A young widow!--to what emotions of tenderness and pity do these

words give rise! With what a vivid scene of wretchedness is the mind

oppressed! Do they not tell us a tale--and how briefly too!--of joy

and sorrow, rejoicing and wailing?--happy anticipations and blighted

hopes crowded into one little space? In our mind's eye, we see a fair

and blushing bride, an animated ardent bridegroom, a group of happy

friends, favours, and festivals; in the background of the picture, a

grave. One is missing from the party, never to return; gone from the

light and warmth of love, to the cold but constant embrace of the

tomb,--from the _few living_ to the _many dead_! The atmosphere was

sweet, and life-instilling; an arc of promise was above us: that arc

has vanished, that atmosphere has changed,--it is thick, oppressive,

dank! Hope's lamp flickers, as if it would go out for ever.

This is undoubtedly the cambric-pocket-handkerchief view of the matter,

making, as some would say, the "devils" very blue indeed; but it is

one that strikes many, perhaps all, who are not of a fishy or froggy

temperament: at the same time, we will admit the brush is dipped in

the darkest colours, and that we might have been a little less sombre

by imagining the defunct a fat and apoplectic old fool, who had only

decided upon going to church when he ought to have been looking to the

church-yard; in which case, "a young widow," instead of drawing on

the deep wells of the heart, draws upon our cheerful congratulations,

and stands forth "redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the

irresistible genius of universal emancipation."

Whether under the melancholy or the happy circumstances to which we

have alluded, a young widow is a very different being to what she has

ever been before; in identity of person she is the same, but there is

no identity of position; as regards society, there is no identity of

rights, privileges, licences, or liabilities. The great difference as

regards herself is, that, for the first time in her life, she is her

own protector: many things that she could not do as a girl, and dare

not do as a wife, are now open to her. She has been "made a woman of,"

and is a very independent person. After languishing a fitting time

in calm retirement and seclusion, having "that within which passeth

outward show," she reappears to the world decked in "the trappings

and the suits of woe." We purposely use the word "decked," because

in its most familiar sense it implies "adorned," at least as applied

to the "craft" we are now convoying. We should very much like to be

told, and very much like to see, a more interesting sight than a young

widow, when, after having been laid up in ordinary the ordinary time,

she leaves her moorings, in proper "rig and trim," to prosecute the

remainder of the voyage of life. The black flag is up, and no doubt she

means mischief; but all is fair and above board. No mystery is made of

the metal she carries, the port she is bound for. She may take a prize,

or make one; but it must be by great gallantry if she is captured.

To drop metaphor: a young widow is, we repeat, an extremely delightful

and highly privileged creature. Mark her in society,--we do not care

how limited or how extensive,--and she bears the palm in the interest

that is excited. We will give a showy animated girl of eighteen the

benefit of a first appearance; we will allow her to have excited the

attention of the room, to be the observed of all observers; every one

shall be asking, "Who is the young lady in pink crape?"--she shall have

danced and sung herself into full-blown importance,--she shall have

turned as many heads as she has times in her waltzing;--and then, a

little late in the evening, we will introduce, very quietly,--no loud

double knocking at the door, no voices of servants echoing her name,

no rustling of silks or satins,--a young widow! just "one year off;"

she shall slide gently into the room, seeming to shun observation, as

they all do, (lest perchance some ill-natured person should wonder what

business they have there,)--and, contented with a simple recognition

from her host or hostess, she shall occupy some "silent nook," and rest

satisfied in its shade. Presently, some one shall chance to _speak_

of her as "a young widow,"--the lady of the house, for instance, who

usually occupies every leisure moment in informing groups of her old

visitors the names and et-ceteras of her young ones,--she shall happen

to say, "Excuse me one moment, I _must_ go and speak to poor Mrs.

Willow."

"_Poor_ Mrs. Willow!--what can that mean?" wonder all who hear it.

And then the lady comes back, and explains that Mrs. W. is a widow.

"Poor thing!" says one.

"Only think!" says another.

"How very young!" says a third.

"Any children?" asks a fourth.

"I thought she looked melancholy!" observes a fifth; and then, after

staring at the object of their commiseration and curiosity sufficiently

long to be sure they will know her again, they separate with the view

of advertising the interesting intelligence. It being known to four old

women, and one middle-aged man who doesn't dance, it speedily spreads

over the whole room; and, provided no one intimates off-hand a superior

case of affliction in the person of any one present, the young widow

has to bear the brunt of a very wholesale inspection. There is also a

great deal of wonder; people wonder in classes:--the elderly, What her

husband died of,--the young ladies, Whether she has any family,--the

gentlemen, Whether she has any money. During all this wonderment, "the

young lady in pink crape" is entirely forgotten.

Now, if the young widow should happen to feel at all "at home," and

chooses to "come out" a little, mark what follows: "the young lady in

pink crape" has to dance the remainder of the evening with red-haired,

freckled, pock-marked, snub-nosed, flat-footed fellows, with whom she

would not have touched gloves an hour ago, while all the stylish staff

that then surrounded her, are doing homage at another shrine.

And no wonder!--A girl may be very agreeable and "all that," as people

say when they want to cut description short; but it's impossible she

can hold a candle to a young widow. She is obliged to be circumspect

in all she says,--to weigh every word,--to cripple her conversation,

lest she should be thought forward; but, worse than this, she is so

deuced simple and credulous, that a man with a fine flowing tongue is

apt to mislead her, and place himself in a false position before he

gets through a set of quadrilles; whereas with the other partner it

is _tout au contraire_. "Old birds are not to be caught with chaff;"

and old the youngest widow is, in "the ways of men," compared with the

bread-and-butter portion of the unmarried world. You may rattle on as

much as you please, so may she; you neither of you mean anything, and

both of you know it: besides, no one has a right to forbid it; you are

your own master, she her own mistress. Dance ten times in an evening

with her, and call in the morning. What then!--she has her own house,

her own servants. What more?--she is--able to take care of herself.

So much for a young widow in society, or those scenes of life in

which the actors and actresses play more immediately against one

another; scenes in which tragedy, comedy, melo-drama, and farce--the

last predominating--are brought before us. Now, if we step behind the

scenes, and look a little into the privacy of the domestic circle,

and observe her as one of the "select few," we fancy we shall still

find her maintaining her pre-eminence as an intelligent companion

and delightful friend. When we use the term "intelligent," we do not

presume to say that she is necessarily more acute than she was as a coy

maiden, or than the virgin of our acquaintance, as touching any branch

of historical, artistical, or scientific information; but we mean

intelligent in an unobtrusive but every-day-available knowledge of "men

and things,"--in other words, a knowledge of the world. She has pushed

off from shore, and has learnt a little of the current of life, its

eddies, shoals, and quicksands. She has lost the dangerous confidence

of inexperience, without having acquired an uncharitable distrust; and

smiles at the greenness of girlhood, without assuming the infallibility

of age. She is not too old to have sympathy for youth, nor so young as

to slight the experience of years. In her past, joy and sorrow have

commingled; in her future, hope is chastened by reason.

Some imaginative people of bygone centuries decided that fire produced

all things, and that this fire was inclosed in the earth. Of fire,

Vesta was the goddess; or, as the Romans sometimes thought, Vesta

herself was fire. Ovid is our authority for this:

"Nec tu aliud Vestam quàm vivam intellige flammam."

The same gentleman, also, synonymizes her with another element:

"---- Tellus Vestaque numen idem est."

Now, whether Vesta was fire, or fire Vesta, or whether the earth

and Vesta were one and the same fire, we are not in a condition to

determine; and as there are no muniments of any Insurance Office to

throw light on the matter,--even the "Sun" had not then begun business

in this line,--the curiosity of the curious must remain unquenched.

This, however we know, that Vesta's waiting-women;--we beg their

pardon, the goddess's lady's-maids,--the Vestales of her Temple,

had, beyond the usual routine of their business, such as dressing

and undressing her; waiting her whims, and getting up her linen, the

onerous charge of watching and guarding the holy fire, and lighting

it once a year, whether it required lighting or not. The first of

March was the appointed day for this ceremony; though the first of

April might have been, under all the circumstances, a more appropriate

anniversary. We have no distinct records as to whether these young

women were familiar with the application of flint and steel to tinder,

or whether the royal-born Lucifer had, in those days, taken out a

patent for his matches; there is little reason for regret, however,

in this uncertainty, inasmuch as neither the one nor the other could

have been made use of. The holy fire might be supplied from no common

flame, and they had therefore to ask "the favour of a light" from the

pure and unpolluted rays of the Sun.

Now we humbly conceive that our motive for introducing this interesting

little classical episode must be obvious from its conclusion.

We were talking of one--though certainly not in any probability a

Vestal virgin--whose "sacred flame" had gone out, and we felt we should

be expected to say something of its re-lighting. Thinking, preparatory

to writing, we recollected all that we _have_ written, and we were

interested and amused with the identity of means employed for a common

end two thousand years ago and in the present day; as it then was, so

it now is, managed by _attraction_.

It has just occurred to our reflective mind, that the imaginative

people before-mentioned must have been figurative also; and meant by

earth, human clay,--and by the fire therein, love. We should like to

know what love will _not_ do; and, until we are told, we shall deem it

capable, as the ancients did fire, of producing everything.

And now a few words upon the marriage of a young widow. We might be

expected to discuss the question of second marriages generally, and

weigh the arguments pro and con,--the romance against the reality of

life; but we decline doing so at present, on the ground that, right or

wrong, young widows at any rate have ever had, if possible, and even

will have, a second string to their bow, should grim Death rudely snap

the first,--a second arrow to their quiver, should the first be lost

"beyond recovery."

She marries again,--may we say, loves? If she has loved before, we may

not. _He_ is in the grave, and her "heart is in the coffin there." But

she marries; and, though she may exclaim,

"No more--no more,--oh! never more on me

The freshness of the heart can fall like dew,"

in the spirit of the words,--she takes nothing from their truth by

substituting one reading for another:

"No more--no more,--oh! never more on me

The _greenness_ of the heart," &c.

And this, there is no doubt, she does, as she embarks in matrimony with

comfortable confidence a second time.

It is believed that many very sensible men have married young widows.

Without saying whether we believe it, we may observe that _we_ have

never done anything of the kind, and never intend. This declaration is

not inconsistent with perfect sincerity in all we have said. We have

been treating of young widows _as_ widows, not as wives. Our objections

to any transformation on our own account are many; we shall give only

one,--our extreme diffidence and modesty, which would never allow us

to be judged by comparison as to the essentials of a good husband. So

strong, indeed, is our feeling on this point, that, notwithstanding our

extreme prepossession in their favour, we verily believe that the most

fascinating relict that ever lived, with the best fortune that was ever

funded, might say to us by her manner, as plainly as a brass-plate on

a street-door, "Please to ring the bell-e," only to suffer defeat and

disappointment.

And now we approach the second division, and proceed to pay our

respects to middle-aged widows; generally, stout, healthy-looking

women with seven children. We have omitted, by-the-bye, to observe,

that young widows cannot have more than two, or at the most three,

without losing caste. Seven children form a very interesting family,

and confer considerable importance on their proprietor, of whose

melancholy bereavement they are perpetual advertisements. In proportion

to the number of pledges presented to a husband, is a wife's love

for him; or, if this be not invariable, at any rate in proportion

to her little ones is her sorrow for his loss; particularly when he

dies leaving nothing behind him but the "regret of a large circle of

friends." For some time, the afflicted woman places great reliance on

an extensive sympathy, and has very little doubt that some one will

some day do something: godfathers and godmothers rise into importance,

and directors of the Blue-coat School are at a premium. If she be

fortunate, her motherly pride is gratified before long by gazing on her

first-born with a trimmed head and yellow cotton stockings; and by this

time she generally finds out she has nothing more to expect from any

one but--herself.

We have begun with the poor and heavily-burthened middle-aged widows,

because they are by far the most numerous of the class. It is a

singular thing, that we seldom meet with a middle-aged widow with

a small family, or a large provision. The young and the old are

frequently wealthy; not so the other unfortunates. We suppose the

reason of this is, that the harassing cares of an increasing family

kill off a prodigious number of men; and, inasmuch as these cares would

not have existed had Fortune been propitious, they make their exit in

poverty.

Occasionally, however, we meet with a middle-aged widow without

children, and with fortune, or a comfortable independence. Of such a

one we shall say a word or two. Generally speaking, she looks with

extreme resignation on the affliction that has overtaken her; and, when

she speaks of it, does so in the most Christian spirit. Of all widows,

she is the most sure that "everything is for the best;" and, as she has

no living duplicates of the lost original, her bosom is less frequently

rent by recollections of the past. Anxious, however, to prove her

appreciation of the holy state, and offer the best testimony of her

sense of one good husband, she rarely omits taking a second; and,

purely to diminish the chance of having twice in her life to mourn the

loss of her heart's idol, she generally selects one some ten or fifteen

years younger than herself. We say "selects," because it is very well

known, that, though maids are wooed, widows are not. The first time a

woman marries is very frequently to please another; the second time,

invariably herself: she therefore takes the whole management of the

matter into her own hands. We think that this is quite as it should

be: it stands to reason that a woman of seven or eight and thirty, who

has been married, should know a great deal more about married life

than a young gentleman of twenty-five, who has not. And then he gets a

nice motherly woman to take care of him, and keep him out of mischief,

and has the interest of her money to forward him in his profession or

business,--the principal has been too carefully settled on the lady to

be in any risk.

