+
+When the conversation ranges from the mystery overhanging the censorious
+young gentleman's behaviour, to the general topics of the day, he
+sustains his character to admiration.  He considers the new tragedy well
+enough for a new tragedy, but Lord bless us--well, no matter; he could
+say a great deal on that point, but he would rather not, lest he should
+be thought ill-natured, as he knows he would be.  'But is not Mr.
+So-and-so's performance truly charming?' inquires a young lady.
+'Charming!' replies the censorious young gentleman.  'Oh, dear, yes,
+certainly; very charming--oh, very charming indeed.'  After this, he
+stirs the fire, smiling contemptuously all the while: and a modest young
+gentleman, who has been a silent listener, thinks what a great thing it
+must be, to have such a critical judgment.  Of music, pictures, books,
+and poetry, the censorious young gentleman has an equally fine
+conception.  As to men and women, he can tell all about them at a glance.
+'Now let us hear your opinion of young Mrs. Barker,' says some great
+believer in the powers of Mr. Fairfax, 'but don't be too severe.'  'I
+never am severe,' replies the censorious young gentleman.  'Well, never
+mind that now.  She is very lady-like, is she not?'  'Lady-like!' repeats
+the censorious young gentleman (for he always repeats when he is at a
+loss for anything to say).  'Did you observe her manner?  Bless my heart
+and soul, Mrs. Thompson, did you observe her manner?--that's all I ask.'
+'I thought I had done so,' rejoins the poor lady, much perplexed; 'I did
+not observe it very closely perhaps.'  'Oh, not very closely,' rejoins
+the censorious young gentleman, triumphantly.  'Very good; then _I_ did.
+Let us talk no more about her.'  The censorious young gentleman purses up
+his lips, and nods his head sagely, as he says this; and it is forthwith
+whispered about, that Mr. Fairfax (who, though he is a little prejudiced,
+must be admitted to be a very excellent judge) has observed something
+exceedingly odd in Mrs. Barker's manner.
+
+
+
+THE FUNNY YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+As one funny young gentleman will serve as a sample of all funny young
+Gentlemen we purpose merely to note down the conduct and behaviour of an
+individual specimen of this class, whom we happened to meet at an annual
+family Christmas party in the course of this very last Christmas that
+ever came.
+
+We were all seated round a blazing fire which crackled pleasantly as the
+guests talked merrily and the urn steamed cheerily--for, being an
+old-fashioned party, there _was_ an urn, and a teapot besides--when there
+came a postman's knock at the door, so violent and sudden, that it
+startled the whole circle, and actually caused two or three very
+interesting and most unaffected young ladies to scream aloud and to
+exhibit many afflicting symptoms of terror and distress, until they had
+been several times assured by their respective adorers, that they were in
+no danger.  We were about to remark that it was surely beyond post-time,
+and must have been a runaway knock, when our host, who had hitherto been
+paralysed with wonder, sank into a chair in a perfect ecstasy of
+laughter, and offered to lay twenty pounds that it was that droll dog
+Griggins.  He had no sooner said this, than the majority of the company
+and all the children of the house burst into a roar of laughter too, as
+if some inimitable joke flashed upon them simultaneously, and gave vent
+to various exclamations of--To be sure it must be Griggins, and How like
+him that was, and What spirits he was always in! with many other
+commendatory remarks of the like nature.
+
+Not having the happiness to know Griggins, we became extremely desirous
+to see so pleasant a fellow, the more especially as a stout gentleman
+with a powdered head, who was sitting with his breeches buckles almost
+touching the hob, whispered us he was a wit of the first water, when the
+door opened, and Mr. Griggins being announced, presented himself, amidst
+another shout of laughter and a loud clapping of hands from the younger
+branches.  This welcome he acknowledged by sundry contortions of
+countenance, imitative of the clown in one of the new pantomimes, which
+were so extremely successful, that one stout gentleman rolled upon an
+ottoman in a paroxysm of delight, protesting, with many gasps, that if
+somebody didn't make that fellow Griggins leave off, he would be the
+death of him, he knew.  At this the company only laughed more
+boisterously than before, and as we always like to accommodate our tone
+and spirit if possible to the humour of any society in which we find
+ourself, we laughed with the rest, and exclaimed, 'Oh! capital, capital!'
+as loud as any of them.
+
+When he had quite exhausted all beholders, Mr. Griggins received the
+welcomes and congratulations of the circle, and went through the needful
+introductions with much ease and many puns.  This ceremony over, he
+avowed his intention of sitting in somebody's lap unless the young ladies
+made room for him on the sofa, which being done, after a great deal of
+tittering and pleasantry, he squeezed himself among them, and likened his
+condition to that of love among the roses.  At this novel jest we all
+roared once more.  'You should consider yourself highly honoured, sir,'
+said we.  'Sir,' replied Mr. Griggins, 'you do me proud.'  Here everybody
+laughed again; and the stout gentleman by the fire whispered in our ear
+that Griggins was making a dead set at us.
+
+The tea-things having been removed, we all sat down to a round game, and
+here Mr. Griggins shone forth with peculiar brilliancy, abstracting other
+people's fish, and looking over their hands in the most comical manner.
+He made one most excellent joke in snuffing a candle, which was neither
+more nor less than setting fire to the hair of a pale young gentleman who
+sat next him, and afterwards begging his pardon with considerable humour.
+As the young gentleman could not see the joke however, possibly in
+consequence of its being on the top of his own head, it did not go off
+quite as well as it might have done; indeed, the young gentleman was
+heard to murmur some general references to 'impertinence,' and a
+'rascal,' and to state the number of his lodgings in an angry tone--a
+turn of the conversation which might have been productive of slaughterous
+consequences, if a young lady, betrothed to the young gentleman, had not
+used her immediate influence to bring about a reconciliation:
+emphatically declaring in an agitated whisper, intended for his peculiar
+edification but audible to the whole table, that if he went on in that
+way, she never would think of him otherwise than as a friend, though as
+that she must always regard him.  At this terrible threat the young
+gentleman became calm, and the young lady, overcome by the revulsion of
+feeling, instantaneously fainted.
+
+Mr. Griggins's spirits were slightly depressed for a short period by this
+unlooked-for result of such a harmless pleasantry, but being promptly
+elevated by the attentions of the host and several glasses of wine, he
+soon recovered, and became even more vivacious than before, insomuch that
+the stout gentleman previously referred to, assured us that although he
+had known him since he was _that_ high (something smaller than a
+nutmeg-grater), he had never beheld him in such excellent cue.
+
+When the round game and several games at blind man's buff which followed
+it were all over, and we were going down to supper, the inexhaustible Mr.
+Griggins produced a small sprig of mistletoe from his waistcoat pocket,
+and commenced a general kissing of the assembled females, which
+occasioned great commotion and much excitement.  We observed that several
+young gentlemen--including the young gentleman with the pale
+countenance--were greatly scandalised at this indecorous proceeding, and
+talked very big among themselves in corners; and we observed too, that
+several young ladies when remonstrated with by the aforesaid young
+gentlemen, called each other to witness how they had struggled, and
+protested vehemently that it was very rude, and that they were surprised
+at Mrs. Brown's allowing it, and that they couldn't bear it, and had no
+patience with such impertinence.  But such is the gentle and forgiving
+nature of woman, that although we looked very narrowly for it, we could
+not detect the slightest harshness in the subsequent treatment of Mr.
+Griggins.  Indeed, upon the whole, it struck us that among the ladies he
+seemed rather more popular than before!
+
+To recount all the drollery of Mr. Griggins at supper, would fill such a
+tiny volume as this, {429} to the very bottom of the outside cover.  How
+he drank out of other people's glasses, and ate of other people's bread,
+how he frightened into screaming convulsions a little boy who was sitting
+up to supper in a high chair, by sinking below the table and suddenly
+reappearing with a mask on; how the hostess was really surprised that
+anybody could find a pleasure in tormenting children, and how the host
+frowned at the hostess, and felt convinced that Mr. Griggins had done it
+with the very best intentions; how Mr. Griggins explained, and how
+everybody's good-humour was restored but the child's;--to tell these and
+a hundred other things ever so briefly, would occupy more of our room and
+our readers' patience, than either they or we can conveniently spare.
+Therefore we change the subject, merely observing that we have offered no
+description of the funny young gentleman's personal appearance, believing
+that almost every society has a Griggins of its own, and leaving all
+readers to supply the deficiency, according to the particular
+circumstances of their particular case.
+
+
+
+THE THEATRICAL YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+All gentlemen who love the drama--and there are few gentlemen who are not
+attached to the most intellectual and rational of all our amusements--do
+not come within this definition.  As we have no mean relish for
+theatrical entertainments ourself, we are disinterestedly anxious that
+this should be perfectly understood.
+
+The theatrical young gentleman has early and important information on all
+theatrical topics.  'Well,' says he, abruptly, when you meet him in the
+street, 'here's a pretty to-do.  Flimkins has thrown up his part in the
+melodrama at the Surrey.'--'And what's to be done?' you inquire with as
+much gravity as you can counterfeit.  'Ah, that's the point,' replies the
+theatrical young gentleman, looking very serious; 'Boozle declines it;
+positively declines it.  From all I am told, I should say it was
+decidedly in Boozle's line, and that he would be very likely to make a
+great hit in it; but he objects on the ground of Flimkins having been put
+up in the part first, and says no earthly power shall induce him to take
+the character.  It's a fine part, too--excellent business, I'm told.  He
+has to kill six people in the course of the piece, and to fight over a
+bridge in red fire, which is as safe a card, you know, as can be.  Don't
+mention it; but I hear that the last scene, when he is first poisoned,
+and then stabbed, by Mrs. Flimkins as Vengedora, will be the greatest
+thing that has been done these many years.'  With this piece of news, and
+laying his finger on his lips as a caution for you not to excite the town
+with it, the theatrical young gentleman hurries away.
+
+The theatrical young gentleman, from often frequenting the different
+theatrical establishments, has pet and familiar names for them all.  Thus
+Covent-Garden is the garden, Drury-Lane the lane, the Victoria the vic,
+and the Olympic the pic.  Actresses, too, are always designated by their
+surnames only, as Taylor, Nisbett, Faucit, Honey; that talented and
+lady-like girl Sheriff, that clever little creature Horton, and so on.
+In the same manner he prefixes Christian names when he mentions actors,
+as Charley Young, Jemmy Buckstone, Fred. Yates, Paul Bedford.  When he is
+at a loss for a Christian name, the word 'old' applied indiscriminately
+answers quite as well: as old Charley Matthews at Vestris's, old Harley,
+and old Braham.  He has a great knowledge of the private proceedings of
+actresses, especially of their getting married, and can tell you in a
+breath half-a-dozen who have changed their names without avowing it.
+Whenever an alteration of this kind is made in the playbills, he will
+remind you that he let you into the secret six months ago.
+
+The theatrical young gentleman has a great reverence for all that is
+connected with the stage department of the different theatres.  He would,
+at any time, prefer going a street or two out of his way, to omitting to
+pass a stage-entrance, into which he always looks with a curious and
+searching eye.  If he can only identify a popular actor in the street, he
+is in a perfect transport of delight; and no sooner meets him, than he
+hurries back, and walks a few paces in front of him, so that he can turn
+round from time to time, and have a good stare at his features.  He looks
+upon a theatrical-fund dinner as one of the most enchanting festivities
+ever known; and thinks that to be a member of the Garrick Club, and see
+so many actors in their plain clothes, must be one of the highest
+gratifications the world can bestow.
+
+The theatrical young gentleman is a constant half-price visitor at one or
+other of the theatres, and has an infinite relish for all pieces which
+display the fullest resources of the establishment.  He likes to place
+implicit reliance upon the play-bills when he goes to see a show-piece,
+and works himself up to such a pitch of enthusiasm, as not only to
+believe (if the bills say so) that there are three hundred and
+seventy-five people on the stage at one time in the last scene, but is
+highly indignant with you, unless you believe it also.  He considers that
+if the stage be opened from the foot-lights to the back wall, in any new
+play, the piece is a triumph of dramatic writing, and applauds
+accordingly.  He has a great notion of trap-doors too; and thinks any
+character going down or coming up a trap (no matter whether he be an
+angel or a demon--they both do it occasionally) one of the most
+interesting feats in the whole range of scenic illusion.
+
+Besides these acquirements, he has several veracious accounts to
+communicate of the private manners and customs of different actors,
+which, during the pauses of a quadrille, he usually communicates to his
+partner, or imparts to his neighbour at a supper table.  Thus he is
+advised, that Mr. Liston always had a footman in gorgeous livery waiting
+at the side-scene with a brandy bottle and tumbler, to administer half a
+pint or so of spirit to him every time he came off, without which
+assistance he must infallibly have fainted.  He knows for a fact, that,
+after an arduous part, Mr. George Bennett is put between two feather
+beds, to absorb the perspiration; and is credibly informed, that Mr.
+Baker has, for many years, submitted to a course of lukewarm
+toast-and-water, to qualify him to sustain his favourite characters.  He
+looks upon Mr. Fitz Ball as the principal dramatic genius and poet of the
+day; but holds that there are great writers extant besides him,--in proof
+whereof he refers you to various dramas and melodramas recently produced,
+of which he takes in all the sixpenny and three-penny editions as fast as
+they appear.
+
+The theatrical young gentleman is a great advocate for violence of
+emotion and redundancy of action.  If a father has to curse a child upon
+the stage, he likes to see it done in the thorough-going style, with no
+mistake about it: to which end it is essential that the child should
+follow the father on her knees, and be knocked violently over on her face
+by the old gentleman as he goes into a small cottage, and shuts the door
+behind him.  He likes to see a blessing invoked upon the young lady, when
+the old gentleman repents, with equal earnestness, and accompanied by the
+usual conventional forms, which consist of the old gentleman looking
+anxiously up into the clouds, as if to see whether it rains, and then
+spreading an imaginary tablecloth in the air over the young lady's
+head--soft music playing all the while.  Upon these, and other points of
+a similar kind, the theatrical young gentleman is a great critic indeed.
+He is likewise very acute in judging of natural expressions of the
+passions, and knows precisely the frown, wink, nod, or leer, which stands
+for any one of them, or the means by which it may be converted into any
+other: as jealousy, with a good stamp of the right foot, becomes anger;
+or wildness, with the hands clasped before the throat, instead of tearing
+the wig, is passionate love.  If you venture to express a doubt of the
+accuracy of any of these portraitures, the theatrical young gentleman
+assures you, with a haughty smile, that it always has been done in that
+way, and he supposes they are not going to change it at this time of day
+to please you; to which, of course, you meekly reply that you suppose
+not.
+
+There are innumerable disquisitions of this nature, in which the
+theatrical young gentleman is very profound, especially to ladies whom he
+is most in the habit of entertaining with them; but as we have no space
+to recapitulate them at greater length, we must rest content with calling
+the attention of the young ladies in general to the theatrical young
+gentlemen of their own acquaintance.
+
+
+
+THE POETICAL YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+Time was, and not very long ago either, when a singular epidemic raged
+among the young gentlemen, vast numbers of whom, under the influence of
+the malady, tore off their neckerchiefs, turned down their shirt collars,
+and exhibited themselves in the open streets with bare throats and
+dejected countenances, before the eyes of an astonished public.  These
+were poetical young gentlemen.  The custom was gradually found to be
+inconvenient, as involving the necessity of too much clean linen and too
+large washing bills, and these outward symptoms have consequently passed
+away; but we are disposed to think, notwithstanding, that the number of
+poetical young gentlemen is considerably on the increase.
+
+We know a poetical young gentleman--a very poetical young gentleman.  We
+do not mean to say that he is troubled with the gift of poesy in any
+remarkable degree, but his countenance is of a plaintive and melancholy
+cast, his manner is abstracted and bespeaks affliction of soul: he seldom
+has his hair cut, and often talks about being an outcast and wanting a
+kindred spirit; from which, as well as from many general observations in
+which he is wont to indulge, concerning mysterious impulses, and
+yearnings of the heart, and the supremacy of intellect gilding all
+earthly things with the glowing magic of immortal verse, it is clear to
+all his friends that he has been stricken poetical.
+
+The favourite attitude of the poetical young gentleman is lounging on a
+sofa with his eyes fixed upon the ceiling, or sitting bolt upright in a
+high-backed chair, staring with very round eyes at the opposite wall.
+When he is in one of these positions, his mother, who is a worthy,
+affectionate old soul, will give you a nudge to bespeak your attention
+without disturbing the abstracted one, and whisper with a shake of the
+head, that John's imagination is at some extraordinary work or other, you
+may take her word for it.  Hereupon John looks more fiercely intent upon
+vacancy than before, and suddenly snatching a pencil from his pocket,
+puts down three words, and a cross on the back of a card, sighs deeply,
+paces once or twice across the room, inflicts a most unmerciful slap upon
+his head, and walks moodily up to his dormitory.
+
+The poetical young gentleman is apt to acquire peculiar notions of things
+too, which plain ordinary people, unblessed with a poetical obliquity of
+vision, would suppose to be rather distorted.  For instance, when the
+sickening murder and mangling of a wretched woman was affording delicious
+food wherewithal to gorge the insatiable curiosity of the public, our
+friend the poetical young gentleman was in ecstasies--not of disgust, but
+admiration.  'Heavens!' cried the poetical young gentleman, 'how grand;
+how great!'  We ventured deferentially to inquire upon whom these
+epithets were bestowed: our humble thoughts oscillating between the
+police officer who found the criminal, and the lock-keeper who found the
+head.  'Upon whom!' exclaimed the poetical young gentleman in a frenzy of
+poetry, 'Upon whom should they be bestowed but upon the murderer!'--and
+thereupon it came out, in a fine torrent of eloquence, that the murderer
+was a great spirit, a bold creature full of daring and nerve, a man of
+dauntless heart and determined courage, and withal a great casuist and
+able reasoner, as was fully demonstrated in his philosophical colloquies
+with the great and noble of the land.  We held our peace, and meekly
+signified our indisposition to controvert these opinions--firstly,
+because we were no match at quotation for the poetical young gentleman;
+and secondly, because we felt it would be of little use our entering into
+any disputation, if we were: being perfectly convinced that the
+respectable and immoral hero in question is not the first and will not be
+the last hanged gentleman upon whom false sympathy or diseased curiosity
+will be plentifully expended.
+
+This was a stern mystic flight of the poetical young gentleman.  In his
+milder and softer moments he occasionally lays down his neckcloth, and
+pens stanzas, which sometimes find their way into a Lady's Magazine, or
+the 'Poets' Corner' of some country newspaper; or which, in default of
+either vent for his genius, adorn the rainbow leaves of a lady's album.
+These are generally written upon some such occasions as contemplating the
+Bank of England by midnight, or beholding Saint Paul's in a snow-storm;
+and when these gloomy objects fail to afford him inspiration, he pours
+forth his soul in a touching address to a violet, or a plaintive lament
+that he is no longer a child, but has gradually grown up.
+
+The poetical young gentleman is fond of quoting passages from his
+favourite authors, who are all of the gloomy and desponding school.  He
+has a great deal to say too about the world, and is much given to
+opining, especially if he has taken anything strong to drink, that there
+is nothing in it worth living for.  He gives you to understand, however,
+that for the sake of society, he means to bear his part in the tiresome
+play, manfully resisting the gratification of his own strong desire to
+make a premature exit; and consoles himself with the reflection, that
+immortality has some chosen nook for himself and the other great spirits
+whom earth has chafed and wearied.
+
+When the poetical young gentleman makes use of adjectives, they are all
+superlatives.  Everything is of the grandest, greatest, noblest,
+mightiest, loftiest; or the lowest, meanest, obscurest, vilest, and most
+pitiful.  He knows no medium: for enthusiasm is the soul of poetry; and
+who so enthusiastic as a poetical young gentleman?  'Mr. Milkwash,' says
+a young lady as she unlocks her album to receive the young gentleman's
+original impromptu contribution, 'how very silent you are!  I think you
+must be in love.'  'Love!' cries the poetical young gentleman, starting
+from his seat by the fire and terrifying the cat who scampers off at full
+speed, 'Love! that burning, consuming passion; that ardour of the soul,
+that fierce glowing of the heart.  Love!  The withering, blighting
+influence of hope misplaced and affection slighted.  Love did you say!
+Ha! ha! ha!'
+
+With this, the poetical young gentleman laughs a laugh belonging only to
+poets and Mr. O. Smith of the Adelphi Theatre, and sits down, pen in
+hand, to throw off a page or two of verse in the biting, semi-atheistical
+demoniac style, which, like the poetical young gentleman himself, is full
+of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
+
+
+
+THE 'THROWING-OFF' YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+There is a certain kind of impostor--a bragging, vaunting, puffing young
+gentleman--against whom we are desirous to warn that fairer part of the
+creation, to whom we more peculiarly devote these our labours.  And we
+are particularly induced to lay especial stress upon this division of our
+subject, by a little dialogue we held some short time ago, with an
+esteemed young lady of our acquaintance, touching a most gross specimen
+of this class of men.  We had been urging all the absurdities of his
+conduct and conversation, and dwelling upon the impossibilities he
+constantly recounted--to which indeed we had not scrupled to prefix a
+certain hard little word of one syllable and three letters--when our fair
+friend, unable to maintain the contest any longer, reluctantly cried,
+'Well; he certainly has a habit of throwing-off, but then--'  What then?
+Throw him off yourself, said we.  And so she did, but not at our
+instance, for other reasons appeared, and it might have been better if
+she had done so at first.
+
+The throwing-off young gentleman has so often a father possessed of vast
+property in some remote district of Ireland, that we look with some
+suspicion upon all young gentlemen who volunteer this description of
+themselves.  The deceased grandfather of the throwing-off young gentleman
+was a man of immense possessions, and untold wealth; the throwing-off
+young gentleman remembers, as well as if it were only yesterday, the
+deceased baronet's library, with its long rows of scarce and valuable
+books in superbly embossed bindings, arranged in cases, reaching from the
+lofty ceiling to the oaken floor; and the fine antique chairs and tables,
+and the noble old castle of Ballykillbabaloo, with its splendid prospect
+of hill and dale, and wood, and rich wild scenery, and the fine hunting
+stables and the spacious court-yards, 'and--and--everything upon the same
+magnificent scale,' says the throwing-off young gentleman, 'princely;
+quite princely.  Ah!'  And he sighs as if mourning over the fallen
+fortunes of his noble house.
+
+The throwing-off young gentleman is a universal genius; at walking,
+running, rowing, swimming, and skating, he is unrivalled; at all games of
+chance or skill, at hunting, shooting, fishing, riding, driving, or
+amateur theatricals, no one can touch him--that is _could_ not, because
+he gives you carefully to understand, lest there should be any
+opportunity of testing his skill, that he is quite out of practice just
+now, and has been for some years.  If you mention any beautiful girl of
+your common acquaintance in his hearing, the throwing-off young gentleman
+starts, smiles, and begs you not to mind him, for it was quite
+involuntary: people do say indeed that they were once engaged, but
+no--although she is a very fine girl, he was so situated at that time
+that he couldn't possibly encourage the--'but it's of no use talking
+about it!' he adds, interrupting himself.  'She has got over it now, and
+I firmly hope and trust is happy.'  With this benevolent aspiration he
+nods his head in a mysterious manner, and whistling the first part of
+some popular air, thinks perhaps it will be better to change the subject.
+
+There is another great characteristic of the throwing-off young
+gentleman, which is, that he 'happens to be acquainted' with a most
+extraordinary variety of people in all parts of the world.  Thus in all
+disputed questions, when the throwing-off young gentleman has no argument
+to bring forward, he invariably happens to be acquainted with some
+distant person, intimately connected with the subject, whose testimony
+decides the point against you, to the great--may we say it--to the great
+admiration of three young ladies out of every four, who consider the
+throwing-off young gentleman a very highly-connected young man, and a
+most charming person.
+
+Sometimes the throwing-off young gentleman happens to look in upon a
+little family circle of young ladies who are quietly spending the evening
+together, and then indeed is he at the very height and summit of his
+glory; for it is to be observed that he by no means shines to equal
+advantage in the presence of men as in the society of over-credulous
+young ladies, which is his proper element.  It is delightful to hear the
+number of pretty things the throwing-off young gentleman gives utterance
+to, during tea, and still more so to observe the ease with which, from
+long practice and study, he delicately blends one compliment to a lady
+with two for himself.  'Did you ever see a more lovely blue than this
+flower, Mr. Caveton?' asks a young lady who, truth to tell, is rather
+smitten with the throwing-off young gentleman.  'Never,' he replies,
+bending over the object of admiration, 'never but in your eyes.'  'Oh,
+Mr. Caveton,' cries the young lady, blushing of course.  'Indeed I speak
+the truth,' replies the throwing-off young gentleman, 'I never saw any
+approach to them.  I used to think my cousin's blue eyes lovely, but they
+grow dim and colourless beside yours.'  'Oh! a beautiful cousin, Mr.
+Caveton!' replies the young lady, with that perfect artlessness which is
+the distinguishing characteristic of all young ladies; 'an affair, of
+course.'  'No; indeed, indeed you wrong me,' rejoins the throwing-off
+young gentleman with great energy.  'I fervently hope that her attachment
+towards me may be nothing but the natural result of our close intimacy in
+childhood, and that in change of scene and among new faces she may soon
+overcome it.  _I_ love her!  Think not so meanly of me, Miss Lowfield, I
+beseech, as to suppose that title, lands, riches, and beauty, can
+influence _my_ choice.  The heart, the heart, Miss Lowfield.'  Here the
+throwing-off young gentleman sinks his voice to a still lower whisper;
+and the young lady duly proclaims to all the other young ladies when they
+go up-stairs, to put their bonnets on, that Mr. Caveton's relations are
+all immensely rich, and that he is hopelessly beloved by title, lands,
+riches, and beauty.
+
+We have seen a throwing-off young gentleman who, to our certain
+knowledge, was innocent of a note of music, and scarcely able to
+recognise a tune by ear, volunteer a Spanish air upon the guitar when he
+had previously satisfied himself that there was not such an instrument
+within a mile of the house.
+
+We have heard another throwing-off young gentleman, after striking a note
+or two upon the piano, and accompanying it correctly (by dint of
+laborious practice) with his voice, assure a circle of wondering
+listeners that so acute was his ear that he was wholly unable to sing out
+of tune, let him try as he would.  We have lived to witness the unmasking
+of another throwing-off young gentleman, who went out a visiting in a
+military cap with a gold band and tassel, and who, after passing
+successfully for a captain and being lauded to the skies for his red
+whiskers, his bravery, his soldierly bearing and his pride, turned out to
+be the dishonest son of an honest linen-draper in a small country town,
+and whom, if it were not for this fortunate exposure, we should not yet
+despair of encountering as the fortunate husband of some rich heiress.
+Ladies, ladies, the throwing-off young gentlemen are often swindlers, and
+always fools.  So pray you avoid them.
+
+
+
+THE YOUNG LADIES' YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+This young gentleman has several titles.  Some young ladies consider him
+'a nice young man,' others 'a fine young man,' others 'quite a lady's
+man,' others 'a handsome man,' others 'a remarkably good-looking young
+man.'  With some young ladies he is 'a perfect angel,' and with others
+'quite a love.'  He is likewise a charming creature, a duck, and a dear.
+
+The young ladies' young gentleman has usually a fresh colour and very
+white teeth, which latter articles, of course, he displays on every
+possible opportunity.  He has brown or black hair, and whiskers of the
+same, if possible; but a slight tinge of red, or the hue which is
+vulgarly known as _sandy_, is not considered an objection.  If his head
+and face be large, his nose prominent, and his figure square, he is an
+uncommonly fine young man, and worshipped accordingly.  Should his
+whiskers meet beneath his chin, so much the better, though this is not
+absolutely insisted on; but he must wear an under-waistcoat, and smile
+constantly.
+
+There was a great party got up by some party-loving friends of ours last
+summer, to go and dine in Epping Forest.  As we hold that such wild
+expeditions should never be indulged in, save by people of the smallest
+means, who have no dinner at home, we should indubitably have excused
+ourself from attending, if we had not recollected that the projectors of
+the excursion were always accompanied on such occasions by a choice
+sample of the young ladies' young gentleman, whom we were very anxious to
+have an opportunity of meeting.  This determined us, and we went.
+
+We were to make for Chigwell in four glass coaches, each with a trifling
+company of six or eight inside, and a little boy belonging to the
+projectors on the box--and to start from the residence of the projectors,
+Woburn-place, Russell-square, at half-past ten precisely.  We arrived at
+the place of rendezvous at the appointed time, and found the glass
+coaches and the little boys quite ready, and divers young ladies and
+young gentlemen looking anxiously over the breakfast-parlour blinds, who
+appeared by no means so much gratified by our approach as we might have
+expected, but evidently wished we had been somebody else.  Observing that
+our arrival in lieu of the unknown occasioned some disappointment, we
+ventured to inquire who was yet to come, when we found from the hasty
+reply of a dozen voices, that it was no other than the young ladies'
+young gentleman.
+
+'I cannot imagine,' said the mamma, 'what has become of Mr. Balim--always
+so punctual, always so pleasant and agreeable.  I am sure I can-_not_
+think.'  As these last words were uttered in that measured, emphatic
+manner which painfully announces that the speaker has not quite made up
+his or her mind what to say, but is determined to talk on nevertheless,
+the eldest daughter took up the subject, and hoped no accident had
+happened to Mr. Balim, upon which there was a general chorus of 'Dear Mr.
+Balim!' and one young lady, more adventurous than the rest, proposed that
+an express should be straightway sent to dear Mr. Balim's lodgings.
+This, however, the papa resolutely opposed, observing, in what a short
+young lady behind us termed 'quite a bearish way,' that if Mr. Balim
+didn't choose to come, he might stop at home.  At this all the daughters
+raised a murmur of 'Oh pa!' except one sprightly little girl of eight or
+ten years old, who, taking advantage of a pause in the discourse,
+remarked, that perhaps Mr. Balim might have been married that
+morning--for which impertinent suggestion she was summarily ejected from
+the room by her eldest sister.
+
+We were all in a state of great mortification and uneasiness, when one of
+the little boys, running into the room as airily as little boys usually
+run who have an unlimited allowance of animal food in the holidays, and
+keep their hands constantly forced down to the bottoms of very deep
+trouser-pockets when they take exercise, joyfully announced that Mr.
+Balim was at that moment coming up the street in a hackney-cab; and the
+intelligence was confirmed beyond all doubt a minute afterwards by the
+entry of Mr. Balim himself, who was received with repeated cries of
+'Where have you been, you naughty creature?' whereunto the naughty
+creature replied, that he had been in bed, in consequence of a late party
+the night before, and had only just risen.  The acknowledgment awakened a
+variety of agonizing fears that he had taken no breakfast; which
+appearing after a slight cross-examination to be the real state of the
+case, breakfast for one was immediately ordered, notwithstanding Mr.
+Balim's repeated protestations that he couldn't think of it.  He did
+think of it though, and thought better of it too, for he made a
+remarkably good meal when it came, and was assiduously served by a select
+knot of young ladies.  It was quite delightful to see how he ate and
+drank, while one pair of fair hands poured out his coffee, and another
+put in the sugar, and another the milk; the rest of the company ever and
+anon casting angry glances at their watches, and the glass coaches,--and
+the little boys looking on in an agony of apprehension lest it should
+begin to rain before we set out; it might have rained all day, after we
+were once too far to turn back again, and welcome, for aught they cared.
+
+However, the cavalcade moved at length, every coachman being accommodated
+with a hamper between his legs something larger than a wheelbarrow; and
+the company being packed as closely as they possibly could in the
+carriages, 'according,' as one married lady observed, 'to the immemorial
+custom, which was half the diversion of gipsy parties.'  Thinking it very
+likely it might be (we have never been able to discover the other half),
+we submitted to be stowed away with a cheerful aspect, and were fortunate
+enough to occupy one corner of a coach in which were one old lady, four
+young ladies, and the renowned Mr. Balim the young ladies' young
+gentleman.
+
+We were no sooner fairly off, than the young ladies' young gentleman
+hummed a fragment of an air, which induced a young lady to inquire
+whether he had danced to that the night before.  'By Heaven, then, I
+did,' replied the young gentleman, 'and with a lovely heiress; a superb
+creature, with twenty thousand pounds.'  'You seem rather struck,'
+observed another young lady.  ''Gad she was a sweet creature,' returned
+the young gentleman, arranging his hair.  'Of course _she_ was struck
+too?' inquired the first young lady.  'How can you ask, love?' interposed
+the second; 'could she fail to be?'  'Well, honestly I think she was,'
+observed the young gentleman.  At this point of the dialogue, the young
+lady who had spoken first, and who sat on the young gentleman's right,
+struck him a severe blow on the arm with a rosebud, and said he was a
+vain man--whereupon the young gentleman insisted on having the rosebud,
+and the young lady appealing for help to the other young ladies, a
+charming struggle ensued, terminating in the victory of the young
+gentleman, and the capture of the rosebud.  This little skirmish over,
+the married lady, who was the mother of the rosebud, smiled sweetly upon
+the young gentleman, and accused him of being a flirt; the young
+gentleman pleading not guilty, a most interesting discussion took place
+upon the important point whether the young gentleman was a flirt or not,
+which being an agreeable conversation of a light kind, lasted a
+considerable time.  At length, a short silence occurring, the young
+ladies on either side of the young gentleman fell suddenly fast asleep;
+and the young gentleman, winking upon us to preserve silence, won a pair
+of gloves from each, thereby causing them to wake with equal suddenness
+and to scream very loud.  The lively conversation to which this
+pleasantry gave rise, lasted for the remainder of the ride, and would
+have eked out a much longer one.
+
+We dined rather more comfortably than people usually do under such
+circumstances, nothing having been left behind but the cork-screw and the
+bread.  The married gentlemen were unusually thirsty, which they
+attributed to the heat of the weather; the little boys ate to
+inconvenience; mammas were very jovial, and their daughters very
+fascinating; and the attendants being well-behaved men, got exceedingly
+drunk at a respectful distance.
+
+We had our eye on Mr. Balim at dinner-time, and perceived that he
+flourished wonderfully, being still surrounded by a little group of young
+ladies, who listened to him as an oracle, while he ate from their plates
+and drank from their glasses in a manner truly captivating from its
+excessive playfulness.  His conversation, too, was exceedingly brilliant.
+In fact, one elderly lady assured us, that in the course of a little
+lively _badinage_ on the subject of ladies' dresses, he had evinced as
+much knowledge as if he had been born and bred a milliner.
+
+As such of the fat people who did not happen to fall asleep after dinner
+entered upon a most vigorous game at ball, we slipped away alone into a
+thicker part of the wood, hoping to fall in with Mr. Balim, the greater
+part of the young people having dropped off in twos and threes and the
+young ladies' young gentleman among them.  Nor were we disappointed, for
+we had not walked far, when, peeping through the trees, we discovered him
+before us, and truly it was a pleasant thing to contemplate his
+greatness.
+
+The young ladies' young gentleman was seated upon the ground, at the feet
+of a few young ladies who were reclining on a bank; he was so profusely
+decked with scarfs, ribands, flowers, and other pretty spoils, that he
+looked like a lamb--or perhaps a calf would be a better simile--adorned
+for the sacrifice.  One young lady supported a parasol over his
+interesting head, another held his hat, and a third his neck-cloth, which
+in romantic fashion he had thrown off; the young gentleman himself, with
+his hand upon his breast, and his face moulded into an expression of the
+most honeyed sweetness, was warbling forth some choice specimens of vocal
+music in praise of female loveliness, in a style so exquisitely perfect,
+that we burst into an involuntary shout of laughter, and made a hasty
+retreat.
+
+What charming fellows these young ladies' young gentlemen are!  Ducks,
+dears, loves, angels, are all terms inadequate to express their merit.
+They are such amazingly, uncommonly, wonderfully, nice men.
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+As we have placed before the young ladies so many specimens of young
+gentlemen, and have also in the dedication of this volume given them to
+understand how much we reverence and admire their numerous virtues and
+perfections; as we have given them such strong reasons to treat us with
+confidence, and to banish, in our case, all that reserve and distrust of
+the male sex which, as a point of general behaviour, they cannot do
+better than preserve and maintain--we say, as we have done all this, we
+feel that now, when we have arrived at the close of our task, they may
+naturally press upon us the inquiry, what particular description of young
+gentlemen we can conscientiously recommend.
+
+Here we are at a loss.  We look over our list, and can neither recommend
+the bashful young gentleman, nor the out-and-out young gentleman, nor the
+very friendly young gentleman, nor the military young gentleman, nor the
+political young gentleman, nor the domestic young gentleman, nor the
+censorious young gentleman, nor the funny young gentleman, nor the
+theatrical young gentleman, nor the poetical young gentleman, nor the
+throwing-off young gentleman, nor the young ladies' young gentleman.
