THE MINISTER OF MERCY 189

"MERRIE ENGLAND"—NO MORE! 201

SETH THOMPSON, THE STOCKINGER; OR, "WHEN THINGS

ARE AT THE WORST, THEY BEGIN TO MEND" 218

SAM SIMKINS, THE RUN-AWAY; OR, VILLAINY AS A

REFUGE FROM THE TORTURES OF SOUR-GODLINESS 235

KUCKY SARSON, THE BARBER;

OR,

THE DISCIPLE OF EQUALITY.

Once upon a time—and that was when "French principles," as they were

called, were beginning to spread in England, and here and there one

began to profess admiration of the new republic,—there lived in the

little town of Caistor, in North Lincolnshire, a notable barber of the

name of Habakkuk Sarson,—but "Kucky" was the name by which he was

familiarly known; for Lincolnshire folk are a plain folk, and don't

like, nor ever did, to trouble themselves with uttering long cramp

names.

It would be difficult to say how it was exactly, but somehow or other,

in spite of the alarm which landowners and tenantry alike felt at the

broaching of Jacobinism,"—that _terror terrorum_ to the squirearchy

and farmers,—Kucky Sarson contrived to keep a fair share of custom

in the matter of clipping hair and scraping beards. Scarcely an hour

of the day but Kucky had a customer; or if customers scanted, he was

sure to have company for gossip. Perhaps it was chiefly owing to the

frank-heartedness and real courtesy of manner which the barber mingled

with his earnest speech—for he was a very great talker, and a good one

too,—that he was respected by almost all who knew him, notwithstanding

his open profession of the principles of "equality."

Indeed, it was a maxim of Kucky Sarson, that, "if you believed all men

to be equal, you ought to treat every man like a gentleman." "That is

the especial hinderance to the spread of first principles, sir," said

Kucky to a customer one day. "Democrats foolishly imagine, sir, that

democracy consists in barking like a bull-dog, or growling like a bear,

at every man they meet; when, the fact is, that that is just the way to

repel a sensible man from both yourself and your principles. Don't you

think so, sir?"

Kucky's customer would have answered, but Kucky held him at that

moment by the nose, and was applying a keen razor to his upper lip.

The earnest shaver did not think of this, but supposed, since his

customer was a stranger, that he was either modest or unacquainted with

politics; and, in the latter case, Kucky was too true an enthusiast to

omit the opportunity of trying to make a convert—so he resumed, after

clearing his throat with a loud "a-hem!"

"If the beautiful principles of equality do not spread, sir," he

said, resolving to show his best graces of conversational style to

a well-dressed stranger, "in my humble opinion, it will be chiefly

attributable to the miscalculating rudeness of those who affect to

advocate them. These principles, in themselves, are so self-evidently

true, and so happily calculated to ensure the felicity of the human

family, that it is impossible for any unprejudiced man to——"

"Pardon me, friend," said the stranger, extricating his nose from the

barber's fingers somewhat dexterously, "there may be considerable

doubt about the self-evident truth of the principles you are speaking

of: you seem to me to be somewhat too hasty in concluding that every

one, from even a candid review of them, must acknowledge them to be

incontrovertible. Give me leave to say, my good friend, that nothing

will be more stoutly controverted than these same doctrines of human

equality."

"Men may controvert them, sir," rejoined the barber, with some shade

of an approach to asperity of manner, "but I cannot, in my conscience,

give them credit for sincerity. Who was ever born into the world with

a star on his breast or his shoulder, to signify that he ought to rule

his fellows solely by his own will?—or who was ever created with a

crook on his knee, to signify that he ought to bow down to the caprice

of others? No, sir, the doctrines of equality are as clear as daylight

when opposed to the darkness of slavery and mastership. In short, sir,

'Right is every man's, but wrong is no man's right,' was a maxim of my

grandfather,—and I think it settles the question."

"Indeed!" exclaimed the stranger, staring at the barber's last words,

and opening his lips till the lather ran into his mouth.

"Yes, sir—I think so," repeated Kucky, striving to look as confident

as before, but evidently somewhat doubtful, on second thought, of the

conclusiveness of his own odd logic,—"I think so, sir; for, as I hold

it to be a natural right for every man to be governed only by his own

consent, so I conclude it to be wrong for any other man to attempt to

rule him without first asking his will or waiting his choice. I think

those two points are as clear as twice two makes four: the first is a

right, and belongs to every man, and the second is a wrong that should

be practised by no man. Does not my grandfather's precept mean the same

thing—'Right is every man's, but wrong is no man's right?'"