We do occasionally encounter some "_rara avis in terris_"--a

middle-aged widow who thinks nothing of further matrimony; and so

convinced are we of the "dangerous tendency" of such characters,

that we would at once consign them to perpetual imprisonment. If they

declared their resolution in time, we would undoubtedly try it, by

burying them with their first lover, or burning them Hindoo fashion;

for, supposing them to have no children, to what possible good end can

they propose to live? It is our firm belief that they know too much

to be at perfect liberty, with safety to society; and they must of

necessity be so thoroughly idle, beyond knitting purses and reading

novels, as to make mischief the end and aim of their existence. We

ask fearlessly of our readers this question--"Did you ever in your

lives know an unmarrying, middle-aged, childless widow, who was not a

disagreeable, slanderous, and strife-inducing creature?" If you ever

did, you ought to have tickled her to death,--so as to have avoided

disfigurement,--and sent her in a glass-case to the British Museum.

Perhaps it will be said by some, that they have known such a woman as

we have just enquired about, and that they don't think she merited any

such fate; perhaps they will say that she was a very harmless, pleasant

person, and only remained single because she held her heart sacred

to her departed lord. Cross-grained and ugly middle-aged widows may

occasionally foster this romance; as also may those whose husbands have

exemplified by their wills that jealousy may outlive life, by decreeing

that their flower should lose its sweetness upon another presuming to

wear it,--in other words, that, upon a second marriage, the worldly

advantages of the first should determine.

There is a class of men in the world, who go through two-thirds

of their life single, and who, if you were to believe them, never

entertain the remotest notion of being "bothered with a wife." In some

instances this arises from an early indulgence in dissipation; and,

from keeping very equivocal company. In their own opinion they are

extremely knowing, and are continually wondering "how men can make such

asses of themselves" as to put their necks into the matrimonial noose;

if you attempt to argue with them on the stupidity, if not baseness of

their creed, they assure you confidently that "women are all alike." We

once made a fellow of this sort ashamed of himself, when, having ended

a long tirade, which was a coarse amplification of Pope's line,

"But every woman is at heart a rake,"

we asked him, with sufficient emphasis, "Who his mother and sisters

were _living_ with?"

Another portion of the ring-renouncers are men who are so abominably

selfish, that they would not share an atom of their worldly substance

with the most perfect specimen of "the precious porcelain of human

clay" that the world could produce them;--men who look with horror on

the expenses of an establishment, and live in miserable hugger-muggery

on some first-floor, sponging on their friends to the extremity of

meanness;--men who look upon children with as much horror as that with

which they would view a fall in the funds or the stoppage of their

banker, and see nothing in them but a draft upon their pockets.

There is yet another body of solitaries, much smaller in number

though, than either of the other two;--men who underrate themselves,

and who are so extremely diffident and bashful as never to have "popped

the question," though their tongues have often had the itch to do

it;--men who people their room, as they sit over the fire, with an

amiable woman and half-a-dozen little ones, and, when they rub their

eyes into the reality of their nothingness, sigh for the happiness

of some envied friend. It was necessary that we should make this

digression.

We left the middle-aged widow with a large family and small means,

convinced that, having got one child provided for,--enabling every one

to speak of a kind act as though they had something to do with it,--she

had then only to rely upon herself. She _does_ rely upon herself;

and, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, her

own resources are sufficient to change her state. Men may make fools

of girls, but women make fools of men. In this work of retribution,

middle-aged widows with families pre-eminently take the lead. They work

particularly on those gentlemen whom we have here introduced; and more

particularly and successfully on the first and third class, though the

second are not unfrequently made examples of. It will be said that the

first class are fools to hand: so they are; and, when caught, they find

it out themselves. They are flies, buzzing about and blowing every fair

fame they are not scared from. The widow spreads her web of flattery

and flirtation; and when the poor insect ventures boldly in, confident

that he can at any moment "take wing and away," she rolls him round

and round in her meshes, as a spider does a blue-bottle,--or, to use a

very expressive idiom, she "twists him round her finger," ring-shape.

The consequential, slanderous, and boasting booby sinks into the

insignificance of a caged monkey, and lives and dies a miserable Jerry

Sneak! Look into society, and you will find many of them.

We admit it is a hard fate for a man, whose only failing, perhaps, has

been his modesty, to be secured for the purpose of feeding the hungry

and clothing the naked; but then it must be remembered that, had not a

widow proposed to him, he would never have had courage to propose to

anybody, and that he gets a companion for life and a ready-made family,

instead of lingering on in envy and despair.

Seeing that we have called all widows old, who are on the grave side of

forty, we feel that we have the most difficult portion of our subject

to discuss,--difficult, and, we may add, delicate, because so very few

of those who are obnoxious to what we may say, will be inclined to

admit it; indeed, if we had any hope of getting over this difficulty

by throwing in ten or fifteen years more, we would do so, and date

only from fifty or fifty-five. We know, however, that this would not

extricate us, and so prefer adhering to our original scale. Widows of

forty and upwards command very little of the sympathy that waits on

those bereaved in earlier life. The reason of this, perhaps, is, that

they are not themselves so interesting. It is astonishing how much we

feel through our eyes. We are told that "Pity is akin to love," and we

might enter into some curious speculations as to the various deductions

to be drawn from these words. Supposing we see a young creature of

one-and-twenty, in all the freshness of life and first grief, who has

buried a lover in a husband after two or three years of unalloyed

happiness; she has an infant, perhaps, in each arm. Do we pity her?

Deeply,--acutely; we could almost weep for her. Well; we meet a woman

in the autumn of life, whose summer has been passed with the first

and only object of her affections; hearts that yearned towards each

other in youth, time has made one; in every inclination, wish, hope,

fear, they have heightened the pleasures of life by a mutual enjoyment

of them, and alleviated its sorrows by sharing them together. Death

has divorced them, and we see her--alone! We are very sorry for her,

and her four or five children; it is "a sad loss:"--we say so, and of

course we mean it; but are we as sensitive to this picture as to that?

If we make second marriages a principal feature in this dissertation

on widows, we do so because it is their "being's end and aim," as is

incontrovertibly proved by their all but universality. Old widows,

even if poor, sometimes lend an able hand in the retaliation of which

we have before spoken; but, unfortunately, they also very frequently,

when they happen to have wealth, become themselves objects of scorn

and derision. Perhaps the most offensive creature in existence, and,

save one, the most contemptible, is the worn-out, toothless, hairless,

wrinkled jade, who attempts,

"---- Unholy mimickry of Nature's work!

To recreate, with frail and mortal things,

Her withered face;"

and then, upon the strength of a long purse, puts herself up, a decayed

vessel, to Dutch auction, herself proclaiming what she is worth, to

be knocked down--we are almost unmanly enough to wish it were not

figuratively--to some needy young spendthrift, of whose grandmother she

must have been a juvenile contemporary. Widows of this stamp are almost

always women raised from low stations, from whom, perhaps, little

delicacy or refinement is to be expected. There is hardly a season in

which some carcase-butcher's or grocer's wealthy relict is not the

talk, and wonder, and emetic of the town.

We must not conclude with exceptions, however, where they create so

unfavourable an impression; we will rather turn to those portly and

obliging widows who, after looking a little about them as single women,

fall in with some comfortable old gentleman who very much wants a

housekeeper, and somebody to mix his grog o' nights, and at once agree

to take the situation. The old boy puts all his affairs into her hands,

and they rub on together cosily enough the remainder of their days.

Every one admits it to be "a very suitable match;" if an objection be

made by anybody, it merely comes from some expectant nephews or nieces.

There _are_ widows we think, we must admit it, who, widows once, remain

so for ever, and from inclination, or rather from disinclination

to encourage any impression, or even thought, that might weaken or

interfere with the memory of the past; but we must repeat that they

are never young, and rarely middle-aged widows: they are women past

the meridian of their days, whose griefs, not violent or obtrusive,

have yet been solemn and absorbing; women who have lost the vanity of

believing they can accommodate themselves to any man; and, dwelling

on the happiness they _have_ enjoyed, cherish its recollection as an

act of devotion to one "not dead, but gone before." They wear their

"weeds" as long as they are of this world; and there is always a

quietness, if not gravity of demeanour, that perfectly assorts with

them. In society they are always respected; by those who know them,

loved; they do not hesitate to talk of their married life, and live

over many of its scenes, to those who are interested in listening:

herein they differ from married widows, if we may use the expression,

who very rarely talk of their first union to any one but their

husbands; they, perhaps, hear of it something too much, and too often!

And now, having passed our compliments and paid our respects, we must

take our leave. We have been guilty of one rudeness,--we have had all

the talk to ourselves: in return, we promise to be patient listeners,

should any fair controversialist think fit to propound her views on

this "highly-interesting and important subject."

PETRARCH IN LONDON.

I.

Near Battersea a lonely flower grew,

It was in truth a sweet and lovely thing:

The skies smiled on its blossoming,

And poured into its breast their balmy dew;

Its breath was fragrant as the month of May;

Its face was fairer than the mist that veils

Aurora's self, ere she has bid the day

Laugh on the hills, and smile upon the dales.

Fairest of all!--companions she had none;

For Fate had torn them from her tender side.

She seemed a virgin suing to be won,

And yet all-shrinking in her modest pride.

This cauliflower,--which I now call a flower,--

I took into my arms, and boiled that very hour.

II.

The Irish hodman, on his ladder high,

Surveys each chimney-pot that smokes around,

Then turns his anxious eyes upon the ground

To where his pipe doth in his jacket lie:

Sweet thoughts of "'bacco," and the opium feel

That lays a handcuff on Care's iron wrist.

Come o'er his mind; and pots of porter steal,

Illusive settling on his outstretched fist!

Entranced he stands: the tenants of his hod

Fall down before the spirits of his heart;

Till Reason interferes her magic rod,

"Puts out his pipe," and shows his bricks apart,

So 'twas with me: Ambition once did fix

An airy structure, which fell down "like bricks!"

ADVENTURES IN PARIS.

BY TOBY ALLSPY.

THE FIVE FLOORS.

The Boulevards may be said to perform for Paris the functions fulfilled

by the cestus of Venus towards that amphibious goddess, by surrounding

it with a magic girdle of fascinations. Every sort and variety of

entertainment is to be found comprised in their cincture of the

city,--from the stately Académie de Musique and Italian Opera (full of

dandies and dowagers), to the trestles of rope-dancers, amphitheatres

of dancing-dogs, and galleries of wax-work, (full of ploughboys and

pickpockets,)--and every species of domicile, from the gorgeous hôtel

to the humble stalls of the vendors of liquorice-water and _galette_.

At one extremity we have the costly _menu_ of the Café de Paris, with

its _ortolans_ and _poudings à la Nessebrode_; at the other, the greasy

_fricots_ of La Courtille. The Café Turc brays forth with Tolbecque,

and an orchestra of trumpets and bassoons; the _guinguettes_ of the

Faubourg St. Antoine scrape away with their solitary fiddle. Every

species of shop and merchandize, from the sumptuous _magazin_ of Le

Revenant to the _boutique à vingt-cinq sous_; every species of temple,

from the Parthenonic Madeleine, to that aërial shrine of liberty, the

site of the Bastille. Every gradation of display between splendour and

misery is epitomized in the circuit of the Boulevards.

Play, opera, farce, feats of equestrianism, funambulism, somnambulism,

and humbugism of every colour, industrious fleas, and idle vendors

of magic eye-salve, successively arrest the attention; while in the

vicinity of the Café Tortoni, famous for the coldness of its ices

and heat of its quarrels, the _courtier marron_ plies his trade of

trickery; stock-jobbing has full possession of the _pavé_; and almost

within hearing of the knowing ears of the Jockey-Club, and the ears

polite of the _Club Anglais_, bulls and bears outbellow the fashionable

jabber of the Boulevards.

On emerging from the head-quarters of English Paris,--the Rue de

la Paix,--to the Boulevards des Capucines and des Italiens, the

eye is dazzled by gilding, gas-light, plate-glass, scagliola, or

moulu, varnished counters, and panelling in grotesque and arabesque,

interspersed with glittering mirrors, as appliances and means of

getting off the lowest goods at the highest rate. A little further, and

by an imperceptible gradation, vice succeeds to frivolity. Instead of

milliners and jewellers, we find billiard-tables and gambling-houses,

deepening at length, into the more tremendous hazards of the Stock

Exchange. After passing the vicinity of the Bourse, we come, naturally

enough, to the quarter of the Jews; passing through the speculative

neighbourhood of Le Passage des Panoramas, which is but a splendid game

of chance materialised into stone and marble.

Next to this gaudy section of the modern Babylon dwells solid

trade,--the streets of St. Denis and St. Martin,--accompanied by such

theatres and such coffee-houses as might be expected to minister to

the sensual and intellectual delights of the _marchand en gros_;

melo-drama, and the Porte St. Martin,--the _Cadran Bleu_, and its

unctuous _cuisine_. The vicinage of Rag Fair (the _marché aux vieux

linges_) succeeds; then the Boulevard still bearing the name of

Beaumarchais (the mansion formerly inhabited by the creator of Figaro

being appropriately occupied by a refinery of salt); and lastly, in the

wake of rags and wits, the site of the Bastille,--the rallying-point

of the most seditious parish of Paris, the republican quarter of the

manufacturers, the tremendous Faubourg St. Antoine.

It was precisely at the boundary limit between the pleasure and

business sections of the Boulevards, at the corner of the Rue du

Faubourg Montmartre, on an airy second-floor with a projecting balcony,

commanding a view of the sporting world to the right, and the trading

world to the left,--the idle west, and active east,--that there

lived a certain Monsieur Georges,--a little wizened man, of doubtful

age, doubtful fortune, doubtful reputation. Everything about him was

equivocal. In Paris people occupy themselves far less than in London

with the affairs of their neighbours: the great have something better

to do, the little something worse; the rich being too busy with play,

the poor too busy with work, to have leisure for the dirty scandals

which spring up like _fungi_ in that region of lords and lackeys,

Grosvenor Square. Nevertheless, the porter's lodge of every Parisian

house is a chartered temple of echo, having a gossipry and a jargon

of its own. The porter's lodge knits stockings, reads novels, and

composes romances; peeps into letters, interrogates chambermaids,

and confederates with duns. A man loose in his habits had need be

very close in his domestics, in order to escape the detection of his

porter's lodge.