+
+As there are some good points about many of them, which still are not
+sufficiently numerous to render any one among them eligible, as a whole,
+our respectful advice to the young ladies is, to seek for a young
+gentleman who unites in himself the best qualities of all, and the worst
+weaknesses of none, and to lead him forthwith to the hymeneal altar,
+whether he will or no.  And to the young lady who secures him, we beg to
+tender one short fragment of matrimonial advice, selected from many sound
+passages of a similar tendency, to be found in a letter written by Dean
+Swift to a young lady on her marriage.
+
+'The grand affair of your life will be, to gain and preserve the esteem
+of your husband.  Neither good-nature nor virtue will suffer him to
+_esteem_ you against his judgment; and although he is not capable of
+using you ill, yet you will in time grow a thing indifferent and perhaps
+contemptible; unless you can supply the loss of youth and beauty with
+more durable qualities.  You have but a very few years to be young and
+handsome in the eyes of the world; and as few months to be so in the eyes
+of a husband who is not a fool; for I hope you do not still dream of
+charms and raptures, which marriage ever did, and ever will, put a sudden
+end to.'
+
+From the anxiety we express for the proper behaviour of the fortunate
+lady after marriage, it may possibly be inferred that the young gentleman
+to whom we have so delicately alluded, is no other than ourself.  Without
+in any way committing ourself upon this point, we have merely to observe,
+that we are ready to receive sealed offers containing a full
+specification of age, temper, appearance, and condition; but we beg it to
+be distinctly understood that we do not pledge ourself to accept the
+highest bidder.
+
+These offers may be forwarded to the Publishers, Messrs. Chapman and
+Hall, London; to whom all pieces of plate and other testimonials of
+approbation from the young ladies generally, are respectfully requested
+to be addressed.
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES
+
+
+AN URGENT REMONSTRANCE, &c.
+
+
+                       TO THE GENTLEMEN OF ENGLAND,
+                      (BEING BACHELORS OR WIDOWERS,)
+            THE REMONSTRANCE OF THEIR FAITHFUL FELLOW-SUBJECT,
+
+SHEWETH,--
+
+THAT Her Most Gracious Majesty, Victoria, by the Grace of God of the
+United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith,
+did, on the 23rd day of November last past, declare and pronounce to Her
+Most Honourable Privy Council, Her Majesty's Most Gracious intention of
+entering into the bonds of wedlock.
+
+THAT Her Most Gracious Majesty, in so making known Her Most Gracious
+intention to Her Most Honourable Privy Council as aforesaid, did use and
+employ the words--'It is my intention to ally myself in marriage with
+Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg and Gotha.'
+
+THAT the present is Bissextile, or Leap Year, in which it is held and
+considered lawful for any lady to offer and submit proposals of marriage
+to any gentleman, and to enforce and insist upon acceptance of the same,
+under pain of a certain fine or penalty; to wit, one silk or satin dress
+of the first quality, to be chosen by the lady and paid (or owed) for, by
+the gentleman.
+
+THAT these and other the horrors and dangers with which the said
+Bissextile, or Leap Year, threatens the gentlemen of England on every
+occasion of its periodical return, have been greatly aggravated and
+augmented by the terms of Her Majesty's said Most Gracious communication,
+which have filled the heads of divers young ladies in this Realm with
+certain new ideas destructive to the peace of mankind, that never entered
+their imagination before.
+
+THAT a case has occurred in Camberwell, in which a young lady informed
+her Papa that 'she intended to ally herself in marriage' with Mr. Smith
+of Stepney; and that another, and a very distressing case, has occurred
+at Tottenham, in which a young lady not only stated her intention of
+allying herself in marriage with her cousin John, but, taking violent
+possession of her said cousin, actually married him.
+
+THAT similar outrages are of constant occurrence, not only in the capital
+and its neighbourhood, but throughout the kingdom, and that unless the
+excited female populace be speedily checked and restrained in their
+lawless proceedings, most deplorable results must ensue therefrom; among
+which may be anticipated a most alarming increase in the population of
+the country, with which no efforts of the agricultural or manufacturing
+interest can possibly keep pace.
+
+THAT there is strong reason to suspect the existence of a most extensive
+plot, conspiracy, or design, secretly contrived by vast numbers of single
+ladies in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and now
+extending its ramifications in every quarter of the land; the object and
+intent of which plainly appears to be the holding and solemnising of an
+enormous and unprecedented number of marriages, on the day on which the
+nuptials of Her said Most Gracious Majesty are performed.
+
+THAT such plot, conspiracy, or design, strongly savours of Popery, as
+tending to the discomfiture of the Clergy of the Established Church, by
+entailing upon them great mental and physical exhaustion; and that such
+Popish plots are fomented and encouraged by Her Majesty's Ministers,
+which clearly appears--not only from Her Majesty's principal Secretary of
+State for Foreign Affairs traitorously getting married while holding
+office under the Crown; but from Mr. O'Connell having been heard to
+declare and avow that, if he had a daughter to marry, she should be
+married on the same day as Her said Most Gracious Majesty.
+
+THAT such arch plots, conspiracies, and designs, besides being fraught
+with danger to the Established Church, and (consequently) to the State,
+cannot fail to bring ruin and bankruptcy upon a large class of Her
+Majesty's subjects; as a great and sudden increase in the number of
+married men occasioning the comparative desertion (for a time) of
+Taverns, Hotels, Billiard-rooms, and Gaming-Houses, will deprive the
+Proprietors of their accustomed profits and returns.  And in further
+proof of the depth and baseness of such designs, it may be here observed,
+that all proprietors of Taverns, Hotels, Billiard-rooms, and
+Gaming-Houses, are (especially the last) solemnly devoted to the
+Protestant religion.
+
+FOR all these reasons, and many others of no less gravity and import, an
+urgent appeal is made to the gentlemen of England (being bachelors or
+widowers) to take immediate steps for convening a Public meeting; To
+consider of the best and surest means of averting the dangers with which
+they are threatened by the recurrence of Bissextile, or Leap Year, and
+the additional sensation created among single ladies by the terms of Her
+Majesty's Most Gracious Declaration; To take measures, without delay, for
+resisting the said single Ladies, and counteracting their evil designs;
+And to pray Her Majesty to dismiss her present Ministers, and to summon
+to her Councils those distinguished Gentlemen in various Honourable
+Professions who, by insulting on all occasions the only Lady in England
+who can be insulted with safety, have given a sufficient guarantee to Her
+Majesty's Loving Subjects that they, at least, are qualified to make war
+with women, and are already expert in the use of those weapons which are
+common to the lowest and most abandoned of the sex.
+
+
+
+THE YOUNG COUPLE
+
+
+There is to be a wedding this morning at the corner house in the terrace.
+The pastry-cook's people have been there half-a-dozen times already; all
+day yesterday there was a great stir and bustle, and they were up this
+morning as soon as it was light.  Miss Emma Fielding is going to be
+married to young Mr. Harvey.
+
+Heaven alone can tell in what bright colours this marriage is painted
+upon the mind of the little housemaid at number six, who has hardly slept
+a wink all night with thinking of it, and now stands on the unswept
+door-steps leaning upon her broom, and looking wistfully towards the
+enchanted house.  Nothing short of omniscience can divine what visions of
+the baker, or the green-grocer, or the smart and most insinuating
+butterman, are flitting across her mind--what thoughts of how she would
+dress on such an occasion, if she were a lady--of how she would dress, if
+she were only a bride--of how cook would dress, being bridesmaid,
+conjointly with her sister 'in place' at Fulham, and how the clergyman,
+deeming them so many ladies, would be quite humbled and respectful.  What
+day-dreams of hope and happiness--of life being one perpetual holiday,
+with no master and no mistress to grant or withhold it--of every Sunday
+being a Sunday out--of pure freedom as to curls and ringlets, and no
+obligation to hide fine heads of hair in caps--what pictures of
+happiness, vast and immense to her, but utterly ridiculous to us,
+bewilder the brain of the little housemaid at number six, all called into
+existence by the wedding at the corner!
+
+We smile at such things, and so we should, though perhaps for a better
+reason than commonly presents itself.  It should be pleasant to us to
+know that there are notions of happiness so moderate and limited, since
+upon those who entertain them, happiness and lightness of heart are very
+easily bestowed.
+
+But the little housemaid is awakened from her reverie, for forth from the
+door of the magical corner house there runs towards her, all fluttering
+in smart new dress and streaming ribands, her friend Jane Adams, who
+comes all out of breath to redeem a solemn promise of taking her in,
+under cover of the confusion, to see the breakfast table spread forth in
+state, and--sight of sights!--her young mistress ready dressed for
+church.
+
+And there, in good truth, when they have stolen up-stairs on tip-toe and
+edged themselves in at the chamber-door--there is Miss Emma 'looking like
+the sweetest picter,' in a white chip bonnet and orange flowers, and all
+other elegancies becoming a bride, (with the make, shape, and quality of
+every article of which the girl is perfectly familiar in one moment, and
+never forgets to her dying day)--and there is Miss Emma's mamma in tears,
+and Miss Emma's papa comforting her, and saying how that of course she
+has been long looking forward to this, and how happy she ought to be--and
+there too is Miss Emma's sister with her arms round her neck, and the
+other bridesmaid all smiles and tears, quieting the children, who would
+cry more but that they are so finely dressed, and yet sob for fear sister
+Emma should be taken away--and it is all so affecting, that the two
+servant-girls cry more than anybody; and Jane Adams, sitting down upon
+the stairs, when they have crept away, declares that her legs tremble so
+that she don't know what to do, and that she will say for Miss Emma, that
+she never had a hasty word from her, and that she does hope and pray she
+may be happy.
+
+But Jane soon comes round again, and then surely there never was anything
+like the breakfast table, glittering with plate and china, and set out
+with flowers and sweets, and long-necked bottles, in the most sumptuous
+and dazzling manner.  In the centre, too, is the mighty charm, the cake,
+glistening with frosted sugar, and garnished beautifully.  They agree
+that there ought to be a little Cupid under one of the barley-sugar
+temples, or at least two hearts and an arrow; but, with this exception,
+there is nothing to wish for, and a table could not be handsomer.  As
+they arrive at this conclusion, who should come in but Mr. John! to whom
+Jane says that its only Anne from number six; and John says _he_ knows,
+for he's often winked his eye down the area, which causes Anne to blush
+and look confused.  She is going away, indeed; when Mr. John will have it
+that she must drink a glass of wine, and he says never mind it's being
+early in the morning, it won't hurt her: so they shut the door and pour
+out the wine; and Anne drinking lane's health, and adding, 'and here's
+wishing you yours, Mr. John,' drinks it in a great many sips,--Mr. John
+all the time making jokes appropriate to the occasion.  At last Mr. John,
+who has waxed bolder by degrees, pleads the usage at weddings, and claims
+the privilege of a kiss, which he obtains after a great scuffle; and
+footsteps being now heard on the stairs, they disperse suddenly.
+
+By this time a carriage has driven up to convey the bride to church, and
+Anne of number six prolonging the process of 'cleaning her door,' has the
+satisfaction of beholding the bride and bridesmaids, and the papa and
+mamma, hurry into the same and drive rapidly off.  Nor is this all, for
+soon other carriages begin to arrive with a posse of company all
+beautifully dressed, at whom she could stand and gaze for ever; but
+having something else to do, is compelled to take one last long look and
+shut the street-door.
+
+And now the company have gone down to breakfast, and tears have given
+place to smiles, for all the corks are out of the long-necked bottles,
+and their contents are disappearing rapidly.  Miss Emma's papa is at the
+top of the table; Miss Emma's mamma at the bottom; and beside the latter
+are Miss Emma herself and her husband,--admitted on all hands to be the
+handsomest and most interesting young couple ever known.  All down both
+sides of the table, too, are various young ladies, beautiful to see, and
+various young gentlemen who seem to think so; and there, in a post of
+honour, is an unmarried aunt of Miss Emma's, reported to possess
+unheard-of riches, and to have expressed vast testamentary intentions
+respecting her favourite niece and new nephew.  This lady has been very
+liberal and generous already, as the jewels worn by the bride abundantly
+testify, but that is nothing to what she means to do, or even to what she
+has done, for she put herself in close communication with the dressmaker
+three months ago, and prepared a wardrobe (with some articles worked by
+her own hands) fit for a Princess.  People may call her an old maid, and
+so she may be, but she is neither cross nor ugly for all that; on the
+contrary, she is very cheerful and pleasant-looking, and very kind and
+tender-hearted: which is no matter of surprise except to those who yield
+to popular prejudices without thinking why, and will never grow wiser and
+never know better.
+
+Of all the company though, none are more pleasant to behold or better
+pleased with themselves than two young children, who, in honour of the
+day, have seats among the guests.  Of these, one is a little fellow of
+six or eight years old, brother to the bride,--and the other a girl of
+the same age, or something younger, whom he calls 'his wife.'  The real
+bride and bridegroom are not more devoted than they: he all love and
+attention, and she all blushes and fondness, toying with a little bouquet
+which he gave her this morning, and placing the scattered rose-leaves in
+her bosom with nature's own coquettishness.  They have dreamt of each
+other in their quiet dreams, these children, and their little hearts have
+been nearly broken when the absent one has been dispraised in jest.  When
+will there come in after-life a passion so earnest, generous, and true as
+theirs; what, even in its gentlest realities, can have the grace and
+charm that hover round such fairy lovers!
+
+By this time the merriment and happiness of the feast have gained their
+height; certain ominous looks begin to be exchanged between the
+bridesmaids, and somehow it gets whispered about that the carriage which
+is to take the young couple into the country has arrived.  Such members
+of the party as are most disposed to prolong its enjoyments, affect to
+consider this a false alarm, but it turns out too true, being speedily
+confirmed, first by the retirement of the bride and a select file of
+intimates who are to prepare her for the journey, and secondly by the
+withdrawal of the ladies generally.  To this there ensues a particularly
+awkward pause, in which everybody essays to be facetious, and nobody
+succeeds; at length the bridegroom makes a mysterious disappearance in
+obedience to some equally mysterious signal; and the table is deserted.
+
+Now, for at least six weeks last past it has been solemnly devised and
+settled that the young couple should go away in secret; but they no
+sooner appear without the door than the drawing-room windows are blocked
+up with ladies waving their handkerchiefs and kissing their hands, and
+the dining-room panes with gentlemen's faces beaming farewell in every
+queer variety of its expression.  The hall and steps are crowded with
+servants in white favours, mixed up with particular friends and relations
+who have darted out to say good-bye; and foremost in the group are the
+tiny lovers arm in arm, thinking, with fluttering hearts, what happiness
+it would be to dash away together in that gallant coach, and never part
+again.
+
+The bride has barely time for one hurried glance at her old home, when
+the steps rattle, the door slams, the horses clatter on the pavement, and
+they have left it far away.
+
+A knot of women servants still remain clustered in the hall, whispering
+among themselves, and there of course is Anne from number six, who has
+made another escape on some plea or other, and been an admiring witness
+of the departure.  There are two points on which Anne expatiates over and
+over again, without the smallest appearance of fatigue or intending to
+leave off; one is, that she 'never see in all her life such a--oh such a
+angel of a gentleman as Mr. Harvey'--and the other, that she 'can't tell
+how it is, but it don't seem a bit like a work-a-day, or a Sunday
+neither--it's all so unsettled and unregular.'
+
+
+
+THE FORMAL COUPLE
+
+
+The formal couple are the most prim, cold, immovable, and unsatisfactory
+people on the face of the earth.  Their faces, voices, dress, house,
+furniture, walk, and manner, are all the essence of formality, unrelieved
+by one redeeming touch of frankness, heartiness, or nature.
+
+Everything with the formal couple resolves itself into a matter of form.
+They don't call upon you on your account, but their own; not to see how
+you are, but to show how they are: it is not a ceremony to do honour to
+you, but to themselves,--not due to your position, but to theirs.  If one
+of a friend's children die, the formal couple are as sure and punctual in
+sending to the house as the undertaker; if a friend's family be
+increased, the monthly nurse is not more attentive than they.  The formal
+couple, in fact, joyfully seize all occasions of testifying their
+good-breeding and precise observance of the little usages of society; and
+for you, who are the means to this end, they care as much as a man does
+for the tailor who has enabled him to cut a figure, or a woman for the
+milliner who has assisted her to a conquest.
+
+Having an extensive connexion among that kind of people who make
+acquaintances and eschew friends, the formal gentleman attends from time
+to time a great many funerals, to which he is formally invited, and to
+which he formally goes, as returning a call for the last time.  Here his
+deportment is of the most faultless description; he knows the exact pitch
+of voice it is proper to assume, the sombre look he ought to wear, the
+melancholy tread which should be his gait for the day.  He is perfectly
+acquainted with all the dreary courtesies to be observed in a
+mourning-coach; knows when to sigh, and when to hide his nose in the
+white handkerchief; and looks into the grave and shakes his head when the
+ceremony is concluded, with the sad formality of a mute.
+
+'What kind of funeral was it?' says the formal lady, when he returns
+home.  'Oh!' replies the formal gentleman, 'there never was such a gross
+and disgusting impropriety; there were no feathers.'  'No feathers!'
+cries the lady, as if on wings of black feathers dead people fly to
+Heaven, and, lacking them, they must of necessity go elsewhere.  Her
+husband shakes his head; and further adds, that they had seed-cake
+instead of plum-cake, and that it was all white wine.  'All white wine!'
+exclaims his wife.  'Nothing but sherry and madeira,' says the husband.
+'What! no port?'  'Not a drop.'  No port, no plums, and no feathers!
+'You will recollect, my dear,' says the formal lady, in a voice of
+stately reproof, 'that when we first met this poor man who is now dead
+and gone, and he took that very strange course of addressing me at dinner
+without being previously introduced, I ventured to express my opinion
+that the family were quite ignorant of etiquette, and very imperfectly
+acquainted with the decencies of life.  You have now had a good
+opportunity of judging for yourself, and all I have to say is, that I
+trust you will never go to a funeral _there_ again.'  'My dear,' replies
+the formal gentleman, 'I never will.'  So the informal deceased is cut in
+his grave; and the formal couple, when they tell the story of the
+funeral, shake their heads, and wonder what some people's feelings _are_
+made of, and what their notions of propriety _can_ be!
+
+If the formal couple have a family (which they sometimes have), they are
+not children, but little, pale, sour, sharp-nosed men and women; and so
+exquisitely brought up, that they might be very old dwarfs for anything
+that appeareth to the contrary.  Indeed, they are so acquainted with
+forms and conventionalities, and conduct themselves with such strict
+decorum, that to see the little girl break a looking-glass in some wild
+outbreak, or the little boy kick his parents, would be to any visitor an
+unspeakable relief and consolation.
+
+The formal couple are always sticklers for what is rigidly proper, and
+have a great readiness in detecting hidden impropriety of speech or
+thought, which by less scrupulous people would be wholly unsuspected.
+Thus, if they pay a visit to the theatre, they sit all night in a perfect
+agony lest anything improper or immoral should proceed from the stage;
+and if anything should happen to be said which admits of a double
+construction, they never fail to take it up directly, and to express by
+their looks the great outrage which their feelings have sustained.
+Perhaps this is their chief reason for absenting themselves almost
+entirely from places of public amusement.  They go sometimes to the
+Exhibition of the Royal Academy;--but that is often more shocking than
+the stage itself, and the formal lady thinks that it really is high time
+Mr. Etty was prosecuted and made a public example of.
+
+We made one at a christening party not long since, where there were
+amongst the guests a formal couple, who suffered the acutest torture from
+certain jokes, incidental to such an occasion, cut--and very likely dried
+also--by one of the godfathers; a red-faced elderly gentleman, who, being
+highly popular with the rest of the company, had it all his own way, and
+was in great spirits.  It was at supper-time that this gentleman came out
+in full force.  We--being of a grave and quiet demeanour--had been chosen
+to escort the formal lady down-stairs, and, sitting beside her, had a
+favourable opportunity of observing her emotions.
+
+We have a shrewd suspicion that, in the very beginning, and in the first
+blush--literally the first blush--of the matter, the formal lady had not
+felt quite certain whether the being present at such a ceremony, and
+encouraging, as it were, the public exhibition of a baby, was not an act
+involving some degree of indelicacy and impropriety; but certain we are
+that when that baby's health was drunk, and allusions were made, by a
+grey-headed gentleman proposing it, to the time when he had dandled in
+his arms the young Christian's mother,--certain we are that then the
+formal lady took the alarm, and recoiled from the old gentleman as from a
+hoary profligate.  Still she bore it; she fanned herself with an
+indignant air, but still she bore it.  A comic song was sung, involving a
+confession from some imaginary gentleman that he had kissed a female, and
+yet the formal lady bore it.  But when at last, the health of the
+godfather before-mentioned being drunk, the godfather rose to return
+thanks, and in the course of his observations darkly hinted at babies yet
+unborn, and even contemplated the possibility of the subject of that
+festival having brothers and sisters, the formal lady could endure no
+more, but, bowing slightly round, and sweeping haughtily past the
+offender, left the room in tears, under the protection of the formal
+gentleman.
+
+
+
+THE LOVING COUPLE
+
+
+There cannot be a better practical illustration of the wise saw and
+ancient instance, that there may be too much of a good thing, than is
+presented by a loving couple.  Undoubtedly it is meet and proper that two
+persons joined together in holy matrimony should be loving, and
+unquestionably it is pleasant to know and see that they are so; but there
+is a time for all things, and the couple who happen to be always in a
+loving state before company, are well-nigh intolerable.
+
+And in taking up this position we would have it distinctly understood
+that we do not seek alone the sympathy of bachelors, in whose objection
+to loving couples we recognise interested motives and personal
+considerations.  We grant that to that unfortunate class of society there
+may be something very irritating, tantalising, and provoking, in being
+compelled to witness those gentle endearments and chaste interchanges
+which to loving couples are quite the ordinary business of life.  But
+while we recognise the natural character of the prejudice to which these
+unhappy men are subject, we can neither receive their biassed evidence,
+nor address ourself to their inflamed and angered minds.  Dispassionate
+experience is our only guide; and in these moral essays we seek no less
+to reform hymeneal offenders than to hold out a timely warning to all
+rising couples, and even to those who have not yet set forth upon their
+pilgrimage towards the matrimonial market.
+
+Let all couples, present or to come, therefore profit by the example of
+Mr. and Mrs. Leaver, themselves a loving couple in the first degree.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Leaver are pronounced by Mrs. Starling, a widow lady who
+lost her husband when she was young, and lost herself about the
+same-time--for by her own count she has never since grown five years
+older--to be a perfect model of wedded felicity.  'You would suppose,'
+says the romantic lady, 'that they were lovers only just now engaged.
+Never was such happiness!  They are so tender, so affectionate, so
+attached to each other, so enamoured, that positively nothing can be more
+charming!'
+
+'Augusta, my soul,' says Mr. Leaver.  'Augustus, my life,' replies Mrs.
+Leaver.  'Sing some little ballad, darling,' quoth Mr. Leaver.  'I
+couldn't, indeed, dearest,' returns Mrs. Leaver.  'Do, my dove,' says Mr.
+Leaver.  'I couldn't possibly, my love,' replies Mrs. Leaver; 'and it's
+very naughty of you to ask me.'  'Naughty, darling!' cries Mr. Leaver.
+'Yes, very naughty, and very cruel,' returns Mrs. Leaver, 'for you know I
+have a sore throat, and that to sing would give me great pain.  You're a
+monster, and I hate you.  Go away!'  Mrs. Leaver has said 'go away,'
+because Mr. Leaver has tapped her under the chin: Mr. Leaver not doing as
+he is bid, but on the contrary, sitting down beside her, Mrs. Leaver
+slaps Mr. Leaver; and Mr. Leaver in return slaps Mrs. Leaver, and it
+being now time for all persons present to look the other way, they look
+the other way, and hear a still small sound as of kissing, at which Mrs.
+Starling is thoroughly enraptured, and whispers her neighbour that if all
+married couples were like that, what a heaven this earth would be!
+
+The loving couple are at home when this occurs, and maybe only three or
+four friends are present, but, unaccustomed to reserve upon this
+interesting point, they are pretty much the same abroad.  Indeed upon
+some occasions, such as a pic-nic or a water-party, their lovingness is
+even more developed, as we had an opportunity last summer of observing in
+person.
+
+There was a great water-party made up to go to Twickenham and dine, and
+afterwards dance in an empty villa by the river-side, hired expressly for
+the purpose.  Mr. and Mrs. Leaver were of the company; and it was our
+fortune to have a seat in the same boat, which was an eight-oared galley,
+manned by amateurs, with a blue striped awning of the same pattern as
+their Guernsey shirts, and a dingy red flag of the same shade as the
+whiskers of the stroke oar.  A coxswain being appointed, and all other
+matters adjusted, the eight gentlemen threw themselves into strong
+paroxysms, and pulled up with the tide, stimulated by the compassionate
+remarks of the ladies, who one and all exclaimed, that it seemed an
+immense exertion--as indeed it did.  At first we raced the other boat,
+which came alongside in gallant style; but this being found an unpleasant
+amusement, as giving rise to a great quantity of splashing, and rendering
+the cold pies and other viands very moist, it was unanimously voted down,
+and we were suffered to shoot a-head, while the second boat followed
+ingloriously in our wake.
+
+It was at this time that we first recognised Mr. Leaver.  There were two
+firemen-watermen in the boat, lying by until somebody was exhausted; and
+one of them, who had taken upon himself the direction of affairs, was
+heard to cry in a gruff voice, 'Pull away, number two--give it her,
+number two--take a longer reach, number two--now, number two, sir, think
+you're winning a boat.'  The greater part of the company had no doubt
+begun to wonder which of the striped Guernseys it might be that stood in
+need of such encouragement, when a stifled shriek from Mrs. Leaver
+confirmed the doubtful and informed the ignorant; and Mr. Leaver, still
+further disguised in a straw hat and no neckcloth, was observed to be in
+a fearful perspiration, and failing visibly.  Nor was the general
+consternation diminished at this instant by the same gentleman (in the
+performance of an accidental aquatic feat, termed 'catching a crab')
+plunging suddenly backward, and displaying nothing of himself to the
+company, but two violently struggling legs.  Mrs. Leaver shrieked again
+several times, and cried piteously--'Is he dead?  Tell me the worst.  Is
+he dead?'
+
+Now, a moment's reflection might have convinced the loving wife, that
+unless her husband were endowed with some most surprising powers of
+muscular action, he never could be dead while he kicked so hard; but
+still Mrs. Leaver cried, 'Is he dead? is he dead?' and still everybody
+else cried--'No, no, no,' until such time as Mr. Leaver was replaced in a
+sitting posture, and his oar (which had been going through all kinds of
+wrong-headed performances on its own account) was once more put in his
+hand, by the exertions of the two firemen-watermen.  Mr. Leaver then
+exclaimed, 'Augustus, my child, come to me;' and Mr. Leaver said,
+'Augusta, my love, compose yourself, I am not injured.'  But Mrs. Leaver
+cried again more piteously than before, 'Augustus, my child, come to me;'
+and now the company generally, who seemed to be apprehensive that if Mr.
+Leaver remained where he was, he might contribute more than his proper
+share towards the drowning of the party, disinterestedly took part with
+Mrs. Leaver, and said he really ought to go, and that he was not strong
+enough for such violent exercise, and ought never to have undertaken it.
+Reluctantly, Mr. Leaver went, and laid himself down at Mrs. Leaver's
+feet, and Mrs. Leaver stooping over him, said, 'Oh Augustus, how could
+you terrify me so?' and Mr. Leaver said, 'Augusta, my sweet, I never
+meant to terrify you;' and Mrs. Leaver said, 'You are faint, my dear;'
+and Mr. Leaver said, 'I am rather so, my love;' and they were very loving
+indeed under Mrs. Leaver's veil, until at length Mr. Leaver came forth
+again, and pleasantly asked if he had not heard something said about
+bottled stout and sandwiches.
+
+Mrs. Starling, who was one of the party, was perfectly delighted with
+this scene, and frequently murmured half-aside, 'What a loving couple you
+are!' or 'How delightful it is to see man and wife so happy together!'
+To us she was quite poetical, (for we are a kind of cousins,) observing
+that hearts beating in unison like that made life a paradise of sweets;
+and that when kindred creatures were drawn together by sympathies so fine
+and delicate, what more than mortal happiness did not our souls partake!
+To all this we answered 'Certainly,' or 'Very true,' or merely sighed, as
+the case might be.  At every new act of the loving couple, the widow's
+admiration broke out afresh; and when Mrs. Leaver would not permit Mr.
+Leaver to keep his hat off, lest the sun should strike to his head, and
+give him a brain fever, Mrs. Starling actually shed tears, and said it
+reminded her of Adam and Eve.
+
+The loving couple were thus loving all the way to Twickenham, but when we
+arrived there (by which time the amateur crew looked very thirsty and
+vicious) they were more playful than ever, for Mrs. Leaver threw stones
+at Mr. Leaver, and Mr. Leaver ran after Mrs. Leaver on the grass, in a
+most innocent and enchanting manner.  At dinner, too, Mr. Leaver _would_
+steal Mrs. Leaver's tongue, and Mrs. Leaver _would_ retaliate upon Mr.
+Leaver's fowl; and when Mrs. Leaver was going to take some lobster salad,
+Mr. Leaver wouldn't let her have any, saying that it made her ill, and
+she was always sorry for it afterwards, which afforded Mrs. Leaver an
+opportunity of pretending to be cross, and showing many other
+prettinesses.  But this was merely the smiling surface of their loves,
+not the mighty depths of the stream, down to which the company, to say
+the truth, dived rather unexpectedly, from the following accident.  It
+chanced that Mr. Leaver took upon himself to propose the bachelors who
+had first originated the notion of that entertainment, in doing which, he
+affected to regret that he was no longer of their body himself, and
+pretended grievously to lament his fallen state.  This Mrs. Leaver's
+feelings could not brook, even in jest, and consequently, exclaiming
+aloud, 'He loves me not, he loves me not!' she fell in a very pitiable
+state into the arms of Mrs. Starling, and, directly becoming insensible,
+was conveyed by that lady and her husband into another room.  Presently
+Mr. Leaver came running back to know if there was a medical gentleman in
+company, and as there was, (in what company is there not?) both Mr.
+Leaver and the medical gentleman hurried away together.
+
+The medical gentleman was the first who returned, and among his intimate
+friends he was observed to laugh and wink, and look as unmedical as might
+be; but when Mr. Leaver came back he was very solemn, and in answer to
+all inquiries, shook his head, and remarked that Augusta was far too
+sensitive to be trifled with--an opinion which the widow subsequently
+confirmed.  Finding that she was in no imminent peril, however, the rest
+of the party betook themselves to dancing on the green, and very merry
+and happy they were, and a vast quantity of flirtation there was; the
+last circumstance being no doubt attributable, partly to the fineness of
+the weather, and partly to the locality, which is well known to be
+favourable to all harmless recreations.
+
+In the bustle of the scene, Mr. and Mrs. Leaver stole down to the boat,
+and disposed themselves under the awning, Mrs. Leaver reclining her head
+upon Mr. Leaver's shoulder, and Mr. Leaver grasping her hand with great
+fervour, and looking in her face from time to time with a melancholy and
+sympathetic aspect.  The widow sat apart, feigning to be occupied with a
+book, but stealthily observing them from behind her fan; and the two
+firemen-watermen, smoking their pipes on the bank hard by, nudged each
+other, and grinned in enjoyment of the joke.  Very few of the party
+missed the loving couple; and the few who did, heartily congratulated
+each other on their disappearance.
+
+
+
+THE CONTRADICTORY COUPLE
+
+
+One would suppose that two people who are to pass their whole lives
+together, and must necessarily be very often alone with each other, could
+find little pleasure in mutual contradiction; and yet what is more common
+than a contradictory couple?
+
+The contradictory couple agree in nothing but contradiction.  They return
+home from Mrs. Bluebottle's dinner-party, each in an opposite corner of
+the coach, and do not exchange a syllable until they have been seated for
+at least twenty minutes by the fireside at home, when the gentleman,
+raising his eyes from the stove, all at once breaks silence:
+
+'What a very extraordinary thing it is,' says he, 'that you _will_
+contradict, Charlotte!'  '_I_ contradict!' cries the lady, 'but that's
+just like you.'  'What's like me?' says the gentleman sharply.  'Saying
+that I contradict you,' replies the lady.  'Do you mean to say that you
+do _not_ contradict me?' retorts the gentleman; 'do you mean to say that
+you have not been contradicting me the whole of this day?'  'Do you mean
+to tell me now, that you have not?  I mean to tell you nothing of the
+kind,' replies the lady quietly; 'when you are wrong, of course I shall
+contradict you.'
+
+During this dialogue the gentleman has been taking his brandy-and-water
+on one side of the fire, and the lady, with her dressing-case on the
+table, has been curling her hair on the other.  She now lets down her
+back hair, and proceeds to brush it; preserving at the same time an air
+of conscious rectitude and suffering virtue, which is intended to
+exasperate the gentleman--and does so.
+
+'I do believe,' he says, taking the spoon out of his glass, and tossing
+it on the table, 'that of all the obstinate, positive, wrong-headed
+creatures that were ever born, you are the most so, Charlotte.'
+'Certainly, certainly, have it your own way, pray.  You see how much _I_
+contradict you,' rejoins the lady.  'Of course, you didn't contradict me
+at dinner-time--oh no, not you!' says the gentleman.  'Yes, I did,' says
+the lady.  'Oh, you did,' cries the gentleman 'you admit that?'  'If you
+call that contradiction, I do,' the lady answers; 'and I say again,
+Edward, that when I know you are wrong, I will contradict you.  I am not
+your slave.'  'Not my slave!' repeats the gentleman bitterly; 'and you
+still mean to say that in the Blackburns' new house there are not more
+than fourteen doors, including the door of the wine-cellar!'  'I mean to
+say,' retorts the lady, beating time with her hair-brush on the palm of
+her hand, 'that in that house there are fourteen doors and no more.'
+'Well then--' cries the gentleman, rising in despair, and pacing the room
+with rapid strides.  'By G-, this is enough to destroy a man's intellect,
+and drive him mad!'
+
+By and by the gentleman comes-to a little, and passing his hand gloomily
+across his forehead, reseats himself in his former chair.  There is a
+long silence, and this time the lady begins.  'I appealed to Mr. Jenkins,
+who sat next to me on the sofa in the drawing-room during tea--'
+'Morgan, you mean,' interrupts the gentleman.  'I do not mean anything of
+the kind,' answers the lady.  'Now, by all that is aggravating and
+impossible to bear,' cries the gentleman, clenching his hands and looking
+upwards in agony, 'she is going to insist upon it that Morgan is
+Jenkins!'  'Do you take me for a perfect fool?' exclaims the lady; 'do
+you suppose I don't know the one from the other?  Do you suppose I don't
+know that the man in the blue coat was Mr. Jenkins?'  'Jenkins in a blue
+coat!' cries the gentleman with a groan; 'Jenkins in a blue coat! a man
+who would suffer death rather than wear anything but brown!'  'Do you
+dare to charge me with telling an untruth?' demands the lady, bursting
+into tears.  'I charge you, ma'am,' retorts the gentleman, starting up,
+'with being a monster of contradiction, a monster of aggravation,
+a--a--a--Jenkins in a blue coat!--what have I done that I should be
+doomed to hear such statements!'
+
+Expressing himself with great scorn and anguish, the gentleman takes up
+his candle and stalks off to bed, where feigning to be fast asleep when
+the lady comes up-stairs drowned in tears, murmuring lamentations over
+her hard fate and indistinct intentions of consulting her brothers, he
+undergoes the secret torture of hearing her exclaim between whiles, 'I
+know there are only fourteen doors in the house, I know it was Mr.
+Jenkins, I know he had a blue coat on, and I would say it as positively
+as I do now, if they were the last words I had to speak!'
+
+If the contradictory couple are blessed with children, they are not the
+less contradictory on that account.  Master James and Miss Charlotte
+present themselves after dinner, and being in perfect good humour, and
+finding their parents in the same amiable state, augur from these
+appearances half a glass of wine a-piece and other extraordinary
+indulgences.  But unfortunately Master James, growing talkative upon such
+prospects, asks his mamma how tall Mrs. Parsons is, and whether she is
+not six feet high; to which his mamma replies, 'Yes, she should think she
+was, for Mrs. Parsons is a very tall lady indeed; quite a giantess.'
+'For Heaven's sake, Charlotte,' cries her husband, 'do not tell the child
+such preposterous nonsense.  Six feet high!'  'Well,' replies the lady,
+'surely I may be permitted to have an opinion; my opinion is, that she is
+six feet high--at least six feet.'  'Now you know, Charlotte,' retorts
+the gentleman sternly, 'that that is _not_ your opinion--that you have no
+such idea--and that you only say this for the sake of contradiction.'