Yet, in spite of fifteen years' domiciliation in that polished corner

of the Boulevards, Monsieur Georges, though far from a beauty, was

still a mystery. _Madame la portière_ had never been able to discover

whether "Georges" was a surname given by father to son, or a Christian

name given by godfather to godson. She sometimes thought him a single

man, sometimes a double, nay, sometimes a treble. Curious varieties of

the fair sex occasionally visited the balconied saloon,--young, old,

and middle-aged,--shabby-genteels who passed for poor relations, and

glaring tawdry who passed for worse. There was no roost in his abode,

however, either for the birds with fine feathers, or the birds without.

Monsieur Georges's foible was not that of hospitality. His interests

were too intimately cared for by a ferocious _femme de confiance_, who

set himself and his house in order, and caused his establishment to be

designated in the neighbourhood as that of Georges and the Dragon.

If not generous, however, the little man was strictly just; he

gave nothing, but he kept nothing back. He paid his way with the

praiseworthy punctuality remarkable in those who never pay an inch of

the way for other people.

It is a hard thing, by-the-bye, that while male designations leave the

facts of the man's bachelorhood uncertain, a spinster is specially

pointed out by the malice of conventional phraseology. Mr. or Monsieur

may be married or single, as he pleases; but Mrs. and Madame assume,

even on the direction of a letter, their airs of matronly superiority

over Miss or Mademoiselle. While her master rejoiced in his ambiguity

as _Monsieur_ Georges, _Mademoiselle_ Berthe was designated to mankind

and womankind in all the odium of spinsterhood; and exclamations

of "old maid" and "_chissie_" followed her daily passage past the

porter's lodge, the moment the "grim white woman" reached the first

floor.

Among those who indulged in the acrimonious apostrophe, the most

persevering, if not the loudest, was an urchin of some fourteen years

old, whom Monsieur Georges had added to his establishment two years

before, by way of Jack Nasty, foot-page, or errand-boy, under an

engagement to clean Monsieur Georges and the housekeeper's shoes,

without dirtying the ante-room with his own; to work much, eat little,

sleep less; to keep his ears open, and his mouth shut; his hands

full, and his stomach empty; his legs were to be evermore running,

his tongue never. Now, little Auguste, (Auguste in the parlour,

and Guguste in the porter's lodge,) though reared in a provincial

foundling hospital, where infants are fed, like sheep, on a common, by

the score, and washed, like pocket-handkerchiefs, by the dozen, had

unluckily both a will and an appetite of his own. Cleaning Mademoiselle

Berthe's shoes inspired him with a fancy for standing in them; and,

on more than one occasion, he was found to have encroached upon the

housekeeper's breakfast of coffee and cream, instead of contenting

himself with wholesome filtred water. He was forthwith accused of being

a greedy pig, as well as of making a litter in the apartments; till,

after six months of faultiness and fault-finding, Monsieur Georges

pronounced him to be an incorrigible _gamin_, sentenced him to "bring

firing at requiring," and blacken shoes as usual, but to have his

bed in an attic under the roof, (Parisianly called, after the famous

Parisian architect, a _mansarde_,) and his board in the porter's

lodge, where the board was exceedingly hard; Madame Grégoire,--the

knitter of stockings, reader of novels, and coiner of romances for

the corner-house of the Rue Montmartre,--having consented to feed and

cherish him at the rate of twenty-five francs per month, _id est_, five

weekly shillings lawful coin of her Majesty's realm. Monsieur Georges

perhaps intended to starve the saucy gamin into submission; he _did_

almost succeed in starving him into an atrophy.

Guguste, however, was a lad of spirit, and could hunger cheerfully

under the housekeeping of the kind-hearted Madame Grégoire, who made up

for the scantiness of her cheer by the abundance of her cheerfulness,

buttered her parsnips with fine words, and gave the poor half-clothed

_gamin_ the place nearest the _chauffrette_, (fire she had none,) while

Mademoiselle Berthe made the apartment on the second floor too hot

to hold him. Madame Grégoire,--whose only daughter was the wife of a

puppet-showman, and whose only grandson, a seller of sparrows _rouged

et noired_ into bullfinches, or white-washed into canaries, on the Pont

Neuf,--transferred a considerable portion of her unclaimed dividends

of maternal tenderness to the little orphan. Her son was a soldier,

serving (as she said) at Algiers in the Indies, and by no means

likely to enter into rivalship with the slave of Monsieur Georges and

Mademoiselle Berthe's household.

"'Tis a strange thing, my dear child," mumbled the old woman to

Guguste, as they sat down together one day to their six o'clock soup,

(a composition of hot water, cabbage-stalks, half an ounce of bacon,

and a peck of salt,) "that so long as I have held the string[29] in

this house, not a drop of wine, either in piece or bottle, has ever

gone through the gateway to the address of Monsieur Georges! Every

month comes the supply of chocolate from Marquise's for Monsieur, and

from the Golden Bee a cargo of Bourbon coffee and beetroot sugar for

the housekeeper; but of wine not a pint."

"Neither Georges nor the Dragon are honest souls enough to trust

themselves with their cups," said the knowing _gamin_. "Wine tells

truth, they say. None but an ass talks now-a-days of truth lying at

the bottom of a well;--'tis in the bottom of a hogshead of claret.

Ma'mselle Berthe, who can do nothing but lie, is the liar in the well.

_She_ can't keep her head above water."

"But Monsieur Georges, who need entertain no fear of making too free

with his own secrets after a glass or two, inasmuch as no living mortal

ever dips with him in the dish;--surely Monsieur might indulge on

Sundays, and fête days, and the like?"

"And so he does indulge, Maman Grégoire,--so he does! Some folks like

their champagne, some their burgundy. Master loves to take an internal

hot-bath after the English fashion."

"A tea-drinker? _sacristie!_ what effeminacy!" exclaimed the old woman,

bravely swallowing, out of a spoon of _métal d'Alger_, a large mouthful

of tepid cabbage water. "I recollect seeing tea made upon the stage, in

the farce of 'Madame Pochet et Madame Gibou.' _Jésu!_ what nastiness! I

really wonder at Monsieur Georges! So spruce and so cleanly a gentleman

as he looks, when, every evening just as St. Philip's church chimes

the half-hour after seven, '_Le cordon, s'il vous plait_,' gives me

notice of his exit! His superfine blue coat and garnet-coloured velvet

waistcoat without a speck of dust upon them!"

"Thanks to _me_!" interposed Guguste.

"His _toupet_ shining with _huile antique_."

"Thanks to _me_!" continued Guguste.

"His boots varnished like looking-glasses."

"Thanks to _me_!" pursued Guguste.

"His hat smoothed as with an iron."

"Thanks to _me_,--thanks to _me_!"

"His _jabot_ plaited as if by machinery, and white as snow; while his

great diamond studs look out like eyes of fire from the frilling,--"

"Thank to--no, not thanks to _me_!" cried Guguste. "I must own that

Ma'mselle Berthe, who is so much in the starch line, still presides in

the washing and ironing department; and, as to the brilliants, which

you say shine in the dark like cats' eyes, master keeps them like the

apple of his own."

"I wonder what makes him so wonderful particular about his dress after

nightfall?" said Madame Grégoire, peering through her spectacles into

the face which she was preparing to cross-examine. "Humph?"

"Can't say," replied Guguste, tilting the soup-tureen to transfer the

last drop of warm salt-water to his own plate.

"You mean _won't_; you _could_ fast enough if you would, child!" said

Madame Grégoire pettishly.

"Bah!" cried the _gamin_, (who was perhaps of opinion that the kicks,

which, more than half-pence, constituted his salary in Monsieur

Georges's service, formed a tie upon his discretions,)--"how can

_you_, Ma'me Grégoire, who are such a very sensible woman, imagine it

possible, that while I am clearing away the dinner things down stairs

in the porter's lodge, or up stairs in Ma'mselle Berthe's chamber,

I can have an eye to master's proceedings after he has crossed his

threshold! Maybe he goes to the opera."

"Three nights in the week. But the other four?"

"There are fifteen theatres open, as I've heard tell, in the city and

the suburbs," quoth Guguste drily.

"But, gentlemen as _is_ gentlemen (which is what Monsieur Georges calls

himself, however he may be called by others,) don't put on diamond

studs and embroidered waistcoats, to go to the playhouses!"

"Don't they? How should I know?" demanded Guguste, polishing the pewter

spoon on his sleeve as he was accustomed to do those of his master's

double-threaded silver. "What do I see of playhouses?"

"Why, you ungrateful child! didn't I give you a ticket for the pit of

the Porte St. Martin, for that moving piece, 'The Spectre Abbot,' on

the night of Ma'mselle Isoline's benefit, the deputy-double of the

general-utility _jeune prémière_, who lodges up stairs in the back

attic, next but one to your own?"

"Yes; I saw 'The Spectre Abbot,' and Ma'mselle Isoline into the

bargain, with three-quarters of a yard of red calico hanging to her

waist, to represent the 'Bleeding Nun;' but I didn't take any notice

whether the gentleman whose elbows were jammed into my sides wore

diamond studs or velvet waistcoats."

"At all events you must perceive that the highly-respectable gentleman

who occupies our splendid first-floor apartment, (Monsieur Boncoeur,

the deputy,) goes out every evening in his carriage in a very different

costume?"

"Monsieur Boncoeur, in his carriage, need not hoist a flag of

gentility. Monsieur Georges, on foot, might be hustled off the pavement

but for his brilliants."

"More likely _for_ them," said the porteress.

"Besides, Monsieur Boncoeur is, as you say, such a very

respectable-looking gentleman! His dark, square-cut coat, and

pepper-and-salts; his broad-brimmed hat, and sad-coloured gloves;

his whole outward man seems to have been taken measure of as the

picture of respectability! And see what that very respectability has

brought him to! Partner in one of the first houses in the Rue Bergère;

deputy in the chamber; _marguillier_ of the parish; a ribbon in his

button-hole; and the picture of himself and his ribbon face to face

with the portrait of Louis Philippe, at the gallery of the Exposition,

for all the world as if they'd a little word to say to each other

in public. Lord bless you! Monsieur Boncoeur's respectable grey

whiskers, respectable speckled stockings, respectable great-coat and

umbrella, are worth a couple of hundred thousand francs a year to the

banking-house in the Rue Bergère, as vouchers for the square-toeishness

of the firm!"

"Lord love thee, child! at thy years how shouldst thou know so much of

the world!" cried Madame Grégoire, removing her spectacles after this

tirade, as if all further perspicacity were superfluous.

"By being thrown upon it from the moment I had years to count," cried

the urchin. "A foundling hospital, Ma'me Grég. is a famous whetstone,

against which no one can rub without sharpening his wits!"

"But, since thine are so sharp, boy, how comes it thou hast never

discovered whither Monsieur Georges directs his steps every evening,

winter and summer, at half-past seven."

"Because 'tis my business to know, and I prefer my pleasure. I've some

sort of _right_, you see, to interest myself in master's proceedings;

but in those of Monsieur Boncoeur of the first floor, Ma'mselle Isoline

of the attic, Madame la Baronne de Gimbecque, the pretty lady with

the handsome _cachemires_, _coupé_, and black eyes, who lodges in the

_entrésol_, and Madame Courson, the widow lady, on the _troisième_,

I've nothing but wrong; and, accordingly, not a step do they take with

which I am not conversant. I could tell you, if you wanted to know,

where Madame Courson's poor, little, pale, patient daughter, Demoiselle

Claire----"

"Thank ye,--thank ye! I fancy I know more of my lodgers than _you_ do!

All I ask you, is, concerning your master. Monsieur Georges is the

only inmate of this house for whom it has ever been my fortune to pull

the string without discovering, before the end of the first term, the

source of his income, where he came from, whither he was going, and----"

"Good evening, grandmamma!" squeaked a voice at the moveable pane of

the glass-door,--the arrow-slit, or _meurtrière_, through which every

porteress is privileged to parley with visitors at meal-times or in

windy weather.

"'Tis Dodo!" exclaimed Guguste, rising to open the latch for the lean

and impish-looking grandson of Madame Grégoire, whose wistful glances

in eyeing the empty tureen plainly indicated that his visit had been

miscalculated by a quarter of an hour.

"Mother desired me to call and inquire after the rheumatic pain in your

right shoulder," continued Dodo, (the short for Dodore,--which is short

for Theodore, in cockney Parisian.)

"'Twas in my left, and it has left me," said the old woman peevishly;

"and don't sit on that chair, child. The knitting-needles in the

stocking may do you a mischief. How's your mother?"

"Mamma's got a cold, sitting out in the showers yesterday afternoon, to

finish shaving a poodle which a customer was werry particular to get

done in time to go out to dinner."

"Humph! I fancied, Dodo, _you_ had taken that part of the business off

her hands. I thought she made over the scissors to you at Michaelmas

last?"

"And so she did for anything of plain work," replied the brat; "but

this was a choice customer, and a bit of fancy work; a great big

grey _barbet_, which stands as high as a rocking-horse, whose master

is curious in his shaving. The gentleman's a poet, what does the

off-rights _romantique_ for Victor Hugo's plaything playhouse at the

Porte St. Antoine; and, as the vulgars is apt to have their poodles

lion-fashion, Monsieur Eugène gives hisn a mane and forelock; which,

with cropped ears, looks for all the world like a unicorn!"

"What an ass!" cried Madame Grégoire contemptuously, tapping her

snuff-box. "These poet and player folk makes themselves notorious, and

fancies themselves famous!"

"And how goes on your own business, Dodo?" demanded Guguste, assuming

in the presence of the starveling of nine years old the airs of a man

of the world.

"Pretty smart, thank ye. I've just set up two new sparrow-traps in a

ditch under the barrack-wall at Montrouge; and last week I sold a pair

of as fine canaries as a coating of plaster of Paris and gamboge could

make 'em, to a fine English lady in a carriage, as was crossing the

bridge to the flower-market. Gave the brace of birds for nine francs,

one of which I slipped into the hand of her _laquais de place_. But

then I was out of business, you see, for three days a'twards, for fear

of the police."

"Dodo, you'll be disgracing your family one of these days by being took

up!" said Madame Grégoire impressively. "I remember my respectable

first-floor, Monsieur Boncoeur, bringing home a piping bullfinch last

year he'd bought on the Boulevards, whose red breast washed off the

first showery day, all as one as Ma'mselle Isoline's rouge after a

flood of tears in a melodrame! The poor dear gentleman had half a mind

to have up the seller of the impositious bird before the commissary of

the district; only, as he'd paid for it with an old coat unbeknownst to

his valet, and an old coat not being lawful coin of the realm, there

was a doubt in his mind about his power of bringing the vagabond to

justice."

"Which? Himself, or the impositious bird, or the industrious fowler as

was arning a living for his family?" inquired Guguste.

"Hush!" cried Madame Grégoire, laying her hand on the cord as Monsieur

Georges' thin voice was heard giving utterance to his usual evening

cry of "_Le cordon!_" Guguste slunk behind her high-backed chair as

his tyrant passed the window,--his withered, sallow face enlivened

by his gold-mounted spectacles, and his mean person coquetted into

consequence, perforce of velvet and trinkets. Burnished from top to

toe, he was the very moral of one of Giroux's toys, the very _im_moral

of a _chevalier d'industrie_.

Certain that his master's exit would be the signal for his being

fetched out of that, by the shrill summons of Ma'mselle Berthe to set

the place in order, and make up the fire, (against the arrival of her

cousin, Madame Dosne, an ex-box-opener of the Ambigu Comique, who

occupied a chamber in the story above, and was admitted to the honour

of seeing her prim relative play patience, and of sipping a glass of

sugar and water with her on a long winter's evening,) Guguste flitted

upward to the discharge of his duties, leaving the skinny imp of

the Pont Neuf and his grandam to commune of domestic matters. While

waiting the summons of Monsieur Boncoeur's demure-looking footman to

open the gate for the demure-looking chariot of that highly demure and

respectable individual, Madame Grégoire accordingly interrogated the

boy concerning his father's absence from the sweets of his domestic

hearth.

"Papa is making a tour in the south," replied the imp. "He passed the

summer in the Pyrenees. The Pyrenees are quite in fashion in papa's

line of business!"

"Ay, 'tis well for him that Gothon likes him to lead such a rambling

life!" said Madame Grégoire in a moralizing tone. "When my poor

daughter thought proper to marry a showman, I told her how it would be!

To think, now, of a child of mine, a respectable _portière_ in the

same house, of the same parish, for forty years' standing."

"The house?"

"The _house_, ignoramus!--The house is a century old, built by the

Regent Duke of Orleans, father of his unfortunate majesty, Louis XIV,

as you might read in history,--if you knew how to read.--To think

of a child of mine, I say, squatting on a wooden stool, like a wild

Indian, winter and summer, with nothing but a cold river under her

feet, and cold oil-cloth over her head, on the look-out for a poodle in

want of clipping, or some mouse-eaten-out-of-house-and-home baker in

want of a tabby kitten! I protest I never think of my poor Gothon and

her stock-in-trade,--her cage of cats on one side, and her string of

puppies on the other,--without bitter anguish of soul. Why can't your

father stay at home, Dodore, and set up in the Champs Elysées, or at

the _barrières_, like other respectable men of his profession, to be

nearer home?"

"Bless your heart!" remonstrated Dodo, "papa took up his station three

years ago, on the way along the Allée d'Antin, to the Suspension

Bridge. But it all but made a bankrupt of him! There was too much

competition. Pierre the Savoyard, who had his show-box within fifty

yards, has such a winning way with him that not a nurse-maid, or

English lord coming out of Lepage's shooting-gallery, but used to throw

silver to Pierre, where papa took only the brownest of copper. At last,

a nasty, good-for-nothing, designing Jesuit of a fellow set up in

opposition to both on 'em; Scripture pieces, with Jepfa's daughters,

and Dalily and Goliar, a hand-organ, and Dutch pug as held an old hat,

and what not. Papa bore it as long as he was able; but what was the

good of opposition atween friends? He'd nothing in his box but worn-out

things, as old as Methusalem or Jerusalem, or whatever it is, such as

the battle of Marengo, and the Pyramids, and the landing of Xerxes in

the Hellyspunt and a pack of low-lived fancies. So mamma persuaded

him to try the provinces (where, as all the world knows, the stalest

bread goes down); and so, from fair to fair, he's been touring it this

twelvemonth."

"Poor Gothon!"

"Mamma doesn't fret. She says I shall soon be old enough to take

papa's business off his shoulders, and then he'll be able to retire

comfortable; and she'll give up her stall on the Pont Neuf, and the

kitten and canary line, to sister Mary."

Madame Grégoire was about to remonstrate against this perpetuation of

open-air commerce in her posterity, when Monsieur Boncoeur's signal was

given; and, lo, the well-varnished, well-stuffed, but plain chariot of

the thriving banker, rolled after his fat and bean-fed horses out of

the court-yard.

Some minutes afterwards, his portly _femme de ménage_, Madame

Alexandre, stepped into the lodge for a few minutes' gossip with the

porteress previous to proceeding to her evening's _Boston_ with the

grocer's lady at the opposite corner. The comely housekeeper, in her

silk-cloak and bonnet, was naturally an object of dislike and envy to

the withered _portière_, in her ragged merino gown and dingy calico

cap. But Christmas was approaching. Her _étrennes_ for New Year's Day

(to the sum total of which, the first-floor contributed three-fourths)

were seldom absent from Madame Grégoire's calculations. Besides,

Monsieur Boncoeur's housekeeper was to be conciliated as a connecting

link in her chain of domestic investigation; for Madame Alexandre not

only afforded her quota of information concerning her own and her

master's affairs, but, in pure pryingness of spirit, contrived to see

through stone-walls, and hear down chimneys, while striving to put this

and that together concerning those of her fellow-lodgers.

"Well, Madame Grégoire, what is the best news with us this evening?"

demanded the jolly dame, as soon as the porteress had despatched her

hungry grandson home to his mamma, the kittens and canaries. "I'm just

stepping out, you see, for my little game with the Pruins. Poor people,

they can't do without me! If I warn't with them before the clock struck

eight, I should be having them here after me; and, to be filling the

house with visitors during master's absence, is a thing I'm not in

the habit of doing, as nobody knows, better than yourself. Indeed,

it's a matter of conscience that takes me out the moment his back is

turned. As a _femme de confiance_, I'm bound to see there's no waste;

and where there's visitors there _must_ be tippling and stuffing;

so, out of regard to Monsieur Boncoeur's property, I'm seldom in the

house ten minutes after him. I hope I know my duty by so respectable a

master better than to make away with his goods like Ma'mselle Berthe

up yonder, who keeps open house like a lady, with as many rings at

her bells of an evening as e'er a duchess in the land! But, as I was

saying, Madame Grégoire,--(Dearie me, I thought I wasn't by no means

comfortable! I've been sitting on the knitting-needles! lucky my cloak

was wadded!)--as I was saying, have you made out anything further about

them Coursons?"

"Scarce a syllable more than the first day they took possession!

One knowed they was respectable, 'cause our proprietor is exceeding

particular about references,--(there isn't a partic'larer landlord from

one end of the Boulevards to t'other!)--and one knowed they was _poor_,

'cause their moveables came on a porter's truck, instead of occupying a

cart and horse, as becomes a creditable lodger, or instead of occupying

three vans of the _administration des déménagemens_, as was the case, I

remember, when our respectable first-floor moved in."

Madame Alexandre smiled a neat and appropriate smile of acknowledgment

for her master; while the porteress took breath, a pinch of snuff, and

proceeded.

"But as to their origin, and sitch, I know no more than Adam! Not an

acquaintance in the parish! I even put the water-carrier upon asking

about the neighbourhood; but no such name as Courson was ever heard of!

How do we know, pray, who we've got among us? Courson may be a sham

name, such as we reads of in Monsieur Jules Janin's novels!"

"Such rubbish, indeed!" said Madame Alexandre, with a sneer, intended,

like the epithet, to apply to the lodgers on the third-floor, ignored

by the water-carrier and public-houses in the neighbourhood, _not_ to

Monsieur Janin's novels, which were probably familiar to them all.

"Would you believe it, ma'am? there's the saucy minx of a daughter

(Ma'mselle Claire, I think, you told me was her name,) has the owdacity

to bid me good morning or good evening if I haps to meet her on the

stairs, affable-like, as if she felt me her inferiorer! Me! Now I

don't know, Ma'me Grégoire, what your opinion may be, but _I_ holds

(and so does my friends, the Pruins,) that the upper domestics of the

first-floor is on a 'quality with the lodgers of the third, that keeps

no domestics at all."

"Certainly, ma'am, certainly," replied the porteress, still harping on

the amount of her New Year's gift. "But have you made out nothing of

these people's occupations? You're two floors nigher to 'em than me. If

I was in _your_ place----"

"If you was in that of the housekeeper of Monsieur Georges, you mean!

Ma'mselle Berthe's store-closet looks clean into Ma'mselle Claire's

room."

"Looks dirty in," emended the prying porteress.

"And, if Ma'mselle Berthe wasn't as dry as a handful of deal shavings,

maybe I might have demeaned myself to ask her in a friendly way how the

young lady passed her mornings. But Ma'mselle Berthe (the _chissie_!)

condescends to hold just about as much communication with me as one of

the chayney mandarins on the top of master's cabinet,--shakes her head

by way of salutation, and not a word!"

"But, Guguste (Monsieur Georges's little lad of all work and no play)

assured me he saw Ma'mselle Courson ring at Monsieur Boncoeur's bell

the other day, and deliver a letter to the footman."

"Oho! that dirty little _gamin_ plays the spy upon those who rings at

Monsieur Boncoeur's bell, do he?" cried the housekeeper, reddening.

"Very dirty behaviour, I must confess!"

"But, my dear madam, my dear friend," whined the porteress in a tone of

deprecation, "did not you yourself inform me that Monsieur Boncoeur's

footman carried up on Sunday se'nnight, by Monsieur Boncoeur's desire,

to Ma'mselle Claire, a box of apricot marmalade, and the last number of

the '_Follet_'?"

"I said no such thing, ma'am, as I remember. The marmalade and the

journal was both lawfully directed to Madame Courson. I never so much

as insinnivated a word of an intention of attention to Mademoiselle!"

"Then I miscomprehended, ma'am; in which I'm the more to blame,

because, from the highly-respectable character of the mansion for which

I have the honour to pull the string, (there isn't, as I said before,

a more partic'larer landlord than the proprietor from one end of the

Boulevarts to t'other,) I might have known that even the letters of

a gentleman so distinguished as my first-floor would never have been

received by Ma'mselle, the daughter of Madame Courson."

"_That_'s all you know about it,--is it?" cried the lusty housekeeper,

crimsoning with pique. "Then be so good as to tell me what makes such

a young lady as Ma'mselle, Madame Courson's daughter, write written

letters to so distinguished a gentleman as your first-floor? Answer me

that!"

"She couldn't be guilty of anything so heinous!" cried the porteress,

aghast.

"I tell you she _was_!"

"You _must_ be mistaken!"

"Seeing is believing, Madame Grégoire!"

"Ay! you may have seen her _deliver_ a written letter, poor dear, from

her mamma, in all probability?"

"No such thing!--from herself."

"Now, how can you possibly know! Did you see her write it? Do you even

know her handwriting?"

"I know her signature,--'Claire de Courson;' and you told me your werry

self, that the agreement for the lodgings was signed by her mother as

'Emilie de Courson.'"

"But the signature was inside the written letter. How could you see

_that_?"

"No matter; I did see it with my two eyes as plain as I see you."

"And that's plain enough," muttered Guguste, who, having crept back

unobserved into the room, was skulking in a corner.

"Why, sure you didn't go to peep?" said the porteress, with a knowing

look of inquiry and accusation.

"What a one you are!" cried Madame Alexandre, trying to turn off

jocularly her self-betrayal. "But, not to haggle with partic'lars of

how the letter came into my hands, into my hands it came; and what

should it be, but a private confidential _tête-à-tête_ epistle from the

young lady, saying how Monsieur Boncoeur's reputation for benevolence

was up in the neighbourhood, and how he seemed inclined to befriend her

poor mother, (the apricot marmalade, you know!) and how it would be a

great charity (no, not charity,--act of humanity the shabby-genteels

calls it,) if he would exert his interest to procure for her mamma a

privilege to sell stamps, a _bureau de papier timbré_; for which, of

course, his petitioner was ever bound to pray, and so forth."

"I hope they don't think of setting up anything in the shop or office

line in a house like ourn?" cried Madame Grégoire, with dignity.

"They'll find theirself plaguily out of their reckoning!--for I must

say it, who shouldn't say it, that there isn't a more partic'larer

landlord."

"I'll just tell you what," ruthlessly interrupted Madame Alexandre,

twitching her silk cloak, as if meditating departure. "Tonight's

Monday, you know."