+'You are exceedingly polite,' his wife replies; 'to be wrong about such a
+paltry question as anybody's height, would be no great crime; but I say
+again, that I believe Mrs. Parsons to be six feet--more than six feet;
+nay, I believe you know her to be full six feet, and only say she is not,
+because I say she is.'  This taunt disposes the gentleman to become
+violent, but he cheeks himself, and is content to mutter, in a haughty
+tone, 'Six feet--ha! ha!  Mrs. Parsons six feet!' and the lady answers,
+'Yes, six feet.  I am sure I am glad you are amused, and I'll say it
+again--six feet.'  Thus the subject gradually drops off, and the
+contradiction begins to be forgotten, when Master James, with some
+undefined notion of making himself agreeable, and putting things to
+rights again, unfortunately asks his mamma what the moon's made of; which
+gives her occasion to say that he had better not ask her, for she is
+always wrong and never can be right; that he only exposes her to
+contradiction by asking any question of her; and that he had better ask
+his papa, who is infallible, and never can be wrong.  Papa, smarting
+under this attack, gives a terrible pull at the bell, and says, that if
+the conversation is to proceed in this way, the children had better be
+removed.  Removed they are, after a few tears and many struggles; and Pa
+having looked at Ma sideways for a minute or two, with a baleful eye,
+draws his pocket-handkerchief over his face, and composes himself for his
+after-dinner nap.
+
+The friends of the contradictory couple often deplore their frequent
+disputes, though they rather make light of them at the same time:
+observing, that there is no doubt they are very much attached to each
+other, and that they never quarrel except about trifles.  But neither the
+friends of the contradictory couple, nor the contradictory couple
+themselves, reflect, that as the most stupendous objects in nature are
+but vast collections of minute particles, so the slightest and least
+considered trifles make up the sum of human happiness or misery.
+
+
+
+THE COUPLE WHO DOTE UPON THEIR CHILDREN
+
+
+The couple who dote upon their children have usually a great many of
+them: six or eight at least.  The children are either the healthiest in
+all the world, or the most unfortunate in existence.  In either case,
+they are equally the theme of their doting parents, and equally a source
+of mental anguish and irritation to their doting parents' friends.
+
+The couple who dote upon their children recognise no dates but those
+connected with their births, accidents, illnesses, or remarkable deeds.
+They keep a mental almanack with a vast number of Innocents'-days, all in
+red letters.  They recollect the last coronation, because on that day
+little Tom fell down the kitchen stairs; the anniversary of the Gunpowder
+Plot, because it was on the fifth of November that Ned asked whether
+wooden legs were made in heaven and cocked hats grew in gardens.  Mrs.
+Whiffler will never cease to recollect the last day of the old year as
+long as she lives, for it was on that day that the baby had the four red
+spots on its nose which they took for measles: nor Christmas-day, for
+twenty-one days after Christmas-day the twins were born; nor Good Friday,
+for it was on a Good Friday that she was frightened by the donkey-cart
+when she was in the family way with Georgiana.  The movable feasts have
+no motion for Mr. and Mrs. Whiffler, but remain pinned down tight and
+fast to the shoulders of some small child, from whom they can never be
+separated any more.  Time was made, according to their creed, not for
+slaves but for girls and boys; the restless sands in his glass are but
+little children at play.
+
+As we have already intimated, the children of this couple can know no
+medium.  They are either prodigies of good health or prodigies of bad
+health; whatever they are, they must be prodigies.  Mr. Whiffler must
+have to describe at his office such excruciating agonies constantly
+undergone by his eldest boy, as nobody else's eldest boy ever underwent;
+or he must be able to declare that there never was a child endowed with
+such amazing health, such an indomitable constitution, and such a
+cast-iron frame, as his child.  His children must be, in some respect or
+other, above and beyond the children of all other people.  To such an
+extent is this feeling pushed, that we were once slightly acquainted with
+a lady and gentleman who carried their heads so high and became so proud
+after their youngest child fell out of a two-pair-of-stairs window
+without hurting himself much, that the greater part of their friends were
+obliged to forego their acquaintance.  But perhaps this may be an extreme
+case, and one not justly entitled to be considered as a precedent of
+general application.
+
+If a friend happen to dine in a friendly way with one of these couples
+who dote upon their children, it is nearly impossible for him to divert
+the conversation from their favourite topic.  Everything reminds Mr.
+Whiffler of Ned, or Mrs. Whiffler of Mary Anne, or of the time before Ned
+was born, or the time before Mary Anne was thought of.  The slightest
+remark, however harmless in itself, will awaken slumbering recollections
+of the twins.  It is impossible to steer clear of them.  They will come
+uppermost, let the poor man do what he may.  Ned has been known to be
+lost sight of for half an hour, Dick has been forgotten, the name of Mary
+Anne has not been mentioned, but the twins will out.  Nothing can keep
+down the twins.
+
+'It's a very extraordinary thing, Saunders,' says Mr. Whiffler to the
+visitor, 'but--you have seen our little babies, the--the--twins?'  The
+friend's heart sinks within him as he answers, 'Oh, yes--often.'  'Your
+talking of the Pyramids,' says Mr. Whiffler, quite as a matter of course,
+'reminds me of the twins.  It's a very extraordinary thing about those
+babies--what colour should you say their eyes were?'  'Upon my word,' the
+friend stammers, 'I hardly know how to answer'--the fact being, that
+except as the friend does not remember to have heard of any departure
+from the ordinary course of nature in the instance of these twins, they
+might have no eyes at all for aught he has observed to the contrary.
+'You wouldn't say they were red, I suppose?' says Mr. Whiffler.  The
+friend hesitates, and rather thinks they are; but inferring from the
+expression of Mr. Whiffler's face that red is not the colour, smiles with
+some confidence, and says, 'No, no! very different from that.'  'What
+should you say to blue?' says Mr. Whiffler.  The friend glances at him,
+and observing a different expression in his face, ventures to say, 'I
+should say they _were_ blue--a decided blue.'  'To be sure!' cries Mr.
+Whiffler, triumphantly, 'I knew you would!  But what should you say if I
+was to tell you that the boy's eyes are blue and the girl's hazel, eh?'
+'Impossible!' exclaims the friend, not at all knowing why it should be
+impossible.  'A fact, notwithstanding,' cries Mr. Whiffler; 'and let me
+tell you, Saunders, _that's_ not a common thing in twins, or a
+circumstance that'll happen every day.'
+
+In this dialogue Mrs. Whiffler, as being deeply responsible for the
+twins, their charms and singularities, has taken no share; but she now
+relates, in broken English, a witticism of little Dick's bearing upon the
+subject just discussed, which delights Mr. Whiffler beyond measure, and
+causes him to declare that he would have sworn that was Dick's if he had
+heard it anywhere.  Then he requests that Mrs. Whiffler will tell
+Saunders what Tom said about mad bulls; and Mrs. Whiffler relating the
+anecdote, a discussion ensues upon the different character of Tom's wit
+and Dick's wit, from which it appears that Dick's humour is of a lively
+turn, while Tom's style is the dry and caustic.  This discussion being
+enlivened by various illustrations, lasts a long time, and is only
+stopped by Mrs. Whiffler instructing the footman to ring the nursery
+bell, as the children were promised that they should come down and taste
+the pudding.
+
+The friend turns pale when this order is given, and paler still when it
+is followed up by a great pattering on the staircase, (not unlike the
+sound of rain upon a skylight,) a violent bursting open of the
+dining-room door, and the tumultuous appearance of six small children,
+closely succeeded by a strong nursery-maid with a twin in each arm.  As
+the whole eight are screaming, shouting, or kicking--some influenced by a
+ravenous appetite, some by a horror of the stranger, and some by a
+conflict of the two feelings--a pretty long space elapses before all
+their heads can be ranged round the table and anything like order
+restored; in bringing about which happy state of things both the nurse
+and footman are severely scratched.  At length Mrs. Whiffler is heard to
+say, 'Mr. Saunders, shall I give you some pudding?'  A breathless silence
+ensues, and sixteen small eyes are fixed upon the guest in expectation of
+his reply.  A wild shout of joy proclaims that he has said 'No, thank
+you.'  Spoons are waved in the air, legs appear above the table-cloth in
+uncontrollable ecstasy, and eighty short fingers dabble in damson syrup.
+
+While the pudding is being disposed of, Mr. and Mrs. Whiffler look on
+with beaming countenances, and Mr. Whiffler nudging his friend Saunders,
+begs him to take notice of Tom's eyes, or Dick's chin, or Ned's nose, or
+Mary Anne's hair, or Emily's figure, or little Bob's calves, or Fanny's
+mouth, or Carry's head, as the case may be.  Whatever the attention of
+Mr. Saunders is called to, Mr. Saunders admires of course; though he is
+rather confused about the sex of the youngest branches and looks at the
+wrong children, turning to a girl when Mr. Whiffler directs his attention
+to a boy, and falling into raptures with a boy when he ought to be
+enchanted with a girl.  Then the dessert comes, and there is a vast deal
+of scrambling after fruit, and sudden spirting forth of juice out of
+tight oranges into infant eyes, and much screeching and wailing in
+consequence.  At length it becomes time for Mrs. Whiffler to retire, and
+all the children are by force of arms compelled to kiss and love Mr.
+Saunders before going up-stairs, except Tom, who, lying on his back in
+the hall, proclaims that Mr. Saunders 'is a naughty beast;' and Dick, who
+having drunk his father's wine when he was looking another way, is found
+to be intoxicated and is carried out, very limp and helpless.
+
+Mr. Whiffler and his friend are left alone together, but Mr. Whiffler's
+thoughts are still with his family, if his family are not with him.
+'Saunders,' says he, after a short silence, 'if you please, we'll drink
+Mrs. Whiffler and the children.'  Mr. Saunders feels this to be a
+reproach against himself for not proposing the same sentiment, and drinks
+it in some confusion.  'Ah!' Mr. Whiffler sighs, 'these children,
+Saunders, make one quite an old man.'  Mr. Saunders thinks that if they
+were his, they would make him a very old man; but he says nothing.  'And
+yet,' pursues Mr. Whiffler, 'what can equal domestic happiness? what can
+equal the engaging ways of children!  Saunders, why don't you get
+married?'  Now, this is an embarrassing question, because Mr. Saunders
+has been thinking that if he had at any time entertained matrimonial
+designs, the revelation of that day would surely have routed them for
+ever.  'I am glad, however,' says Mr. Whiffler, 'that you _are_ a
+bachelor,--glad on one account, Saunders; a selfish one, I admit.  Will
+you do Mrs. Whiffler and myself a favour?'  Mr. Saunders is
+surprised--evidently surprised; but he replies, 'with the greatest
+pleasure.'  'Then, will you, Saunders,' says Mr. Whiffler, in an
+impressive manner, 'will you cement and consolidate our friendship by
+coming into the family (so to speak) as a godfather?'  'I shall be proud
+and delighted,' replies Mr. Saunders: 'which of the children is it?
+really, I thought they were all christened; or--'  'Saunders,' Mr.
+Whiffler interposes, 'they _are_ all christened; you are right.  The fact
+is, that Mrs. Whiffler is--in short, we expect another.'  'Not a ninth!'
+cries the friend, all aghast at the idea.  'Yes, Saunders,' rejoins Mr.
+Whiffler, solemnly, 'a ninth.  Did we drink Mrs. Whiffler's health?  Let
+us drink it again, Saunders, and wish her well over it!'
+
+Doctor Johnson used to tell a story of a man who had but one idea, which
+was a wrong one.  The couple who dote upon their children are in the same
+predicament: at home or abroad, at all times, and in all places, their
+thoughts are bound up in this one subject, and have no sphere beyond.
+They relate the clever things their offspring say or do, and weary every
+company with their prolixity and absurdity.  Mr. Whiffler takes a friend
+by the button at a street corner on a windy day to tell him a _bon mot_
+of his youngest boy's; and Mrs. Whiffler, calling to see a sick
+acquaintance, entertains her with a cheerful account of all her own past
+sufferings and present expectations.  In such cases the sins of the
+fathers indeed descend upon the children; for people soon come to regard
+them as predestined little bores.  The couple who dote upon their
+children cannot be said to be actuated by a general love for these
+engaging little people (which would be a great excuse); for they are apt
+to underrate and entertain a jealousy of any children but their own.  If
+they examined their own hearts, they would, perhaps, find at the bottom
+of all this, more self-love and egotism than they think of.  Self-love
+and egotism are bad qualities, of which the unrestrained exhibition,
+though it may be sometimes amusing, never fails to be wearisome and
+unpleasant.  Couples who dote upon their children, therefore, are best
+avoided.
+
+
+
+THE COOL COUPLE
+
+
+There is an old-fashioned weather-glass representing a house with two
+doorways, in one of which is the figure of a gentleman, in the other the
+figure of a lady.  When the weather is to be fine the lady comes out and
+the gentleman goes in; when wet, the gentleman comes out and the lady
+goes in.  They never seek each other's society, are never elevated and
+depressed by the same cause, and have nothing in common.  They are the
+model of a cool couple, except that there is something of politeness and
+consideration about the behaviour of the gentleman in the weather-glass,
+in which, neither of the cool couple can be said to participate.
+
+The cool couple are seldom alone together, and when they are, nothing can
+exceed their apathy and dulness: the gentleman being for the most part
+drowsy, and the lady silent.  If they enter into conversation, it is
+usually of an ironical or recriminatory nature.  Thus, when the gentleman
+has indulged in a very long yawn and settled himself more snugly in his
+easy-chair, the lady will perhaps remark, 'Well, I am sure, Charles!  I
+hope you're comfortable.'  To which the gentleman replies, 'Oh yes, he's
+quite comfortable quite.'  'There are not many married men, I hope,'
+returns the lady, 'who seek comfort in such selfish gratifications as you
+do.'  'Nor many wives who seek comfort in such selfish gratifications as
+_you_ do, I hope,' retorts the gentleman.  'Whose fault is that?' demands
+the lady.  The gentleman becoming more sleepy, returns no answer.  'Whose
+fault is that?' the lady repeats.  The gentleman still returning no
+answer, she goes on to say that she believes there never was in all this
+world anybody so attached to her home, so thoroughly domestic, so
+unwilling to seek a moment's gratification or pleasure beyond her own
+fireside as she.  God knows that before she was married she never thought
+or dreamt of such a thing; and she remembers that her poor papa used to
+say again and again, almost every day of his life, 'Oh, my dear Louisa,
+if you only marry a man who understands you, and takes the trouble to
+consider your happiness and accommodate himself a very little to your
+disposition, what a treasure he will find in you!'  She supposes her papa
+knew what her disposition was--he had known her long enough--he ought to
+have been acquainted with it, but what can she do?  If her home is always
+dull and lonely, and her husband is always absent and finds no pleasure
+in her society, she is naturally sometimes driven (seldom enough, she is
+sure) to seek a little recreation elsewhere; she is not expected to pine
+and mope to death, she hopes.  'Then come, Louisa,' says the gentleman,
+waking up as suddenly as he fell asleep, 'stop at home this evening, and
+so will I.'  'I should be sorry to suppose, Charles, that you took a
+pleasure in aggravating me,' replies the lady; 'but you know as well as I
+do that I am particularly engaged to Mrs. Mortimer, and that it would be
+an act of the grossest rudeness and ill-breeding, after accepting a seat
+in her box and preventing her from inviting anybody else, not to go.'
+'Ah! there it is!' says the gentleman, shrugging his shoulders, 'I knew
+that perfectly well.  I knew you couldn't devote an evening to your own
+home.  Now all I have to say, Louisa, is this--recollect that _I_ was
+quite willing to stay at home, and that it's no fault of _mine_ we are
+not oftener together.'
+
+With that the gentleman goes away to keep an old appointment at his club,
+and the lady hurries off to dress for Mrs. Mortimer's; and neither thinks
+of the other until by some odd chance they find themselves alone again.
+
+But it must not be supposed that the cool couple are habitually a
+quarrelsome one.  Quite the contrary.  These differences are only
+occasions for a little self-excuse,--nothing more.  In general they are
+as easy and careless, and dispute as seldom, as any common acquaintances
+may; for it is neither worth their while to put each other out of the
+way, nor to ruffle themselves.
+
+When they meet in society, the cool couple are the best-bred people in
+existence.  The lady is seated in a corner among a little knot of lady
+friends, one of whom exclaims, 'Why, I vow and declare there is your
+husband, my dear!'  'Whose?--mine?' she says, carelessly.  'Ay, yours,
+and coming this way too.'  'How very odd!' says the lady, in a languid
+tone, 'I thought he had been at Dover.'  The gentleman coming up, and
+speaking to all the other ladies and nodding slightly to his wife, it
+turns out that he has been at Dover, and has just now returned.  'What a
+strange creature you are!' cries his wife; 'and what on earth brought you
+here, I wonder?'  'I came to look after you, _of course_,' rejoins her
+husband.  This is so pleasant a jest that the lady is mightily amused, as
+are all the other ladies similarly situated who are within hearing; and
+while they are enjoying it to the full, the gentleman nods again, turns
+upon his heel, and saunters away.
+
+There are times, however, when his company is not so agreeable, though
+equally unexpected; such as when the lady has invited one or two
+particular friends to tea and scandal, and he happens to come home in the
+very midst of their diversion.  It is a hundred chances to one that he
+remains in the house half an hour, but the lady is rather disturbed by
+the intrusion, notwithstanding, and reasons within herself,--'I am sure I
+never interfere with him, and why should he interfere with me?  It can
+scarcely be accidental; it never happens that I have a particular reason
+for not wishing him to come home, but he always comes.  It's very
+provoking and tiresome; and I am sure when he leaves me so much alone for
+his own pleasure, the least he could do would be to do as much for mine.'
+Observing what passes in her mind, the gentleman, who has come home for
+his own accommodation, makes a merit of it with himself; arrives at the
+conclusion that it is the very last place in which he can hope to be
+comfortable; and determines, as he takes up his hat and cane, never to be
+so virtuous again.
+
+Thus a great many cool couples go on until they are cold couples, and the
+grave has closed over their folly and indifference.  Loss of name,
+station, character, life itself, has ensued from causes as slight as
+these, before now; and when gossips tell such tales, and aggravate their
+deformities, they elevate their hands and eyebrows, and call each other
+to witness what a cool couple Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so always were, even in
+the best of times.
+
+
+
+THE PLAUSIBLE COUPLE
+
+
+The plausible couple have many titles.  They are 'a delightful couple,'
+an 'affectionate couple,' 'a most agreeable couple, 'a good-hearted
+couple,' and 'the best-natured couple in existence.'  The truth is, that
+the plausible couple are people of the world; and either the way of
+pleasing the world has grown much easier than it was in the days of the
+old man and his ass, or the old man was but a bad hand at it, and knew
+very little of the trade.
+
+'But is it really possible to please the world!' says some doubting
+reader.  It is indeed.  Nay, it is not only very possible, but very easy.
+The ways are crooked, and sometimes foul and low.  What then?  A man need
+but crawl upon his hands and knees, know when to close his eyes and when
+his ears, when to stoop and when to stand upright; and if by the world is
+meant that atom of it in which he moves himself, he shall please it,
+never fear.
+
+Now, it will be readily seen, that if a plausible man or woman have an
+easy means of pleasing the world by an adaptation of self to all its
+twistings and twinings, a plausible man _and_ woman, or, in other words,
+a plausible couple, playing into each other's hands, and acting in
+concert, have a manifest advantage.  Hence it is that plausible couples
+scarcely ever fail of success on a pretty large scale; and hence it is
+that if the reader, laying down this unwieldy volume at the next full
+stop, will have the goodness to review his or her circle of acquaintance,
+and to search particularly for some man and wife with a large connexion
+and a good name, not easily referable to their abilities or their wealth,
+he or she (that is, the male or female reader) will certainly find that
+gentleman or lady, on a very short reflection, to be a plausible couple.
+
+The plausible couple are the most ecstatic people living: the most
+sensitive people--to merit--on the face of the earth.  Nothing clever or
+virtuous escapes them.  They have microscopic eyes for such endowments,
+and can find them anywhere.  The plausible couple never fawn--oh no!
+They don't even scruple to tell their friends of their faults.  One is
+too generous, another too candid; a third has a tendency to think all
+people like himself, and to regard mankind as a company of angels; a
+fourth is kind-hearted to a fault.  'We never flatter, my dear Mrs.
+Jackson,' say the plausible couple; 'we speak our minds.  Neither you nor
+Mr. Jackson have faults enough.  It may sound strangely, but it is true.
+You have not faults enough.  You know our way,--we must speak out, and
+always do.  Quarrel with us for saying so, if you will; but we repeat
+it,--you have not faults enough!'
+
+The plausible couple are no less plausible to each other than to third
+parties.  They are always loving and harmonious.  The plausible gentleman
+calls his wife 'darling,' and the plausible lady addresses him as
+'dearest.'  If it be Mr. and Mrs. Bobtail Widger, Mrs. Widger is
+'Lavinia, darling,' and Mr. Widger is 'Bobtail, dearest.'  Speaking of
+each other, they observe the same tender form.  Mrs. Widger relates what
+'Bobtail' said, and Mr. Widger recounts what 'darling' thought and did.
+
+If you sit next to the plausible lady at a dinner-table, she takes the
+earliest opportunity of expressing her belief that you are acquainted
+with the Clickits; she is sure she has heard the Clickits speak of
+you--she must not tell you in what terms, or you will take her for a
+flatterer.  You admit a knowledge of the Clickits; the plausible lady
+immediately launches out in their praise.  She quite loves the Clickits.
+Were there ever such true-hearted, hospitable, excellent people--such a
+gentle, interesting little woman as Mrs. Clickit, or such a frank,
+unaffected creature as Mr. Clickit? were there ever two people, in short,
+so little spoiled by the world as they are?  'As who, darling?' cries Mr.
+Widger, from the opposite side of the table.  'The Clickits, dearest,'
+replies Mrs. Widger.  'Indeed you are right, darling,' Mr. Widger
+rejoins; 'the Clickits are a very high-minded, worthy, estimable couple.'
+Mrs. Widger remarking that Bobtail always grows quite eloquent upon this
+subject, Mr. Widger admits that he feels very strongly whenever such
+people as the Clickits and some other friends of his (here he glances at
+the host and hostess) are mentioned; for they are an honour to human
+nature, and do one good to think of.  '_You_ know the Clickits, Mrs.
+Jackson?' he says, addressing the lady of the house.  'No, indeed; we
+have not that pleasure,' she replies.  'You astonish me!' exclaims Mr.
+Widger: 'not know the Clickits! why, you are the very people of all
+others who ought to be their bosom friends.  You are kindred beings; you
+are one and the same thing:--not know the Clickits!  Now _will_ you know
+the Clickits?  Will you make a point of knowing them?  Will you meet them
+in a friendly way at our house one evening, and be acquainted with them?'
+Mrs. Jackson will be quite delighted; nothing would give her more
+pleasure.  'Then, Lavinia, my darling,' says Mr. Widger, 'mind you don't
+lose sight of that; now, pray take care that Mr. and Mrs. Jackson know
+the Clickits without loss of time.  Such people ought not to be strangers
+to each other.'  Mrs. Widger books both families as the centre of
+attraction for her next party; and Mr. Widger, going on to expatiate upon
+the virtues of the Clickits, adds to their other moral qualities, that
+they keep one of the neatest phaetons in town, and have two thousand a
+year.
+
+As the plausible couple never laud the merits of any absent person,
+without dexterously contriving that their praises shall reflect upon
+somebody who is present, so they never depreciate anything or anybody,
+without turning their depreciation to the same account.  Their friend,
+Mr. Slummery, say they, is unquestionably a clever painter, and would no
+doubt be very popular, and sell his pictures at a very high price, if
+that cruel Mr. Fithers had not forestalled him in his department of art,
+and made it thoroughly and completely his own;--Fithers, it is to be
+observed, being present and within hearing, and Slummery elsewhere.  Is
+Mrs. Tabblewick really as beautiful as people say?  Why, there indeed you
+ask them a very puzzling question, because there is no doubt that she is
+a very charming woman, and they have long known her intimately.  She is
+no doubt beautiful, very beautiful; they once thought her the most
+beautiful woman ever seen; still if you press them for an honest answer,
+they are bound to say that this was before they had ever seen our lovely
+friend on the sofa, (the sofa is hard by, and our lovely friend can't
+help hearing the whispers in which this is said;) since that time,
+perhaps, they have been hardly fair judges; Mrs. Tabblewick is no doubt
+extremely handsome,--very like our friend, in fact, in the form of the
+features,--but in point of expression, and soul, and figure, and air
+altogether--oh dear!
+
+But while the plausible couple depreciate, they are still careful to
+preserve their character for amiability and kind feeling; indeed the
+depreciation itself is often made to grow out of their excessive sympathy
+and good will.  The plausible lady calls on a lady who dotes upon her
+children, and is sitting with a little girl upon her knee, enraptured by
+her artless replies, and protesting that there is nothing she delights in
+so much as conversing with these fairies; when the other lady inquires if
+she has seen young Mrs. Finching lately, and whether the baby has turned
+out a finer one than it promised to be.  'Oh dear!' cries the plausible
+lady, 'you cannot think how often Bobtail and I have talked about poor
+Mrs. Finching--she is such a dear soul, and was so anxious that the baby
+should be a fine child--and very naturally, because she was very much
+here at one time, and there is, you know, a natural emulation among
+mothers--that it is impossible to tell you how much we have felt for
+her.'  'Is it weak or plain, or what?' inquires the other.  'Weak or
+plain, my love,' returns the plausible lady, 'it's a fright--a perfect
+little fright; you never saw such a miserable creature in all your days.
+Positively you must not let her see one of these beautiful dears again,
+or you'll break her heart, you will indeed.--Heaven bless this child, see
+how she is looking in my face! can you conceive anything prettier than
+that?  If poor Mrs. Finching could only hope--but that's impossible--and
+the gifts of Providence, you know--What _did_ I do with my
+pocket-handkerchief!'
+
+What prompts the mother, who dotes upon her children, to comment to her
+lord that evening on the plausible lady's engaging qualities and feeling
+heart, and what is it that procures Mr. and Mrs. Bobtail Widger an
+immediate invitation to dinner?
+
+
+
+THE NICE LITTLE COUPLE
+
+
+A custom once prevailed in old-fashioned circles, that when a lady or
+gentleman was unable to sing a song, he or she should enliven the company
+with a story.  As we find ourself in the predicament of not being able to
+describe (to our own satisfaction) nice little couples in the abstract,
+we purpose telling in this place a little story about a nice little
+couple of our acquaintance.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Chirrup are the nice little couple in question.  Mr. Chirrup
+has the smartness, and something of the brisk, quick manner of a small
+bird.  Mrs. Chirrup is the prettiest of all little women, and has the
+prettiest little figure conceivable.  She has the neatest little foot,
+and the softest little voice, and the pleasantest little smile, and the
+tidiest little curls, and the brightest little eyes, and the quietest
+little manner, and is, in short, altogether one of the most engaging of
+all little women, dead or alive.  She is a condensation of all the
+domestic virtues,--a pocket edition of the young man's best companion,--a
+little woman at a very high pressure, with an amazing quantity of
+goodness and usefulness in an exceedingly small space.  Little as she is,
+Mrs. Chirrup might furnish forth matter for the moral equipment of a
+score of housewives, six feet high in their stockings--if, in the
+presence of ladies, we may be allowed the expression--and of
+corresponding robustness.
+
+Nobody knows all this better than Mr. Chirrup, though he rather takes on
+that he don't.  Accordingly he is very proud of his better-half, and
+evidently considers himself, as all other people consider him, rather
+fortunate in having her to wife.  We say evidently, because Mr. Chirrup
+is a warm-hearted little fellow; and if you catch his eye when he has
+been slyly glancing at Mrs. Chirrup in company, there is a certain
+complacent twinkle in it, accompanied, perhaps, by a half-expressed toss
+of the head, which as clearly indicates what has been passing in his mind
+as if he had put it into words, and shouted it out through a
+speaking-trumpet.  Moreover, Mr. Chirrup has a particularly mild and
+bird-like manner of calling Mrs. Chirrup 'my dear;' and--for he is of a
+jocose turn--of cutting little witticisms upon her, and making her the
+subject of various harmless pleasantries, which nobody enjoys more
+thoroughly than Mrs. Chirrup herself.  Mr. Chirrup, too, now and then
+affects to deplore his bachelor-days, and to bemoan (with a marvellously
+contented and smirking face) the loss of his freedom, and the sorrow of
+his heart at having been taken captive by Mrs. Chirrup--all of which
+circumstances combine to show the secret triumph and satisfaction of Mr.
+Chirrup's soul.
+
+We have already had occasion to observe that Mrs. Chirrup is an
+incomparable housewife.  In all the arts of domestic arrangement and
+management, in all the mysteries of confectionery-making, pickling, and
+preserving, never was such a thorough adept as that nice little body.
+She is, besides, a cunning worker in muslin and fine linen, and a special
+hand at marketing to the very best advantage.  But if there be one branch
+of housekeeping in which she excels to an utterly unparalleled and
+unprecedented extent, it is in the important one of carving.  A roast
+goose is universally allowed to be the great stumbling-block in the way
+of young aspirants to perfection in this department of science; many
+promising carvers, beginning with legs of mutton, and preserving a good
+reputation through fillets of veal, sirloins of beef, quarters of lamb,
+fowls, and even ducks, have sunk before a roast goose, and lost caste and
+character for ever.  To Mrs. Chirrup the resolving a goose into its
+smallest component parts is a pleasant pastime--a practical joke--a thing
+to be done in a minute or so, without the smallest interruption to the
+conversation of the time.  No handing the dish over to an unfortunate man
+upon her right or left, no wild sharpening of the knife, no hacking and
+sawing at an unruly joint, no noise, no splash, no heat, no leaving off
+in despair; all is confidence and cheerfulness.  The dish is set upon the
+table, the cover is removed; for an instant, and only an instant, you
+observe that Mrs. Chirrup's attention is distracted; she smiles, but
+heareth not.  You proceed with your story; meanwhile the glittering knife
+is slowly upraised, both Mrs. Chirrup's wrists are slightly but not
+ungracefully agitated, she compresses her lips for an instant, then
+breaks into a smile, and all is over.  The legs of the bird slide gently
+down into a pool of gravy, the wings seem to melt from the body, the
+breast separates into a row of juicy slices, the smaller and more
+complicated parts of his anatomy are perfectly developed, a cavern of
+stuffing is revealed, and the goose is gone!
+
+To dine with Mr. and Mrs. Chirrup is one of the pleasantest things in the
+world.  Mr. Chirrup has a bachelor friend, who lived with him in his own
+days of single blessedness, and to whom he is mightily attached.
+Contrary to the usual custom, this bachelor friend is no less a friend of
+Mrs. Chirrup's, and, consequently, whenever you dine with Mr. and Mrs.
+Chirrup, you meet the bachelor friend.  It would put any
+reasonably-conditioned mortal into good-humour to observe the entire
+unanimity which subsists between these three; but there is a quiet
+welcome dimpling in Mrs. Chirrup's face, a bustling hospitality oozing as
+it were out of the waistcoat-pockets of Mr. Chirrup, and a patronising
+enjoyment of their cordiality and satisfaction on the part of the
+bachelor friend, which is quite delightful.  On these occasions Mr.
+Chirrup usually takes an opportunity of rallying the friend on being
+single, and the friend retorts on Mr. Chirrup for being married, at which
+moments some single young ladies present are like to die of laughter; and
+we have more than once observed them bestow looks upon the friend, which
+convinces us that his position is by no means a safe one, as, indeed, we
+hold no bachelor's to be who visits married friends and cracks jokes on
+wedlock, for certain it is that such men walk among traps and nets and
+pitfalls innumerable, and often find themselves down upon their knees at
+the altar rails, taking M. or N. for their wedded wives, before they know
+anything about the matter.
+
+However, this is no business of Mr. Chirrup's, who talks, and laughs, and
+drinks his wine, and laughs again, and talks more, until it is time to
+repair to the drawing-room, where, coffee served and over, Mrs. Chirrup
+prepares for a round game, by sorting the nicest possible little fish
+into the nicest possible little pools, and calling Mr. Chirrup to assist
+her, which Mr. Chirrup does.  As they stand side by side, you find that
+Mr. Chirrup is the least possible shadow of a shade taller than Mrs.
+Chirrup, and that they are the neatest and best-matched little couple
+that can be, which the chances are ten to one against your observing with
+such effect at any other time, unless you see them in the street
+arm-in-arm, or meet them some rainy day trotting along under a very small
+umbrella.  The round game (at which Mr. Chirrup is the merriest of the
+party) being done and over, in course of time a nice little tray appears,
+on which is a nice little supper; and when that is finished likewise, and
+you have said 'Good night,' you find yourself repeating a dozen times, as
+you ride home, that there never was such a nice little couple as Mr. and
+Mrs. Chirrup.
+
+Whether it is that pleasant qualities, being packed more closely in small
+bodies than in large, come more readily to hand than when they are
+diffused over a wider space, and have to be gathered together for use, we
+don't know, but as a general rule,--strengthened like all other rules by
+its exceptions,--we hold that little people are sprightly and
+good-natured.  The more sprightly and good-natured people we have, the
+better; therefore, let us wish well to all nice little couples, and hope
+that they may increase and multiply.
+
+
+
+THE EGOTISTICAL COUPLE
+
+
+Egotism in couples is of two kinds.--It is our purpose to show this by
+two examples.
+
+The egotistical couple may be young, old, middle-aged, well to do, or ill
+to do; they may have a small family, a large family, or no family at all.
+There is no outward sign by which an egotistical couple may be known and
+avoided.  They come upon you unawares; there is no guarding against them.
+No man can of himself be forewarned or forearmed against an egotistical
+couple.
+
+The egotistical couple have undergone every calamity, and experienced
+every pleasurable and painful sensation of which our nature is
+susceptible.  You cannot by possibility tell the egotistical couple
+anything they don't know, or describe to them anything they have not
+felt.  They have been everything but dead.  Sometimes we are tempted to
+wish they had been even that, but only in our uncharitable moments, which
+are few and far between.
+
+We happened the other day, in the course of a morning call, to encounter
+an egotistical couple, nor were we suffered to remain long in ignorance
+of the fact, for our very first inquiry of the lady of the house brought
+them into active and vigorous operation.  The inquiry was of course
+touching the lady's health, and the answer happened to be, that she had
+not been very well.  'Oh, my dear!' said the egotistical lady, 'don't
+talk of not being well.  We have been in _such_ a state since we saw you
+last!'--The lady of the house happening to remark that her lord had not
+been well either, the egotistical gentleman struck in: 'Never let Briggs
+complain of not being well--never let Briggs complain, my dear Mrs.
+Briggs, after what I have undergone within these six weeks.  He doesn't
+know what it is to be ill, he hasn't the least idea of it; not the
+faintest conception.'--'My dear,' interposed his wife smiling, 'you talk
+as if it were almost a crime in Mr. Briggs not to have been as ill as we
+have been, instead of feeling thankful to Providence that both he and our
+dear Mrs. Briggs are in such blissful ignorance of real suffering.'--'My
+love,' returned the egotistical gentleman, in a low and pious voice, 'you
+mistake me;--I feel grateful--very grateful.  I trust our friends may
+never purchase their experience as dearly as we have bought ours; I hope
+they never may!'
+
+Having put down Mrs. Briggs upon this theme, and settled the question
+thus, the egotistical gentleman turned to us, and, after a few
+preliminary remarks, all tending towards and leading up to the point he
+had in his mind, inquired if we happened to be acquainted with the
+Dowager Lady Snorflerer.  On our replying in the negative, he presumed we
+had often met Lord Slang, or beyond all doubt, that we were on intimate
+terms with Sir Chipkins Glogwog.  Finding that we were equally unable to
+lay claim to either of these distinctions, he expressed great
+astonishment, and turning to his wife with a retrospective smile,
+inquired who it was that had told that capital story about the mashed
+potatoes.  'Who, my dear?' returned the egotistical lady, 'why Sir
+Chipkins, of course; how can you ask!  Don't you remember his applying it
+to our cook, and saying that you and I were so like the Prince and
+Princess, that he could almost have sworn we were they?'  'To be sure, I
+remember that,' said the egotistical gentleman, 'but are you quite
+certain that didn't apply to the other anecdote about the Emperor of
+Austria and the pump?'  'Upon my word then, I think it did,' replied his
+wife.  'To be sure it did,' said the egotistical gentleman, 'it was
+Slang's story, I remember now, perfectly.'  However, it turned out, a few
+seconds afterwards, that the egotistical gentleman's memory was rather
+treacherous, as he began to have a misgiving that the story had been told
+by the Dowager Lady Snorflerer the very last time they dined there; but
+there appearing, on further consideration, strong circumstantial evidence
+tending to show that this couldn't be, inasmuch as the Dowager Lady
+Snorflerer had been, on the occasion in question, wholly engrossed by the
+egotistical lady, the egotistical gentleman recanted this opinion; and
+after laying the story at the doors of a great many great people, happily
+left it at last with the Duke of Scuttlewig:--observing that it was not
+extraordinary he had forgotten his Grace hitherto, as it often happened
+that the names of those with whom we were upon the most familiar footing
+were the very last to present themselves to our thoughts.