"Yes, I _do_ know."

"And that's the reception-night, you know, of the Minister of the Home

Department."

"No, I didn't know."

"And, as sure as life,----"

"Lord lovee, Ma'me Alexandre, don't use that profane expression!

There's nothing less sure than life!" cried Madame G. while Auguste

groaned in the background.

"As sure as a gun, then----"

Again Auguste groaned.

"--Master's gone this evening to the hotel of the _Ministre

de l'Interieur_, to present Ma'mselle Claire's petition for a

stamp-office."

"Do you really think things of that sort are done in that sort of

straight-for'ard way?" demanded the porteress. "_I_ fancied that, when

you wanted anything of government, you got a word said for you to the

cousin of some clerk-of-a-deputy-to-an-under-commissioner, with,

maybe, a genteel little offering, to make it go down,--such as a Savoy

cake, or a China rose-tree in a flower-pot."

"Nonsense! You're thinking of folks of your own species," said the

housekeeper disdainfully.

"You forget that my master, Monsieur Boncoeur,'s a representative of

the nation, a governor of the Bank of France, and a _marguillier_ of

the parish. Master's a right to go straight an end to the king, and

tell his majesty any little wish he may have ungratified. And, if he

_should_ think proper to mention to Louis Philippe Ma'mselle Claire's

desire that her mamma should set up a bureau for stamps, her business

is done!"

They were interrupted by the starting up of Guguste, who was crouching

behind them, and placed an admonitory finger on his lip to impose

silence upon Madame Grégoire's meditated rejoinder, just as a very

white hand, holding a very black key, was intruded into the room

through the porter's window; and the silvery accents of Mademoiselle

Courson were heard, announcing to the porteress that she was going out

for half an hour; and that, though her mother remained at home, she was

indisposed, and could receive no visitors."

"_Visitors_, indeed! Who ever comes to visit _them_, I should like to

know!" muttered Madame Grégoire, after pulling the _cordon_ to admit of

the young lady's egress.

"She certainly _had_ a bundle under her arm!" cried Madame Alexandre,

who had been watching the young lady through the window. "Now, how I

_should_ like to know where she's going."

"To the pharmacy, for medicine for her mother, or to the herborist

for lime-blossoms, to make _tisanne_," said Guguste, who shrewdly

anticipated a request on the part of the elderly ladies that he would

arise and play the spy upon the movements of Mademoiselle Claire.

"Pho! pho! The old lady's only trouble-sick, which would be a deal

worse than body-sick, only that it don't require no physic," observed

the porteress.

"Then she's gone to the laundress."

"Laundress, indeed!" cried the fat housekeeper; "as if low-lived people

like the third-floor wasn't their own laundress!"

"Pardon me, my dear Ma'me Alexandre," cried the porteress. "You know

we don't allow no hanging out in _this_ house. There's not a more

partic'larer landlord in----"

"'Tis my true and honest belief," interrupted the lady in the

silk-cloak, "that the girl is gone to the Mont de Piété! I said to

Robert, our footman, when he was taking up master's apricot marmalade,

that 'twould be a deal more to the purpose if he took up a good dish of

cutlets, or a _fricandeau_; for, as you and I was agreeing t'other day,

my dear Ma'me Grégoire, not an ounce of anything eatable beyond daily

bread ever goes up these blessed stairs to the third-floor. And, what's

more, I've noticed strange changes in Miss and Madam since they took up

in the house; I don't mean in point of growing thin and meagre, 'cause

care alone, without starving, will bring the poor body of a poor soul

down to nothing. But, the day as their goods came in, Ma'mselle Courson

had as good a cloak over her shoulders as the one on mine (which cost

me a good hundred and thirty livres in the Passage de l'Orme,) and

Ma'mselle Claire's having a velvet collar doubtless might be counted

at twenty more. What's become of it, I should like to know?"

"Ay, what's become of it, eh?" added the porteress, tapping her box.

"_Certes!_ people that _has_ a comfortable cloak is apt to put it on

such nights as this!" rejoined the housekeeper; "but I say nothing."

"The young lady may have lent it to her mamma, who is indisposed,"

pleaded Guguste. "Fuel is ris' within the week. I don't suppose they've

too much fire."

"Lent it to her mamma, indeed!" cried Madame Alexandre. "Why, Madame

Courson has as handsome a Thibet shawl as ever came out of Ternaux's

factory."

"_Had_," emended the porteress. "I haven't seen the red shawl on her

shoulders these three weeks. On that point I has my suspicions."

A single rap, Parisian-wise, at the _porte cochère_, produced the usual

professional tug at the _cordon_. The gate flew open; and, peeping in

at the window-pane, was seen the rubicund face of Monsieur Paul Emile

Pruin, the grocer, come in search of his loitering guest.

"So, so, so!" cried he, on detecting her in the thick of gossip

with the grandmamma of Dodore. "_This_ is the way you keep your

appointments, _ma belle voisine_? Haven't we had the hearth made

up these three quarters of an hour, candles snuffed, (_bougies

de l'étoile_, always a-snuffing!) a fresh bottle of _groseille

frambroisée_ ready to be uncorked, and a batch of _biscuits de Rheims_

ready to be opened?--Saw _Monsieur le Député's_ carriage bowl out, and

been hoping ever since to see you bowl in. Poor Madame Paul in the

fidgets, as if she'd swallowed a flight of swallows,--up and down,--in

and out. Sent me over with the umbrella to look after you."

"Thank you,--thank you!" cried Madame Alexandre. "'Tis the first of the

month, you see," she continued, winking at the blind old porteress (to

whom a nod and wink were much alike) to back her apologies. "I'd my

little postage account to settle with my good friend here. But now I'm

at your service. _Allons!_"

"Guguste, my dear, show the lantern to Madame Alexandre over the

_ruisseau_," said the porteress, turning round to look for her boarder.

But Guguste had disappeared. He had perhaps sneaked away to track the

mysterious footsteps of Mademoiselle de Courson.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 29: The business of a porter in Paris is to open the gates of

the house to comers and goers after dusk, by means of a cord, which is

fixed in the lodge.]

MARTIAL IN TOWN.

THE SERVANT OUT OF LIVERY.

Dandle! when thou art asked abroad,

It is not for thy wit reward:

We know that thou canst draw a cork;

In carving, use thy knife and fork;

Canst hand the tea-cups round at tea,

And hold an urchin on each knee;

Canst sort the cards, set tables right,

And see old ladies home at night:

With talents of such vast display,

Thou'rt but a servant for the day!

ASTRONOMICAL AGITATION.

REFORM OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM.

FROM OUR OWN REPORTER.

Yesterday, a numerous and highly respectable meeting of gentlemen

and ladies interested in the stability of the solar system was held,

pursuant to advertisement in the Vox Stellarum, True Sun, &c. at the

sign of the Great Bear in the North Hemisphere, at One P.M. (sidereal

time).

Long before the hour named, the neighbouring constellations were

crowded with a brilliant assemblage of all the beauty and fashion of

the upper regions. Amongst the glittering throng we noticed nearly all

the stars of any magnitude occupying their accustomed places, together

with deputations from various influential bodies interested in the

support of the system; the principal Nebulæ, several Signs of the

Zodiac, a deputation from the Electro-magnetic Grand Junction Company,

and from the Galvanic Branch Association, his Highness the Meridian

with several degrees of Longitude, the Equator with the Latitudinarian

party, the Torrid Zone and his Tropics, their High Mightinesses the

Hurricanes, Mr. Monsoon and the Trades' Union of the South Hemisphere,

the Æthereal and Atmospheric Alliance Company, and, though last not

least, their Royal Highnesses the Planets, who came in state, attended

by a guard of honour of their Satellites in rings and belts, under a

royal salute of Thunder and Lightning.

The great Area of the Constellation was brilliantly lit with Zodiacal

light. Notwithstanding the exertions of a strong party of the

Centrifugal Police Force, assisted by the Comets from the out-stations

under Inspector Halley, and a detachment of the South African

Asteroids, (sent by Sir W. Herschel from head-quarters at the Cape,)

the atmospheric pressure was nearly insupportable, and several of the

ladies were nearly absorbed by the crowd. Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta

appeared to suffer intensely; and we deeply regret to state that one of

the Pleiads is still missing, to the great regret of her lovely sisters

and their brilliant circle. The disorderly conduct of a White Squall

(introduced by Mr. Monsoon) was as conspicuous as the undeviating and

steady regularity of the members of the Trades' Union. Discordant cries

of "Adjourn!" "Adjourn to the Milky Way!" quite drowned the music of

the Spheres.

On the arrival of the Planets, the meeting accordingly adjourned to

the Via Lactea. Cassiopea's Chair (kindly lent for the occasion) was

impartially, if not brilliantly, filled by our old and steady friend

the Pole Star; his fair neighbour and _protegée_, Aurora Borealis,

acted as secretary, and excited universal admiration by her brilliant

rapidity.

The Man in the Moon then rose, and said he had been deputed by the

Sidereal and Solar System Self-supporting Societies, to lay before the

meeting a statement of their reasons for assembling. His indifference

to all sublunary considerations was well known, and he was utterly

incapable of casting reflections upon any body; but he must solemnly

declare that the constant annoyances and insults which he received

from his neighbours the Terrestrials were enough to inflame the temper

of a Fixed Star. (Cheers from the Sidereal benches.) He had heard

much of Tellurian attractions; but he was fortunately not of a warm

temperament, and he would never so far deviate from the orbit of moral

rectitude as to yield to them. The very idea of forming a Tellurian

connexion was repulsive to him: and with his Eccentric tendency, unless

he were warmly supported by the Influential Members of the System, and

by that admirable institution the Centrifugal Force, he trembled for

the consequences of the continuance of such conduct on the part of

the Earth; he should hazard his very Equilibrium, and expose himself

to an attack of Parabola. ("Shame!" and groans.) Ever since that

scoundrel Daniel O'Rourke had obtruded himself upon him, he had had

no peace: the sanctity of Sidereal society had been invaded, and the

mysteries of the Lunarian Œconomy unveiled. (Loud cries of "Shame!"

from Mars and Venus.) He had been, in common with many of those whom

he was addressing, travestied at the Terrestrial theatres. (A voice,

"The Olympic!") He had been exposed to the naked eye by astronomical

lecturers, without even the decent intervention of a spy-glass.

Whichever way he turned his phase, they followed him. But he would

proceed at once to that which had principally induced him to address

them; he meant the Monster Balloon (Confusion) and its crew. (Cries of

"Down with 'em!" "Nebulize 'em!" "Tip 'em the Meteorics!" &c.) Yes,

they had defied the elements, violated the whole of the Gravitation

laws, and endangered the stability of the system itself. (Cheers.) He

(the Honourable Lunarian) did not know where they would stop. Other

aeronauts had respected Lunatic and Sidereal dignity, and had had

the decency to perform their antics by daylight; but these Balloon

Monsters, these vile Misouranists had done it burglariously, and by

starlight. He had indeed been spared the indignity of beholding them;

but all celestial security was at an end, and he did not know when he

rose any evening, whether he should be allowed to set again in peace."

(The worthy Luminary, overpowered by his feelings, sank beneath the

Horizon in a Halo of tears, amidst thunders of applause.)

The Winds rose all at once, and attempted to make themselves heard; and

many of the Siderealists being anxious to neutralize all opposition,

much irregularity and many disturbances ensued, but, the Fixed Stars

surrounding the Chair, and the Centrifugal Force interfering, order was

restored, and

_Mr. Zephyr_, of the Trades' Union, in a scarcely audible whisper,

commenced by expressing his regret at the surface of the meeting

having been ruffled by anything which had _fallen from the Moon_.

(Coruscations of laughter.) The Moon rose to order. "It was a vile

slander of the grovelling Terrestrials,--he never let anything fall:

the meteoric stones--" ("Order, order!") "Mr. Zephyr proceeded. He had

expected a breeze, but was quite unprepared for such a blowing up.

(Cheers.) His own course had been uniformly steady, and the principles

by which he was actuated were now ascertained and appreciated by

high and low. He was neither a Lunatic nor a Terrestrial, but of the

Atmospheric Juste Milieu,--in short, an Aerialist. Whilst he opposed

all undue Planetary influence, and disliked a Sidereal ascendency, he

abhorred a Vacuum, and was deeply interested in the stability of the

Solar System. He could with confidence appeal to his worthy neighbours

the Tropics, and to the whole constituency of the Torrid Zone for

the confirmation of his assertions. ("Hear, hear!" from Cancer and

Capricorn.) He had been accused of blowing hot and cold, (Ironical

cheers from Messrs. Boreas and Auster,) but that was merely because

he was not violent,--not a regular Destructive, like some of his

neighbours, who were always kicking up a dust, and never knew when to

stop. (Cheers from the Trades.) But he would no longer deviate from his

course. It must, he thought, be clear to the least reflecting surfaces,

that these large meetings had a tendency to cause disturbances, and

to lead to serious irregularities. Many of the Stars would be out all

night, and he feared that some of their Royal Highnesses the Planets

would find it impossible to perform their necessary revolutions in

proper time. How could they expect to find Honourable Luminaries ready

to undertake the onerous duties of acting as Morning Stars if all this

night-work were to be allowed? How was it possible, for instance, for

Jupiter to go his circuit, or for Georgium Sidus to keep his distance?

("Order!") He looked upon the Balloon and its crew as mere trifles,

light as air. There was no danger of their rising above their own petty

sphere. It was quite clear that they were within the Gravitation laws:

if they transgressed them, they would be very soon placed _in vacuo_,

and the full penalty levied under the Newton act. That penalty amounted

to a prohibition, for it not only inflicted sixteen feet perpendicular

for the first second, but went on in a rapidly-increasing proportion.

He must be excused for disbelieving the alleged Eccentricity of

the worthy Luminary who rose last. He thought his anticipations of

premature Parabola mere moonshine; he appeared to him to have viewed

the light in which he was regarded by the Terrestrials through a

most distorted medium. He could assure him that he had lately become

the observed of all observers. The Fixed Stars were much better

appreciated, and were considered as peculiarly well calculated for

their places: even the Nebulæ were beginning to be properly estimated;

and a very graphic account of the Double Stars had made them better

known, and had displayed their peculiar sympathies, and numerous and

unprecedented attractions. Even the necessity of Periodical Revolutions

was now admitted below as well as above, and there appeared a strong

tendency to a system of Universal Centralization. His worthy friends

the Atmospherics would bear him out in saying that the doctrine of

'Pressure from without' was understood and acted on to its fullest

extent, and that an important Displacement was generally anticipated.

He begged to be allowed to subside by moving an adjournment _sine

die_." (At this period our reporter was obliged to leave; but we are

happy to say there was every prospect of Mr. Zephyr's motion being

carried.)

THE ADVENTURES OF A TALE.

BY THE HON. MRS. ERSKINE NORTON.

"I could [and will] a tale unfold!"--_Hamlet._

It is with indignation such only as a literary composition, conscious

of its own high value, and smarting under injustice and neglect, can

be supposed to feel, that I lift up my voice from behind the serried

ranks of my companions, long tales and short, the light effusion of

three pages, or the decided weight of three volumes; serious tales or

gay; moral or profane; fine French or low Irish; tales without an end,

and tales that ought never to have had a beginning; tales in ponderous

verse or in gossamer prose; the delicate and brittle ware called

travellers' tales; or those more substantial and important-looking

matters, political economy tales. I say, that from behind this

prodigious phalanx I rise up like Erskine from behind the big-wigs

of the first law-court he addressed, elevating myself as the young

counsellor on his bench, and making myself heard,--not, it is true,

in the general cause of justice, liberty, humanity, and so forth, but

in that cause in which all, if not eloquent, are at least earnest and

sincere,--in the cause of self.

It is said that Minerva (a goddess) sprang from the brain of Jupiter

without a mamma; I, Seraphina (a tale), issued forth from the lovely

head (I am not quite so sure of the brain) of a fair romantic young

lady, without a papa;--at least so I presume, for my composition is

purely feminine; my slight and delicate texture could only have been

woven by an unassisted female imagination.

While yet in embryo, I was christened Seraphina, and was to be composed

in three or four reasonably long letters (ladies' letters, crossed and

re-crossed with different coloured inks,) to Clementina. My respected

parent decided that there was nothing equal to the epistolary form for

describing the sentiments and adventures of a heroine; for who like

herself _can_ lay open all those finer and minuter feelings of the

inmost heart, pouring into the ear of sympathising friendship every

wish, every hope, every thought? Soul meets soul, even through the

vulgar medium of pens, ink, and paper; "thoughts that glow and words

that burn," are traced by the delicate fingers that "resume the pen,"

with a celerity altogether surprising; no agitation can delay, no

fatigue can excuse; the half-dozen sheets of foolscap that are to be

run over before she can lay her throbbing temples on her pillow, her

white drapery (i. e. her night-gown) floating round her, her long hair

unbound (very much out of curl), her snowy feet on the cold marble (she

has lost her slippers), her door carefully locked, but her trellised

casement left open, that the pale moonbeams may peep through it;

her lamp is decaying, her hands are trembling, her eyes swimming in

tears;--_n'importe_, the six sheets of foolscap are finished! O, there

is nothing like the epistolary form! Seraphina shall be in letters to

Clementina;

"Sure, letters were invented for some wretch's aid,

Some absent lover, or some captive maid."--POPE.

I can just recollect, as I began to assume form and consistency, how

much and how dearly I was fondled by my young and doting mother;

indeed, at times, I ran some danger of being killed by kindness. While

transcribing some of the deeply affecting scenes and sentiments with

which I abound, I was nearly obliterated by her tears, my material

parts being composed with a very fine pen and very pale ink; at other

times, when the stronger passions took possession of the scene, and

revenge, hatred, and fury predominated, she would crush me in her hand,

"her eyes in a fine frenzy rolling," and throw me to the other end of

the room. Of course she had some difficulty in smoothing me out again.

Nevertheless I grew in stature, and in favour with mamma, myself, and

four young ladies, her neighbours, (all under fifteen,) who were at

home for the holidays. On the assembling of this little coterie, I was

mysteriously brought forth from my perfumed drawer, where I lay covered

with dried rose-leaves, and read by the author of my being, in a way in

which an author only can read. My young auditory listened in profound

attention and admiration, secretly resolving that they too would try

their unfledged wings in authorship, when they had left off school and

finished their education. Except to these four interesting girls, my

existence was a profound secret.

My composition is certainly enough to excite emulation, however

hopeless. I am (though I say it myself) an exquisite tale. My heroine

is a model of beauty, virtue, tenderness, and thrilling sensibility;

"a perfect wonder that the world ne'er saw;" therefore the world

ought the more to appreciate so rare a conception. Her mother was a

suffering angel on earth; but, happily for herself, she removed to a

more congenial abode, while her cherub child was yet in infancy. The

surviving parent is, of course, a horrid tyrant, who cannot comprehend

the highly-wrought sensibilities of his daughter, and therefore will

not give way to them. There is the suitor favoured by the father,

and the lover favoured by the daughter. There are a locking up,

an elopement, delicate and dubious situations full of excitement,

misapprehensions of all kinds, a false female friend, libertine lords,

fine unfeeling ladies, dark stormy nights, and a catastrophe of the

most extraordinary, pathetic, and soul-subduing interest. And then my

descriptions of nature! my silver moon and diamond stars! my rustling

trees! my woodbine, jessamine, and violets!

A little conceit I acknowledge to, when copied on pale pink, gilt-edged

paper, curiously ornamented with embossed loves and doves, written in

a neat small running-hand, the tails of my letters prettily curled,

plenty of dashes, and very few stops, I was thus headed:

SERAPHINA; OR, SUFFERING SENSIBILITY.

A TALE.

BY A FAIR UNKNOWN.

"Love rules the camp, the court, the grove,

And man below, and saints above,

For love is heaven, and heaven is love."

_Lay of the Last Minstrel._

I was highly scented, and sealed in green wax, with a device of Cupid

tormenting a heart.

The dignified Half-yearly was selected for my debut. It rarely

admitted literature of my class, and such only of acknowledged merit;

consequently it was considered my proper and natural medium. From it,

I was to be commented on and extracted in the monthlies, as well in

Edinburgh and Dublin as in London; I was to be pirated by the Americans

and translated by the French; and at the end of the year I was, by

express permission, to appear in one of the most fashionable annuals,

my tenderest scene forming the subject of a gorgeous frontispiece,

on which the most celebrated artists were to lavish their talents.

The identification of the "Fair Unknown" was to become the puzzle of

the season; and already many scenes of admiring wonder on the part of

others, and of dignified modesty on her own, had been played off in the

active imagination of my dear parent; the acknowledgement of Evelina

by its young authoress to her father, and the final recognition of the

_Great_ Unknown, were her models.

At length, with this dazzling perspective before me, I was dismissed

from the maternal embrace. Betty the housemaid slipped with me out of

the street-door, holding me with a piece of white paper between her

finger and thumb, to prevent her soiling my envelope; while my mother

watched us from the window with tears in her eyes. On reaching the

twopenny post-office, Betty without any ceremony pushed me through a

slit beneath a window, and, to my great discomposure, I fell head over

heels into a dirty box full of all sorts of queer-looking epistles. As

might be expected, I painfully felt this my first tumble (for I cannot

call it _step_) into real from imaginary life. I had scarcely time to

recover from the shock before the box was withdrawn, and we were all

turned out by a fat woman on a horrid thing called a counter, where

we were _sorted_, as she termed it, and distributed, with a rapidity

that was quite confounding, to three or four shabby-looking men having

bags under their arms. I, being the first turned out, was the last the

post-mistress clawed up. She retained me a full minute, twirled me

round, examined my seal, thrust her great finger between my delicate

side folds, and brought me up to her eye to peer if possible into my

inside, when the monster who held his bag open to receive me, called

out,

"Come, mistress,--can't wait no longer!"

"Well," she replied, "bless me, if this don't look for all the world

like a walentine!" and into the bag she reluctantly dropped me,

writhing as I was with pain and indignation.

When I had somewhat smoothed my ruffled plumes, I ventured to look

round on my fellow-travellers, in search of some congenial spirit with

whom I might beguile the tediousness of time, as we jolted along on

the shoulders of the postman; but I looked round in vain. My nearest

neighbour, to my great annoyance, was a butcher's bill, with whom every

jolt brought me in contact; the dirty thing had a wet wafer prest down

by a greasy thumb. I shrank from it with horror, and fell back on an

epistle from a young gentleman at school, which was at least clean, and

in fair round characters; so I attended to what it had to say. The date

took up a large portion of the paper, and then: "My dear mamma,--I have

the pleasure to inform you that our Christmas vacation begins on the

20th. I am very well. I hope you are very well. I hope my papa is very

well; and my brothers and sisters, my uncles, aunts, and cousins. I beg

my duty to my papa, my love to my brothers and sisters, my respects to

my uncles and aunts, and my remembrances to my cousins; and believe

me your dutiful son." I sighed, and turned to a business-like looking

letter, directed in a precise hand to Messrs. ----, in some dark lane

in the city. The names of the persons addressed, and a very exact date,

took up, as in the schoolboy's letter, a vast deal of room, and then

it began: "Gentlemen,--We beg to acknowledge your _favour_ of the 1st

instant--" I could not get any further, for I was suddenly attracted by

a smart-looking and very highly scented affair, sealed, and directed

to a lord; but was disappointed on finding it was only a Bond-street

perfumer's little yearly account of one hundred and fifty pounds for

perfumes, fine soaps, cold-cream, and tooth-brushes. There was no other

very close to me, so I ventured gently to push my way to a curiously

folded epistle directed to Miss Matilda Dandeville, Oxford-street:

"Dear Tilly,--Pray send me, as soon as you can, my close bonnet, for my

nose is nearly off from wearing my pink silk and blonde this freezing

weather. Full of life and fun here! Shall tell you all when we meet.

It will be your turn next; meantime, business, business! money, money!

Love to all inquiring friends." I felt disgusted. Do not gentlemen and

ladies write by the twopenny-post? Nothing but duns, bills, business,

and money! Is there no sense, sentiment, or sensibility, to be found in

a twopenny-postbag? I certainly did observe some fashionable-looking

letters, and one decidedly with a coronet; but they were too far down,

quite unattainable; so I drew myself up as much apart as possible

from the things by which I was so unhappily surrounded, and remained

the rest of the way in dignified stillness. My wounded feelings were

somewhat soothed by observing the awe, mingled with curiosity, with

which I was regarded; and somewhat amused by the perfumer's genteel

account turning its back on the butcher's bill, and the lady of the

pink and blonde squeezing herself into a corner to avoid contact with

a housemaid. The schoolboy alone was at perfect liberty,--and a great

annoyance he was,--evidently delighting to jumble us all together by

a single jump, and constantly peering at my seal, trying to read my

address, and touching my embossed and gilded edges.

At length we reached our district, and that nervous sound, the

postman's rap, was heard in rapid succession down the street; heads

were popped out at windows, and doors were opened, and pence ready,

before we reached. Out hopped the housemaid, out jumped the school-boy;

and, as my fellow-travellers departed, I sank gradually lower, until I

arrived among the genteel-looking letters I had spied at a distance; a

slight shuffle was perceptible among them: their black and red seals

were erected with great gravity, and my pink dye became almost crimson

when I found that, from the gaiety of my attire, they evidently thought

me "no better than I should be;" however I had scarcely time to feel

uneasy, so swift were our evolutions, and so completely were we all

turned topsy-turvy every time the postman's hand was introduced among

us, and that was every minute; the big-wigs lost their dignity, and

as to me, I felt my seal crack like a lady's stay-lace; I thought my

envelope was torn away, and that I myself would have been displayed.

Shocked at the very idea of such a catastrophe, I sank senseless to the

bottom of the bag, and only recovered on being violently shaken from

it, and hearing my brutal conductor exclaim: "Why, here it is, to be

sure; and if it isn't the walentine itself, I declare!" He seized his

pence, and, folding up his empty bag, strode off.

I found myself in the hands of a respectable man-servant out of livery,

who, after having examined me with a look of surprise, introduced me

up stairs into rather a dark and heavy drawing-room, with, however,

a cheerful fire, bookcases, and portraits of distinguished authors.

I lay for some time on a circular table, which was covered with

newspapers and periodicals: there was a dead silence; if I had had a

heart, it would have beaten audibly. At length a side-door opened,

and a young gentleman stept in from an adjoining room; he glanced his

eyes over the table, evidently in search of letters from the post;

and, when he saw me, he smiled, and, picking me up, carried me into

the room he had just left. I am sure he must have felt me tremble in

his grasp. In this apartment, the only furniture was chairs and three

writing-tables, the two smaller of which were occupied by my bearer and

another young gentleman; but at that in the centre was seated a grave

elderly personage, rather large in person, with bushy eyebrows, and

keen penetrating eyes. I, who was extremely ignorant at that time, and

had heard much of the knowledge, power, and dignity of the Half-yearly,

without exactly knowing what it was, took this gentlemen for it

himself. My introducer held me up to his young companion, and a stifled

laugh passed between them; but, recovering his gravity, he laid me on

the Half-yearly's desk, as near under his spectacles as he could bring

me without interrupting his pen. The old gentleman started, frowned,

and, lowering his head, looked at me from above his spectacles, (an

awful way of looking, as is well known,) inquiring gruffly, "What's

this?" "A letter by the twopenny, sir; a lady's verses I should think,

by its appearance." "D---- ladies' verses! Take it away." "Shall _we_

open it, sir?" "Don't pester me!" and in an instant afterwards he was

lost in his important meditations.