+
+It not only appeared that the egotistical couple knew everybody, but that
+scarcely any event of importance or notoriety had occurred for many years
+with which they had not been in some way or other connected.  Thus we
+learned that when the well-known attempt upon the life of George the
+Third was made by Hatfield in Drury Lane theatre, the egotistical
+gentleman's grandfather sat upon his right hand and was the first man who
+collared him; and that the egotistical lady's aunt, sitting within a few
+boxes of the royal party, was the only person in the audience who heard
+his Majesty exclaim, 'Charlotte, Charlotte, don't be frightened, don't be
+frightened; they're letting off squibs, they're letting off squibs.'
+When the fire broke out, which ended in the destruction of the two Houses
+of Parliament, the egotistical couple, being at the time at a
+drawing-room window on Blackheath, then and there simultaneously
+exclaimed, to the astonishment of a whole party--'It's the House of
+Lords!'  Nor was this a solitary instance of their peculiar discernment,
+for chancing to be (as by a comparison of dates and circumstances they
+afterwards found) in the same omnibus with Mr. Greenacre, when he carried
+his victim's head about town in a blue bag, they both remarked a singular
+twitching in the muscles of his countenance; and walking down Fish Street
+Hill, a few weeks since, the egotistical gentleman said to his
+lady--slightly casting up his eyes to the top of the Monument--'There's a
+boy up there, my dear, reading a Bible.  It's very strange.  I don't like
+it.--In five seconds afterwards, Sir,' says the egotistical gentleman,
+bringing his hands together with one violent clap--'the lad was over!'
+
+Diversifying these topics by the introduction of many others of the same
+kind, and entertaining us between whiles with a minute account of what
+weather and diet agreed with them, and what weather and diet disagreed
+with them, and at what time they usually got up, and at what time went to
+bed, with many other particulars of their domestic economy too numerous
+to mention; the egotistical couple at length took their leave, and
+afforded us an opportunity of doing the same.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Sliverstone are an egotistical couple of another class, for
+all the lady's egotism is about her husband, and all the gentleman's
+about his wife.  For example:--Mr. Sliverstone is a clerical gentleman,
+and occasionally writes sermons, as clerical gentlemen do.  If you happen
+to obtain admission at the street-door while he is so engaged, Mrs.
+Sliverstone appears on tip-toe, and speaking in a solemn whisper, as if
+there were at least three or four particular friends up-stairs, all upon
+the point of death, implores you to be very silent, for Mr. Sliverstone
+is composing, and she need not say how very important it is that he
+should not be disturbed.  Unwilling to interrupt anything so serious, you
+hasten to withdraw, with many apologies; but this Mrs. Sliverstone will
+by no means allow, observing, that she knows you would like to see him,
+as it is very natural you should, and that she is determined to make a
+trial for you, as you are a great favourite.  So you are led
+up-stairs--still on tip-toe--to the door of a little back room, in which,
+as the lady informs you in a whisper, Mr. Sliverstone always writes.  No
+answer being returned to a couple of soft taps, the lady opens the door,
+and there, sure enough, is Mr. Sliverstone, with dishevelled hair,
+powdering away with pen, ink, and paper, at a rate which, if he has any
+power of sustaining it, would settle the longest sermon in no time.  At
+first he is too much absorbed to be roused by this intrusion; but
+presently looking up, says faintly, 'Ah!' and pointing to his desk with a
+weary and languid smile, extends his hand, and hopes you'll forgive him.
+Then Mrs. Sliverstone sits down beside him, and taking his hand in hers,
+tells you how that Mr. Sliverstone has been shut up there ever since nine
+o'clock in the morning, (it is by this time twelve at noon,) and how she
+knows it cannot be good for his health, and is very uneasy about it.
+Unto this Mr. Sliverstone replies firmly, that 'It must be done;' which
+agonizes Mrs. Sliverstone still more, and she goes on to tell you that
+such were Mr. Sliverstone's labours last week--what with the buryings,
+marryings, churchings, christenings, and all together,--that when he was
+going up the pulpit stairs on Sunday evening, he was obliged to hold on
+by the rails, or he would certainly have fallen over into his own pew.
+Mr. Sliverstone, who has been listening and smiling meekly, says, 'Not
+quite so bad as that, not quite so bad!' he admits though, on
+cross-examination, that he _was_ very near falling upon the verger who
+was following him up to bolt the door; but adds, that it was his duty as
+a Christian to fall upon him, if need were, and that he, Mr. Sliverstone,
+and (possibly the verger too) ought to glory in it.
+
+This sentiment communicates new impulse to Mrs. Sliverstone, who launches
+into new praises of Mr. Sliverstone's worth and excellence, to which he
+listens in the same meek silence, save when he puts in a word of
+self-denial relative to some question of fact, as--'Not seventy-two
+christenings that week, my dear.  Only seventy-one, only seventy-one.'
+At length his lady has quite concluded, and then he says, Why should he
+repine, why should he give way, why should he suffer his heart to sink
+within him?  Is it he alone who toils and suffers?  What has she gone
+through, he should like to know?  What does she go through every day for
+him and for society?
+
+With such an exordium Mr. Sliverstone launches out into glowing praises
+of the conduct of Mrs. Sliverstone in the production of eight young
+children, and the subsequent rearing and fostering of the same; and thus
+the husband magnifies the wife, and the wife the husband.
+
+This would be well enough if Mr. and Mrs. Sliverstone kept it to
+themselves, or even to themselves and a friend or two; but they do not.
+The more hearers they have, the more egotistical the couple become, and
+the more anxious they are to make believers in their merits.  Perhaps
+this is the worst kind of egotism.  It has not even the poor excuse of
+being spontaneous, but is the result of a deliberate system and malice
+aforethought.  Mere empty-headed conceit excites our pity, but
+ostentatious hypocrisy awakens our disgust.
+
+
+
+THE COUPLE WHO CODDLE THEMSELVES
+
+
+Mrs. Merrywinkle's maiden name was Chopper.  She was the only child of
+Mr. and Mrs. Chopper.  Her father died when she was, as the play-books
+express it, 'yet an infant;' and so old Mrs. Chopper, when her daughter
+married, made the house of her son-in-law her home from that time
+henceforth, and set up her staff of rest with Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle are a couple who coddle themselves; and the
+venerable Mrs. Chopper is an aider and abettor in the same.
+
+Mr. Merrywinkle is a rather lean and long-necked gentleman, middle-aged
+and middle-sized, and usually troubled with a cold in the head.  Mrs.
+Merrywinkle is a delicate-looking lady, with very light hair, and is
+exceedingly subject to the same unpleasant disorder.  The venerable Mrs.
+Chopper--who is strictly entitled to the appellation, her daughter not
+being very young, otherwise than by courtesy, at the time of her
+marriage, which was some years ago--is a mysterious old lady who lurks
+behind a pair of spectacles, and is afflicted with a chronic disease,
+respecting which she has taken a vast deal of medical advice, and
+referred to a vast number of medical books, without meeting any
+definition of symptoms that at all suits her, or enables her to say,
+'That's my complaint.'  Indeed, the absence of authentic information upon
+the subject of this complaint would seem to be Mrs. Chopper's greatest
+ill, as in all other respects she is an uncommonly hale and hearty
+gentlewoman.
+
+Both Mr. and Mrs. Chopper wear an extraordinary quantity of flannel, and
+have a habit of putting their feet in hot water to an unnatural extent.
+They likewise indulge in chamomile tea and such-like compounds, and rub
+themselves on the slightest provocation with camphorated spirits and
+other lotions applicable to mumps, sore-throat, rheumatism, or lumbago.
+
+Mr. Merrywinkle's leaving home to go to business on a damp or wet morning
+is a very elaborate affair.  He puts on wash-leather socks over his
+stockings, and India-rubber shoes above his boots, and wears under his
+waistcoat a cuirass of hare-skin.  Besides these precautions, he winds a
+thick shawl round his throat, and blocks up his mouth with a large silk
+handkerchief.  Thus accoutred, and furnished besides with a great-coat
+and umbrella, he braves the dangers of the streets; travelling in severe
+weather at a gentle trot, the better to preserve the circulation, and
+bringing his mouth to the surface to take breath, but very seldom, and
+with the utmost caution.  His office-door opened, he shoots past his
+clerk at the same pace, and diving into his own private room, closes the
+door, examines the window-fastenings, and gradually unrobes himself:
+hanging his pocket-handkerchief on the fender to air, and determining to
+write to the newspapers about the fog, which, he says, 'has really got to
+that pitch that it is quite unbearable.'
+
+In this last opinion Mrs. Merrywinkle and her respected mother fully
+concur; for though not present, their thoughts and tongues are occupied
+with the same subject, which is their constant theme all day.  If anybody
+happens to call, Mrs. Merrywinkle opines that they must assuredly be mad,
+and her first salutation is, 'Why, what in the name of goodness can bring
+you out in such weather?  You know you _must_ catch your death.'  This
+assurance is corroborated by Mrs. Chopper, who adds, in further
+confirmation, a dismal legend concerning an individual of her
+acquaintance who, making a call under precisely parallel circumstances,
+and being then in the best health and spirits, expired in forty-eight
+hours afterwards, of a complication of inflammatory disorders.  The
+visitor, rendered not altogether comfortable perhaps by this and other
+precedents, inquires very affectionately after Mr. Merrywinkle, but by so
+doing brings about no change of the subject; for Mr. Merrywinkle's name
+is inseparably connected with his complaints, and his complaints are
+inseparably connected with Mrs. Merrywinkle's; and when these are done
+with, Mrs. Chopper, who has been biding her time, cuts in with the
+chronic disorder--a subject upon which the amiable old lady never leaves
+off speaking until she is left alone, and very often not then.
+
+But Mr. Merrywinkle comes home to dinner.  He is received by Mrs.
+Merrywinkle and Mrs. Chopper, who, on his remarking that he thinks his
+feet are damp, turn pale as ashes and drag him up-stairs, imploring him
+to have them rubbed directly with a dry coarse towel.  Rubbed they are,
+one by Mrs. Merrywinkle and one by Mrs. Chopper, until the friction
+causes Mr. Merrywinkle to make horrible faces, and look as if he had been
+smelling very powerful onions; when they desist, and the patient,
+provided for his better security with thick worsted stockings and list
+slippers, is borne down-stairs to dinner.  Now, the dinner is always a
+good one, the appetites of the diners being delicate, and requiring a
+little of what Mrs. Merrywinkle calls 'tittivation;' the secret of which
+is understood to lie in good cookery and tasteful spices, and which
+process is so successfully performed in the present instance, that both
+Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle eat a remarkably good dinner, and even the
+afflicted Mrs. Chopper wields her knife and fork with much of the spirit
+and elasticity of youth.  But Mr. Merrywinkle, in his desire to gratify
+his appetite, is not unmindful of his health, for he has a bottle of
+carbonate of soda with which to qualify his porter, and a little pair of
+scales in which to weigh it out.  Neither in his anxiety to take care of
+his body is he unmindful of the welfare of his immortal part, as he
+always prays that for what he is going to receive he may be made truly
+thankful; and in order that he may be as thankful as possible, eats and
+drinks to the utmost.
+
+Either from eating and drinking so much, or from being the victim of this
+constitutional infirmity, among others, Mr. Merrywinkle, after two or
+three glasses of wine, falls fast asleep; and he has scarcely closed his
+eyes, when Mrs. Merrywinkle and Mrs. Chopper fall asleep likewise.  It is
+on awakening at tea-time that their most alarming symptoms prevail; for
+then Mr. Merrywinkle feels as if his temples were tightly bound round
+with the chain of the street-door, and Mrs. Merrywinkle as if she had
+made a hearty dinner of half-hundredweights, and Mrs. Chopper as if cold
+water were running down her back, and oyster-knives with sharp points
+were plunging of their own accord into her ribs.  Symptoms like these are
+enough to make people peevish, and no wonder that they remain so until
+supper-time, doing little more than doze and complain, unless Mr.
+Merrywinkle calls out very loudly to a servant 'to keep that draught
+out,' or rushes into the passage to flourish his fist in the countenance
+of the twopenny-postman, for daring to give such a knock as he had just
+performed at the door of a private gentleman with nerves.
+
+Supper, coming after dinner, should consist of some gentle provocative;
+and therefore the tittivating art is again in requisition, and
+again--done honour to by Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle, still comforted and
+abetted by Mrs. Chopper.  After supper, it is ten to one but the
+last-named old lady becomes worse, and is led off to bed with the chronic
+complaint in full vigour.  Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle, having administered
+to her a warm cordial, which is something of the strongest, then repair
+to their own room, where Mr. Merrywinkle, with his legs and feet in hot
+water, superintends the mulling of some wine which he is to drink at the
+very moment he plunges into bed, while Mrs. Merrywinkle, in garments
+whose nature is unknown to and unimagined by all but married men, takes
+four small pills with a spasmodic look between each, and finally comes to
+something hot and fragrant out of another little saucepan, which serves
+as her composing-draught for the night.
+
+There is another kind of couple who coddle themselves, and who do so at a
+cheaper rate and on more spare diet, because they are niggardly and
+parsimonious; for which reason they are kind enough to coddle their
+visitors too.  It is unnecessary to describe them, for our readers may
+rest assured of the accuracy of these general principles:--that all
+couples who coddle themselves are selfish and slothful,--that they charge
+upon every wind that blows, every rain that falls, and every vapour that
+hangs in the air, the evils which arise from their own imprudence or the
+gloom which is engendered in their own tempers,--and that all men and
+women, in couples or otherwise, who fall into exclusive habits of
+self-indulgence, and forget their natural sympathy and close connexion
+with everybody and everything in the world around them, not only neglect
+the first duty of life, but, by a happy retributive justice, deprive
+themselves of its truest and best enjoyment.
+
+
+
+THE OLD COUPLE
+
+
+They are grandfather and grandmother to a dozen grown people and have
+great-grandchildren besides; their bodies are bent, their hair is grey,
+their step tottering and infirm.  Is this the lightsome pair whose
+wedding was so merry, and have the young couple indeed grown old so soon!
+
+It seems but yesterday--and yet what a host of cares and griefs are
+crowded into the intervening time which, reckoned by them, lengthens out
+into a century!  How many new associations have wreathed themselves about
+their hearts since then!  The old time is gone, and a new time has come
+for others--not for them.  They are but the rusting link that feebly
+joins the two, and is silently loosening its hold and dropping asunder.
+
+It seems but yesterday--and yet three of their children have sunk into
+the grave, and the tree that shades it has grown quite old.  One was an
+infant--they wept for him; the next a girl, a slight young thing too
+delicate for earth--her loss was hard indeed to bear.  The third, a man.
+That was the worst of all, but even that grief is softened now.
+
+It seems but yesterday--and yet how the gay and laughing faces of that
+bright morning have changed and vanished from above ground!  Faint
+likenesses of some remain about them yet, but they are very faint and
+scarcely to be traced.  The rest are only seen in dreams, and even they
+are unlike what they were, in eyes so old and dim.
+
+One or two dresses from the bridal wardrobe are yet preserved.  They are
+of a quaint and antique fashion, and seldom seen except in pictures.
+White has turned yellow, and brighter hues have faded.  Do you wonder,
+child?  The wrinkled face was once as smooth as yours, the eyes as
+bright, the shrivelled skin as fair and delicate.  It is the work of
+hands that have been dust these many years.
+
+Where are the fairy lovers of that happy day whose annual return comes
+upon the old man and his wife, like the echo of some village bell which
+has long been silent?  Let yonder peevish bachelor, racked by rheumatic
+pains, and quarrelling with the world, let him answer to the question.
+He recollects something of a favourite playmate; her name was Lucy--so
+they tell him.  He is not sure whether she was married, or went abroad,
+or died.  It is a long while ago, and he don't remember.
+
+Is nothing as it used to be; does no one feel, or think, or act, as in
+days of yore?  Yes.  There is an aged woman who once lived servant with
+the old lady's father, and is sheltered in an alms-house not far off.
+She is still attached to the family, and loves them all; she nursed the
+children in her lap, and tended in their sickness those who are no more.
+Her old mistress has still something of youth in her eyes; the young
+ladies are like what she was but not quite so handsome, nor are the
+gentlemen as stately as Mr. Harvey used to be.  She has seen a great deal
+of trouble; her husband and her son died long ago; but she has got over
+that, and is happy now--quite happy.
+
+If ever her attachment to her old protectors were disturbed by fresher
+cares and hopes, it has long since resumed its former current.  It has
+filled the void in the poor creature's heart, and replaced the love of
+kindred.  Death has not left her alone, and this, with a roof above her
+head, and a warm hearth to sit by, makes her cheerful and contented.
+Does she remember the marriage of great-grandmamma?  Ay, that she does,
+as well--as if it was only yesterday.  You wouldn't think it to look at
+her now, and perhaps she ought not to say so of herself, but she was as
+smart a young girl then as you'd wish to see.  She recollects she took a
+friend of hers up-stairs to see Miss Emma dressed for church; her name
+was--ah! she forgets the name, but she remembers that she was a very
+pretty girl, and that she married not long afterwards, and lived--it has
+quite passed out of her mind where she lived, but she knows she had a bad
+husband who used her ill, and that she died in Lambeth work-house.  Dear,
+dear, in Lambeth workhouse!
+
+And the old couple--have they no comfort or enjoyment of existence?  See
+them among their grandchildren and great-grandchildren; how garrulous
+they are, how they compare one with another, and insist on likenesses
+which no one else can see; how gently the old lady lectures the girls on
+points of breeding and decorum, and points the moral by anecdotes of
+herself in her young days--how the old gentleman chuckles over boyish
+feats and roguish tricks, and tells long stories of a 'barring-out'
+achieved at the school he went to: which was very wrong, he tells the
+boys, and never to be imitated of course, but which he cannot help
+letting them know was very pleasant too--especially when he kissed the
+master's niece.  This last, however, is a point on which the old lady is
+very tender, for she considers it a shocking and indelicate thing to talk
+about, and always says so whenever it is mentioned, never failing to
+observe that he ought to be very penitent for having been so sinful.  So
+the old gentleman gets no further, and what the schoolmaster's niece said
+afterwards (which he is always going to tell) is lost to posterity.
+
+The old gentleman is eighty years old, to-day--'Eighty years old, Crofts,
+and never had a headache,' he tells the barber who shaves him (the barber
+being a young fellow, and very subject to that complaint).  'That's a
+great age, Crofts,' says the old gentleman.  'I don't think it's sich a
+wery great age, Sir,' replied the barber.  'Crofts,' rejoins the old
+gentleman, 'you're talking nonsense to me.  Eighty not a great age?'
+'It's a wery great age, Sir, for a gentleman to be as healthy and active
+as you are,' returns the barber; 'but my grandfather, Sir, he was
+ninety-four.'  'You don't mean that, Crofts?' says the old gentleman.  'I
+do indeed, Sir,' retorts the barber, 'and as wiggerous as Julius Caesar,
+my grandfather was.'  The old gentleman muses a little time, and then
+says, 'What did he die of, Crofts?'  'He died accidentally, Sir,' returns
+the barber; 'he didn't mean to do it.  He always would go a running about
+the streets--walking never satisfied _his_ spirit--and he run against a
+post and died of a hurt in his chest.'  The old gentleman says no more
+until the shaving is concluded, and then he gives Crofts half-a-crown to
+drink his health.  He is a little doubtful of the barber's veracity
+afterwards, and telling the anecdote to the old lady, affects to make
+very light of it--though to be sure (he adds) there was old Parr, and in
+some parts of England, ninety-five or so is a common age, quite a common
+age.
+
+This morning the old couple are cheerful but serious, recalling old times
+as well as they can remember them, and dwelling upon many passages in
+their past lives which the day brings to mind.  The old lady reads aloud,
+in a tremulous voice, out of a great Bible, and the old gentleman with
+his hand to his ear, listens with profound respect.  When the book is
+closed, they sit silent for a short space, and afterwards resume their
+conversation, with a reference perhaps to their dead children, as a
+subject not unsuited to that they have just left.  By degrees they are
+led to consider which of those who survive are the most like those
+dearly-remembered objects, and so they fall into a less solemn strain,
+and become cheerful again.
+
+How many people in all, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and one or
+two intimate friends of the family, dine together to-day at the eldest
+son's to congratulate the old couple, and wish them many happy returns,
+is a calculation beyond our powers; but this we know, that the old couple
+no sooner present themselves, very sprucely and carefully attired, than
+there is a violent shouting and rushing forward of the younger branches
+with all manner of presents, such as pocket-books, pencil-cases,
+pen-wipers, watch-papers, pin-cushions, sleeve-buckles, worked-slippers,
+watch-guards, and even a nutmeg-grater: the latter article being
+presented by a very chubby and very little boy, who exhibits it in great
+triumph as an extraordinary variety.  The old couple's emotion at these
+tokens of remembrance occasions quite a pathetic scene, of which the
+chief ingredients are a vast quantity of kissing and hugging, and
+repeated wipings of small eyes and noses with small square
+pocket-handkerchiefs, which don't come at all easily out of small
+pockets.  Even the peevish bachelor is moved, and he says, as he presents
+the old gentleman with a queer sort of antique ring from his own finger,
+that he'll be de'ed if he doesn't think he looks younger than he did ten
+years ago.
+
+But the great time is after dinner, when the dessert and wine are on the
+table, which is pushed back to make plenty of room, and they are all
+gathered in a large circle round the fire, for it is then--the glasses
+being filled, and everybody ready to drink the toast--that two
+great-grandchildren rush out at a given signal, and presently return,
+dragging in old Jane Adams leaning upon her crutched stick, and trembling
+with age and pleasure.  Who so popular as poor old Jane, nurse and
+story-teller in ordinary to two generations; and who so happy as she,
+striving to bend her stiff limbs into a curtsey, while tears of pleasure
+steal down her withered cheeks!
+
+The old couple sit side by side, and the old time seems like yesterday
+indeed.  Looking back upon the path they have travelled, its dust and
+ashes disappear; the flowers that withered long ago, show brightly again
+upon its borders, and they grow young once more in the youth of those
+about them.
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+We have taken for the subjects of the foregoing moral essays, twelve
+samples of married couples, carefully selected from a large stock on
+hand, open to the inspection of all comers.  These samples are intended
+for the benefit of the rising generation of both sexes, and, for their
+more easy and pleasant information, have been separately ticketed and
+labelled in the manner they have seen.
+
+We have purposely excluded from consideration the couple in which the
+lady reigns paramount and supreme, holding such cases to be of a very
+unnatural kind, and like hideous births and other monstrous deformities,
+only to be discreetly and sparingly exhibited.
+
+And here our self-imposed task would have ended, but that to those young
+ladies and gentlemen who are yet revolving singly round the church,
+awaiting the advent of that time when the mysterious laws of attraction
+shall draw them towards it in couples, we are desirous of addressing a
+few last words.
+
+Before marriage and afterwards, let them learn to centre all their hopes
+of real and lasting happiness in their own fireside; let them cherish the
+faith that in home, and all the English virtues which the love of home
+engenders, lies the only true source of domestic felicity; let them
+believe that round the household gods, contentment and tranquillity
+cluster in their gentlest and most graceful forms; and that many weary
+hunters of happiness through the noisy world, have learnt this truth too
+late, and found a cheerful spirit and a quiet mind only at home at last.
+
+How much may depend on the education of daughters and the conduct of
+mothers; how much of the brightest part of our old national character may
+be perpetuated by their wisdom or frittered away by their folly--how much
+of it may have been lost already, and how much more in danger of
+vanishing every day--are questions too weighty for discussion here, but
+well deserving a little serious consideration from all young couples
+nevertheless.
+
+To that one young couple on whose bright destiny the thoughts of nations
+are fixed, may the youth of England look, and not in vain, for an
+example.  From that one young couple, blessed and favoured as they are,
+may they learn that even the glare and glitter of a court, the splendour
+of a palace, and the pomp and glory of a throne, yield in their power of
+conferring happiness, to domestic worth and virtue.  From that one young
+couple may they learn that the crown of a great empire, costly and
+jewelled though it be, gives place in the estimation of a Queen to the
+plain gold ring that links her woman's nature to that of tens of
+thousands of her humble subjects, and guards in her woman's heart one
+secret store of tenderness, whose proudest boast shall be that it knows
+no Royalty save Nature's own, and no pride of birth but being the child
+of heaven!
+
+So shall the highest young couple in the land for once hear the truth,
+when men throw up their caps, and cry with loving shouts--
+
+                               GOD BLESS THEM.
+
+
+
+
+THE MUDFOG AND OTHER SKETCHES
+
+
+PUBLIC LIFE OF MR. TULRUMBLE--ONCE MAYOR OF MUDFOG
+
+
+Mudfog is a pleasant town--a remarkably pleasant town--situated in a
+charming hollow by the side of a river, from which river, Mudfog derives
+an agreeable scent of pitch, tar, coals, and rope-yarn, a roving
+population in oilskin hats, a pretty steady influx of drunken bargemen,
+and a great many other maritime advantages.  There is a good deal of
+water about Mudfog, and yet it is not exactly the sort of town for a
+watering-place, either.  Water is a perverse sort of element at the best
+of times, and in Mudfog it is particularly so.  In winter, it comes
+oozing down the streets and tumbling over the fields,--nay, rushes into
+the very cellars and kitchens of the houses, with a lavish prodigality
+that might well be dispensed with; but in the hot summer weather it
+_will_ dry up, and turn green: and, although green is a very good colour
+in its way, especially in grass, still it certainly is not becoming to
+water; and it cannot be denied that the beauty of Mudfog is rather
+impaired, even by this trifling circumstance.  Mudfog is a healthy
+place--very healthy;--damp, perhaps, but none the worse for that.  It's
+quite a mistake to suppose that damp is unwholesome: plants thrive best
+in damp situations, and why shouldn't men?  The inhabitants of Mudfog are
+unanimous in asserting that there exists not a finer race of people on
+the face of the earth; here we have an indisputable and veracious
+contradiction of the vulgar error at once.  So, admitting Mudfog to be
+damp, we distinctly state that it is salubrious.
+
+The town of Mudfog is extremely picturesque.  Limehouse and Ratcliff
+Highway are both something like it, but they give you a very faint idea
+of Mudfog.  There are a great many more public-houses in Mudfog--more
+than in Ratcliff Highway and Limehouse put together.  The public
+buildings, too, are very imposing.  We consider the town-hall one of the
+finest specimens of shed architecture, extant: it is a combination of the
+pig-sty and tea-garden-box orders; and the simplicity of its design is of
+surpassing beauty.  The idea of placing a large window on one side of the
+door, and a small one on the other, is particularly happy.  There is a
+fine old Doric beauty, too, about the padlock and scraper, which is
+strictly in keeping with the general effect.
+
+In this room do the mayor and corporation of Mudfog assemble together in
+solemn council for the public weal.  Seated on the massive wooden
+benches, which, with the table in the centre, form the only furniture of
+the whitewashed apartment, the sage men of Mudfog spend hour after hour
+in grave deliberation.  Here they settle at what hour of the night the
+public-houses shall be closed, at what hour of the morning they shall be
+permitted to open, how soon it shall be lawful for people to eat their
+dinner on church-days, and other great political questions; and
+sometimes, long after silence has fallen on the town, and the distant
+lights from the shops and houses have ceased to twinkle, like far-off
+stars, to the sight of the boatmen on the river, the illumination in the
+two unequal-sized windows of the town-hall, warns the inhabitants of
+Mudfog that its little body of legislators, like a larger and
+better-known body of the same genus, a great deal more noisy, and not a
+whit more profound, are patriotically dozing away in company, far into
+the night, for their country's good.
+
+Among this knot of sage and learned men, no one was so eminently
+distinguished, during many years, for the quiet modesty of his appearance
+and demeanour, as Nicholas Tulrumble, the well-known coal-dealer.
+However exciting the subject of discussion, however animated the tone of
+the debate, or however warm the personalities exchanged, (and even in
+Mudfog we get personal sometimes,) Nicholas Tulrumble was always the
+same.  To say truth, Nicholas, being an industrious man, and always up
+betimes, was apt to fall asleep when a debate began, and to remain asleep
+till it was over, when he would wake up very much refreshed, and give his
+vote with the greatest complacency.  The fact was, that Nicholas
+Tulrumble, knowing that everybody there had made up his mind beforehand,
+considered the talking as just a long botheration about nothing at all;
+and to the present hour it remains a question, whether, on this point at
+all events, Nicholas Tulrumble was not pretty near right.
+
+Time, which strews a man's head with silver, sometimes fills his pockets
+with gold.  As he gradually performed one good office for Nicholas
+Tulrumble, he was obliging enough, not to omit the other.  Nicholas began
+life in a wooden tenement of four feet square, with a capital of two and
+ninepence, and a stock in trade of three bushels and a-half of coals,
+exclusive of the large lump which hung, by way of sign-board, outside.
+Then he enlarged the shed, and kept a truck; then he left the shed, and
+the truck too, and started a donkey and a Mrs. Tulrumble; then he moved
+again and set up a cart; the cart was soon afterwards exchanged for a
+waggon; and so he went on like his great predecessor Whittington--only
+without a cat for a partner--increasing in wealth and fame, until at last
+he gave up business altogether, and retired with Mrs. Tulrumble and
+family to Mudfog Hall, which he had himself erected, on something which
+he attempted to delude himself into the belief was a hill, about a
+quarter of a mile distant from the town of Mudfog.
+
+About this time, it began to be murmured in Mudfog that Nicholas
+Tulrumble was growing vain and haughty; that prosperity and success had
+corrupted the simplicity of his manners, and tainted the natural goodness
+of his heart; in short, that he was setting up for a public character,
+and a great gentleman, and affected to look down upon his old companions
+with compassion and contempt.  Whether these reports were at the time
+well-founded, or not, certain it is that Mrs. Tulrumble very shortly
+afterwards started a four-wheel chaise, driven by a tall postilion in a
+yellow cap,--that Mr. Tulrumble junior took to smoking cigars, and
+calling the footman a 'feller,'--and that Mr. Tulrumble from that time
+forth, was no more seen in his old seat in the chimney-corner of the
+Lighterman's Arms at night.  This looked bad; but, more than this, it
+began to be observed that Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble attended the corporation
+meetings more frequently than heretofore; and he no longer went to sleep
+as he had done for so many years, but propped his eyelids open with his
+two forefingers; that he read the newspapers by himself at home; and that
+he was in the habit of indulging abroad in distant and mysterious
+allusions to 'masses of people,' and 'the property of the country,' and
+'productive power,' and 'the monied interest:' all of which denoted and
+proved that Nicholas Tulrumble was either mad, or worse; and it puzzled
+the good people of Mudfog amazingly.
+
+At length, about the middle of the month of October, Mr. Tulrumble and
+family went up to London; the middle of October being, as Mrs. Tulrumble
+informed her acquaintance in Mudfog, the very height of the fashionable
+season.
+
+Somehow or other, just about this time, despite the health-preserving air
+of Mudfog, the Mayor died.  It was a most extraordinary circumstance; he
+had lived in Mudfog for eighty-five years.  The corporation didn't
+understand it at all; indeed it was with great difficulty that one old
+gentleman, who was a great stickler for forms, was dissuaded from
+proposing a vote of censure on such unaccountable conduct.  Strange as it
+was, however, die he did, without taking the slightest notice of the
+corporation; and the corporation were imperatively called upon to elect
+his successor.  So, they met for the purpose; and being very full of
+Nicholas Tulrumble just then, and Nicholas Tulrumble being a very
+important man, they elected him, and wrote off to London by the very next
+post to acquaint Nicholas Tulrumble with his new elevation.
+
+Now, it being November time, and Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble being in the
+capital, it fell out that he was present at the Lord Mayor's show and
+dinner, at sight of the glory and splendour whereof, he, Mr. Tulrumble,
+was greatly mortified, inasmuch as the reflection would force itself on
+his mind, that, had he been born in London instead of in Mudfog, he might
+have been a Lord Mayor too, and have patronized the judges, and been
+affable to the Lord Chancellor, and friendly with the Premier, and coldly
+condescending to the Secretary to the Treasury, and have dined with a
+flag behind his back, and done a great many other acts and deeds which
+unto Lord Mayors of London peculiarly appertain.  The more he thought of
+the Lord Mayor, the more enviable a personage he seemed.  To be a King
+was all very well; but what was the King to the Lord Mayor!  When the
+King made a speech, everybody knew it was somebody else's writing;
+whereas here was the Lord Mayor, talking away for half an hour-all out of
+his own head--amidst the enthusiastic applause of the whole company,
+while it was notorious that the King might talk to his parliament till he
+was black in the face without getting so much as a single cheer.  As all
+these reflections passed through the mind of Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble, the
+Lord Mayor of London appeared to him the greatest sovereign on the face
+of the earth, beating the Emperor of Russia all to nothing, and leaving
+the Great Mogul immeasurably behind.
+
+Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble was pondering over these things, and inwardly
+cursing the fate which had pitched his coal-shed in Mudfog, when the
+letter of the corporation was put into his hand.  A crimson flush mantled
+over his face as he read it, for visions of brightness were already
+dancing before his imagination.
+
+'My dear,' said Mr. Tulrumble to his wife, 'they have elected me, Mayor
+of Mudfog.'
+
+'Lor-a-mussy!' said Mrs. Tulrumble: 'why what's become of old Sniggs?'
+
+'The late Mr. Sniggs, Mrs. Tulrumble,' said Mr. Tulrumble sharply, for he
+by no means approved of the notion of unceremoniously designating a
+gentleman who filled the high office of Mayor, as 'Old Sniggs,'--'The
+late Mr. Sniggs, Mrs. Tulrumble, is dead.'
+
+The communication was very unexpected; but Mrs. Tulrumble only ejaculated
+'Lor-a-mussy!' once again, as if a Mayor were a mere ordinary Christian,
+at which Mr. Tulrumble frowned gloomily.
+
+'What a pity 'tan't in London, ain't it?' said Mrs. Tulrumble, after a
+short pause; 'what a pity 'tan't in London, where you might have had a
+show.'
+
+'I _might_ have a show in Mudfog, if I thought proper, I apprehend,' said
+Mr. Tulrumble mysteriously.
+
+'Lor! so you might, I declare,' replied Mrs. Tulrumble.
+
+'And a good one too,' said Mr. Tulrumble.
+
+'Delightful!' exclaimed Mrs. Tulrumble.
+
+'One which would rather astonish the ignorant people down there,' said
+Mr. Tulrumble.
+
+'It would kill them with envy,' said Mrs. Tulrumble.
+
+So it was agreed that his Majesty's lieges in Mudfog should be astonished
+with splendour, and slaughtered with envy, and that such a show should
+take place as had never been seen in that town, or in any other town
+before,--no, not even in London itself.
+
+On the very next day after the receipt of the letter, down came the tall
+postilion in a post-chaise,--not upon one of the horses, but
+inside--actually inside the chaise,--and, driving up to the very door of
+the town-hall, where the corporation were assembled, delivered a letter,
+written by the Lord knows who, and signed by Nicholas Tulrumble, in which
+Nicholas said, all through four sides of closely-written, gilt-edged,
+hot-pressed, Bath post letter paper, that he responded to the call of his
+fellow-townsmen with feelings of heartfelt delight; that he accepted the
+arduous office which their confidence had imposed upon him; that they
+would never find him shrinking from the discharge of his duty; that he
+would endeavour to execute his functions with all that dignity which
+their magnitude and importance demanded; and a great deal more to the
+same effect.  But even this was not all.  The tall postilion produced
+from his right-hand top-boot, a damp copy of that afternoon's number of
+the county paper; and there, in large type, running the whole length of
+the very first column, was a long address from Nicholas Tulrumble to the
+inhabitants of Mudfog, in which he said that he cheerfully complied with
+their requisition, and, in short, as if to prevent any mistake about the
+matter, told them over again what a grand fellow he meant to be, in very
+much the same terms as those in which he had already told them all about
+the matter in his letter.
+
+The corporation stared at one another very hard at all this, and then
+looked as if for explanation to the tall postilion, but as the tall
+postilion was intently contemplating the gold tassel on the top of his
+yellow cap, and could have afforded no explanation whatever, even if his
+thoughts had been entirely disengaged, they contented themselves with
+coughing very dubiously, and looking very grave.  The tall postilion then
+delivered another letter, in which Nicholas Tulrumble informed the
+corporation, that he intended repairing to the town-hall, in grand state
+and gorgeous procession, on the Monday afternoon next ensuing.  At this
+the corporation looked still more solemn; but, as the epistle wound up
+with a formal invitation to the whole body to dine with the Mayor on that
+day, at Mudfog Hall, Mudfog Hill, Mudfog, they began to see the fun of
+the thing directly, and sent back their compliments, and they'd be sure
+to come.
+
+Now there happened to be in Mudfog, as somehow or other there does happen
+to be, in almost every town in the British dominions, and perhaps in
+foreign dominions too--we think it very likely, but, being no great
+traveller, cannot distinctly say--there happened to be, in Mudfog, a
+merry-tempered, pleasant-faced, good-for-nothing sort of vagabond, with
+an invincible dislike to manual labour, and an unconquerable attachment
+to strong beer and spirits, whom everybody knew, and nobody, except his
+wife, took the trouble to quarrel with, who inherited from his ancestors
+the appellation of Edward Twigger, and rejoiced in the _sobriquet_ of
+Bottle-nosed Ned.  He was drunk upon the average once a day, and penitent
+upon an equally fair calculation once a month; and when he was penitent,
+he was invariably in the very last stage of maudlin intoxication.  He was
+a ragged, roving, roaring kind of fellow, with a burly form, a sharp wit,
+and a ready head, and could turn his hand to anything when he chose to do
+it.  He was by no means opposed to hard labour on principle, for he would
+work away at a cricket-match by the day together,--running, and catching,
+and batting, and bowling, and revelling in toil which would exhaust a
+galley-slave.  He would have been invaluable to a fire-office; never was
+a man with such a natural taste for pumping engines, running up ladders,
+and throwing furniture out of two-pair-of-stairs' windows: nor was this
+the only element in which he was at home; he was a humane society in
+himself, a portable drag, an animated life-preserver, and had saved more
+people, in his time, from drowning, than the Plymouth life-boat, or
+Captain Manby's apparatus.  With all these qualifications,
+notwithstanding his dissipation, Bottle-nosed Ned was a general
+favourite; and the authorities of Mudfog, remembering his numerous
+services to the population, allowed him in return to get drunk in his own
+way, without the fear of stocks, fine, or imprisonment.  He had a general
+licence, and he showed his sense of the compliment by making the most of
+it.
+
+We have been thus particular in describing the character and avocations
+of Bottle-nosed Ned, because it enables us to introduce a fact politely,
+without hauling it into the reader's presence with indecent haste by the
+head and shoulders, and brings us very naturally to relate, that on the
+very same evening on which Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble and family returned to
+Mudfog, Mr. Tulrumble's new secretary, just imported from London, with a
+pale face and light whiskers, thrust his head down to the very bottom of
+his neckcloth-tie, in at the tap-room door of the Lighterman's Arms, and
+inquiring whether one Ned Twigger was luxuriating within, announced
+himself as the bearer of a message from Nicholas Tulrumble, Esquire,
+requiring Mr. Twigger's immediate attendance at the hall, on private and
+particular business.  It being by no means Mr. Twigger's interest to
+affront the Mayor, he rose from the fireplace with a slight sigh, and
+followed the light-whiskered secretary through the dirt and wet of Mudfog
+streets, up to Mudfog Hall, without further ado.
+
+Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble was seated in a small cavern with a skylight,
+which he called his library, sketching out a plan of the procession on a
+large sheet of paper; and into the cavern the secretary ushered Ned
+Twigger.
+
+'Well, Twigger!' said Nicholas Tulrumble, condescendingly.
+
+There was a time when Twigger would have replied, 'Well, Nick!' but that
+was in the days of the truck, and a couple of years before the donkey;
+so, he only bowed.
+
+'I want you to go into training, Twigger,' said Mr. Tulrumble.
+
+'What for, sir?' inquired Ned, with a stare.
+
+'Hush, hush, Twigger!' said the Mayor.  'Shut the door, Mr. Jennings.
+Look here, Twigger.'
+
+As the Mayor said this, he unlocked a high closet, and disclosed a
+complete suit of brass armour, of gigantic dimensions.
+
+'I want you to wear this next Monday, Twigger,' said the Mayor.
+
+'Bless your heart and soul, sir!' replied Ned, 'you might as well ask me
+to wear a seventy-four pounder, or a cast-iron boiler.'
+
+'Nonsense, Twigger, nonsense!' said the Mayor.
+
+'I couldn't stand under it, sir,' said Twigger; 'it would make mashed
+potatoes of me, if I attempted it.'
+
+'Pooh, pooh, Twigger!' returned the Mayor.  'I tell you I have seen it
+done with my own eyes, in London, and the man wasn't half such a man as
+you are, either.'
+
+'I should as soon have thought of a man's wearing the case of an
+eight-day clock to save his linen,' said Twigger, casting a look of
+apprehension at the brass suit.
+
+'It's the easiest thing in the world,' rejoined the Mayor.
+
+'It's nothing,' said Mr. Jennings.
+
+'When you're used to it,' added Ned.
+
+'You do it by degrees,' said the Mayor.  'You would begin with one piece
+to-morrow, and two the next day, and so on, till you had got it all on.
+Mr. Jennings, give Twigger a glass of rum.  Just try the breast-plate,
+Twigger.  Stay; take another glass of rum first.  Help me to lift it, Mr.
+Jennings.  Stand firm, Twigger!  There!--it isn't half as heavy as it
+looks, is it?'
+
+Twigger was a good strong, stout fellow; so, after a great deal of
+staggering, he managed to keep himself up, under the breastplate, and
+even contrived, with the aid of another glass of rum, to walk about in
+it, and the gauntlets into the bargain.  He made a trial of the helmet,
+but was not equally successful, inasmuch as he tipped over instantly,--an
+accident which Mr. Tulrumble clearly demonstrated to be occasioned by his
+not having a counteracting weight of brass on his legs.
+
+'Now, wear that with grace and propriety on Monday next,' said Tulrumble,
+'and I'll make your fortune.'
+
+'I'll try what I can do, sir,' said Twigger.
+
+'It must be kept a profound secret,' said Tulrumble.
+
+'Of course, sir,' replied Twigger.
+
+'And you must be sober,' said Tulrumble; 'perfectly sober.'  Mr. Twigger
+at once solemnly pledged himself to be as sober as a judge, and Nicholas
+Tulrumble was satisfied, although, had we been Nicholas, we should
+certainly have exacted some promise of a more specific nature; inasmuch
+as, having attended the Mudfog assizes in the evening more than once, we
+can solemnly testify to having seen judges with very strong symptoms of
+dinner under their wigs.  However, that's neither here nor there.
+
+The next day, and the day following, and the day after that, Ned Twigger
+was securely locked up in the small cavern with the sky-light, hard at
+work at the armour.  With every additional piece he could manage to stand
+upright in, he had an additional glass of rum; and at last, after many
+partial suffocations, he contrived to get on the whole suit, and to
+stagger up and down the room in it, like an intoxicated effigy from
+Westminster Abbey.
+
+Never was man so delighted as Nicholas Tulrumble; never was woman so
+charmed as Nicholas Tulrumble's wife.  Here was a sight for the common
+people of Mudfog!  A live man in brass armour!  Why, they would go wild
+with wonder!
+
+The day--_the_ Monday--arrived.
+
+If the morning had been made to order, it couldn't have been better
+adapted to the purpose.  They never showed a better fog in London on Lord
+Mayor's day, than enwrapped the town of Mudfog on that eventful occasion.
+It had risen slowly and surely from the green and stagnant water with the
+first light of morning, until it reached a little above the lamp-post
+tops; and there it had stopped, with a sleepy, sluggish obstinacy, which
+bade defiance to the sun, who had got up very blood-shot about the eyes,
+as if he had been at a drinking-party over-night, and was doing his day's
+work with the worst possible grace.  The thick damp mist hung over the
+town like a huge gauze curtain.  All was dim and dismal.  The church
+steeples had bidden a temporary adieu to the world below; and every
+object of lesser importance--houses, barns, hedges, trees, and
+barges--had all taken the veil.
+
+The church-clock struck one.  A cracked trumpet from the front garden of
+Mudfog Hall produced a feeble flourish, as if some asthmatic person had
+coughed into it accidentally; the gate flew open, and out came a
+gentleman, on a moist-sugar coloured charger, intended to represent a
+herald, but bearing a much stronger resemblance to a court-card on
+horseback.  This was one of the Circus people, who always came down to
+Mudfog at that time of the year, and who had been engaged by Nicholas
+Tulrumble expressly for the occasion.  There was the horse, whisking his
+tail about, balancing himself on his hind-legs, and flourishing away with
+his fore-feet, in a manner which would have gone to the hearts and souls
+of any reasonable crowd.  But a Mudfog crowd never was a reasonable one,
+and in all probability never will be.  Instead of scattering the very fog
+with their shouts, as they ought most indubitably to have done, and were
+fully intended to do, by Nicholas Tulrumble, they no sooner recognized
+the herald, than they began to growl forth the most unqualified
+disapprobation at the bare notion of his riding like any other man.  If
+he had come out on his head indeed, or jumping through a hoop, or flying
+through a red-hot drum, or even standing on one leg with his other foot
+in his mouth, they might have had something to say to him; but for a
+professional gentleman to sit astride in the saddle, with his feet in the
+stirrups, was rather too good a joke.  So, the herald was a decided
+failure, and the crowd hooted with great energy, as he pranced
+ingloriously away.
+
+On the procession came.  We are afraid to say how many supernumeraries
+there were, in striped shirts and black velvet caps, to imitate the
+London watermen, or how many base imitations of running-footmen, or how
+many banners, which, owing to the heaviness of the atmosphere, could by
+no means be prevailed on to display their inscriptions: still less do we
+feel disposed to relate how the men who played the wind instruments,
+looking up into the sky (we mean the fog) with musical fervour, walked
+through pools of water and hillocks of mud, till they covered the
+powdered heads of the running-footmen aforesaid with splashes, that
+looked curious, but not ornamental; or how the barrel-organ performer put
+on the wrong stop, and played one tune while the band played another; or
+how the horses, being used to the arena, and not to the streets, would
+stand still and dance, instead of going on and prancing;--all of which
+are matters which might be dilated upon to great advantage, but which we
+have not the least intention of dilating upon, notwithstanding.
+
+Oh! it was a grand and beautiful sight to behold a corporation in glass
+coaches, provided at the sole cost and charge of Nicholas Tulrumble,
+coming rolling along, like a funeral out of mourning, and to watch the
+attempts the corporation made to look great and solemn, when Nicholas
+Tulrumble himself, in the four-wheel chaise, with the tall postilion,
+rolled out after them, with Mr. Jennings on one side to look like a
+chaplain, and a supernumerary on the other, with an old life-guardsman's
+sabre, to imitate the sword-bearer; and to see the tears rolling down the
+faces of the mob as they screamed with merriment.  This was beautiful!
+and so was the appearance of Mrs. Tulrumble and son, as they bowed with
+grave dignity out of their coach-window to all the dirty faces that were
+laughing around them: but it is not even with this that we have to do,
+but with the sudden stopping of the procession at another blast of the
+trumpet, whereat, and whereupon, a profound silence ensued, and all eyes
+were turned towards Mudfog Hall, in the confident anticipation of some
+new wonder.
+
+'They won't laugh now, Mr. Jennings,' said Nicholas Tulrumble.
+
+'I think not, sir,' said Mr. Jennings.
+
+'See how eager they look,' said Nicholas Tulrumble.  'Aha! the laugh will
+be on our side now; eh, Mr. Jennings?'
+
+'No doubt of that, sir,' replied Mr. Jennings; and Nicholas Tulrumble, in
+a state of pleasurable excitement, stood up in the four-wheel chaise, and
+telegraphed gratification to the Mayoress behind.
+
+While all this was going forward, Ned Twigger had descended into the
+kitchen of Mudfog Hall for the purpose of indulging the servants with a
+private view of the curiosity that was to burst upon the town; and,
+somehow or other, the footman was so companionable, and the housemaid so
+kind, and the cook so friendly, that he could not resist the offer of the
+first-mentioned to sit down and take something--just to drink success to
+master in.
+
+So, down Ned Twigger sat himself in his brass livery on the top of the
+kitchen-table; and in a mug of something strong, paid for by the
+unconscious Nicholas Tulrumble, and provided by the companionable
+footman, drank success to the Mayor and his procession; and, as Ned laid
+by his helmet to imbibe the something strong, the companionable footman
+put it on his own head, to the immeasurable and unrecordable delight of
+the cook and housemaid.  The companionable footman was very facetious to
+Ned, and Ned was very gallant to the cook and housemaid by turns.  They
+were all very cosy and comfortable; and the something strong went briskly
+round.
+
+At last Ned Twigger was loudly called for, by the procession people: and,
+having had his helmet fixed on, in a very complicated manner, by the
+companionable footman, and the kind housemaid, and the friendly cook, he
+walked gravely forth, and appeared before the multitude.
+
+The crowd roared--it was not with wonder, it was not with surprise; it
+was most decidedly and unquestionably with laughter.
+
+'What!' said Mr. Tulrumble, starting up in the four-wheel chaise.
+'Laughing?  If they laugh at a man in real brass armour, they'd laugh
+when their own fathers were dying.  Why doesn't he go into his place, Mr.
+Jennings?  What's he rolling down towards us for? he has no business
+here!'
+
+'I am afraid, sir--' faltered Mr. Jennings.
+
+'Afraid of what, sir?' said Nicholas Tulrumble, looking up into the
+secretary's face.
+
+'I am afraid he's drunk, sir,' replied Mr. Jennings.
+
+Nicholas Tulrumble took one look at the extraordinary figure that was
+bearing down upon them; and then, clasping his secretary by the arm,
+uttered an audible groan in anguish of spirit.
+
+It is a melancholy fact that Mr. Twigger having full licence to demand a
+single glass of rum on the putting on of every piece of the armour, got,
+by some means or other, rather out of his calculation in the hurry and
+confusion of preparation, and drank about four glasses to a piece instead
+of one, not to mention the something strong which went on the top of it.
+Whether the brass armour checked the natural flow of perspiration, and
+thus prevented the spirit from evaporating, we are not scientific enough
+to know; but, whatever the cause was, Mr. Twigger no sooner found himself
+outside the gate of Mudfog Hall, than he also found himself in a very
+considerable state of intoxication; and hence his extraordinary style of
+progressing.  This was bad enough, but, as if fate and fortune had
+conspired against Nicholas Tulrumble, Mr. Twigger, not having been
+penitent for a good calendar month, took it into his head to be most
+especially and particularly sentimental, just when his repentance could
+have been most conveniently dispensed with.  Immense tears were rolling
+down his cheeks, and he was vainly endeavouring to conceal his grief by
+applying to his eyes a blue cotton pocket-handkerchief with white
+spots,--an article not strictly in keeping with a suit of armour some
+three hundred years old, or thereabouts.
+
+'Twigger, you villain!' said Nicholas Tulrumble, quite forgetting his
+dignity, 'go back.'
+
+'Never,' said Ned.  'I'm a miserable wretch.  I'll never leave you.'
+
+The by-standers of course received this declaration with acclamations of
+'That's right, Ned; don't!'
+
+'I don't intend it,' said Ned, with all the obstinacy of a very tipsy
+man.  'I'm very unhappy.  I'm the wretched father of an unfortunate
+family; but I am very faithful, sir.  I'll never leave you.'  Having
+reiterated this obliging promise, Ned proceeded in broken words to
+harangue the crowd upon the number of years he had lived in Mudfog, the
+excessive respectability of his character, and other topics of the like
+nature.
+
+'Here! will anybody lead him away?' said Nicholas: 'if they'll call on me
+afterwards, I'll reward them well.'
+
+Two or three men stepped forward, with the view of bearing Ned off, when
+the secretary interposed.
+
+'Take care! take care!' said Mr. Jennings.  'I beg your pardon, sir; but
+they'd better not go too near him, because, if he falls over, he'll
+certainly crush somebody.'
+
+At this hint the crowd retired on all sides to a very respectful
+distance, and left Ned, like the Duke of Devonshire, in a little circle
+of his own.
+
+'But, Mr. Jennings,' said Nicholas Tulrumble, 'he'll be suffocated.'
+
+'I'm very sorry for it, sir,' replied Mr. Jennings; 'but nobody can get
+that armour off, without his own assistance.  I'm quite certain of it
+from the way he put it on.'
+
+Here Ned wept dolefully, and shook his helmeted head, in a manner that
+might have touched a heart of stone; but the crowd had not hearts of
+stone, and they laughed heartily.
+
+'Dear me, Mr. Jennings,' said Nicholas, turning pale at the possibility
+of Ned's being smothered in his antique costume--'Dear me, Mr. Jennings,
+can nothing be done with him?'
+
+'Nothing at all,' replied Ned, 'nothing at all.  Gentlemen, I'm an
+unhappy wretch.  I'm a body, gentlemen, in a brass coffin.'  At this
+poetical idea of his own conjuring up, Ned cried so much that the people
+began to get sympathetic, and to ask what Nicholas Tulrumble meant by
+putting a man into such a machine as that; and one individual in a hairy
+waistcoat like the top of a trunk, who had previously expressed his
+opinion that if Ned hadn't been a poor man, Nicholas wouldn't have dared
+do it, hinted at the propriety of breaking the four-wheel chaise, or
+Nicholas's head, or both, which last compound proposition the crowd
+seemed to consider a very good notion.
+
+It was not acted upon, however, for it had hardly been broached, when Ned
+Twigger's wife made her appearance abruptly in the little circle before
+noticed, and Ned no sooner caught a glimpse of her face and form, than
+from the mere force of habit he set off towards his home just as fast as
+his legs could carry him; and that was not very quick in the present
+instance either, for, however ready they might have been to carry _him_,
+they couldn't get on very well under the brass armour.  So, Mrs. Twigger
+had plenty of time to denounce Nicholas Tulrumble to his face: to express
+her opinion that he was a decided monster; and to intimate that, if her
+ill-used husband sustained any personal damage from the brass armour, she
+would have the law of Nicholas Tulrumble for manslaughter.  When she had
+said all this with due vehemence, she posted after Ned, who was dragging
+himself along as best he could, and deploring his unhappiness in most
+dismal tones.
+
+What a wailing and screaming Ned's children raised when he got home at
+last!  Mrs. Twigger tried to undo the armour, first in one place, and
+then in another, but she couldn't manage it; so she tumbled Ned into bed,
+helmet, armour, gauntlets, and all.  Such a creaking as the bedstead
+made, under Ned's weight in his new suit!  It didn't break down though;
+and there Ned lay, like the anonymous vessel in the Bay of Biscay, till
+next day, drinking barley-water, and looking miserable: and every time he
+groaned, his good lady said it served him right, which was all the
+consolation Ned Twigger got.
+
+Nicholas Tulrumble and the gorgeous procession went on together to the
+town-hall, amid the hisses and groans of all the spectators, who had
+suddenly taken it into their heads to consider poor Ned a martyr.
+Nicholas was formally installed in his new office, in acknowledgment of
+which ceremony he delivered himself of a speech, composed by the
+secretary, which was very long, and no doubt very good, only the noise of
+the people outside prevented anybody from hearing it, but Nicholas
+Tulrumble himself.  After which, the procession got back to Mudfog Hall
+any how it could; and Nicholas and the corporation sat down to dinner.
+
+But the dinner was flat, and Nicholas was disappointed.  They were such
+dull sleepy old fellows, that corporation.  Nicholas made quite as long
+speeches as the Lord Mayor of London had done, nay, he said the very same
+things that the Lord Mayor of London had said, and the deuce a cheer the
+corporation gave him.  There was only one man in the party who was
+thoroughly awake; and he was insolent, and called him Nick.  Nick!  What
+would be the consequence, thought Nicholas, of anybody presuming to call
+the Lord Mayor of London 'Nick!'  He should like to know what the
+sword-bearer would say to that; or the recorder, or the toast-master, or
+any other of the great officers of the city.  They'd nick him.
+
+But these were not the worst of Nicholas Tulrumble's doings.  If they had
+been, he might have remained a Mayor to this day, and have talked till he
+lost his voice.  He contracted a relish for statistics, and got
+philosophical; and the statistics and the philosophy together, led him
+into an act which increased his unpopularity and hastened his downfall.
+
+At the very end of the Mudfog High-street, and abutting on the
+river-side, stands the Jolly Boatmen, an old-fashioned low-roofed,
+bay-windowed house, with a bar, kitchen, and tap-room all in one, and a
+large fireplace with a kettle to correspond, round which the working men
+have congregated time out of mind on a winter's night, refreshed by
+draughts of good strong beer, and cheered by the sounds of a fiddle and
+tambourine: the Jolly Boatmen having been duly licensed by the Mayor and
+corporation, to scrape the fiddle and thumb the tambourine from time,
+whereof the memory of the oldest inhabitants goeth not to the contrary.
+Now Nicholas Tulrumble had been reading pamphlets on crime, and
+parliamentary reports,--or had made the secretary read them to him, which
+is the same thing in effect,--and he at once perceived that this fiddle
+and tambourine must have done more to demoralize Mudfog, than any other
+operating causes that ingenuity could imagine.  So he read up for the
+subject, and determined to come out on the corporation with a burst, the
+very next time the licence was applied for.
+
+The licensing day came, and the red-faced landlord of the Jolly Boatmen
+walked into the town-hall, looking as jolly as need be, having actually
+put on an extra fiddle for that night, to commemorate the anniversary of
+the Jolly Boatmen's music licence.  It was applied for in due form, and
+was just about to be granted as a matter of course, when up rose Nicholas
+Tulrumble, and drowned the astonished corporation in a torrent of
+eloquence.  He descanted in glowing terms upon the increasing depravity
+of his native town of Mudfog, and the excesses committed by its
+population.  Then, he related how shocked he had been, to see barrels of
+beer sliding down into the cellar of the Jolly Boatmen week after week;
+and how he had sat at a window opposite the Jolly Boatmen for two days
+together, to count the people who went in for beer between the hours of
+twelve and one o'clock alone--which, by-the-bye, was the time at which
+the great majority of the Mudfog people dined.  Then, he went on to
+state, how the number of people who came out with beer-jugs, averaged
+twenty-one in five minutes, which, being multiplied by twelve, gave two
+hundred and fifty-two people with beer-jugs in an hour, and multiplied
+again by fifteen (the number of hours during which the house was open
+daily) yielded three thousand seven hundred and eighty people with
+beer-jugs per day, or twenty-six thousand four hundred and sixty people
+with beer-jugs, per week.  Then he proceeded to show that a tambourine
+and moral degradation were synonymous terms, and a fiddle and vicious
+propensities wholly inseparable.  All these arguments he strengthened and
+demonstrated by frequent references to a large book with a blue cover,
+and sundry quotations from the Middlesex magistrates; and in the end, the
+corporation, who were posed with the figures, and sleepy with the speech,
+and sadly in want of dinner into the bargain, yielded the palm to
+Nicholas Tulrumble, and refused the music licence to the Jolly Boatmen.
+
+But although Nicholas triumphed, his triumph was short.  He carried on
+the war against beer-jugs and fiddles, forgetting the time when he was
+glad to drink out of the one, and to dance to the other, till the people
+hated, and his old friends shunned him.  He grew tired of the lonely
+magnificence of Mudfog Hall, and his heart yearned towards the
+Lighterman's Arms.  He wished he had never set up as a public man, and
+sighed for the good old times of the coal-shop, and the chimney corner.
+
+At length old Nicholas, being thoroughly miserable, took heart of grace,
+paid the secretary a quarter's wages in advance, and packed him off to
+London by the next coach.  Having taken this step, he put his hat on his
+head, and his pride in his pocket, and walked down to the old room at the
+Lighterman's Arms.  There were only two of the old fellows there, and
+they looked coldly on Nicholas as he proffered his hand.
+
+'Are you going to put down pipes, Mr. Tulrumble?' said one.
+
+'Or trace the progress of crime to 'bacca?' growled another.
+
+'Neither,' replied Nicholas Tulrumble, shaking hands with them both,
+whether they would or not.  'I've come down to say that I'm very sorry
+for having made a fool of myself, and that I hope you'll give me up the
+old chair, again.'
+
+The old fellows opened their eyes, and three or four more old fellows
+opened the door, to whom Nicholas, with tears in his eyes, thrust out his
+hand too, and told the same story.  They raised a shout of joy, that made
+the bells in the ancient church-tower vibrate again, and wheeling the old
+chair into the warm corner, thrust old Nicholas down into it, and ordered
+in the very largest-sized bowl of hot punch, with an unlimited number of
+pipes, directly.
+
+The next day, the Jolly Boatmen got the licence, and the next night, old
+Nicholas and Ned Twigger's wife led off a dance to the music of the
+fiddle and tambourine, the tone of which seemed mightily improved by a
+little rest, for they never had played so merrily before.  Ned Twigger
+was in the very height of his glory, and he danced hornpipes, and
+balanced chairs on his chin, and straws on his nose, till the whole
+company, including the corporation, were in raptures of admiration at the
+brilliancy of his acquirements.
+
+Mr. Tulrumble, junior, couldn't make up his mind to be anything but
+magnificent, so he went up to London and drew bills on his father; and
+when he had overdrawn, and got into debt, he grew penitent, and came home
+again.
+
+As to old Nicholas, he kept his word, and having had six weeks of public
+life, never tried it any more.  He went to sleep in the town-hall at the
+very next meeting; and, in full proof of his sincerity, has requested us
+to write this faithful narrative.  We wish it could have the effect of
+reminding the Tulrumbles of another sphere, that puffed-up conceit is not
+dignity, and that snarling at the little pleasures they were once glad to
+enjoy, because they would rather forget the times when they were of lower
+station, renders them objects of contempt and ridicule.
+
+This is the first time we have published any of our gleanings from this
+particular source.  Perhaps, at some future period, we may venture to
+open the chronicles of Mudfog.
+
+
+
+FULL REPORT OF THE FIRST MEETING OF THE MUDFOG ASSOCIATION
+FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EVERYTHING
+
+
+We have made the most unparalleled and extraordinary exertions to place
+before our readers a complete and accurate account of the proceedings at
+the late grand meeting of the Mudfog Association, holden in the town of
+Mudfog; it affords us great happiness to lay the result before them, in
+the shape of various communications received from our able, talented, and
+graphic correspondent, expressly sent down for the purpose, who has
+immortalized us, himself, Mudfog, and the association, all at one and the
+same time.  We have been, indeed, for some days unable to determine who
+will transmit the greatest name to posterity; ourselves, who sent our
+correspondent down; our correspondent, who wrote an account of the
+matter; or the association, who gave our correspondent something to write
+about.  We rather incline to the opinion that we are the greatest man of
+the party, inasmuch as the notion of an exclusive and authentic report
+originated with us; this may be prejudice: it may arise from a
+prepossession on our part in our own favour.  Be it so.  We have no doubt
+that every gentleman concerned in this mighty assemblage is troubled with
+the same complaint in a greater or less degree; and it is a consolation
+to us to know that we have at least this feeling in common with the great
+scientific stars, the brilliant and extraordinary luminaries, whose
+speculations we record.
+
+We give our correspondent's letters in the order in which they reached
+us.  Any attempt at amalgamating them into one beautiful whole, would
+only destroy that glowing tone, that dash of wildness, and rich vein of
+picturesque interest, which pervade them throughout.
+
+                               '_Mudfog_, _Monday night_, _seven o'clock_.
+
+'We are in a state of great excitement here.  Nothing is spoken of, but
+the approaching meeting of the association.  The inn-doors are thronged
+with waiters anxiously looking for the expected arrivals; and the
+numerous bills which are wafered up in the windows of private houses,
+intimating that there are beds to let within, give the streets a very
+animated and cheerful appearance, the wafers being of a great variety of
+colours, and the monotony of printed inscriptions being relieved by every
+possible size and style of hand-writing.  It is confidently rumoured that
+Professors Snore, Doze, and Wheezy have engaged three beds and a
+sitting-room at the Pig and Tinder-box.  I give you the rumour as it has
+reached me; but I cannot, as yet, vouch for its accuracy.  The moment I
+have been enabled to obtain any certain information upon this interesting
+point, you may depend upon receiving it.'
+
+                                                       '_Half-past seven_.
+
+I have just returned from a personal interview with the landlord of the
+Pig and Tinder-box.  He speaks confidently of the probability of
+Professors Snore, Doze, and Wheezy taking up their residence at his house
+during the sitting of the association, but denies that the beds have been
+yet engaged; in which representation he is confirmed by the
+chambermaid--a girl of artless manners, and interesting appearance.  The
+boots denies that it is at all likely that Professors Snore, Doze, and
+Wheezy will put up here; but I have reason to believe that this man has
+been suborned by the proprietor of the Original Pig, which is the
+opposition hotel.  Amidst such conflicting testimony it is difficult to
+arrive at the real truth; but you may depend upon receiving authentic
+information upon this point the moment the fact is ascertained.  The
+excitement still continues.  A boy fell through the window of the
+pastrycook's shop at the corner of the High-street about half an hour
+ago, which has occasioned much confusion.  The general impression is,
+that it was an accident.  Pray heaven it may prove so!'
+
+                                                       '_Tuesday_, _noon_.
+
+'At an early hour this morning the bells of all the churches struck seven
+o'clock; the effect of which, in the present lively state of the town,
+was extremely singular.  While I was at breakfast, a yellow gig, drawn by
+a dark grey horse, with a patch of white over his right eyelid, proceeded
+at a rapid pace in the direction of the Original Pig stables; it is
+currently reported that this gentleman has arrived here for the purpose
+of attending the association, and, from what I have heard, I consider it
+extremely probable, although nothing decisive is yet known regarding him.
+You may conceive the anxiety with which we are all looking forward to the
+arrival of the four o'clock coach this afternoon.
+
+'Notwithstanding the excited state of the populace, no outrage has yet
+been committed, owing to the admirable discipline and discretion of the
+police, who are nowhere to be seen.  A barrel-organ is playing opposite
+my window, and groups of people, offering fish and vegetables for sale,
+parade the streets.  With these exceptions everything is quiet, and I
+trust will continue so.'
+
+                                                          '_Five o'clock_.
+
+'It is now ascertained, beyond all doubt, that Professors Snore, Doze,
+and Wheezy will _not_ repair to the Pig and Tinder-box, but have actually
+engaged apartments at the Original Pig.  This intelligence is
+_exclusive_; and I leave you and your readers to draw their own
+inferences from it.  Why Professor Wheezy, of all people in the world,
+should repair to the Original Pig in preference to the Pig and
+Tinder-box, it is not easy to conceive.  The professor is a man who
+should be above all such petty feelings.  Some people here openly impute
+treachery, and a distinct breach of faith to Professors Snore and Doze;
+while others, again, are disposed to acquit them of any culpability in
+the transaction, and to insinuate that the blame rests solely with
+Professor Wheezy.  I own that I incline to the latter opinion; and
+although it gives me great pain to speak in terms of censure or
+disapprobation of a man of such transcendent genius and acquirements,
+still I am bound to say that, if my suspicions be well founded, and if
+all the reports which have reached my ears be true, I really do not well
+know what to make of the matter.
+
+'Mr. Slug, so celebrated for his statistical researches, arrived this
+afternoon by the four o'clock stage.  His complexion is a dark purple,
+and he has a habit of sighing constantly.  He looked extremely well, and
+appeared in high health and spirits.  Mr. Woodensconce also came down in
+the same conveyance.  The distinguished gentleman was fast asleep on his
+arrival, and I am informed by the guard that he had been so the whole
+way.  He was, no doubt, preparing for his approaching fatigues; but what
+gigantic visions must those be that flit through the brain of such a man
+when his body is in a state of torpidity!
+
+'The influx of visitors increases every moment.  I am told (I know not
+how truly) that two post-chaises have arrived at the Original Pig within
+the last half-hour, and I myself observed a wheelbarrow, containing three
+carpet bags and a bundle, entering the yard of the Pig and Tinder-box no
+longer ago than five minutes since.  The people are still quietly
+pursuing their ordinary occupations; but there is a wildness in their
+eyes, and an unwonted rigidity in the muscles of their countenances,
+which shows to the observant spectator that their expectations are
+strained to the very utmost pitch.  I fear, unless some very
+extraordinary arrivals take place to-night, that consequences may arise
+from this popular ferment, which every man of sense and feeling would
+deplore.'
+
+                                               '_Twenty minutes past six_.
+
+'I have just heard that the boy who fell through the pastrycook's window
+last night has died of the fright.  He was suddenly called upon to pay
+three and sixpence for the damage done, and his constitution, it seems,
+was not strong enough to bear up against the shock.  The inquest, it is
+said, will be held to-morrow.'
+
+                                             '_Three-quarters part seven_.
+
+'Professors Muff and Nogo have just driven up to the hotel door; they at
+once ordered dinner with great condescension.  We are all very much
+delighted with the urbanity of their manners, and the ease with which
+they adapt themselves to the forms and ceremonies of ordinary life.
+Immediately on their arrival they sent for the head waiter, and privately
+requested him to purchase a live dog,--as cheap a one as he could meet
+with,--and to send him up after dinner, with a pie-board, a knife and
+fork, and a clean plate.  It is conjectured that some experiments will be
+tried upon the dog to-night; if any particulars should transpire, I will
+forward them by express.'
+
+                                                       '_Half-past eight_.
+
+'The animal has been procured.  He is a pug-dog, of rather intelligent
+appearance, in good condition, and with very short legs.  He has been
+tied to a curtain-peg in a dark room, and is howling dreadfully.'
+
+                                                   '_Ten minutes to nine_.
+
+'The dog has just been rung for.  With an instinct which would appear
+almost the result of reason, the sagacious animal seized the waiter by
+the calf of the leg when he approached to take him, and made a desperate,
+though ineffectual resistance.  I have not been able to procure admission
+to the apartment occupied by the scientific gentlemen; but, judging from
+the sounds which reached my ears when I stood upon the landing-place
+outside the door, just now, I should be disposed to say that the dog had
+retreated growling beneath some article of furniture, and was keeping the
+professors at bay.  This conjecture is confirmed by the testimony of the
+ostler, who, after peeping through the keyhole, assures me that he
+distinctly saw Professor Nogo on his knees, holding forth a small bottle
+of prussic acid, to which the animal, who was crouched beneath an
+arm-chair, obstinately declined to smell.  You cannot imagine the
+feverish state of irritation we are in, lest the interests of science
+should be sacrificed to the prejudices of a brute creature, who is not
+endowed with sufficient sense to foresee the incalculable benefits which
+the whole human race may derive from so very slight a concession on his
+part.'
+
+                                                          '_Nine o'clock_.
+
+'The dog's tail and ears have been sent down-stairs to be washed; from
+which circumstance we infer that the animal is no more.  His forelegs
+have been delivered to the boots to be brushed, which strengthens the
+supposition.'
+
+                                                        '_Half after ten_.
+
+'My feelings are so overpowered by what has taken place in the course of
+the last hour and a half, that I have scarcely strength to detail the
+rapid succession of events which have quite bewildered all those who are
+cognizant of their occurrence.  It appears that the pug-dog mentioned in
+my last was surreptitiously obtained,--stolen, in fact,--by some person
+attached to the stable department, from an unmarried lady resident in
+this town.  Frantic on discovering the loss of her favourite, the lady
+rushed distractedly into the street, calling in the most heart-rending
+and pathetic manner upon the passengers to restore her, her
+Augustus,--for so the deceased was named, in affectionate remembrance of
+a former lover of his mistress, to whom he bore a striking personal
+resemblance, which renders the circumstances additionally affecting.  I
+am not yet in a condition to inform you what circumstance induced the
+bereaved lady to direct her steps to the hotel which had witnessed the
+last struggles of her _protege_.  I can only state that she arrived
+there, at the very instant when his detached members were passing through
+the passage on a small tray.  Her shrieks still reverberate in my ears!
+I grieve to say that the expressive features of Professor Muff were much
+scratched and lacerated by the injured lady; and that Professor Nogo,
+besides sustaining several severe bites, has lost some handfuls of hair
+from the same cause.  It must be some consolation to these gentlemen to
+know that their ardent attachment to scientific pursuits has alone
+occasioned these unpleasant consequences; for which the sympathy of a
+grateful country will sufficiently reward them.  The unfortunate lady
+remains at the Pig and Tinder-box, and up to this time is reported in a
+very precarious state.
+
+'I need scarcely tell you that this unlooked-for catastrophe has cast a
+damp and gloom upon us in the midst of our exhilaration; natural in any
+case, but greatly enhanced in this, by the amiable qualities of the
+deceased animal, who appears to have been much and deservedly respected
+by the whole of his acquaintance.'
+
+                                                        '_Twelve o'clock_.
+
+'I take the last opportunity before sealing my parcel to inform you that
+the boy who fell through the pastrycook's window is not dead, as was
+universally believed, but alive and well.  The report appears to have had
+its origin in his mysterious disappearance.  He was found half an hour
+since on the premises of a sweet-stuff maker, where a raffle had been
+announced for a second-hand seal-skin cap and a tambourine; and where--a
+sufficient number of members not having been obtained at first--he had
+patiently waited until the list was completed.  This fortunate discovery
+has in some degree restored our gaiety and cheerfulness.  It is proposed
+to get up a subscription for him without delay.
+
+'Everybody is nervously anxious to see what to-morrow will bring forth.
+If any one should arrive in the course of the night, I have left strict
+directions to be called immediately.  I should have sat up, indeed, but
+the agitating events of this day have been too much for me.
+
+'No news yet of either of the Professors Snore, Doze, or Wheezy.  It is
+very strange!'
+
+                                                   '_Wednesday afternoon_.
+
+'All is now over; and, upon one point at least, I am at length enabled to
+set the minds of your readers at rest.  The three professors arrived at
+ten minutes after two o'clock, and, instead of taking up their quarters
+at the Original Pig, as it was universally understood in the course of
+yesterday that they would assuredly have done, drove straight to the Pig
+and Tinder-box, where they threw off the mask at once, and openly
+announced their intention of remaining.  Professor Wheezy may reconcile
+this very extraordinary conduct with _his_ notions of fair and equitable
+dealing, but I would recommend Professor Wheezy to be cautious how he
+presumes too far upon his well-earned reputation.  How such a man as
+Professor Snore, or, which is still more extraordinary, such an
+individual as Professor Doze, can quietly allow himself to be mixed up
+with such proceedings as these, you will naturally inquire.  Upon this
+head, rumour is silent; I have my speculations, but forbear to give
+utterance to them just now.'