The two young gentlemen cut round my seal, and perused the note of the

Fair Unknown, with tears--but not of sympathy. _I_ was then taken up,

and passages here and there recited in an under-tone with mock gravity,

eliciting, in spite of their dread of their superior, bursts of

irrepressible laughter: these, at last, attracted his attention, and,

looking over his shoulder, he angrily inquired what they were about.

"Pray, sir, do look at this! it is quite a curiosity;" and my note was

handed to him.

"A fair unknown, with that modesty which ever accompanies genius; with

faltering accent, timid step, and eyes that seek the ground, presumes

to lay at the feet of the great Half-yearly the first-born of her

imagination! She prays him not to spurn the babe; but to take it,

cherish it, and usher it into the world!--It is his own!"

"Mine!" exclaimed the Half-yearly, settling his wig; "I hope she does

not mean to swear it to me; such scrapes are marvellously difficult to

get out of. Wafer up the babe, if you please, gentlemen, in a sheet

of foolscap, (its proper swaddling band,) and add a sentence to our

Notices to Correspondents."

In a few weeks after this memorable scene, my young and tender parent

was at breakfast with her family, when her father entered, carrying a

new Half-yearly, with leaves uncut, and hot from the press, under his

arm. My mother's heart leaped in her bosom, her face became scarlet,

and her mouthful of bread and butter nearly choked her. Her father

dawdled a little over the advertisements and answers to correspondents:

at the latter he smiled. "What amuses you, sir?" inquired his anxious

daughter in a tone of forced calmness: he read, "A Fair Unknown is

earnestly requested to send for her babe immediately; the Half-yearly

having no intention of cherishing, fostering, furthering, or fathering

it in any way whatever." It was well for his thunderstricken auditor

that the reader became immediately too much absorbed in a political

paper to notice the effect of this appalling blow. She made her escape

unobserved: I was instantly sent for, torn from my coarse envelope, and

pressed to her agonised bosom.

Her four friends had returned to school, she could not therefore have

the benefit of their advice and condolence; and, to tell truth, she

did not appear much to regret this circumstance,--the mortification of

their presence would have been too great.

Betty was not even let into the secret: I was placed in a plain white

envelope, accompanied by a note much less romantic than the first,

addressed to a Monthly; and, being sealed with a more respectable and

well-behaved seal, she hid me in her muff, and dropped me herself into

the same dirty box as before.

The Monthly was not nearly so terrible a person as the Half-yearly.

He was not at home on my arrival in the evening, and I was laid

with several other very literary-looking letters on a table in his

dressing-room, near a good fire, with a lamp ready to light, a pair of

slippers on the hearth-rug, and a large easy chair with a dressing-gown

thrown over it. All this looked sociable and comfortable; and, feeling

quite in spirits, I curtsied respectfully to a moral paper, shook hands

with a political argument, chatted with a _jeu d'esprit_, and flirted

with a sonnet.

The Monthly returned home about midnight in exceeding good humour,

humming an opera tune; he lit his lamp, donned his dressing-gown,

thrust his feet into his slippers, and, having mused a little while

over the fire, ventured a glance at the table. "The deuce take it,

what a lot there are of them!" he exclaimed; "politics, morality,

and poetry I am not fit for to-night, that's very clear; something

entertaining--what's this?" (taking up me)--"a woman's hand--prose--a

tale--just the very thing!" and forthwith I was begun.

Reader, can you imagine--no, you cannot, so there is no use in

appealing to your sympathy--the state of agitation I was in? He read

amazingly fast, and hummed and ha'ed as he proceeded; and, to my utter

astonishment, at one of my most pathetic appeals he burst into a fit

of laughter: in short--I grieve to say it--but I fear the Monthly, as

indeed he himself had hinted, had indulged a little too freely,--had

taken a little drop too much; for, soon after this unaccountable

explosion of merriment, he yawned, settled himself more decidedly in

his chair, read very much slower, and at last, on observing that he

turned over two of my pages at once without finding it out, I ventured

to look up, and, behold! his eyes were closing,--sleep was creeping

over him! I lay aghast, every moment inclining more and more backwards,

till I reposed upon his knee. The pangs of wounded pride, acute as they

were, began to give way to apprehensions of the most serious nature;

his hold momentarily relaxed, and at length I fell--fell over the

fender, reader! and there I lay, roasting like a Spanish priest cooked

by a French soldier, (the French, they say, are excellent cooks,) until

he should discover the hidden treasures of his monastery.

Alas! I thought my treasures were lost for ever to the literary world!

There they lay, scorching and melting, until at last fortunately a

cinder, inspired no doubt by the Muses, leapt out to my protection,

and, by destroying a small portion, saved the remainder; for the smell

of fire became so strong, that a servant, who had just let himself into

the house from a high-life-below-stairs party, came rushing in with a

nose extended to its utmost width, rousing and alarming his sleeping

master. "Deuce take it!" exclaimed the Monthly on perceiving me, "in

ten minutes more we should have been all set on fire by this d--d

_soporific_ (I think that is what he called me). Who would have thought

it had spirit enough to burn!" The next morning I was despatched home,

without a single line, not even an apology, for my miserable condition.

The curse of Cain was upon me: my own mother (who had become engaged

in the creation of another offspring) received me with mortifying

coolness, and beheld my burnt and disfigured tale with horror and

contempt. She gave up all thoughts of the London annuals, (her new pet

was intended for one of them,) and, having coarsely repaired me, I was

put into the general post, addressed to a country annual, the "Rosebud"

of Diddle-town.

The glowing aspirations of youth were chilled, misfortune had set

her seal upon me; but, although hope was diminished, pride remained

unquelled, for, as I glided over high-ways, and jolted over by-ways,

in the Diddle-town coach, I recalled to my recollection all that I had

heard (especially while I lay smothered up for six weeks on the learned

Half-yearly's table) of the many great luminaries of literature who

had struggled into light and life through the dark and chilling mists

of neglect, ignorance, and envy. I had no doubt but that I should yet

burst forth from my cloud, astonishing and dazzling the weak eyes which

had hitherto refused to encounter, or were incapable of dwelling upon,

my beauty and brilliancy.

On being presented to the Diddle-town editor, he immediately seized

upon me with great glee, and carried me off, without reading me, to

the printer's devil; and, to my utter astonishment, I found myself

in the process of printing an hour after my arrival. Although this

consummation had long been devoutly wished, I cannot say I was much

flattered at its mode.

I appeared in the "Rosebud" of Diddle-town. The editor gave out that

I was the production of a celebrated lady-author, anonymous on the

occasion to all but him. I was demurely listened to by a coterie of

old maids, who, on my conclusion, curtsied to the reader and curtsied

to each other, sighed, and inquired if there were a picture; I was

hummed over by two or three lazy half-pay officers; I was spelt over

by a cottage-full of young lace-makers; and I was wept over by the

Diddle-town milliners' apprentice girls.

But my desire for a larger and nobler sphere of action can no longer be

suppressed: I am determined to make known that I exist, and to inform

the reading world, and all who, like many great philosophers of old,

are eager to seek what they are never likely to find, that the Tale of

Seraphina reposes in all its neglected sweetness, and unappreciated,

because unappreciable beauty, on the leaves of the "Rosebud" of

Diddle-town.

WHEN AND WHY THE DEVIL INVENTED BRANDY.

A POPULAR TRADITION FROM THE DUCHY OF SAXE-MEININGEN; TRANSLATED FOR

THE BENEFIT OF THE TEMPERANCE SOCIETIES.[30]

Many years ago, our village (Steinbach) and Winterstein (in the Duchy

of Saxe-Gotha) disputed about the common boundaries. Witnesses were

called from both sides; but the dispute could not be brought to an end,

because each of them spoke in favour of his own village. Amongst these

witnesses were two men,--the one a native of Steinbach, and the other

of Winterstein,--who had been instructed in magic by the devil, to whom

they had sold their souls.

These two men in one and the same night conceived a resolution to erect

false boundary-stones, to which they intended to give an appearance of

antiquity by the help of magic, so that people might suppose they had

stood there, for many years. Both of them, in the figures of fiery men,

went up the hill where was the boundary in dispute. Neither of them

knew of the intentions of the other. When they met on the hill, he who

arrived the last, asked the other,

"What he was doing there?"

"That is no concern of yours!" answered this; "tell me first what _you_

are doing here?"

"I will place boundary-stones, and settle the limits as they ought to

be."

"That I have done already, and there you see the stones; and, as the

stones go, so goes the boundary."

"You are wrong, for the boundary goes this way; and my master told me

that I was in the right."

"Pray, who is your master? A fine gentleman must he be!"

"My master is the devil. Are you satisfied now? and do you feel respect

for me?"

"That is a lie! for the devil is _my_ master; and he told me that I was

right: and, therefore, get off as quick as you can, or you shall see!"

So saying, they threw themselves upon each other; but the man of our

village proved too strong for the other, to whom he gave such a blow on

the mouth that his head flew off and rolled down the hill. The fiery

man without a head quickly ran after it to catch it, and fix it on

again; but he did not succeed in doing so before he arrived at the spot

where the little brook, which flows down the hill, enters the Emse.

Meanwhile, our man, who gave the blow, looked from the hill how the

other chased his own head, when on a sudden a third fiery man stood

before him, who asked,

"What he had done there?"

"That is no concern of yours!" answered our man; "and, if you do not go

your ways immediately, I'll treat you just as I have the other."

"Have you no more respect for me? and don't you know that I am your

master, the devil?"

"And, if you are the devil himself, I care not a straw for you! Go to

h--!"

"And that I'll do," said the devil; "but not without you."

Thus saying, the devil stooped to carry him away on his shoulders; but

our man, watching his opportunity, caught his neck between his two

legs, and then, laying his hands on him, and holding him down to the

ground, he said,

"Now you are in my power; and now you shall feel what my hands are able

to do. You have during your life broken the neck of many a poor man;

you shall now learn yourself how it feels!"

Thus saying, he set about to screw the devil's neck round with all his

might; but, when the devil saw that our man was in earnest, he gave

him good words, and prayed him not to do so, and not to smother him,

promising to do anything he might require.

"As I hear you speaking so piteously," said our man, "I'll let you

loose; but not before you have returned to me the bond by which I

sold you my soul. And, moreover, you must swear to me by your own

grandmother, not to claim any part in me; and, during all your life

hereafter, never to take any man's bond for his soul."

The devil, though not pleased with these conditions, yet, for the

safety of his own neck, could not but return the bond, and even swear

by his grandmother what our man had ordered him to do.

But, as soon as the devil found himself free, he jumped on his legs,

and, retiring a few paces lest the other might take him unawares a

second time, he said,

"Now I am free; and now I must tell you that, though I have returned

your bond, and sworn not to claim any part in you, I have not promised

you not to break your own neck; and that I shall do now, and upon this

very spot you shall die for having throttled me, and for having been

about to smother me."

The devil then rushed upon him in order to kill him; but our man ran

away straight into the wood, the devil after him. But, coming to an old

beech which was hollow, and had likewise an opening beneath, he quickly

crept into it and hid himself, and the devil would have certainly

missed him had not his toe peeped out from the hole; but, his toe being

all fiery, and glistening through the darkness, the devil found out

where he had hid himself, and stept near to catch him by the toe. But

he in the tree, hearing him come, dragged back his toe, and climbed

higher up. The devil then crept likewise into the tree. The other

climbed still higher up, and the devil pursued him, until at last our

man reached another hole high up, through which he crept out. As soon

as he was out, he quickly shut the hole, and jumped as quickly down to

fasten the opening below. And this he did with magic, and did it so

well that the devil himself, nor his grandmother, could have opened

it. Having performed this, he went his ways.

Thus the devil sat in the old beech-tree, and could not come out,

though he bethought himself for a long time how to do so. Thus he

was kept in the beech; and during that time many of our own people,

when going to Winterstein or coming from it, heard him bleating and

grunting. At last, amongst a large lot of trees, the old beech was cut

down, and the devil regained his freedom. The first thing he did was

to hasten down below, and see how matters stood there. It was as empty

as a church during the week, and not a single soul was to be heard or

seen there; for the devil not having returned for so long a while, and

no one knowing where he was, not a single soul had arrived. And that

broke the heart of the devil's grandmother, who died with grief; and,

when she was dead, all the souls who were then there ran away, and went

straight to heaven. Thus the devil stood quite alone, without knowing

how to get new souls, for he had forsworn to take the bond of any man

more, and this was then the only mode in which he would get souls. And

thus he stood there ruminating, and was near to pull out his horns from

his head with grief and despair, when he hit upon an idea. While he had

been in his beech, which stood on the old Hart-place, he had, to while

away his time, bethought himself of many things, and amongst others he

invented brandy. That he remembered in the midst of his grief, and he

conceived at once it would be the best means of getting hold of new

souls.