+
+                                                          '_Four o'clock_.
+
+'The town is filling fast; eighteenpence has been offered for a bed and
+refused.  Several gentlemen were under the necessity last night of
+sleeping in the brick fields, and on the steps of doors, for which they
+were taken before the magistrates in a body this morning, and committed
+to prison as vagrants for various terms.  One of these persons I
+understand to be a highly-respectable tinker, of great practical skill,
+who had forwarded a paper to the President of Section D. Mechanical
+Science, on the construction of pipkins with copper bottoms and
+safety-values, of which report speaks highly.  The incarceration of this
+gentleman is greatly to be regretted, as his absence will preclude any
+discussion on the subject.
+
+'The bills are being taken down in all directions, and lodgings are being
+secured on almost any terms.  I have heard of fifteen shillings a week
+for two rooms, exclusive of coals and attendance, but I can scarcely
+believe it.  The excitement is dreadful.  I was informed this morning
+that the civil authorities, apprehensive of some outbreak of popular
+feeling, had commanded a recruiting sergeant and two corporals to be
+under arms; and that, with the view of not irritating the people
+unnecessarily by their presence, they had been requested to take up their
+position before daybreak in a turnpike, distant about a quarter of a mile
+from the town.  The vigour and promptness of these measures cannot be too
+highly extolled.
+
+'Intelligence has just been brought me, that an elderly female, in a
+state of inebriety, has declared in the open street her intention to "do"
+for Mr. Slug.  Some statistical returns compiled by that gentleman,
+relative to the consumption of raw spirituous liquors in this place, are
+supposed to be the cause of the wretch's animosity.  It is added that
+this declaration was loudly cheered by a crowd of persons who had
+assembled on the spot; and that one man had the boldness to designate Mr.
+Slug aloud by the opprobrious epithet of "Stick-in-the-mud!"  It is
+earnestly to be hoped that now, when the moment has arrived for their
+interference, the magistrates will not shrink from the exercise of that
+power which is vested in them by the constitution of our common country.'
+
+                                                         '_Half-past ten_.
+
+'The disturbance, I am happy to inform you, has been completely quelled,
+and the ringleader taken into custody.  She had a pail of cold water
+thrown over her, previous to being locked up, and expresses great
+contrition and uneasiness.  We are all in a fever of anticipation about
+to-morrow; but, now that we are within a few hours of the meeting of the
+association, and at last enjoy the proud consciousness of having its
+illustrious members amongst us, I trust and hope everything may go off
+peaceably.  I shall send you a full report of to-morrow's proceedings by
+the night coach.'
+
+                                                        '_Eleven o'clock_.
+
+'I open my letter to say that nothing whatever has occurred since I
+folded it up.'
+
+                                                              '_Thursday_.
+
+'The sun rose this morning at the usual hour.  I did not observe anything
+particular in the aspect of the glorious planet, except that he appeared
+to me (it might have been a delusion of my heightened fancy) to shine
+with more than common brilliancy, and to shed a refulgent lustre upon the
+town, such as I had never observed before.  This is the more
+extraordinary, as the sky was perfectly cloudless, and the atmosphere
+peculiarly fine.  At half-past nine o'clock the general committee
+assembled, with the last year's president in the chair.  The report of
+the council was read; and one passage, which stated that the council had
+corresponded with no less than three thousand five hundred and
+seventy-one persons, (all of whom paid their own postage,) on no fewer
+than seven thousand two hundred and forty-three topics, was received with
+a degree of enthusiasm which no efforts could suppress.  The various
+committees and sections having been appointed, and the more formal
+business transacted, the great proceedings of the meeting commenced at
+eleven o'clock precisely.  I had the happiness of occupying a most
+eligible position at that time, in
+
+
+'SECTION A.--ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY.
+GREAT ROOM, PIG AND TINDER-BOX.
+
+
+_President_--Professor Snore.  _Vice-Presidents_--Professors Doze and
+Wheezy.
+
+'The scene at this moment was particularly striking.  The sun streamed
+through the windows of the apartments, and tinted the whole scene with
+its brilliant rays, bringing out in strong relief the noble visages of
+the professors and scientific gentlemen, who, some with bald heads, some
+with red heads, some with brown heads, some with grey heads, some with
+black heads, some with block heads, presented a _coup d'oeil_ which no
+eye-witness will readily forget.  In front of these gentlemen were papers
+and inkstands; and round the room, on elevated benches extending as far
+as the forms could reach, were assembled a brilliant concourse of those
+lovely and elegant women for which Mudfog is justly acknowledged to be
+without a rival in the whole world.  The contrast between their fair
+faces and the dark coats and trousers of the scientific gentlemen I shall
+never cease to remember while Memory holds her seat.
+
+'Time having been allowed for a slight confusion, occasioned by the
+falling down of the greater part of the platforms, to subside, the
+president called on one of the secretaries to read a communication
+entitled, "Some remarks on the industrious fleas, with considerations on
+the importance of establishing infant-schools among that numerous class
+of society; of directing their industry to useful and practical ends; and
+of applying the surplus fruits thereof, towards providing for them a
+comfortable and respectable maintenance in their old age."
+
+'The author stated, that, having long turned his attention to the moral
+and social condition of these interesting animals, he had been induced to
+visit an exhibition in Regent-street, London, commonly known by the
+designation of "The Industrious Fleas."  He had there seen many fleas,
+occupied certainly in various pursuits and avocations, but occupied, he
+was bound to add, in a manner which no man of well-regulated mind could
+fail to regard with sorrow and regret.  One flea, reduced to the level of
+a beast of burden, was drawing about a miniature gig, containing a
+particularly small effigy of His Grace the Duke of Wellington; while
+another was staggering beneath the weight of a golden model of his great
+adversary Napoleon Bonaparte.  Some, brought up as mountebanks and
+ballet-dancers, were performing a figure-dance (he regretted to observe,
+that, of the fleas so employed, several were females); others were in
+training, in a small card-board box, for pedestrians,--mere sporting
+characters--and two were actually engaged in the cold-blooded and
+barbarous occupation of duelling; a pursuit from which humanity recoiled
+with horror and disgust.  He suggested that measures should be
+immediately taken to employ the labour of these fleas as part and parcel
+of the productive power of the country, which might easily be done by the
+establishment among them of infant schools and houses of industry, in
+which a system of virtuous education, based upon sound principles, should
+be observed, and moral precepts strictly inculcated.  He proposed that
+every flea who presumed to exhibit, for hire, music, or dancing, or any
+species of theatrical entertainment, without a licence, should be
+considered a vagabond, and treated accordingly; in which respect he only
+placed him upon a level with the rest of mankind.  He would further
+suggest that their labour should be placed under the control and
+regulation of the state, who should set apart from the profits, a fund
+for the support of superannuated or disabled fleas, their widows and
+orphans.  With this view, he proposed that liberal premiums should be
+offered for the three best designs for a general almshouse; from
+which--as insect architecture was well known to be in a very advanced and
+perfect state--we might possibly derive many valuable hints for the
+improvement of our metropolitan universities, national galleries, and
+other public edifices.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT wished to be informed how the ingenious gentleman proposed
+to open a communication with fleas generally, in the first instance, so
+that they might be thoroughly imbued with a sense of the advantages they
+must necessarily derive from changing their mode of life, and applying
+themselves to honest labour.  This appeared to him, the only difficulty.
+
+'THE AUTHOR submitted that this difficulty was easily overcome, or rather
+that there was no difficulty at all in the case.  Obviously the course to
+be pursued, if Her Majesty's government could be prevailed upon to take
+up the plan, would be, to secure at a remunerative salary the individual
+to whom he had alluded as presiding over the exhibition in Regent-street
+at the period of his visit.  That gentleman would at once be able to put
+himself in communication with the mass of the fleas, and to instruct them
+in pursuance of some general plan of education, to be sanctioned by
+Parliament, until such time as the more intelligent among them were
+advanced enough to officiate as teachers to the rest.
+
+'The President and several members of the section highly complimented the
+author of the paper last read, on his most ingenious and important
+treatise.  It was determined that the subject should be recommended to
+the immediate consideration of the council.
+
+'MR. WIGSBY produced a cauliflower somewhat larger than a
+chaise-umbrella, which had been raised by no other artificial means than
+the simple application of highly carbonated soda-water as manure.  He
+explained that by scooping out the head, which would afford a new and
+delicious species of nourishment for the poor, a parachute, in principle
+something similar to that constructed by M. Garnerin, was at once
+obtained; the stalk of course being kept downwards.  He added that he was
+perfectly willing to make a descent from a height of not less than three
+miles and a quarter; and had in fact already proposed the same to the
+proprietors of Vauxhall Gardens, who in the handsomest manner at once
+consented to his wishes, and appointed an early day next summer for the
+undertaking; merely stipulating that the rim of the cauliflower should be
+previously broken in three or four places to ensure the safety of the
+descent.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT congratulated the public on the _grand gala_ in store for
+them, and warmly eulogised the proprietors of the establishment alluded
+to, for their love of science, and regard for the safety of human life,
+both of which did them the highest honour.
+
+'A Member wished to know how many thousand additional lamps the royal
+property would be illuminated with, on the night after the descent.
+
+'MR. WIGSBY replied that the point was not yet finally decided; but he
+believed it was proposed, over and above the ordinary illuminations, to
+exhibit in various devices eight millions and a-half of additional lamps.
+
+'The Member expressed himself much gratified with this announcement.
+
+'MR. BLUNDERUM delighted the section with a most interesting and valuable
+paper "on the last moments of the learned pig," which produced a very
+strong impression on the assembly, the account being compiled from the
+personal recollections of his favourite attendant.  The account stated in
+the most emphatic terms that the animal's name was not Toby, but Solomon;
+and distinctly proved that he could have no near relatives in the
+profession, as many designing persons had falsely stated, inasmuch as his
+father, mother, brothers and sisters, had all fallen victims to the
+butcher at different times.  An uncle of his indeed, had with very great
+labour been traced to a sty in Somers Town; but as he was in a very
+infirm state at the time, being afflicted with measles, and shortly
+afterwards disappeared, there appeared too much reason to conjecture that
+he had been converted into sausages.  The disorder of the learned pig was
+originally a severe cold, which, being aggravated by excessive trough
+indulgence, finally settled upon the lungs, and terminated in a general
+decay of the constitution.  A melancholy instance of a presentiment
+entertained by the animal of his approaching dissolution, was recorded.
+After gratifying a numerous and fashionable company with his
+performances, in which no falling off whatever was visible, he fixed his
+eyes on the biographer, and, turning to the watch which lay on the floor,
+and on which he was accustomed to point out the hour, deliberately passed
+his snout twice round the dial.  In precisely four-and-twenty hours from
+that time he had ceased to exist!
+
+'PROFESSOR WHEEZY inquired whether, previous to his demise, the animal
+had expressed, by signs or otherwise, any wishes regarding the disposal
+of his little property.
+
+'MR. BLUNDERUM replied, that, when the biographer took up the pack of
+cards at the conclusion of the performance, the animal grunted several
+times in a significant manner, and nodding his head as he was accustomed
+to do, when gratified.  From these gestures it was understood that he
+wished the attendant to keep the cards, which he had ever since done.  He
+had not expressed any wish relative to his watch, which had accordingly
+been pawned by the same individual.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT wished to know whether any Member of the section had ever
+seen or conversed with the pig-faced lady, who was reported to have worn
+a black velvet mask, and to have taken her meals from a golden trough.
+
+'After some hesitation a Member replied that the pig-faced lady was his
+mother-in-law, and that he trusted the President would not violate the
+sanctity of private life.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT begged pardon.  He had considered the pig-faced lady a
+public character.  Would the honourable member object to state, with a
+view to the advancement of science, whether she was in any way connected
+with the learned pig?
+
+'The Member replied in the same low tone, that, as the question appeared
+to involve a suspicion that the learned pig might be his half-brother, he
+must decline answering it.
+
+
+'SECTION B.--ANATOMY AND MEDICINE.
+COACH-HOUSE, PIG AND TINDER-BOX.
+
+
+_President_--Dr. Toorell.  _Vice-Presidents_--Professors Muff and Nogo.
+
+DR. KUTANKUMAGEN (of Moscow) read to the section a report of a case which
+had occurred within his own practice, strikingly illustrative of the
+power of medicine, as exemplified in his successful treatment of a
+virulent disorder.  He had been called in to visit the patient on the 1st
+of April, 1837.  He was then labouring under symptoms peculiarly alarming
+to any medical man.  His frame was stout and muscular, his step firm and
+elastic, his cheeks plump and red, his voice loud, his appetite good, his
+pulse full and round.  He was in the constant habit of eating three meals
+_per diem_, and of drinking at least one bottle of wine, and one glass of
+spirituous liquors diluted with water, in the course of the
+four-and-twenty hours.  He laughed constantly, and in so hearty a manner
+that it was terrible to hear him.  By dint of powerful medicine, low
+diet, and bleeding, the symptoms in the course of three days perceptibly
+decreased.  A rigid perseverance in the same course of treatment for only
+one week, accompanied with small doses of water-gruel, weak broth, and
+barley-water, led to their entire disappearance.  In the course of a
+month he was sufficiently recovered to be carried down-stairs by two
+nurses, and to enjoy an airing in a close carriage, supported by soft
+pillows.  At the present moment he was restored so far as to walk about,
+with the slight assistance of a crutch and a boy.  It would perhaps be
+gratifying to the section to learn that he ate little, drank little,
+slept little, and was never heard to laugh by any accident whatever.
+
+'DR. W. R. FEE, in complimenting the honourable member upon the
+triumphant cure he had effected, begged to ask whether the patient still
+bled freely?
+
+'DR. KUTANKUMAGEN replied in the affirmative.
+
+'DR. W. R. FEE.--And you found that he bled freely during the whole
+course of the disorder?
+
+'DR. KUTANKUMAGEN.--Oh dear, yes; most freely.
+
+'DR. NEESHAWTS supposed, that if the patient had not submitted to be bled
+with great readiness and perseverance, so extraordinary a cure could
+never, in fact, have been accomplished.  Dr. Kutankumagen rejoined,
+certainly not.
+
+'MR. KNIGHT BELL (M.R.C.S.) exhibited a wax preparation of the interior
+of a gentleman who in early life had inadvertently swallowed a door-key.
+It was a curious fact that a medical student of dissipated habits, being
+present at the _post mortem_ examination, found means to escape
+unobserved from the room, with that portion of the coats of the stomach
+upon which an exact model of the instrument was distinctly impressed,
+with which he hastened to a locksmith of doubtful character, who made a
+new key from the pattern so shown to him.  With this key the medical
+student entered the house of the deceased gentleman, and committed a
+burglary to a large amount, for which he was subsequently tried and
+executed.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT wished to know what became of the original key after the
+lapse of years.  Mr. Knight Bell replied that the gentleman was always
+much accustomed to punch, and it was supposed the acid had gradually
+devoured it.
+
+'DR. NEESHAWTS and several of the members were of opinion that the key
+must have lain very cold and heavy upon the gentleman's stomach.
+
+'MR. KNIGHT BELL believed it did at first.  It was worthy of remark,
+perhaps, that for some years the gentleman was troubled with a
+night-mare, under the influence of which he always imagined himself a
+wine-cellar door.
+
+'PROFESSOR MUFF related a very extraordinary and convincing proof of the
+wonderful efficacy of the system of infinitesimal doses, which the
+section were doubtless aware was based upon the theory that the very
+minutest amount of any given drug, properly dispersed through the human
+frame, would be productive of precisely the same result as a very large
+dose administered in the usual manner.  Thus, the fortieth part of a
+grain of calomel was supposed to be equal to a five-grain calomel pill,
+and so on in proportion throughout the whole range of medicine.  He had
+tried the experiment in a curious manner upon a publican who had been
+brought into the hospital with a broken head, and was cured upon the
+infinitesimal system in the incredibly short space of three months.  This
+man was a hard drinker.  He (Professor Muff) had dispersed three drops of
+rum through a bucket of water, and requested the man to drink the whole.
+What was the result?  Before he had drunk a quart, he was in a state of
+beastly intoxication; and five other men were made dead drunk with the
+remainder.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT wished to know whether an infinitesimal dose of soda-water
+would have recovered them?  Professor Muff replied that the twenty-fifth
+part of a teaspoonful, properly administered to each patient, would have
+sobered him immediately.  The President remarked that this was a most
+important discovery, and he hoped the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen
+would patronize it immediately.
+
+'A Member begged to be informed whether it would be possible to
+administer--say, the twentieth part of a grain of bread and cheese to all
+grown-up paupers, and the fortieth part to children, with the same
+satisfying effect as their present allowance.
+
+'PROFESSOR MUFF was willing to stake his professional reputation on the
+perfect adequacy of such a quantity of food to the support of human
+life--in workhouses; the addition of the fifteenth part of a grain of
+pudding twice a week would render it a high diet.
+
+'PROFESSOR NOGO called the attention of the section to a very
+extraordinary case of animal magnetism.  A private watchman, being merely
+looked at by the operator from the opposite side of a wide street, was at
+once observed to be in a very drowsy and languid state.  He was followed
+to his box, and being once slightly rubbed on the palms of the hands,
+fell into a sound sleep, in which he continued without intermission for
+ten hours.
+
+
+'SECTION C.--STATISTICS.
+HAY-LOFT, ORIGINAL PIG.
+
+
+_President_--Mr. Woodensconce.  _Vice-Presidents_--Mr. Ledbrain and Mr.
+Timbered.
+
+'MR. SLUG stated to the section the result of some calculations he had
+made with great difficulty and labour, regarding the state of infant
+education among the middle classes of London.  He found that, within a
+circle of three miles from the Elephant and Castle, the following were
+the names and numbers of children's books principally in circulation:--
+
+'Jack the Giant-killer                7,943
+Ditto and Bean-stalk                  8,621
+Ditto and Eleven Brothers             2,845
+Ditto and Jill                        1,998
+                         Total       21,407
+
+'He found that the proportion of Robinson Crusoes to Philip Quarlls was
+as four and a half to one; and that the preponderance of Valentine and
+Orsons over Goody Two Shoeses was as three and an eighth of the former to
+half a one of the latter; a comparison of Seven Champions with Simple
+Simons gave the same result.  The ignorance that prevailed, was
+lamentable.  One child, on being asked whether he would rather be Saint
+George of England or a respectable tallow-chandler, instantly replied,
+"Taint George of Ingling."  Another, a little boy of eight years old, was
+found to be firmly impressed with a belief in the existence of dragons,
+and openly stated that it was his intention when he grew up, to rush
+forth sword in hand for the deliverance of captive princesses, and the
+promiscuous slaughter of giants.  Not one child among the number
+interrogated had ever heard of Mungo Park,--some inquiring whether he was
+at all connected with the black man that swept the crossing; and others
+whether he was in any way related to the Regent's Park.  They had not the
+slightest conception of the commonest principles of mathematics, and
+considered Sindbad the Sailor the most enterprising voyager that the
+world had ever produced.
+
+'A Member strongly deprecating the use of all the other books mentioned,
+suggested that Jack and Jill might perhaps be exempted from the general
+censure, inasmuch as the hero and heroine, in the very outset of the
+tale, were depicted as going _up_ a hill to fetch a pail of water, which
+was a laborious and useful occupation,--supposing the family linen was
+being washed, for instance.
+
+'MR. SLUG feared that the moral effect of this passage was more than
+counterbalanced by another in a subsequent part of the poem, in which
+very gross allusion was made to the mode in which the heroine was
+personally chastised by her mother
+
+    "'For laughing at Jack's disaster;"
+
+besides, the whole work had this one great fault, _it was not true_.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT complimented the honourable member on the excellent
+distinction he had drawn.  Several other Members, too, dwelt upon the
+immense and urgent necessity of storing the minds of children with
+nothing but facts and figures; which process the President very forcibly
+remarked, had made them (the section) the men they were.
+
+'MR. SLUG then stated some curious calculations respecting the dogs'-meat
+barrows of London.  He found that the total number of small carts and
+barrows engaged in dispensing provision to the cats and dogs of the
+metropolis was, one thousand seven hundred and forty-three.  The average
+number of skewers delivered daily with the provender, by each dogs'-meat
+cart or barrow, was thirty-six.  Now, multiplying the number of skewers
+so delivered by the number of barrows, a total of sixty-two thousand
+seven hundred and forty-eight skewers daily would be obtained.  Allowing
+that, of these sixty-two thousand seven hundred and forty-eight skewers,
+the odd two thousand seven hundred and forty-eight were accidentally
+devoured with the meat, by the most voracious of the animals supplied, it
+followed that sixty thousand skewers per day, or the enormous number of
+twenty-one millions nine hundred thousand skewers annually, were wasted
+in the kennels and dustholes of London; which, if collected and
+warehoused, would in ten years' time afford a mass of timber more than
+sufficient for the construction of a first-rate vessel of war for the use
+of her Majesty's navy, to be called "The Royal Skewer," and to become
+under that name the terror of all the enemies of this island.
+
+'MR. X. LEDBRAIN read a very ingenious communication, from which it
+appeared that the total number of legs belonging to the manufacturing
+population of one great town in Yorkshire was, in round numbers, forty
+thousand, while the total number of chair and stool legs in their houses
+was only thirty thousand, which, upon the very favourable average of
+three legs to a seat, yielded only ten thousand seats in all.  From this
+calculation it would appear,--not taking wooden or cork legs into the
+account, but allowing two legs to every person,--that ten thousand
+individuals (one-half of the whole population) were either destitute of
+any rest for their legs at all, or passed the whole of their leisure time
+in sitting upon boxes.
+
+
+'SECTION D.--MECHANICAL SCIENCE.
+COACH-HOUSE, ORIGINAL PIG.
+
+
+_President_--Mr. Carter.  _Vice-Presidents_--Mr. Truck and Mr. Waghorn.
+
+'PROFESSOR QUEERSPECK exhibited an elegant model of a portable railway,
+neatly mounted in a green case, for the waistcoat pocket.  By attaching
+this beautiful instrument to his boots, any Bank or public-office clerk
+could transport himself from his place of residence to his place of
+business, at the easy rate of sixty-five miles an hour, which, to
+gentlemen of sedentary pursuits, would be an incalculable advantage.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT was desirous of knowing whether it was necessary to have a
+level surface on which the gentleman was to run.
+
+'PROFESSOR QUEERSPECK explained that City gentlemen would run in trains,
+being handcuffed together to prevent confusion or unpleasantness.  For
+instance, trains would start every morning at eight, nine, and ten
+o'clock, from Camden Town, Islington, Camberwell, Hackney, and various
+other places in which City gentlemen are accustomed to reside.  It would
+be necessary to have a level, but he had provided for this difficulty by
+proposing that the best line that the circumstances would admit of,
+should be taken through the sewers which undermine the streets of the
+metropolis, and which, well lighted by jets from the gas pipes which run
+immediately above them, would form a pleasant and commodious arcade,
+especially in winter-time, when the inconvenient custom of carrying
+umbrellas, now so general, could be wholly dispensed with.  In reply to
+another question, Professor Queerspeck stated that no substitute for the
+purposes to which these arcades were at present devoted had yet occurred
+to him, but that he hoped no fanciful objection on this head would be
+allowed to interfere with so great an undertaking.
+
+'MR. JOBBA produced a forcing-machine on a novel plan, for bringing
+joint-stock railway shares prematurely to a premium.  The instrument was
+in the form of an elegant gilt weather-glass, of most dazzling
+appearance, and was worked behind, by strings, after the manner of a
+pantomime trick, the strings being always pulled by the directors of the
+company to which the machine belonged.  The quicksilver was so
+ingeniously placed, that when the acting directors held shares in their
+pockets, figures denoting very small expenses and very large returns
+appeared upon the glass; but the moment the directors parted with these
+pieces of paper, the estimate of needful expenditure suddenly increased
+itself to an immense extent, while the statements of certain profits
+became reduced in the same proportion.  Mr. Jobba stated that the machine
+had been in constant requisition for some months past, and he had never
+once known it to fail.
+
+'A Member expressed his opinion that it was extremely neat and pretty.
+He wished to know whether it was not liable to accidental derangement?
+Mr. Jobba said that the whole machine was undoubtedly liable to be blown
+up, but that was the only objection to it.
+
+'PROFESSOR NOGO arrived from the anatomical section to exhibit a model of
+a safety fire-escape, which could be fixed at any time, in less than half
+an hour, and by means of which, the youngest or most infirm persons
+(successfully resisting the progress of the flames until it was quite
+ready) could be preserved if they merely balanced themselves for a few
+minutes on the sill of their bedroom window, and got into the escape
+without falling into the street.  The Professor stated that the number of
+boys who had been rescued in the daytime by this machine from houses
+which were not on fire, was almost incredible.  Not a conflagration had
+occurred in the whole of London for many months past to which the escape
+had not been carried on the very next day, and put in action before a
+concourse of persons.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT inquired whether there was not some difficulty in
+ascertaining which was the top of the machine, and which the bottom, in
+cases of pressing emergency.
+
+'PROFESSOR NOGO explained that of course it could not be expected to act
+quite as well when there was a fire, as when there was not a fire; but in
+the former case he thought it would be of equal service whether the top
+were up or down.'
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+With the last section our correspondent concludes his most able and
+faithful Report, which will never cease to reflect credit upon him for
+his scientific attainments, and upon us for our enterprising spirit.  It
+is needless to take a review of the subjects which have been discussed;
+of the mode in which they have been examined; of the great truths which
+they have elicited.  They are now before the world, and we leave them to
+read, to consider, and to profit.
+
+The place of meeting for next year has undergone discussion, and has at
+length been decided, regard being had to, and evidence being taken upon,
+the goodness of its wines, the supply of its markets, the hospitality of
+its inhabitants, and the quality of its hotels.  We hope at this next
+meeting our correspondent may again be present, and that we may be once
+more the means of placing his communications before the world.  Until
+that period we have been prevailed upon to allow this number of our
+Miscellany to be retailed to the public, or wholesaled to the trade,
+without any advance upon our usual price.
+
+We have only to add, that the committees are now broken up, and that
+Mudfog is once again restored to its accustomed tranquillity,--that
+Professors and Members have had balls, and _soirees_, and suppers, and
+great mutual complimentations, and have at length dispersed to their
+several homes,--whither all good wishes and joys attend them, until next
+year!
+
+                                                               Signed BOZ.
+
+
+
+FULL REPORT OF THE SECOND MEETING OF THE MUDFOG ASSOCIATION
+FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EVERYTHING
+
+
+In October last, we did ourselves the immortal credit of recording, at an
+enormous expense, and by dint of exertions unnpralleled in the history of
+periodical publication, the proceedings of the Mudfog Association for the
+Advancement of Everything, which in that month held its first great
+half-yearly meeting, to the wonder and delight of the whole empire.  We
+announced at the conclusion of that extraordinary and most remarkable
+Report, that when the Second Meeting of the Society should take place, we
+should be found again at our post, renewing our gigantic and spirited
+endeavours, and once more making the world ring with the accuracy,
+authenticity, immeasurable superiority, and intense remarkability of our
+account of its proceedings.  In redemption of this pledge, we caused to
+be despatched per steam to Oldcastle (at which place this second meeting
+of the Society was held on the 20th instant), the same
+superhumanly-endowed gentleman who furnished the former report, and
+who,--gifted by nature with transcendent abilities, and furnished by us
+with a body of assistants scarcely inferior to himself,--has forwarded a
+series of letters, which, for faithfulness of description, power of
+language, fervour of thought, happiness of expression, and importance of
+subject-matter, have no equal in the epistolary literature of any age or
+country.  We give this gentleman's correspondence entire, and in the
+order in which it reached our office.
+
+                '_Saloon of Steamer_, _Thursday night_, _half-past eight_.
+
+'When I left New Burlington Street this evening in the hackney cabriolet,
+number four thousand two hundred and eighty-five, I experienced
+sensations as novel as they were oppressive.  A sense of the importance
+of the task I had undertaken, a consciousness that I was leaving London,
+and, stranger still, going somewhere else, a feeling of loneliness and a
+sensation of jolting, quite bewildered my thoughts, and for a time
+rendered me even insensible to the presence of my carpet-bag and hat-box.
+I shall ever feel grateful to the driver of a Blackwall omnibus who, by
+thrusting the pole of his vehicle through the small door of the
+cabriolet, awakened me from a tumult of imaginings that are wholly
+indescribable.  But of such materials is our imperfect nature composed!
+
+'I am happy to say that I am the first passenger on board, and shall thus
+be enabled to give you an account of all that happens in the order of its
+occurrence.  The chimney is smoking a good deal, and so are the crew; and
+the captain, I am informed, is very drunk in a little house upon deck,
+something like a black turnpike.  I should infer from all I hear that he
+has got the steam up.
+
+'You will readily guess with what feelings I have just made the discovery
+that my berth is in the same closet with those engaged by Professor
+Woodensconce, Mr. Slug, and Professor Grime.  Professor Woodensconce has
+taken the shelf above me, and Mr. Slug and Professor Grime the two
+shelves opposite.  Their luggage has already arrived.  On Mr. Slug's bed
+is a long tin tube of about three inches in diameter, carefully closed at
+both ends.  What can this contain?  Some powerful instrument of a new
+construction, doubtless.'
+
+                                                 '_Ten minutes past nine_.
+
+'Nobody has yet arrived, nor has anything fresh come in my way except
+several joints of beef and mutton, from which I conclude that a good
+plain dinner has been provided for to-morrow.  There is a singular smell
+below, which gave me some uneasiness at first; but as the steward says it
+is always there, and never goes away, I am quite comfortable again.  I
+learn from this man that the different sections will be distributed at
+the Black Boy and Stomach-ache, and the Boot-jack and Countenance.  If
+this intelligence be true (and I have no reason to doubt it), your
+readers will draw such conclusions as their different opinions may
+suggest.
+
+'I write down these remarks as they occur to me, or as the facts come to
+my knowledge, in order that my first impressions may lose nothing of
+their original vividness.  I shall despatch them in small packets as
+opportunities arise.'
+
+                                                        '_Half past nine_.
+
+'Some dark object has just appeared upon the wharf.  I think it is a
+travelling carriage.'
+
+                                                      '_A quarter to ten_.
+
+'No, it isn't.'
+
+                                                         '_Half-past ten_.
+
+The passengers are pouring in every instant.  Four omnibuses full have
+just arrived upon the wharf, and all is bustle and activity.  The noise
+and confusion are very great.  Cloths are laid in the cabins, and the
+steward is placing blue plates--full of knobs of cheese at equal
+distances down the centre of the tables.  He drops a great many knobs;
+but, being used to it, picks them up again with great dexterity, and,
+after wiping them on his sleeve, throws them back into the plates.  He is
+a young man of exceedingly prepossessing appearance--either dirty or a
+mulatto, but I think the former.
+
+'An interesting old gentleman, who came to the wharf in an omnibus, has
+just quarrelled violently with the porters, and is staggering towards the
+vessel with a large trunk in his arms.  I trust and hope that he may
+reach it in safety; but the board he has to cross is narrow and slippery.
+Was that a splash?  Gracious powers!
+
+'I have just returned from the deck.  The trunk is standing upon the
+extreme brink of the wharf, but the old gentleman is nowhere to be seen.
+The watchman is not sure whether he went down or not, but promises to
+drag for him the first thing to-morrow morning.  May his humane efforts
+prove successful!
+
+'Professor Nogo has this moment arrived with his nightcap on under his
+hat.  He has ordered a glass of cold brandy and water, with a hard
+biscuit and a basin, and has gone straight to bed.  What can this mean?
+
+'The three other scientific gentlemen to whom I have already alluded have
+come on board, and have all tried their beds, with the exception of
+Professor Woodensconce, who sleeps in one of the top ones, and can't get
+into it.  Mr. Slug, who sleeps in the other top one, is unable to get out
+of his, and is to have his supper handed up by a boy.  I have had the
+honour to introduce myself to these gentlemen, and we have amicably
+arranged the order in which we shall retire to rest; which it is
+necessary to agree upon, because, although the cabin is very comfortable,
+there is not room for more than one gentleman to be out of bed at a time,
+and even he must take his boots off in the passage.
+
+'As I anticipated, the knobs of cheese were provided for the passengers'
+supper, and are now in course of consumption.  Your readers will be
+surprised to hear that Professor Woodensconce has abstained from cheese
+for eight years, although he takes butter in considerable quantities.
+Professor Grime having lost several teeth, is unable, I observe, to eat
+his crusts without previously soaking them in his bottled porter.  How
+interesting are these peculiarities!'
+
+                                                      '_Half-past eleven_.
+
+'Professors Woodensconce and Grime, with a degree of good humour that
+delights us all, have just arranged to toss for a bottle of mulled port.
+There has been some discussion whether the payment should be decided by
+the first toss or the best out of three.  Eventually the latter course
+has been determined on.  Deeply do I wish that both gentlemen could win;
+but that being impossible, I own that my personal aspirations (I speak as
+an individual, and do not compromise either you or your readers by this
+expression of feeling) are with Professor Woodensconce.  I have backed
+that gentleman to the amount of eighteenpence.'
+
+                                              '_Twenty minutes to twelve_.
+
+'Professor Grime has inadvertently tossed his half-crown out of one of
+the cabin-windows, and it has been arranged that the steward shall toss
+for him.  Bets are offered on any side to any amount, but there are no
+takers.
+
+'Professor Woodensconce has just called "woman;" but the coin having
+lodged in a beam, is a long time coming down again.  The interest and
+suspense of this one moment are beyond anything that can be imagined.'
+
+                                                        '_Twelve o'clock_.
+
+'The mulled port is smoking on the table before me, and Professor Grime
+has won.  Tossing is a game of chance; but on every ground, whether of
+public or private character, intellectual endowments, or scientific
+attainments, I cannot help expressing my opinion that Professor
+Woodensconce _ought_ to have come off victorious.  There is an exultation
+about Professor Grime incompatible, I fear, with true greatness.'
+
+                                                 '_A quarter past twelve_.
+
+'Professor Grime continues to exult, and to boast of his victory in no
+very measured terms, observing that he always does win, and that he knew
+it would be a "head" beforehand, with many other remarks of a similar
+nature.  Surely this gentleman is not so lost to every feeling of decency
+and propriety as not to feel and know the superiority of Professor
+Woodensconce?  Is Professor Grime insane? or does he wish to be reminded
+in plain language of his true position in society, and the precise level
+of his acquirements and abilities?  Professor Grime will do well to look
+to this.'
+
+                                                           '_One o'clock_.
+
+'I am writing in bed.  The small cabin is illuminated by the feeble light
+of a flickering lamp suspended from the ceiling; Professor Grime is lying
+on the opposite shelf on the broad of his back, with his mouth wide open.
+The scene is indescribably solemn.  The rippling of the tide, the noise
+of the sailors' feet overhead, the gruff voices on the river, the dogs on
+the shore, the snoring of the passengers, and a constant creaking of
+every plank in the vessel, are the only sounds that meet the ear.  With
+these exceptions, all is profound silence.
+
+'My curiosity has been within the last moment very much excited.  Mr.
+Slug, who lies above Professor Grime, has cautiously withdrawn the
+curtains of his berth, and, after looking anxiously out, as if to satisfy
+himself that his companions are asleep, has taken up the tin tube of
+which I have before spoken, and is regarding it with great interest.
+What rare mechanical combination can be contained in that mysterious
+case?  It is evidently a profound secret to all.'
+
+                                                    '_A quarter past one_.
+
+'The behaviour of Mr. Slug grows more and more mysterious.  He has
+unscrewed the top of the tube, and now renews his observations upon his
+companions, evidently to make sure that he is wholly unobserved.  He is
+clearly on the eve of some great experiment.  Pray heaven that it be not
+a dangerous one; but the interests of science must be promoted, and I am
+prepared for the worst.'
+
+                                                    '_Five minutes later_.
+
+'He has produced a large pair of scissors, and drawn a roll of some
+substance, not unlike parchment in appearance, from the tin case.  The
+experiment is about to begin.  I must strain my eyes to the utmost, in
+the attempt to follow its minutest operation.'
+
+                                             '_Twenty minutes before two_.
+
+'I have at length been enabled to ascertain that the tin tube contains a
+few yards of some celebrated plaster, recommended--as I discover on
+regarding the label attentively through my eye-glass--as a preservative
+against sea-sickness.  Mr. Slug has cut it up into small portions, and is
+now sticking it over himself in every direction.'
+
+                                                         '_Three o'clock_.
+
+'Precisely a quarter of an hour ago we weighed anchor, and the machinery
+was suddenly put in motion with a noise so appalling, that Professor
+Woodensconce (who had ascended to his berth by means of a platform of
+carpet-bags arranged by himself on geometrical principals) darted from
+his shelf head foremost, and, gaining his feet with all the rapidity of
+extreme terror, ran wildly into the ladies' cabin, under the impression
+that we were sinking, and uttering loud cries for aid.  I am assured that
+the scene which ensued baffles all description.  There were one hundred
+and forty-seven ladies in their respective berths at the time.
+
+'Mr. Slug has remarked, as an additional instance of the extreme
+ingenuity of the steam-engine as applied to purposes of navigation, that
+in whatever part of the vessel a passenger's berth may be situated, the
+machinery always appears to be exactly under his pillow.  He intends
+stating this very beautiful, though simple discovery, to the
+association.'
+
+                                                         '_Half-past ten_.
+
+'We are still in smooth water; that is to say, in as smooth water as a
+steam-vessel ever can be, for, as Professor Woodensconce (who has just
+woke up) learnedly remarks, another great point of ingenuity about a
+steamer is, that it always carries a little storm with it.  You can
+scarcely conceive how exciting the jerking pulsation of the ship becomes.
+It is a matter of positive difficulty to get to sleep.'
+
+                                       '_Friday afternoon_, _six o'clock_.
+
+'I regret to inform you that Mr. Slug's plaster has proved of no avail.
+He is in great agony, but has applied several large, additional pieces
+notwithstanding.  How affecting is this extreme devotion to science and
+pursuit of knowledge under the most trying circumstances!
+
+'We were extremely happy this morning, and the breakfast was one of the
+most animated description.  Nothing unpleasant occurred until noon, with
+the exception of Doctor Foxey's brown silk umbrella and white hat
+becoming entangled in the machinery while he was explaining to a knot of
+ladies the construction of the steam-engine.  I fear the gravy soup for
+lunch was injudicious.  We lost a great many passengers almost
+immediately afterwards.'
+
+                                                         '_Half-past six_.
+
+'I am again in bed.  Anything so heart-rending as Mr. Slug's sufferings
+it has never yet been my lot to witness.'
+
+                                                         '_Seven o'clock_.
+
+'A messenger has just come down for a clean pocket-handkerchief from
+Professor Woodensconce's bag, that unfortunate gentleman being quite
+unable to leave the deck, and imploring constantly to be thrown
+overboard.  From this man I understand that Professor Nogo, though in a
+state of utter exhaustion, clings feebly to the hard biscuit and cold
+brandy and water, under the impression that they will yet restore him.
+Such is the triumph of mind over matter.
+
+'Professor Grime is in bed, to all appearance quite well; but he _will_
+eat, and it is disagreeable to see him.  Has this gentleman no sympathy
+with the sufferings of his fellow-creatures?  If he has, on what
+principle can he call for mutton-chops--and smile?'
+
+                                            '_Black Boy and Stomach-ache_,
+                                             _Oldcastle_, _Saturday noon_.
+
+'You will be happy to learn that I have at length arrived here in safety.
+The town is excessively crowded, and all the private lodgings and hotels
+are filled with _savans_ of both sexes.  The tremendous assemblage of
+intellect that one encounters in every street is in the last degree
+overwhelming.
+
+'Notwithstanding the throng of people here, I have been fortunate enough
+to meet with very comfortable accommodation on very reasonable terms,
+having secured a sofa in the first-floor passage at one guinea per night,
+which includes permission to take my meals in the bar, on condition that
+I walk about the streets at all other times, to make room for other
+gentlemen similarly situated.  I have been over the outhouses intended to
+be devoted to the reception of the various sections, both here and at the
+Boot-jack and Countenance, and am much delighted with the arrangements.
+Nothing can exceed the fresh appearance of the saw-dust with which the
+floors are sprinkled.  The forms are of unplaned deal, and the general
+effect, as you can well imagine, is extremely beautiful.'
+
+                                                        '_Half-past nine_.
+
+'The number and rapidity of the arrivals are quite bewildering.  Within
+the last ten minutes a stage-coach has driven up to the door, filled
+inside and out with distinguished characters, comprising Mr.
+Muddlebranes, Mr. Drawley, Professor Muff, Mr. X. Misty, Mr. X. X. Misty,
+Mr. Purblind, Professor Rummun, The Honourable and Reverend Mr. Long
+Eers, Professor John Ketch, Sir William Joltered, Doctor Buffer, Mr.
+Smith (of London), Mr. Brown (of Edinburgh), Sir Hookham Snivey, and
+Professor Pumpkinskull.  The ten last-named gentlemen were wet through,
+and looked extremely intelligent.'
+
+                                          '_Sunday_, _two o'clock_, _p.m._
+
+'The Honourable and Reverend Mr. Long Eers, accompanied by Sir William
+Joltered, walked and drove this morning.  They accomplished the former
+feat in boots, and the latter in a hired fly.  This has naturally given
+rise to much discussion.
+
+'I have just learnt that an interview has taken place at the Boot-jack
+and Countenance between Sowster, the active and intelligent beadle of
+this place, and Professor Pumpkinskull, who, as your readers are
+doubtless aware, is an influential member of the council.  I forbear to
+communicate any of the rumours to which this very extraordinary
+proceeding has given rise until I have seen Sowster, and endeavoured to
+ascertain the truth from him.'
+
+                                                         '_Half-past six_.
+
+'I engaged a donkey-chaise shortly after writing the above, and proceeded
+at a brisk trot in the direction of Sowster's residence, passing through
+a beautiful expanse of country, with red brick buildings on either side,
+and stopping in the marketplace to observe the spot where Mr. Kwakley's
+hat was blown off yesterday.  It is an uneven piece of paving, but has
+certainly no appearance which would lead one to suppose that any such
+event had recently occurred there.  From this point I proceeded--passing
+the gas-works and tallow-melter's--to a lane which had been pointed out
+to me as the beadle's place of residence; and before I had driven a dozen
+yards further, I had the good fortune to meet Sowster himself advancing
+towards me.
+
+'Sowster is a fat man, with a more enlarged development of that peculiar
+conformation of countenance which is vulgarly termed a double chin than I
+remember to have ever seen before.  He has also a very red nose, which he
+attributes to a habit of early rising--so red, indeed, that but for this
+explanation I should have supposed it to proceed from occasional
+inebriety.  He informed me that he did not feel himself at liberty to
+relate what had passed between himself and Professor Pumpkinskull, but
+had no objection to state that it was connected with a matter of police
+regulation, and added with peculiar significance "Never wos sitch times!"
+
+'You will easily believe that this intelligence gave me considerable
+surprise, not wholly unmixed with anxiety, and that I lost no time in
+waiting on Professor Pumpkinskull, and stating the object of my visit.
+After a few moments' reflection, the Professor, who, I am bound to say,
+behaved with the utmost politeness, openly avowed (I mark the passage in
+italics) _that he had requested Sowster to attend on the Monday morning
+at the Boot-jack and Countenance_, _to keep off the boys_; _and that he
+had further desired that the under-beadle might be stationed_, _with the
+same object_, _at the Black Boy and Stomach-ache_!
+
+'Now I leave this unconstitutional proceeding to your comments and the
+consideration of your readers.  I have yet to learn that a beadle,
+without the precincts of a church, churchyard, or work-house, and acting
+otherwise than under the express orders of churchwardens and overseers in
+council assembled, to enforce the law against people who come upon the
+parish, and other offenders, has any lawful authority whatever over the
+rising youth of this country.  I have yet to learn that a beadle can be
+called out by any civilian to exercise a domination and despotism over
+the boys of Britain.  I have yet to learn that a beadle will be permitted
+by the commissioners of poor law regulation to wear out the soles and
+heels of his boots in illegal interference with the liberties of people
+not proved poor or otherwise criminal.  I have yet to learn that a beadle
+has power to stop up the Queen's highway at his will and pleasure, or
+that the whole width of the street is not free and open to any man, boy,
+or woman in existence, up to the very walls of the houses--ay, be they
+Black Boys and Stomach-aches, or Boot-jacks and Countenances, I care
+not.'
+
+                                                          '_Nine o'clock_.
+
+'I have procured a local artist to make a faithful sketch of the tyrant
+Sowster, which, as he has acquired this infamous celebrity, you will no
+doubt wish to have engraved for the purpose of presenting a copy with
+every copy of your next number.  I enclose it.
+
+[Picture which cannot be reproduced]
+
+The under-beadle has consented to write his life, but it is to be
+strictly anonymous.
+
+'The accompanying likeness is of course from the life, and complete in
+every respect.  Even if I had been totally ignorant of the man's real
+character, and it had been placed before me without remark, I should have
+shuddered involuntarily.  There is an intense malignity of expression in
+the features, and a baleful ferocity of purpose in the ruffian's eye,
+which appals and sickens.  His whole air is rampant with cruelty, nor is
+the stomach less characteristic of his demoniac propensities.'
+
+                                                                '_Monday_.
+
+'The great day has at length arrived.  I have neither eyes, nor ears, nor
+pens, nor ink, nor paper, for anything but the wonderful proceedings that
+have astounded my senses.  Let me collect my energies and proceed to the
+account.
+
+
+'SECTION A.--ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY.
+FRONT PARLOUR, BLACK BOY AND STOMACH-ACHE.
+
+
+_President_--Sir William Joltered.  _Vice-Presidents_--Mr. Muddlebranes
+and Mr. Drawley.
+
+'MR. X. X. MISTY communicated some remarks on the disappearance of
+dancing-bears from the streets of London, with observations on the
+exhibition of monkeys as connected with barrel-organs.  The writer had
+observed, with feelings of the utmost pain and regret, that some years
+ago a sudden and unaccountable change in the public taste took place with
+reference to itinerant bears, who, being discountenanced by the populace,
+gradually fell off one by one from the streets of the metropolis, until
+not one remained to create a taste for natural history in the breasts of
+the poor and uninstructed.  One bear, indeed,--a brown and ragged
+animal,--had lingered about the haunts of his former triumphs, with a
+worn and dejected visage and feeble limbs, and had essayed to wield his
+quarter-staff for the amusement of the multitude; but hunger, and an
+utter want of any due recompense for his abilities, had at length driven
+him from the field, and it was only too probable that he had fallen a
+sacrifice to the rising taste for grease.  He regretted to add that a
+similar, and no less lamentable, change had taken place with reference to
+monkeys.  These delightful animals had formerly been almost as plentiful
+as the organs on the tops of which they were accustomed to sit; the
+proportion in the year 1829 (it appeared by the parliamentary return)
+being as one monkey to three organs.  Owing, however, to an altered taste
+in musical instruments, and the substitution, in a great measure, of
+narrow boxes of music for organs, which left the monkeys nothing to sit
+upon, this source of public amusement was wholly dried up.  Considering
+it a matter of the deepest importance, in connection with national
+education, that the people should not lose such opportunities of making
+themselves acquainted with the manners and customs of two most
+interesting species of animals, the author submitted that some measures
+should be immediately taken for the restoration of these pleasing and
+truly intellectual amusements.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT inquired by what means the honourable member proposed to
+attain this most desirable end?
+
+'THE AUTHOR submitted that it could be most fully and satisfactorily
+accomplished, if Her Majesty's Government would cause to be brought over
+to England, and maintained at the public expense, and for the public
+amusement, such a number of bears as would enable every quarter of the
+town to be visited--say at least by three bears a week.  No difficulty
+whatever need be experienced in providing a fitting place for the
+reception of these animals, as a commodious bear-garden could be erected
+in the immediate neighbourhood of both Houses of Parliament; obviously
+the most proper and eligible spot for such an establishment.
+
+'PROFESSOR MULL doubted very much whether any correct ideas of natural
+history were propagated by the means to which the honourable member had
+so ably adverted.  On the contrary, he believed that they had been the
+means of diffusing very incorrect and imperfect notions on the subject.
+He spoke from personal observation and personal experience, when he said
+that many children of great abilities had been induced to believe, from
+what they had observed in the streets, at and before the period to which
+the honourable gentleman had referred, that all monkeys were born in red
+coats and spangles, and that their hats and feathers also came by nature.
+He wished to know distinctly whether the honourable gentleman attributed
+the want of encouragement the bears had met with to the decline of public
+taste in that respect, or to a want of ability on the part of the bears
+themselves?
+
+'MR. X. X. MISTY replied, that he could not bring himself to believe but
+that there must be a great deal of floating talent among the bears and
+monkeys generally; which, in the absence of any proper encouragement, was
+dispersed in other directions.
+
+'PROFESSOR PUMPKINSKULL wished to take that opportunity of calling the
+attention of the section to a most important and serious point.  The
+author of the treatise just read had alluded to the prevalent taste for
+bears'-grease as a means of promoting the growth of hair, which
+undoubtedly was diffused to a very great and (as it appeared to him) very
+alarming extent.  No gentleman attending that section could fail to be
+aware of the fact that the youth of the present age evinced, by their
+behaviour in the streets, and at all places of public resort, a
+considerable lack of that gallantry and gentlemanly feeling which, in
+more ignorant times, had been thought becoming.  He wished to know
+whether it were possible that a constant outward application of
+bears'-grease by the young gentlemen about town had imperceptibly infused
+into those unhappy persons something of the nature and quality of the
+bear.  He shuddered as he threw out the remark; but if this theory, on
+inquiry, should prove to be well founded, it would at once explain a
+great deal of unpleasant eccentricity of behaviour, which, without some
+such discovery, was wholly unaccountable.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT highly complimented the learned gentleman on his most
+valuable suggestion, which produced the greatest effect upon the
+assembly; and remarked that only a week previous he had seen some young
+gentlemen at a theatre eyeing a box of ladies with a fierce intensity,
+which nothing but the influence of some brutish appetite could possibly
+explain.  It was dreadful to reflect that our youth were so rapidly
+verging into a generation of bears.
+
+'After a scene of scientific enthusiasm it was resolved that this
+important question should be immediately submitted to the consideration
+of the council.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT wished to know whether any gentleman could inform the
+section what had become of the dancing-dogs?
+
+'A MEMBER replied, after some hesitation, that on the day after three
+glee-singers had been committed to prison as criminals by a late most
+zealous police-magistrate of the metropolis, the dogs had abandoned their
+professional duties, and dispersed themselves in different quarters of
+the town to gain a livelihood by less dangerous means.  He was given to
+understand that since that period they had supported themselves by lying
+in wait for and robbing blind men's poodles.
+
+'MR. FLUMMERY exhibited a twig, claiming to be a veritable branch of that
+noble tree known to naturalists as the SHAKSPEARE, which has taken root
+in every land and climate, and gathered under the shade of its broad
+green boughs the great family of mankind.  The learned gentleman remarked
+that the twig had been undoubtedly called by other names in its time; but
+that it had been pointed out to him by an old lady in Warwickshire, where
+the great tree had grown, as a shoot of the genuine SHAKSPEARE, by which
+name he begged to introduce it to his countrymen.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT wished to know what botanical definition the honourable
+gentleman could afford of the curiosity.
+
+'MR. FLUMMERY expressed his opinion that it was A DECIDED PLANT.
+
+
+'SECTION B.--DISPLAY OF MODELS AND MECHANICAL SCIENCE.
+LARGE ROOM, BOOT-JACK AND COUNTENANCE.
+
+
+_President_--Mr. Mallett.  _Vice-Presidents_--Messrs. Leaver and Scroo.
+
+'MR. CRINKLES exhibited a most beautiful and delicate machine, of little
+larger size than an ordinary snuff-box, manufactured entirely by himself,
+and composed exclusively of steel, by the aid of which more pockets could
+be picked in one hour than by the present slow and tedious process in
+four-and-twenty.  The inventor remarked that it had been put into active
+operation in Fleet Street, the Strand, and other thoroughfares, and had
+never been once known to fail.
+
+'After some slight delay, occasioned by the various members of the
+section buttoning their pockets,
+
+'THE PRESIDENT narrowly inspected the invention, and declared that he had
+never seen a machine of more beautiful or exquisite construction.  Would
+the inventor be good enough to inform the section whether he had taken
+any and what means for bringing it into general operation?
+
+'MR. CRINKLES stated that, after encountering some preliminary
+difficulties, he had succeeded in putting himself in communication with
+Mr. Fogle Hunter, and other gentlemen connected with the swell mob, who
+had awarded the invention the very highest and most unqualified
+approbation.  He regretted to say, however, that these distinguished
+practitioners, in common with a gentleman of the name of Gimlet-eyed
+Tommy, and other members of a secondary grade of the profession whom he
+was understood to represent, entertained an insuperable objection to its
+being brought into general use, on the ground that it would have the
+inevitable effect of almost entirely superseding manual labour, and
+throwing a great number of highly-deserving persons out of employment.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT hoped that no such fanciful objections would be allowed to
+stand in the way of such a great public improvement.
+
+'MR. CRINKLES hoped so too; but he feared that if the gentlemen of the
+swell mob persevered in their objection, nothing could be done.
+
+'PROFESSOR GRIME suggested, that surely, in that case, Her Majesty's
+Government might be prevailed upon to take it up.
+
+'MR. CRINKLES said, that if the objection were found to be insuperable he
+should apply to Parliament, which he thought could not fail to recognise
+the utility of the invention.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT observed that, up to this time Parliament had certainly
+got on very well without it; but, as they did their business on a very
+large scale, he had no doubt they would gladly adopt the improvement.
+His only fear was that the machine might be worn out by constant working.
+
+'MR. COPPERNOSE called the attention of the section to a proposition of
+great magnitude and interest, illustrated by a vast number of models, and
+stated with much clearness and perspicuity in a treatise entitled
+"Practical Suggestions on the necessity of providing some harmless and
+wholesome relaxation for the young noblemen of England."  His proposition
+was, that a space of ground of not less than ten miles in length and four
+in breadth should be purchased by a new company, to be incorporated by
+Act of Parliament, and inclosed by a brick wall of not less than twelve
+feet in height.  He proposed that it should be laid out with highway
+roads, turnpikes, bridges, miniature villages, and every object that
+could conduce to the comfort and glory of Four-in-hand Clubs, so that
+they might be fairly presumed to require no drive beyond it.  This
+delightful retreat would be fitted up with most commodious and extensive
+stables, for the convenience of such of the nobility and gentry as had a
+taste for ostlering, and with houses of entertainment furnished in the
+most expensive and handsome style.  It would be further provided with
+whole streets of door-knockers and bell-handles of extra size, so
+constructed that they could be easily wrenched off at night, and
+regularly screwed on again, by attendants provided for the purpose, every
+day.  There would also be gas lamps of real glass, which could be broken
+at a comparatively small expense per dozen, and a broad and handsome foot
+pavement for gentlemen to drive their cabriolets upon when they were
+humorously disposed--for the full enjoyment of which feat live
+pedestrians would be procured from the workhouse at a very small charge
+per head.  The place being inclosed, and carefully screened from the
+intrusion of the public, there would be no objection to gentlemen laying
+aside any article of their costume that was considered to interfere with
+a pleasant frolic, or, indeed, to their walking about without any costume
+at all, if they liked that better.  In short, every facility of enjoyment
+would be afforded that the most gentlemanly person could possibly desire.
+But as even these advantages would be incomplete unless there were some
+means provided of enabling the nobility and gentry to display their
+prowess when they sallied forth after dinner, and as some inconvenience
+might be experienced in the event of their being reduced to the necessity
+of pummelling each other, the inventor had turned his attention to the
+construction of an entirely new police force, composed exclusively of
+automaton figures, which, with the assistance of the ingenious Signor
+Gagliardi, of Windmill-street, in the Haymarket, he had succeeded in
+making with such nicety, that a policeman, cab-driver, or old woman, made
+upon the principle of the models exhibited, would walk about until
+knocked down like any real man; nay, more, if set upon and beaten by six
+or eight noblemen or gentlemen, after it was down, the figure would utter
+divers groans, mingled with entreaties for mercy, thus rendering the
+illusion complete, and the enjoyment perfect.  But the invention did not
+stop even here; for station-houses would be built, containing good beds
+for noblemen and gentlemen during the night, and in the morning they
+would repair to a commodious police office, where a pantomimic
+investigation would take place before the automaton magistrates,--quite
+equal to life,--who would fine them in so many counters, with which they
+would be previously provided for the purpose.  This office would be
+furnished with an inclined plane, for the convenience of any nobleman or
+gentleman who might wish to bring in his horse as a witness; and the
+prisoners would be at perfect liberty, as they were now, to interrupt the
+complainants as much as they pleased, and to make any remarks that they
+thought proper.  The charge for these amusements would amount to very
+little more than they already cost, and the inventor submitted that the
+public would be much benefited and comforted by the proposed arrangement.
+
+'PROFESSOR NOGO wished to be informed what amount of automaton police
+force it was proposed to raise in the first instance.
+
+'MR. COPPERNOSE replied, that it was proposed to begin with seven
+divisions of police of a score each, lettered from A to G inclusive.  It
+was proposed that not more than half this number should be placed on
+active duty, and that the remainder should be kept on shelves in the
+police office ready to be called out at a moment's notice.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT, awarding the utmost merit to the ingenious gentleman who
+had originated the idea, doubted whether the automaton police would quite
+answer the purpose.  He feared that noblemen and gentlemen would perhaps
+require the excitement of thrashing living subjects.
+
+'MR. COPPERNOSE submitted, that as the usual odds in such cases were ten
+noblemen or gentlemen to one policeman or cab-driver, it could make very
+little difference in point of excitement whether the policeman or
+cab-driver were a man or a block.  The great advantage would be, that a
+policeman's limbs might be all knocked off, and yet he would be in a
+condition to do duty next day.  He might even give his evidence next
+morning with his head in his hand, and give it equally well.
+
+'PROFESSOR MUFF.--Will you allow me to ask you, sir, of what materials it
+is intended that the magistrates' heads shall be composed?
+
+'MR. COPPERNOSE.--The magistrates will have wooden heads of course, and
+they will be made of the toughest and thickest materials that can
+possibly be obtained.
+
+'PROFESSOR MUFF.--I am quite satisfied.  This is a great invention.
+
+'PROFESSOR NOGO.--I see but one objection to it.  It appears to me that
+the magistrates ought to talk.
+
+'MR. COPPERNOSE no sooner heard this suggestion than he touched a small
+spring in each of the two models of magistrates which were placed upon
+the table; one of the figures immediately began to exclaim with great
+volubility that he was sorry to see gentlemen in such a situation, and
+the other to express a fear that the policeman was intoxicated.
+
+'The section, as with one accord, declared with a shout of applause that
+the invention was complete; and the President, much excited, retired with
+Mr. Coppernose to lay it before the council.  On his return,
+
+'MR. TICKLE displayed his newly-invented spectacles, which enabled the
+wearer to discern, in very bright colours, objects at a great distance,
+and rendered him wholly blind to those immediately before him.  It was,
+he said, a most valuable and useful invention, based strictly upon the
+principle of the human eye.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT required some information upon this point.  He had yet to
+learn that the human eye was remarkable for the peculiarities of which
+the honourable gentleman had spoken.
+
+'MR. TICKLE was rather astonished to hear this, when the President could
+not fail to be aware that a large number of most excellent persons and
+great statesmen could see, with the naked eye, most marvellous horrors on
+West India plantations, while they could discern nothing whatever in the
+interior of Manchester cotton mills.  He must know, too, with what
+quickness of perception most people could discover their neighbour's
+faults, and how very blind they were to their own.  If the President
+differed from the great majority of men in this respect, his eye was a
+defective one, and it was to assist his vision that these glasses were
+made.
+
+'MR. BLANK exhibited a model of a fashionable annual, composed of
+copper-plates, gold leaf, and silk boards, and worked entirely by milk
+and water.
+
+'MR. PROSEE, after examining the machine, declared it to be so
+ingeniously composed, that he was wholly unable to discover how it went
+on at all.
+
+'MR. BLANK.--Nobody can, and that is the beauty of it.
+
+
+'SECTION C.--ANATOMY AND MEDICINE.
+BAR ROOM, BLACK BOY AND STOMACH-ACHE.
+
+
+_President_--Dr. Soemup.  _Vice-Presidents_--Messrs. Pessell and Mortair.
+
+'DR. GRUMMIDGE stated to the section a most interesting case of
+monomania, and described the course of treatment he had pursued with
+perfect success.  The patient was a married lady in the middle rank of
+life, who, having seen another lady at an evening party in a full suit of
+pearls, was suddenly seized with a desire to possess a similar equipment,
+although her husband's finances were by no means equal to the necessary
+outlay.  Finding her wish ungratified, she fell sick, and the symptoms
+soon became so alarming, that he (Dr. Grummidge) was called in.  At this
+period the prominent tokens of the disorder were sullenness, a total
+indisposition to perform domestic duties, great peevishness, and extreme
+languor, except when pearls were mentioned, at which times the pulse
+quickened, the eyes grew brighter, the pupils dilated, and the patient,
+after various incoherent exclamations, burst into a passion of tears, and
+exclaimed that nobody cared for her, and that she wished herself dead.
+Finding that the patient's appetite was affected in the presence of
+company, he began by ordering a total abstinence from all stimulants, and
+forbidding any sustenance but weak gruel; he then took twenty ounces of
+blood, applied a blister under each ear, one upon the chest, and another
+on the back; having done which, and administered five grains of calomel,
+he left the patient to her repose.  The next day she was somewhat low,
+but decidedly better, and all appearances of irritation were removed.
+The next day she improved still further, and on the next again.  On the
+fourth there was some appearance of a return of the old symptoms, which
+no sooner developed themselves, than he administered another dose of
+calomel, and left strict orders that, unless a decidedly favourable
+change occurred within two hours, the patient's head should be
+immediately shaved to the very last curl.  From that moment she began to
+mend, and, in less than four-and-twenty hours was perfectly restored.
+She did not now betray the least emotion at the sight or mention of
+pearls or any other ornaments.  She was cheerful and good-humoured, and a
+most beneficial change had been effected in her whole temperament and
+condition.
+
+'MR. PIPKIN (M.R.C.S.) read a short but most interesting communication in
+which he sought to prove the complete belief of Sir William Courtenay,
+otherwise Thorn, recently shot at Canterbury, in the Homoeopathic system.
+The section would bear in mind that one of the Homoeopathic doctrines
+was, that infinitesimal doses of any medicine which would occasion the
+disease under which the patient laboured, supposing him to be in a
+healthy state, would cure it.  Now, it was a remarkable
+circumstance--proved in the evidence--that the deceased Thorn employed a
+woman to follow him about all day with a pail of water, assuring her that
+one drop (a purely homoeopathic remedy, the section would observe),
+placed upon his tongue, after death, would restore him.  What was the
+obvious inference?  That Thorn, who was marching and countermarching in
+osier beds, and other swampy places, was impressed with a presentiment
+that he should be drowned; in which case, had his instructions been
+complied with, he could not fail to have been brought to life again
+instantly by his own prescription.  As it was, if this woman, or any
+other person, had administered an infinitesimal dose of lead and
+gunpowder immediately after he fell, he would have recovered forthwith.
+But unhappily the woman concerned did not possess the power of reasoning
+by analogy, or carrying out a principle, and thus the unfortunate
+gentleman had been sacrificed to the ignorance of the peasantry.
+
+
+'SECTION D.--STATISTICS.
+OUT-HOUSE, BLACK BOY AND STOMACH-ACHE.
+
+
+_President_--Mr. Slug.  _Vice-Presidents_--Messrs. Noakes and Styles.
+
+'MR. KWAKLEY stated the result of some most ingenious statistical
+inquiries relative to the difference between the value of the
+qualification of several members of Parliament as published to the world,
+and its real nature and amount.  After reminding the section that every
+member of Parliament for a town or borough was supposed to possess a
+clear freehold estate of three hundred pounds per annum, the honourable
+gentleman excited great amusement and laughter by stating the exact
+amount of freehold property possessed by a column of legislators, in
+which he had included himself.  It appeared from this table, that the
+amount of such income possessed by each was 0 pounds, 0 shillings, and 0
+pence, yielding an average of the same. (Great laughter.)  It was pretty
+well known that there were accommodating gentlemen in the habit of
+furnishing new members with temporary qualifications, to the ownership of
+which they swore solemnly--of course as a mere matter of form.  He argued
+from these _data_ that it was wholly unnecessary for members of
+Parliament to possess any property at all, especially as when they had
+none the public could get them so much cheaper.
+
+
+'SUPPLEMENTARY SECTION, E.--UMBUGOLOGY AND DITCHWATERISICS.
+
+
+_President_--Mr. Grub.  _Vice Presidents_--Messrs. Dull and Dummy.
+
+'A paper was read by the secretary descriptive of a bay pony with one
+eye, which had been seen by the author standing in a butcher's cart at
+the corner of Newgate Market.  The communication described the author of
+the paper as having, in the prosecution of a mercantile pursuit, betaken
+himself one Saturday morning last summer from Somers Town to Cheapside;
+in the course of which expedition he had beheld the extraordinary
+appearance above described.  The pony had one distinct eye, and it had
+been pointed out to him by his friend Captain Blunderbore, of the Horse
+Marines, who assisted the author in his search, that whenever he winked
+this eye he whisked his tail (possibly to drive the flies off), but that
+he always winked and whisked at the same time.  The animal was lean,
+spavined, and tottering; and the author proposed to constitute it of the
+family of _Fitfordogsmeataurious_.  It certainly did occur to him that
+there was no case on record of a pony with one clearly-defined and
+distinct organ of vision, winking and whisking at the same moment.
+
+'MR. Q. J. SNUFFLETOFFLE had heard of a pony winking his eye, and
+likewise of a pony whisking his tail, but whether they were two ponies or
+the same pony he could not undertake positively to say.  At all events,
+he was acquainted with no authenticated instance of a simultaneous
+winking and whisking, and he really could not but doubt the existence of
+such a marvellous pony in opposition to all those natural laws by which
+ponies were governed.  Referring, however, to the mere question of his
+one organ of vision, might he suggest the possibility of this pony having
+been literally half asleep at the time he was seen, and having closed
+only one eye.
+
+'THE PRESIDENT observed that, whether the pony was half asleep or fast
+asleep, there could be no doubt that the association was wide awake, and
+therefore that they had better get the business over, and go to dinner.
+He had certainly never seen anything analogous to this pony, but he was
+not prepared to doubt its existence; for he had seen many queerer ponies
+in his time, though he did not pretend to have seen any more remarkable
+donkeys than the other gentlemen around him.
+
+'PROFESSOR JOHN KETCH was then called upon to exhibit the skull of the
+late Mr. Greenacre, which he produced from a blue bag, remarking, on
+being invited to make any observations that occurred to him, "that he'd
+pound it as that 'ere 'spectable section had never seed a more gamerer
+cove nor he vos."
+
+'A most animated discussion upon this interesting relic ensued; and, some
+difference of opinion arising respecting the real character of the
+deceased gentleman, Mr. Blubb delivered a lecture upon the cranium before
+him, clearly showing that Mr. Greenacre possessed the organ of
+destructiveness to a most unusual extent, with a most remarkable
+development of the organ of carveativeness.  Sir Hookham Snivey was
+proceeding to combat this opinion, when Professor Ketch suddenly
+interrupted the proceedings by exclaiming, with great excitement of
+manner, "Walker!"
+
+'THE PRESIDENT begged to call the learned gentleman to order.
+
+'PROFESSOR KETCH.--"Order be blowed! you've got the wrong un, I tell you.
+It ain't no 'ed at all; it's a coker-nut as my brother-in-law has been
+a-carvin', to hornament his new baked tatur-stall wots a-comin' down 'ere
+vile the 'sociation's in the town.  Hand over, vill you?"
+
+'With these words, Professor Ketch hastily repossessed himself of the
+cocoa-nut, and drew forth the skull, in mistake for which he had
+exhibited it.  A most interesting conversation ensued; but as there
+appeared some doubt ultimately whether the skull was Mr. Greenacre's, or
+a hospital patient's, or a pauper's, or a man's, or a woman's, or a
+monkey's, no particular result was obtained.'
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+'I cannot,' says our talented correspondent in conclusion, 'I cannot
+close my account of these gigantic researches and sublime and noble
+triumphs without repeating a _bon mot_ of Professor Woodensconce's, which
+shows how the greatest minds may occasionally unbend when truth can be
+presented to listening ears, clothed in an attractive and playful form.
+I was standing by, when, after a week of feasting and feeding, that
+learned gentleman, accompanied by the whole body of wonderful men,
+entered the hall yesterday, where a sumptuous dinner was prepared; where
+the richest wines sparkled on the board, and fat bucks--propitiatory
+sacrifices to learning--sent forth their savoury odours.  "Ah!" said
+Professor Woodensconce, rubbing his hands, "this is what we meet for;
+this is what inspires us; this is what keeps us together, and beckons us
+onward; this is the _spread_ of science, and a glorious spread it is."'
+
+
+
+THE PANTOMIME OF LIFE
+
+
+Before we plunge headlong into this paper, let us at once confess to a
+fondness for pantomimes--to a gentle sympathy with clowns and
+pantaloons--to an unqualified admiration of harlequins and columbines--to
+a chaste delight in every action of their brief existence, varied and
+many-coloured as those actions are, and inconsistent though they
+occasionally be with those rigid and formal rules of propriety which
+regulate the proceedings of meaner and less comprehensive minds.  We
+revel in pantomimes--not because they dazzle one's eyes with tinsel and
+gold leaf; not because they present to us, once again, the well-beloved
+chalked faces, and goggle eyes of our childhood; not even because, like
+Christmas-day, and Twelfth-night, and Shrove-Tuesday, and one's own
+birthday, they come to us but once a year;--our attachment is founded on
+a graver and a very different reason.  A pantomime is to us, a mirror of
+life; nay, more, we maintain that it is so to audiences generally,
+although they are not aware of it, and that this very circumstance is the
+secret cause of their amusement and delight.
+
+Let us take a slight example.  The scene is a street: an elderly
+gentleman, with a large face and strongly marked features, appears.  His
+countenance beams with a sunny smile, and a perpetual dimple is on his
+broad, red cheek.  He is evidently an opulent elderly gentleman,
+comfortable in circumstances, and well-to-do in the world.  He is not
+unmindful of the adornment of his person, for he is richly, not to say
+gaudily, dressed; and that he indulges to a reasonable extent in the
+pleasures of the table may be inferred from the joyous and oily manner in
+which he rubs his stomach, by way of informing the audience that he is
+going home to dinner.  In the fulness of his heart, in the fancied
+security of wealth, in the possession and enjoyment of all the good
+things of life, the elderly gentleman suddenly loses his footing, and
+stumbles.  How the audience roar!  He is set upon by a noisy and
+officious crowd, who buffet and cuff him unmercifully.  They scream with
+delight!  Every time the elderly gentleman struggles to get up, his
+relentless persecutors knock him down again.  The spectators are
+convulsed with merriment!  And when at last the elderly gentleman does
+get up, and staggers away, despoiled of hat, wig, and clothing, himself
+battered to pieces, and his watch and money gone, they are exhausted with
+laughter, and express their merriment and admiration in rounds of
+applause.
+
+Is this like life?  Change the scene to any real street;--to the Stock
+Exchange, or the City banker's; the merchant's counting-house, or even
+the tradesman's shop.  See any one of these men fall,--the more suddenly,
+and the nearer the zenith of his pride and riches, the better.  What a
+wild hallo is raised over his prostrate carcase by the shouting mob; how
+they whoop and yell as he lies humbled beneath them!  Mark how eagerly
+they set upon him when he is down; and how they mock and deride him as he
+slinks away.  Why, it is the pantomime to the very letter.
+
+Of all the pantomimic _dramatis personae_, we consider the pantaloon the
+most worthless and debauched.  Independent of the dislike one naturally
+feels at seeing a gentleman of his years engaged in pursuits highly
+unbecoming his gravity and time of life, we cannot conceal from ourselves
+the fact that he is a treacherous, worldly-minded old villain, constantly
+enticing his younger companion, the clown, into acts of fraud or petty
+larceny, and generally standing aside to watch the result of the
+enterprise.  If it be successful, he never forgets to return for his
+share of the spoil; but if it turn out a failure, he generally retires
+with remarkable caution and expedition, and keeps carefully aloof until
+the affair has blown over.  His amorous propensities, too, are eminently
+disagreeable; and his mode of addressing ladies in the open street at
+noon-day is down-right improper, being usually neither more nor less than
+a perceptible tickling of the aforesaid ladies in the waist, after
+committing which, he starts back, manifestly ashamed (as well he may be)
+of his own indecorum and temerity; continuing, nevertheless, to ogle and
+beckon to them from a distance in a very unpleasant and immoral manner.
+
+Is there any man who cannot count a dozen pantaloons in his own social
+circle?  Is there any man who has not seen them swarming at the west end
+of the town on a sunshiny day or a summer's evening, going through the
+last-named pantomimic feats with as much liquorish energy, and as total
+an absence of reserve, as if they were on the very stage itself?  We can
+tell upon our fingers a dozen pantaloons of our acquaintance at this
+moment--capital pantaloons, who have been performing all kinds of strange
+freaks, to the great amusement of their friends and acquaintance, for
+years past; and who to this day are making such comical and ineffectual
+attempts to be young and dissolute, that all beholders are like to die
+with laughter.