He immediately went to Nordhausen, and made himself a distiller; and

burnt brandy as much as he could, which he sent into all the world. And

he showed to all the men of Nordhausen how brandy was made, promising

them great riches if they learnt it, and made brandy like him. And the

men of Nordhausen did not oblige him to say it twice, for they all

became distillers, and made brandy like him. And thus it happened that

to the present day there is no other place in the world where there is

so much of brandy burned as at Nordhausen.[31]

And so it turned out as the devil expected. Whenever people got a

little brandy into their stomachs they began to swear, and d--d their

souls to the devil; so that the devil got them when they were dead

without taking any bond from them, and without serving them, as he was

obliged to do before, when he sought a man's soul. When the brandy rose

into their heads, they collared each other, and fought, and broke their

necks; so that the devil was saved all the trouble he had had before in

wringing them. And, if the devil had had before the greatest pains to

be imagined in order to get a poor soul a week for his hell, they came

now by their own accord by dozens and scores every day; and scarcely a

year passed before hell was too small to hold them. The devil was then

obliged to build a new hell at the side of the old one, for the sake of

giving them accommodation.

In one word, since the devil got loose from the beech on the

Hart-place, since that time brandy was introduced into the world; and,

since we have brandy, it may be said "that the devil is loosened," as

our proverb goes.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 30: Germany is very rich in popular traditions. The

nursery-tales collected by the brothers Grimm are known in this country

by two translations. The present tale is written in the very words of

an inhabitant of Steinbach, situate in Saxe-Meiningen, at one mile's

distance from the watering-place of Liebenstein, and containing two

hundred and seventy houses, with one thousand three hundred and thirty

inhabitants, amongst whom are a hundred and sixty cutlers, and eighty

lock-smiths. The inhabitants participate in the principal fancies of

those regions,--singing-birds, flowers, song, and music. The music

bands of Steinbach are some of the best of Germany, and are the delight

of its principal fairs. In our translation we have kept as close as

possible to the words of the man who related it.]

[Footnote 31: Literally true.]

THE WIT IN SPITE OF HIMSELF.

BY RICHARD JOHNS.

Reader, are you a wit? If so, are you a whit the better for so being?

The mere imputation of being a facetious fellow has cost me so dearly,

that I can well imagine what fearful consequences the actual possession

of a real patent from the court of Momus involves. For mine own part,

I may truly say _my_ offences against the gravity of society ought to

have been denominated accidents. Unwittingly have I offended: I have

no pretension to the art of "making a good hit," cutting up a private

acquaintance or a public character, "backbiting," or giving "a slap in

the face." I am no alchymist at retorts, to be able to transmute the

missile aimed at me, into a crown of triumph. If I say a sharp thing,

it is because I did not perceive its point; or I would not have meddled

with it. I never had the knack of running other men's jokes to death by

clapping riders to them; and as to mine own, such as they are, any one

is welcome to the credit of them who will take their responsibilities.

But, ere the speculative reader closes the bargain, let him "listen to

my tale of woe." My father was a wit and a man of letters: he proved

his good sense by marrying a fool,--I beg my mother's pardon; she died

soon after I was born, and I only judge by the character she left

behind her, to say nothing of her MS. poems and common-place book,

which I inherited. When ten years of age, I lost my remaining parent,

he being killed in a duel arising out of a christening-dinner; on

which occasion he originated the _now_ standing joke of wishing the

heir "long life to be a better man than his father." The worthy host,

who was here hinted at, in his relational position, conceiving the

expression implied not only an impossibility, but an impertinence, my

progenitor was called out, and incontinently sent home again with a

hole pinked in his body, which let the existence out of the wittiest

man of his day. With such an example before my mental eyes of the

consequences of being a bright ornament of society, is it to be

wondered that I determined to be the dullest dolt in my school? Alas!

it was declared by all, that a "Winkings" must be a wit and a clever

fellow, in spite of my endeavours to prove the contrary.

If I committed the most egregious blunders in my class, there was

always somebody to say, "Winkings knows better; he is a wag,--a dry

dog; very like a whale, that he can't answer such a simple question;"

and the cheek of the "dry dog" was often wetted by tears; and the "wag"

found the jest no joke; and, if my ignorance was "very like a whale,"

it was one on mine own shoulders, since, if I really knew better, I

certainly got the worst of it. I have been flogged one moment for

pretending to be obtuse, when there was no pretence in the matter; and

the next, for saying impudent things to the dominie, which I had never

intended. I unconsciously quizzed the ushers, to mine own disgrace;

while the writing-master declared, if ever I _did_ write, it must be

without tuition and by intuition, for I was too busy making the other

boys laugh, or worrying them till they cried, to attend to my copy.

Such was my character at a school which I quitted early in my nonage,

having persuaded my guardians that my education was complete, out

of sheer compassion to my master. Had I not left his school, there

was a probability of my being his only scholar, so numerous were the

complaints from my schoolfellows' parents of "that mischief-making,

sly, quarrelsome, impudent little scapegrace, Master Sam Winkings,

who, from all they had heard, seemed quite enough to corrupt a whole

school." Thus early did my unhappy destiny develope itself; people

would have it that I was always saying or imagining evil of them,

setting others by the ears for the fun of the fight, and jesting and

sneering at all the world holds sacred and respectable.

But in those days unjust accusations were of little consequence to me;

if strangers belied me, my immediate relatives were then proud of my

"facetious ways," and my "dry humour,--so like his poor father!" Thus

lauded and encouraged, matters were at one time going on so pleasantly

that I had some intention of favouring the deceit my friends seemed

determined to put on themselves, and, professing myself a wit, take all

the honours for my fortuitous smart sayings, rather than be accused

of affectation in eternally denying them. The tables, however, were

soon turned; and it was well I still stuck to the truth, or disasters

might have more speedily befallen me. As it was, I in due course of

time offended matter-of-fact uncles by jests that I was unconscious of;

shocked the ears of fair cousins by _double entendre_ most unmeaningly;

and robbed maiden aunts of their good names, when I really meant to

compliment their virtues.

But I will at once individualize my misfortunes, and I feel assured

of the reader's sympathy. "Sam," said my uncle John, as he was

breakfasting with me at my chambers in the Temple, where I did

_nothing_, with an air of business: having been called to the bar, "I

want to ask your advice; but you really are such a facetious fellow,

that you even laugh at a man's misfortunes."

"Indeed, sir, you wrong me," I replied, anxious to justify myself, for

I was his reputed heir. "Only state your case, and I will give you as

good advice as if I were your fee'd counsel."

"Well, Sam, you must in the first place know," said the old gentleman,

"that I shall be obliged to stand an action for assault."

"Sorry for it, uncle: I hope it is not a bad action on your part, or

we had better----" I was going to add "compromise, rather than go into

court;" but my worthy relative, who was about one of the most irritable

men in existence, interrupted me.

"Confound you, sir! when _will_ you leave off your puns? What bad

action did I ever commit in the whole course of my life?"

"Beg pardon, uncle, you quite misunderstand me," apologised I, wishing

to explain.

"No, I don't, Sam," retorted he, shaking his head; "your unhappy

propensity is too well known. But I will forgive you this once; only

_do_ be serious. I tell you, boy, it may cost me a cool hundred,

besides expenses."

I again assured him that I was all attention; and as he threw himself

back in his chair, in preparation for a lengthy detail, I quietly

continued my breakfast, only occasionally putting in a "Yes," "Truly,"

"Really," and so on, as Uncle John paused for breath.

"I was down at Brighton last week, as you know, Sam: had a dreadful

headache, and thought a shower-bath would do me good; so went to

the new baths. An attendant almost ran against me in the hall.

'Shower-bath,' said I. 'Yes, sir, in a moment, sir; hot or cold?' 'A

hot shower-bath!' exclaimed I in the very extremity of surprise. 'I

am not used to be jested with, young man.' The fellow stared as if

he did not half understand me; but brushed off, and I walked into

the waiting-room. My head throbbed with pain, and not a little with

perplexity at what the fellow could mean by a hot shower-bath; I had

never heard of such a thing, and thought the rogue was quizzing me.

Well, Sam, to go on with my story, I was soon ushered into a little

bathing-room, with its tall sentry-box, by the same man I had at first

spoken to. 'Get more towels,' said I: there were only three. 'Yes,

sir,' and away went my gentleman; while I stripped, and shut myself up

in the bath. For the life of me, I could not muster resolution enough,

just at first, to pull the string. It is no joke, Sam, to stand the

shock of a deluge of cold water. I can assure you it always seems to

make my red face hiss again."

"No doubt, sir," said I inadvertently.

"Young gentleman," slowly enunciated my uncle, drawing himself up to

his full height in his seat, as if to give greater gravity to his words

by causing them to fall from an increased altitude, "it is not becoming

in _you_ to make such a remark, though _I_ may choose to be a little

facetious on myself. You need not excuse yourself," he added, seeing I

was about to reply; "it is your infirmity; but your wit will one day be

your only portion."

What could I do?--I sighed, let Uncle John go on with his narrative,

and helped myself to an egg.

"Well, nephew, if you can keep from your jokes for a moment, I will

come at once to the assault. I had at last made up my mind to endure

the cold shock, so I pulled the cord. Never shall I forget it: down

came at least six gallons of boiling water! Yes! I am sure it was

boiling: the fellow had done it to spite me. The rascal was entering

the room with the towels at that very moment, and I _had_ my revenge. I

dashed open the door and seized him by the neck. I kicked him, I cuffed

him; he cried out 'Murder!' 'You ordered hot water, sir!' I called him

a liar, and knocked his head against the wall."

Here my uncle became so animated, that he seemed inclined to enact

his story. Reader, I have mentioned that I had helped myself to an

egg. Now, there has long been a question as to the proper mode of

boiling eggs. I like them put into cold water: thus, by the heat being

gradually introduced, the shell is prevented from cracking. My man,

on the contrary, is for plunging the egg into water at boiling-point.

Obstinate fellow! his perverseness on this occasion cost me a thousand

a-year and a house in Lancashire. Uncle John was dashing out his

hand towards my wig, which, in all the majesty of curls, decorated a

block on the side-table, no doubt fancying that he was again going to

throttle the knight of the bath, and I had just discovered my egg-shell

full of vile slimy fluid, instead of the luxurious yolk and white

it would have contained had my rascal obeyed directions. Behold the

consequences! My uncle sprang half out of his seat in the frenzy of

scalding recollections; while I on the opposite side of the table rose

in an agony of vexation, exclaiming "Cracked! cracked! D--the fellow,

always in hot water!"

Reader, did you ever happen to say an ill-natured thing of a person

whom you supposed to have just left the room, but who, in point of

fact, not having progressed many yards from the back of your chair,

suddenly confronts you to thank you for the attention; if so, you may

imagine my uncle's sarcastic acknowledgments. "Thank you, sir; I am

very much obliged to you," said the old man, in a moment recovering

himself from his menacing attitude; "I humbly thank you. Your wit, sir,

will make your fortune. I am cracked, am I? I am always in hot water?"

Then, changing his tone as he stalked from his chair to possess himself

of his hat, he thundered out, "Mr. Samuel Winkings, no longer nephew of

mine,--if a scurvy jest is all your sympathy for your invalid uncle,

jeered at and parboiled by a rascally bath waiter, I wish you a very

good morning!"

In vain I interposed between the old gentleman and the door; I essayed

to explain; I offered to put myself, my servant, upon oath; he would

not listen to me. He declared all wits were liars,--that I had provoked

him past bearing; and away he went, and away went my hopes in that

quarter. Never did he forgive me. He died last week, and the only

mention he favours me with, in his will, runs thus: "To Samuel Winkings

I leave nothing; he can doubtless live by his wit, and I would not

insult him by making him any other provision."

Though Uncle John had discarded me, still Aunt Jemima, a

legacy-huntress all her life, could not carry her quarry to earth

with her. She must in her turn make a bequest; and it was at one time

thought this would be in my favour, till, in an unluckly hour, I

irretrievably lost my place in her good graces. Aunt Jem, as she was

familiarly called by her nephews and nieces, had "great expectations"

from Miss Julia and Miss Maria Beech, very rich ancient maidens,

sufficiently her seniors to make it worth while to calculate what

they would leave behind them. Of course my aunt laid herself out in

every possible way to conciliate these ladies; indeed, among all their

acquaintance, her anxiety to please them was only rivalled by a Mr.

Smith, an elderly gentleman living at Barking, in Essex. He, like

Aunt Jem, took great pleasure in toadyism, though wealthy enough to

have afforded himself much more respectable amusements. There was a

cross-fire of invitations, and a grand struggle every Christmas between

the lady and gentleman legacy-hunters for the possession of the Misses

Beech; and, during a stay I was making last year at my aunt's abode in

Hampshire, I found that, yielding to her superior powers of persuasion,

the worthy spinsters were her own from the approaching Christmas-eve

even until Twelfth-day. "Then they positively _must_ go to Mr. Smith;

he was so pressing, and made _such_ a point of it." This delightful

announcement was conveyed in a letter to mine aunt, received at

breakfast-time, and triumphantly read to me.

"They each of them bring their own maid," said the hospitable lady as

she conned over their epistle; "but I do not mind the expense nor the

trouble; the Beeches are such pleasant companions. I dare say they

won't die worth less than twenty thousand pounds apiece. Now I hope you

intend to make yourself agreeable, Sam. Let us have none of your jests

and your dry sayings. They are--they are staid, serious persons, and

don't like such things, but are partial to sensible conversation. If I

recollect right, the last time Miss Julia was here, she told me she had

three thousand pounds in the Long Annuities. Both she and her sister

treat me with the greatest confidence. I only wish they would not go to

Barking so soon. If we were to make things very agreeable to them, who

knows, Sam, but they might break their engagement with that mercenary

Mr. Smith?"

Thus ran on my aunt, while I silently acquiesced in all she said.

"Why, Sam, you do not seem pleased at the prospect of company!"

"Indeed, aunt," replied I, "I was only thinking you would like my

_room_."

"Will you have _done_ with your jests?" said Aunt Jem, suspecting a

joke in my literal offer, I knowing that ladies' maids are often more

fastidious as to their bedchambers than their mistresses.