+
+Take that old gentleman who has just emerged from the _Cafe de l'Europe_
+in the Haymarket, where he has been dining at the expense of the young
+man upon town with whom he shakes hands as they part at the door of the
+tavern.  The affected warmth of that shake of the hand, the courteous
+nod, the obvious recollection of the dinner, the savoury flavour of which
+still hangs upon his lips, are all characteristics of his great
+prototype.  He hobbles away humming an opera tune, and twirling his cane
+to and fro, with affected carelessness.  Suddenly he stops--'tis at the
+milliner's window.  He peeps through one of the large panes of glass;
+and, his view of the ladies within being obstructed by the India shawls,
+directs his attentions to the young girl with the band-box in her hand,
+who is gazing in at the window also.  See! he draws beside her.  He
+coughs; she turns away from him.  He draws near her again; she disregards
+him.  He gleefully chucks her under the chin, and, retreating a few
+steps, nods and beckons with fantastic grimaces, while the girl bestows a
+contemptuous and supercilious look upon his wrinkled visage.  She turns
+away with a flounce, and the old gentleman trots after her with a
+toothless chuckle. The pantaloon to the life!
+
+But the close resemblance which the clowns of the stage bear to those of
+every-day life is perfectly extraordinary.  Some people talk with a sigh
+of the decline of pantomime, and murmur in low and dismal tones the name
+of Grimaldi.  We mean no disparagement to the worthy and excellent old
+man when we say that this is downright nonsense.  Clowns that beat
+Grimaldi all to nothing turn up every day, and nobody patronizes
+them--more's the pity!
+
+'I know who you mean,' says some dirty-faced patron of Mr.
+Osbaldistone's, laying down the Miscellany when he has got thus far, and
+bestowing upon vacancy a most knowing glance; 'you mean C. J. Smith as
+did Guy Fawkes, and George Barnwell at the Garden.'  The dirty-faced
+gentleman has hardly uttered the words, when he is interrupted by a young
+gentleman in no shirt-collar and a Petersham coat.  'No, no,' says the
+young gentleman; 'he means Brown, King, and Gibson, at the 'Delphi.'
+Now, with great deference both to the first-named gentleman with the
+dirty face, and the last-named gentleman in the non-existing
+shirt-collar, we do _not_ mean either the performer who so grotesquely
+burlesqued the Popish conspirator, or the three unchangeables who have
+been dancing the same dance under different imposing titles, and doing
+the same thing under various high-sounding names for some five or six
+years last past.  We have no sooner made this avowal, than the public,
+who have hitherto been silent witnesses of the dispute, inquire what on
+earth it is we _do_ mean; and, with becoming respect, we proceed to tell
+them.
+
+It is very well known to all playgoers and pantomime-seers, that the
+scenes in which a theatrical clown is at the very height of his glory are
+those which are described in the play-bills as 'Cheesemonger's shop and
+Crockery warehouse,' or 'Tailor's shop, and Mrs. Queertable's
+boarding-house,' or places bearing some such title, where the great fun
+of the thing consists in the hero's taking lodgings which he has not the
+slightest intention of paying for, or obtaining goods under false
+pretences, or abstracting the stock-in-trade of the respectable
+shopkeeper next door, or robbing warehouse porters as they pass under his
+window, or, to shorten the catalogue, in his swindling everybody he
+possibly can, it only remaining to be observed that, the more extensive
+the swindling is, and the more barefaced the impudence of the swindler,
+the greater the rapture and ecstasy of the audience.  Now it is a most
+remarkable fact that precisely this sort of thing occurs in real life day
+after day, and nobody sees the humour of it.  Let us illustrate our
+position by detailing the plot of this portion of the pantomime--not of
+the theatre, but of life.
+
+The Honourable Captain Fitz-Whisker Fiercy, attended by his livery
+servant Do'em--a most respectable servant to look at, who has grown grey
+in the service of the captain's family--views, treats for, and ultimately
+obtains possession of, the unfurnished house, such a number, such a
+street.  All the tradesmen in the neighbourhood are in agonies of
+competition for the captain's custom; the captain is a good-natured,
+kind-hearted, easy man, and, to avoid being the cause of disappointment
+to any, he most handsomely gives orders to all.  Hampers of wine, baskets
+of provisions, cart-loads of furniture, boxes of jewellery, supplies of
+luxuries of the costliest description, flock to the house of the
+Honourable Captain Fitz-Whisker Fiercy, where they are received with the
+utmost readiness by the highly respectable Do'em; while the captain
+himself struts and swaggers about with that compound air of conscious
+superiority and general blood-thirstiness which a military captain should
+always, and does most times, wear, to the admiration and terror of
+plebeian men.  But the tradesmen's backs are no sooner turned, than the
+captain, with all the eccentricity of a mighty mind, and assisted by the
+faithful Do'em, whose devoted fidelity is not the least touching part of
+his character, disposes of everything to great advantage; for, although
+the articles fetch small sums, still they are sold considerably above
+cost price, the cost to the captain having been nothing at all.  After
+various manoeuvres, the imposture is discovered, Fitz-Fiercy and Do'em
+are recognized as confederates, and the police office to which they are
+both taken is thronged with their dupes.
+
+Who can fail to recognize in this, the exact counterpart of the best
+portion of a theatrical pantomime--Fitz-Whisker Fiercy by the clown;
+Do'em by the pantaloon; and supernumeraries by the tradesmen?  The best
+of the joke, too, is, that the very coal-merchant who is loudest in his
+complaints against the person who defrauded him, is the identical man who
+sat in the centre of the very front row of the pit last night and laughed
+the most boisterously at this very same thing,--and not so well done
+either.  Talk of Grimaldi, we say again!  Did Grimaldi, in his best days,
+ever do anything in this way equal to Da Costa?
+
+The mention of this latter justly celebrated clown reminds us of his last
+piece of humour, the fraudulently obtaining certain stamped acceptances
+from a young gentleman in the army.  We had scarcely laid down our pen to
+contemplate for a few moments this admirable actor's performance of that
+exquisite practical joke, than a new branch of our subject flashed
+suddenly upon us.  So we take it up again at once.
+
+All people who have been behind the scenes, and most people who have been
+before them, know, that in the representation of a pantomime, a good many
+men are sent upon the stage for the express purpose of being cheated, or
+knocked down, or both.  Now, down to a moment ago, we had never been able
+to understand for what possible purpose a great number of odd, lazy,
+large-headed men, whom one is in the habit of meeting here, and there,
+and everywhere, could ever have been created.  We see it all, now.  They
+are the supernumeraries in the pantomime of life; the men who have been
+thrust into it, with no other view than to be constantly tumbling over
+each other, and running their heads against all sorts of strange things.
+We sat opposite to one of these men at a supper-table, only last week.
+Now we think of it, he was exactly like the gentlemen with the pasteboard
+heads and faces, who do the corresponding business in the theatrical
+pantomimes; there was the same broad stolid simper--the same dull leaden
+eye--the same unmeaning, vacant stare; and whatever was said, or whatever
+was done, he always came in at precisely the wrong place, or jostled
+against something that he had not the slightest business with.  We looked
+at the man across the table again and again; and could not satisfy
+ourselves what race of beings to class him with.  How very odd that this
+never occurred to us before!
+
+We will frankly own that we have been much troubled with the harlequin.
+We see harlequins of so many kinds in the real living pantomime, that we
+hardly know which to select as the proper fellow of him of the theatres.
+At one time we were disposed to think that the harlequin was neither more
+nor less than a young man of family and independent property, who had run
+away with an opera-dancer, and was fooling his life and his means away in
+light and trivial amusements.  On reflection, however, we remembered that
+harlequins are occasionally guilty of witty, and even clever acts, and we
+are rather disposed to acquit our young men of family and independent
+property, generally speaking, of any such misdemeanours.  On a more
+mature consideration of the subject, we have arrived at the conclusion
+that the harlequins of life are just ordinary men, to be found in no
+particular walk or degree, on whom a certain station, or particular
+conjunction of circumstances, confers the magic wand.  And this brings us
+to a few words on the pantomime of public and political life, which we
+shall say at once, and then conclude--merely premising in this place that
+we decline any reference whatever to the columbine, being in no wise
+satisfied of the nature of her connection with her parti-coloured lover,
+and not feeling by any means clear that we should be justified in
+introducing her to the virtuous and respectable ladies who peruse our
+lucubrations.
+
+We take it that the commencement of a Session of Parliament is neither
+more nor less than the drawing up of the curtain for a grand comic
+pantomime, and that his Majesty's most gracious speech on the opening
+thereof may be not inaptly compared to the clown's opening speech of
+'Here we are!'  'My lords and gentlemen, here we are!' appears, to our
+mind at least, to be a very good abstract of the point and meaning of the
+propitiatory address of the ministry.  When we remember how frequently
+this speech is made, immediately after _the change_ too, the parallel is
+quite perfect, and still more singular.
+
+Perhaps the cast of our political pantomime never was richer than at this
+day.  We are particularly strong in clowns.  At no former time, we should
+say, have we had such astonishing tumblers, or performers so ready to go
+through the whole of their feats for the amusement of an admiring throng.
+Their extreme readiness to exhibit, indeed, has given rise to some
+ill-natured reflections; it having been objected that by exhibiting
+gratuitously through the country when the theatre is closed, they reduce
+themselves to the level of mountebanks, and thereby tend to degrade the
+respectability of the profession.  Certainly Grimaldi never did this sort
+of thing; and though Brown, King, and Gibson have gone to the Surrey in
+vacation time, and Mr. C. J. Smith has ruralised at Sadler's Wells, we
+find no theatrical precedent for a general tumbling through the country,
+except in the gentleman, name unknown, who threw summersets on behalf of
+the late Mr. Richardson, and who is no authority either, because he had
+never been on the regular boards.
+
+But, laying aside this question, which after all is a mere matter of
+taste, we may reflect with pride and gratification of heart on the
+proficiency of our clowns as exhibited in the season.  Night after night
+will they twist and tumble about, till two, three, and four o'clock in
+the morning; playing the strangest antics, and giving each other the
+funniest slaps on the face that can possibly be imagined, without
+evincing the smallest tokens of fatigue.  The strange noises, the
+confusion, the shouting and roaring, amid which all this is done, too,
+would put to shame the most turbulent sixpenny gallery that ever yelled
+through a boxing-night.
+
+It is especially curious to behold one of these clowns compelled to go
+through the most surprising contortions by the irresistible influence of
+the wand of office, which his leader or harlequin holds above his head.
+Acted upon by this wonderful charm he will become perfectly motionless,
+moving neither hand, foot, nor finger, and will even lose the faculty of
+speech at an instant's notice; or on the other hand, he will become all
+life and animation if required, pouring forth a torrent of words without
+sense or meaning, throwing himself into the wildest and most fantastic
+contortions, and even grovelling on the earth and licking up the dust.
+These exhibitions are more curious than pleasing; indeed, they are rather
+disgusting than otherwise, except to the admirers of such things, with
+whom we confess we have no fellow-feeling.
+
+Strange tricks--very strange tricks--are also performed by the harlequin
+who holds for the time being the magic wand which we have just mentioned.
+The mere waving it before a man's eyes will dispossess his brains of all
+the notions previously stored there, and fill it with an entirely new set
+of ideas; one gentle tap on the back will alter the colour of a man's
+coat completely; and there are some expert performers, who, having this
+wand held first on one side and then on the other, will change from side
+to side, turning their coats at every evolution, with so much rapidity
+and dexterity, that the quickest eye can scarcely detect their motions.
+Occasionally, the genius who confers the wand, wrests it from the hand of
+the temporary possessor, and consigns it to some new performer; on which
+occasions all the characters change sides, and then the race and the hard
+knocks begin anew.
+
+We might have extended this chapter to a much greater length--we might
+have carried the comparison into the liberal professions--we might have
+shown, as was in fact our original purpose, that each is in itself a
+little pantomime with scenes and characters of its own, complete; but, as
+we fear we have been quite lengthy enough already, we shall leave this
+chapter just where it is.  A gentleman, not altogether unknown as a
+dramatic poet, wrote thus a year or two ago--
+
+                'All the world's a stage,
+    And all the men and women merely players:'
+
+and we, tracking out his footsteps at the scarcely-worth-mentioning
+little distance of a few millions of leagues behind, venture to add, by
+way of new reading, that he meant a Pantomime, and that we are all actors
+in The Pantomime of Life.
+
+
+
+SOME PARTICULARS CONCERNING A LION
+
+
+We have a great respect for lions in the abstract.  In common with most
+other people, we have heard and read of many instances of their bravery
+and generosity.  We have duly admired that heroic self-denial and
+charming philanthropy which prompts them never to eat people except when
+they are hungry, and we have been deeply impressed with a becoming sense
+of the politeness they are said to display towards unmarried ladies of a
+certain state.  All natural histories teem with anecdotes illustrative of
+their excellent qualities; and one old spelling-book in particular
+recounts a touching instance of an old lion, of high moral dignity and
+stern principle, who felt it his imperative duty to devour a young man
+who had contracted a habit of swearing, as a striking example to the
+rising generation.
+
+All this is extremely pleasant to reflect upon, and, indeed, says a very
+great deal in favour of lions as a mass.  We are bound to state, however,
+that such individual lions as we have happened to fall in with have not
+put forth any very striking characteristics, and have not acted up to the
+chivalrous character assigned them by their chroniclers.  We never saw a
+lion in what is called his natural state, certainly; that is to say, we
+have never met a lion out walking in a forest, or crouching in his lair
+under a tropical sun, waiting till his dinner should happen to come by,
+hot from the baker's.  But we have seen some under the influence of
+captivity, and the pressure of misfortune; and we must say that they
+appeared to us very apathetic, heavy-headed fellows.
+
+The lion at the Zoological Gardens, for instance.  He is all very well;
+he has an undeniable mane, and looks very fierce; but, Lord bless us!
+what of that?  The lions of the fashionable world look just as ferocious,
+and are the most harmless creatures breathing.  A box-lobby lion or a
+Regent-street animal will put on a most terrible aspect, and roar,
+fearfully, if you affront him; but he will never bite, and, if you offer
+to attack him manfully, will fairly turn tail and sneak off.  Doubtless
+these creatures roam about sometimes in herds, and, if they meet any
+especially meek-looking and peaceably-disposed fellow, will endeavour to
+frighten him; but the faintest show of a vigorous resistance is
+sufficient to scare them even then.  These are pleasant characteristics,
+whereas we make it matter of distinct charge against the Zoological lion
+and his brethren at the fairs, that they are sleepy, dreamy, sluggish
+quadrupeds.
+
+We do not remember to have ever seen one of them perfectly awake, except
+at feeding-time.  In every respect we uphold the biped lions against
+their four-footed namesakes, and we boldly challenge controversy upon the
+subject.
+
+With these opinions it may be easily imagined that our curiosity and
+interest were very much excited the other day, when a lady of our
+acquaintance called on us and resolutely declined to accept our refusal
+of her invitation to an evening party; 'for,' said she, 'I have got a
+lion coming.'  We at once retracted our plea of a prior engagement, and
+became as anxious to go, as we had previously been to stay away.
+
+We went early, and posted ourselves in an eligible part of the
+drawing-room, from whence we could hope to obtain a full view of the
+interesting animal.  Two or three hours passed, the quadrilles began, the
+room filled; but no lion appeared.  The lady of the house became
+inconsolable,--for it is one of the peculiar privileges of these lions to
+make solemn appointments and never keep them,--when all of a sudden there
+came a tremendous double rap at the street-door, and the master of the
+house, after gliding out (unobserved as he flattered himself) to peep
+over the banisters, came into the room, rubbing his hands together with
+great glee, and cried out in a very important voice, 'My dear,
+Mr.--(naming the lion) has this moment arrived.'
+
+Upon this, all eyes were turned towards the door, and we observed several
+young ladies, who had been laughing and conversing previously with great
+gaiety and good humour, grow extremely quiet and sentimental; while some
+young gentlemen, who had been cutting great figures in the facetious and
+small-talk way, suddenly sank very obviously in the estimation of the
+company, and were looked upon with great coldness and indifference.  Even
+the young man who had been ordered from the music shop to play the
+pianoforte was visibly affected, and struck several false notes in the
+excess of his excitement.
+
+All this time there was a great talking outside, more than once
+accompanied by a loud laugh, and a cry of 'Oh! capital! excellent!' from
+which we inferred that the lion was jocose, and that these exclamations
+were occasioned by the transports of his keeper and our host.  Nor were
+we deceived; for when the lion at last appeared, we overheard his keeper,
+who was a little prim man, whisper to several gentlemen of his
+acquaintance, with uplifted hands, and every expression of
+half-suppressed admiration, that--(naming the lion again) was in _such_
+cue to-night!
+
+The lion was a literary one.  Of course, there were a vast number of
+people present who had admired his roarings, and were anxious to be
+introduced to him; and very pleasant it was to see them brought up for
+the purpose, and to observe the patient dignity with which he received
+all their patting and caressing.  This brought forcibly to our mind what
+we had so often witnessed at country fairs, where the other lions are
+compelled to go through as many forms of courtesy as they chance to be
+acquainted with, just as often as admiring parties happen to drop in upon
+them.
+
+While the lion was exhibiting in this way, his keeper was not idle, for
+he mingled among the crowd, and spread his praises most industriously.
+To one gentleman he whispered some very choice thing that the noble
+animal had said in the very act of coming up-stairs, which, of course,
+rendered the mental effort still more astonishing; to another he murmured
+a hasty account of a grand dinner that had taken place the day before,
+where twenty-seven gentlemen had got up all at once to demand an extra
+cheer for the lion; and to the ladies he made sundry promises of
+interceding to procure the majestic brute's sign-manual for their albums.
+Then, there were little private consultations in different corners,
+relative to the personal appearance and stature of the lion; whether he
+was shorter than they had expected to see him, or taller, or thinner, or
+fatter, or younger, or older; whether he was like his portrait, or unlike
+it; and whether the particular shade of his eyes was black, or blue, or
+hazel, or green, or yellow, or mixture.  At all these consultations the
+keeper assisted; and, in short, the lion was the sole and single subject
+of discussion till they sat him down to whist, and then the people
+relapsed into their old topics of conversation--themselves and each
+other.
+
+We must confess that we looked forward with no slight impatience to the
+announcement of supper; for if you wish to see a tame lion under
+particularly favourable circumstances, feeding-time is the period of all
+others to pitch upon.  We were therefore very much delighted to observe a
+sensation among the guests, which we well knew how to interpret, and
+immediately afterwards to behold the lion escorting the lady of the house
+down-stairs.  We offered our arm to an elderly female of our
+acquaintance, who--dear old soul!--is the very best person that ever
+lived, to lead down to any meal; for, be the room ever so small, or the
+party ever so large, she is sure, by some intuitive perception of the
+eligible, to push and pull herself and conductor close to the best dishes
+on the table;--we say we offered our arm to this elderly female, and,
+descending the stairs shortly after the lion, were fortunate enough to
+obtain a seat nearly opposite him.
+
+Of course the keeper was there already.  He had planted himself at
+precisely that distance from his charge which afforded him a decent
+pretext for raising his voice, when he addressed him, to so loud a key,
+as could not fail to attract the attention of the whole company, and
+immediately began to apply himself seriously to the task of bringing the
+lion out, and putting him through the whole of his manoeuvres.  Such
+flashes of wit as he elicited from the lion!  First of all, they began to
+make puns upon a salt-cellar, and then upon the breast of a fowl, and
+then upon the trifle; but the best jokes of all were decidedly on the
+lobster salad, upon which latter subject the lion came out most
+vigorously, and, in the opinion of the most competent authorities, quite
+outshone himself.  This is a very excellent mode of shining in society,
+and is founded, we humbly conceive, upon the classic model of the
+dialogues between Mr. Punch and his friend the proprietor, wherein the
+latter takes all the up-hill work, and is content to pioneer to the jokes
+and repartees of Mr. P. himself, who never fails to gain great credit and
+excite much laughter thereby.  Whatever it be founded on, however, we
+recommend it to all lions, present and to come; for in this instance it
+succeeded to admiration, and perfectly dazzled the whole body of hearers.
+
+When the salt-cellar, and the fowl's breast, and the trifle, and the
+lobster salad were all exhausted, and could not afford standing-room for
+another solitary witticism, the keeper performed that very dangerous feat
+which is still done with some of the caravan lions, although in one
+instance it terminated fatally, of putting his head in the animal's
+mouth, and placing himself entirely at its mercy.  Boswell frequently
+presents a melancholy instance of the lamentable results of this
+achievement, and other keepers and jackals have been terribly lacerated
+for their daring.  It is due to our lion to state, that he condescended
+to be trifled with, in the most gentle manner, and finally went home with
+the showman in a hack cab: perfectly peaceable, but slightly fuddled.
+
+Being in a contemplative mood, we were led to make some reflections upon
+the character and conduct of this genus of lions as we walked homewards,
+and we were not long in arriving at the conclusion that our former
+impression in their favour was very much strengthened and confirmed by
+what we had recently seen.  While the other lions receive company and
+compliments in a sullen, moody, not to say snarling manner, these appear
+flattered by the attentions that are paid them; while those conceal
+themselves to the utmost of their power from the vulgar gaze, these court
+the popular eye, and, unlike their brethren, whom nothing short of
+compulsion will move to exertion, are ever ready to display their
+acquirements to the wondering throng.  We have known bears of undoubted
+ability who, when the expectations of a large audience have been wound up
+to the utmost pitch, have peremptorily refused to dance; well-taught
+monkeys, who have unaccountably objected to exhibit on the slack wire;
+and elephants of unquestioned genius, who have suddenly declined to turn
+the barrel-organ; but we never once knew or heard of a biped lion,
+literary or otherwise,--and we state it as a fact which is highly
+creditable to the whole species,--who, occasion offering, did not seize
+with avidity on any opportunity which was afforded him, of performing to
+his heart's content on the first violin.
+
+
+
+MR. ROBERT BOLTON: THE 'GENTLEMAN CONNECTED WITH THE PRESS'
+
+
+In the parlour of the Green Dragon, a public-house in the immediate
+neighbourhood of Westminster Bridge, everybody talks politics, every
+evening, the great political authority being Mr. Robert Bolton, an
+individual who defines himself as 'a gentleman connected with the press,'
+which is a definition of peculiar indefiniteness.  Mr. Robert Bolton's
+regular circle of admirers and listeners are an undertaker, a
+greengrocer, a hairdresser, a baker, a large stomach surmounted by a
+man's head, and placed on the top of two particularly short legs, and a
+thin man in black, name, profession, and pursuit unknown, who always sits
+in the same position, always displays the same long, vacant face, and
+never opens his lips, surrounded as he is by most enthusiastic
+conversation, except to puff forth a volume of tobacco smoke, or give
+vent to a very snappy, loud, and shrill _hem_!  The conversation
+sometimes turns upon literature, Mr. Bolton being a literary character,
+and always upon such news of the day as is exclusively possessed by that
+talented individual.  I found myself (of course, accidentally) in the
+Green Dragon the other evening, and, being somewhat amused by the
+following conversation, preserved it.
+
+'Can you lend me a ten-pound note till Christmas?' inquired the
+hairdresser of the stomach.
+
+'Where's your security, Mr. Clip?'
+
+'My stock in trade,--there's enough of it, I'm thinking, Mr. Thicknesse.
+Some fifty wigs, two poles, half-a-dozen head blocks, and a dead Bruin.'
+
+'No, I won't, then,' growled out Thicknesse.  'I lends nothing on the
+security of the whigs or the Poles either.  As for whigs, they're cheats;
+as for the Poles, they've got no cash.  I never have nothing to do with
+blockheads, unless I can't awoid it (ironically), and a dead bear's about
+as much use to me as I could be to a dead bear.'
+
+'Well, then,' urged the other, 'there's a book as belonged to Pope,
+Byron's Poems, valued at forty pounds, because it's got Pope's identical
+scratch on the back; what do you think of that for security?'
+
+'Well, to be sure!' cried the baker.  'But how d'ye mean, Mr. Clip?'
+
+'Mean! why, that it's got the _hottergruff_ of Pope.
+
+    "Steal not this book, for fear of hangman's rope;
+    For it belongs to Alexander Pope."
+
+All that's written on the inside of the binding of the book; so, as my
+son says, we're _bound_ to believe it.'
+
+'Well, sir,' observed the undertaker, deferentially, and in a
+half-whisper, leaning over the table, and knocking over the hairdresser's
+grog as he spoke, 'that argument's very easy upset.'
+
+'Perhaps, sir,' said Clip, a little flurried, 'you'll pay for the first
+upset afore you thinks of another.'
+
+'Now,' said the undertaker, bowing amicably to the hairdresser, 'I
+_think_, I says I _think_--you'll excuse me, Mr. Clip, I _think_, you
+see, that won't go down with the present company--unfortunately, my
+master had the honour of making the coffin of that ere Lord's housemaid,
+not no more nor twenty year ago.  Don't think I'm proud on it, gentlemen;
+others might be; but I hate rank of any sort.  I've no more respect for a
+Lord's footman than I have for any respectable tradesman in this room.  I
+may say no more nor I have for Mr. Clip! (bowing).  Therefore, that ere
+Lord must have been born long after Pope died.  And it's a logical
+interference to defer, that they neither of them lived at the same time.
+So what I mean is this here, that Pope never had no book, never seed,
+felt, never smelt no book (triumphantly) as belonged to that ere Lord.
+And, gentlemen, when I consider how patiently you have 'eared the ideas
+what I have expressed, I feel bound, as the best way to reward you for
+the kindness you have exhibited, to sit down without saying anything
+more--partickler as I perceive a worthier visitor nor myself is just
+entered.  I am not in the habit of paying compliments, gentlemen; when I
+do, therefore, I hope I strikes with double force.'
+
+'Ah, Mr. Murgatroyd! what's all this about striking with double force?'
+said the object of the above remark, as he entered.  'I never excuse a
+man's getting into a rage during winter, even when he's seated so close
+to the fire as you are.  It is very injudicious to put yourself into such
+a perspiration.  What is the cause of this extreme physical and mental
+excitement, sir?'
+
+Such was the very philosophical address of Mr. Robert Bolton, a
+shorthand-writer, as he termed himself--a bit of equivoque passing
+current among his fraternity, which must give the uninitiated a vast idea
+of the establishment of the ministerial organ, while to the initiated it
+signifies that no one paper can lay claim to the enjoyment of their
+services.  Mr. Bolton was a young man, with a somewhat sickly and very
+dissipated expression of countenance.  His habiliments were composed of
+an exquisite union of gentility, slovenliness, assumption, simplicity,
+_newness_, and old age.  Half of him was dressed for the winter, the
+other half for the summer.  His hat was of the newest cut, the D'Orsay;
+his trousers had been white, but the inroads of mud and ink, etc., had
+given them a pie-bald appearance; round his throat he wore a very high
+black cravat, of the most tyrannical stiffness; while his _tout ensemble_
+was hidden beneath the enormous folds of an old brown poodle-collared
+great-coat, which was closely buttoned up to the aforesaid cravat.  His
+fingers peeped through the ends of his black kid gloves, and two of the
+toes of each foot took a similar view of society through the extremities
+of his high-lows.  Sacred to the bare walls of his garret be the
+mysteries of his interior dress!  He was a short, spare man, of a
+somewhat inferior deportment.  Everybody seemed influenced by his entry
+into the room, and his salutation of each member partook of the
+patronizing.  The hairdresser made way for him between himself and the
+stomach.  A minute afterwards he had taken possession of his pint and
+pipe.  A pause in the conversation took place.  Everybody was waiting,
+anxious for his first observation.
+
+'Horrid murder in Westminster this morning,' observed Mr. Bolton.
+
+Everybody changed their positions.  All eyes were fixed upon the man of
+paragraphs.
+
+'A baker murdered his son by boiling him in a copper,' said Mr. Bolton.
+
+'Good heavens!' exclaimed everybody, in simultaneous horror.
+
+'Boiled him, gentlemen!' added Mr. Bolton, with the most effective
+emphasis; '_boiled_ him!'
+
+'And the particulars, Mr. B.,' inquired the hairdresser, 'the
+particulars?'
+
+Mr. Bolton took a very long draught of porter, and some two or three
+dozen whiffs of tobacco, doubtless to instil into the commercial
+capacities of the company the superiority of a gentlemen connected with
+the press, and then said--
+
+'The man was a baker, gentlemen.'  (Every one looked at the baker
+present, who stared at Bolton.)  'His victim, being his son, also was
+necessarily the son of a baker.  The wretched murderer had a wife, whom
+he was frequently in the habit, while in an intoxicated state, of
+kicking, pummelling, flinging mugs at, knocking down, and half-killing
+while in bed, by inserting in her mouth a considerable portion of a sheet
+or blanket.'
+
+The speaker took another draught, everybody looked at everybody else, and
+exclaimed, 'Horrid!'
+
+'It appears in evidence, gentlemen,' continued Mr. Bolton, 'that, on the
+evening of yesterday, Sawyer the baker came home in a reprehensible state
+of beer.  Mrs. S., connubially considerate, carried him in that condition
+up-stairs into his chamber, and consigned him to their mutual couch.  In
+a minute or two she lay sleeping beside the man whom the morrow's dawn
+beheld a murderer!'  (Entire silence informed the reporter that his
+picture had attained the awful effect he desired.)  'The son came home
+about an hour afterwards, opened the door, and went up to bed.  Scarcely
+(gentlemen, conceive his feelings of alarm), scarcely had he taken off
+his indescribables, when shrieks (to his experienced ear _maternal_
+shrieks) scared the silence of surrounding night.  He put his
+indescribables on again, and ran down-stairs.  He opened the door of the
+parental bed-chamber.  His father was dancing upon his mother.  What must
+have been his feelings!  In the agony of the minute he rushed at his male
+parent as he was about to plunge a knife into the side of his female.
+The mother shrieked.  The father caught the son (who had wrested the
+knife from the paternal grasp) up in his arms, carried him down-stairs,
+shoved him into a copper of boiling water among some linen, closed the
+lid, and jumped upon the top of it, in which position he was found with a
+ferocious countenance by the mother, who arrived in the melancholy
+wash-house just as he had so settled himself.
+
+'"Where's my boy?" shrieked the mother.
+
+'"In that copper, boiling," coolly replied the benign father.
+
+'Struck by the awful intelligence, the mother rushed from the house, and
+alarmed the neighbourhood.  The police entered a minute afterwards.  The
+father, having bolted the wash-house door, had bolted himself.  They
+dragged the lifeless body of the boiled baker from the cauldron, and,
+with a promptitude commendable in men of their station, they immediately
+carried it to the station-house.  Subsequently, the baker was apprehended
+while seated on the top of a lamp-post in Parliament Street, lighting his
+pipe.'
+
+The whole horrible ideality of the Mysteries of Udolpho, condensed into
+the pithy effect of a ten-line paragraph, could not possibly have so
+affected the narrator's auditory.  Silence, the purest and most noble of
+all kinds of applause, bore ample testimony to the barbarity of the
+baker, as well as to Bolton's knack of narration; and it was only broken
+after some minutes had elapsed by interjectional expressions of the
+intense indignation of every man present.  The baker wondered how a
+British baker could so disgrace himself and the highly honourable calling
+to which he belonged; and the others indulged in a variety of wonderments
+connected with the subject; among which not the least wonderment was that
+which was awakened by the genius and information of Mr. Robert Bolton,
+who, after a glowing eulogium on himself, and his unspeakable influence
+with the daily press, was proceeding, with a most solemn countenance, to
+hear the pros and cons of the Pope autograph question, when I took up my
+hat, and left.
+
+
+
+FAMILIAR EPISTLE FROM A PARENT TO A CHILD
+AGED TWO YEARS AND TWO MONTHS
+
+
+MY CHILD,
+
+To recount with what trouble I have brought you up--with what an anxious
+eye I have regarded your progress,--how late and how often I have sat up
+at night working for you,--and how many thousand letters I have received
+from, and written to your various relations and friends, many of whom
+have been of a querulous and irritable turn,--to dwell on the anxiety and
+tenderness with which I have (as far as I possessed the power) inspected
+and chosen your food; rejecting the indigestible and heavy matter which
+some injudicious but well-meaning old ladies would have had you swallow,
+and retaining only those light and pleasant articles which I deemed
+calculated to keep you free from all gross humours, and to render you an
+agreeable child, and one who might be popular with society in
+general,--to dilate on the steadiness with which I have prevented your
+annoying any company by talking politics--always assuring you that you
+would thank me for it yourself some day when you grew older,--to
+expatiate, in short, upon my own assiduity as a parent, is beside my
+present purpose, though I cannot but contemplate your fair
+appearance--your robust health, and unimpeded circulation (which I take
+to be the great secret of your good looks) without the liveliest
+satisfaction and delight.
+
+It is a trite observation, and one which, young as you are, I have no
+doubt you have often heard repeated, that we have fallen upon strange
+times, and live in days of constant shiftings and changes.  I had a
+melancholy instance of this only a week or two since.  I was returning
+from Manchester to London by the Mail Train, when I suddenly fell into
+another train--a mixed train--of reflection, occasioned by the dejected
+and disconsolate demeanour of the Post-Office Guard.  We were stopping at
+some station where they take in water, when he dismounted slowly from the
+little box in which he sits in ghastly mockery of his old condition with
+pistol and blunderbuss beside him, ready to shoot the first highwayman
+(or railwayman) who shall attempt to stop the horses, which now travel
+(when they travel at all) _inside_ and in a portable stable invented for
+the purpose,--he dismounted, I say, slowly and sadly, from his post, and
+looking mournfully about him as if in dismal recollection of the old
+roadside public-house the blazing fire--the glass of foaming ale--the
+buxom handmaid and admiring hangers-on of tap-room and stable, all
+honoured by his notice; and, retiring a little apart, stood leaning
+against a signal-post, surveying the engine with a look of combined
+affliction and disgust which no words can describe.  His scarlet coat and
+golden lace were tarnished with ignoble smoke; flakes of soot had fallen
+on his bright green shawl--his pride in days of yore--the steam condensed
+in the tunnel from which we had just emerged, shone upon his hat like
+rain.  His eye betokened that he was thinking of the coachman; and as it
+wandered to his own seat and his own fast-fading garb, it was plain to
+see that he felt his office and himself had alike no business there, and
+were nothing but an elaborate practical joke.
+
+As we whirled away, I was led insensibly into an anticipation of those
+days to come, when mail-coach guards shall no longer be judges of
+horse-flesh--when a mail-coach guard shall never even have seen a
+horse--when stations shall have superseded stables, and corn shall have
+given place to coke.  'In those dawning times,' thought I,
+'exhibition-rooms shall teem with portraits of Her Majesty's favourite
+engine, with boilers after Nature by future Landseers.  Some Amburgh, yet
+unborn, shall break wild horses by his magic power; and in the dress of a
+mail-coach guard exhibit his TRAINED ANIMALS in a mock mail-coach.  Then,
+shall wondering crowds observe how that, with the exception of his whip,
+it is all his eye; and crowned heads shall see them fed on oats, and
+stand alone unmoved and undismayed, while counters flee affrighted when
+the coursers neigh!'
+
+Such, my child, were the reflections from which I was only awakened then,
+as I am now, by the necessity of attending to matters of present though
+minor importance.  I offer no apology to you for the digression, for it
+brings me very naturally to the subject of change, which is the very
+subject of which I desire to treat.
+
+In fact, my child, you have changed hands.  Henceforth I resign you to
+the guardianship and protection of one of my most intimate and valued
+friends, Mr. Ainsworth, with whom, and with you, my best wishes and
+warmest feelings will ever remain.  I reap no gain or profit by parting
+from you, nor will any conveyance of your property be required, for, in
+this respect, you have always been literally 'Bentley's' Miscellany, and
+never mine.
+
+Unlike the driver of the old Manchester mail, I regard this altered state
+of things with feelings of unmingled pleasure and satisfaction.
+
+Unlike the guard of the new Manchester mail, _your_ guard is at home in
+his new place, and has roystering highwaymen and gallant desperadoes ever
+within call.  And if I might compare you, my child, to an engine; (not a
+Tory engine, nor a Whig engine, but a brisk and rapid locomotive;) your
+friends and patrons to passengers; and he who now stands towards you _in
+loco parentis_ as the skilful engineer and supervisor of the whole, I
+would humbly crave leave to postpone the departure of the train on its
+new and auspicious course for one brief instant, while, with hat in hand,
+I approach side by side with the friend who travelled with me on the old
+road, and presume to solicit favour and kindness in behalf of him and his
+new charge, both for their sakes and that of the old coachman,
+
+                                                                      BOZ.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+
+{122}  This paper was written before the practice of exhibiting Members
+of Parliament, like other curiosities, for the small charge of
+half-a-crown, was abolished.
+
+{161}  The regulations of the prison relative to the confinement of
+prisoners during the day, their sleeping at night, their taking their
+meals, and other matters of gaol economy, have been all altered-greatly
+for the better--since this sketch was first published.  Even the
+construction of the prison itself has been changed.
+
+{165}  These two men were executed shortly afterwards.  The other was
+respited during his Majesty's pleasure.
+
+{429}  [In its original form.]
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKETCHES BY BOZ***
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