"Pardon me, my friend," replied the gentleman, unable entirely to

suppress a smile, "if I say that I admire your sincerity more than your

logic. Allow me further to say——"

"Oh, allow, sir!" exclaimed the barber, bowing very low, and spreading

out his hands,—"to be sure, I allow every man to judge for himself,

sir. It would be extremely inconsistent in me, who claim the fullest

freedom of opinion myself, to refuse others the liberty of thought,

sir. I pray you, sir, forgive me if I have been a little too positive

in my manner: I will assure you, sir, I am not a bigot,—indeed, I am

not——"

"Stay, stay, my friend!" cried the stranger, puzzled and bothered with

the superlative politeness of him of the razor, "if you will finish

your operation upon my chin, we will have half-an-hour's talk on these

subjects afterwards. In the mean time, believe me, I am happy to find

you are so truly tolerant of other men's opinions: if we all cultivated

that spirit, this world would speedily be much happier than it is."

"Excellent—excellent, sir!" exclaimed the honest and enthusiastic

barber, resuming his shaving, but too much excited to leave his

favourite theme—"you speak like a true gentleman, sir. I see we really

agree, although we may seem to differ; for you have just maintained a

sentiment which is purely in accordance with the principles I profess.

Some great man once said, 'No man was ever born with a saddle on his

back, nor was any other man brought into the world ready booted and

spurred to ride him.' That was a very true and striking saying: do you

recollect it, sir?"

"I recollect it, and admire it much," answered the gentleman; "but I do

not just now remember whose it is."

"Nor I, sir," rejoined the garrulous barber; "but that is of little

consequence, sir: truths are valuable solely for their own weight, and

not for the sake of those who utter them."

"There, again, we differ," observed the stranger. "I think that many

truths are doubly valuable;—first, for their intrinsic excellence,

and often, secondarily, for the sake of the great and the good men

who utter them. For instance, the striking saying you have just

quoted becomes, to my mind, as a passionate lover of his own country,

increasedly valuable, when I remember that it is attributed to the

illustrious patriot-martyr, Algernon Sydney."

"Why, sir," resumed Kucky Sarson, who was the soul of ingenuity

at an argument, "the man, and the truth he utters, are very often

one, essentially. Some men's lives—nay, their very deaths,—are

great truths in themselves,—like the life and death of the noble

commonwealthsman you have just mentioned: in such cases the man becomes

so closely and entirely identified with the truths he utters, that he

and they may be said to be one."

"You are now really becoming too refined for me, my friend," replied

the gentleman, laughing. "But give me the pleasure of your company for

a couple of hours at my inn, if you please, and I will do my best to

discuss these points with you, good-humouredly and charitably, over a

glass of wine."

The barber was making his politest acknowledgments, and was assuring

the gentleman that he felt highly honoured and gratified by his

handsome invitation, when old Farmer Garbutt, a regular customer

of Kucky's for more than thirty years past, although a stout

"church-and-king" man, pushed his burly person in at the little shop

door, and gruffly bidding the barber "good-morning," sat down in the

shaving-chair, which the gentleman had just quitted. Farmer Garbutt

could not have come at a moment when he was less welcome; but Bucky

Sarson could not decline to shave a beard he had shorn for so long a

period, and therefore politely assured the strange gentleman that he

would be with him, at his inn, in the course of a quarter of an hour.

Ere the farmer's beard was cleansed, however, more than one additional

chin had gathered round the chair; and what was most vexing to Kucky,

in his impatient mood, was the "striking fact" that all the chins

and their beards belonged to the most extreme and sturdy opposers of

Kucky's republican principles to be found among his regular customers.

With all his acquirement of _suave_ manners, the poor barber was

greatly in danger of going into a passion, as he heard, first one, and

then another, allude, jeeringly, to the persecution that was commencing

against Kucky's favourite doctrines. Yet he kept down the rising storm

within, though with a considerable struggle:—

"Ay, ay—they'll soon hang all the levellers out o' the way, I'll

warrant 'em!" said gruff Garbutt, rolling his eye in wicked waggery at

his neighbours, and then threateningly at Kucky.

"What else can folk expect that side with cutting off kings' heads?"

cried Bobby Sparrow, a dapper little master-tailor, who made and

repaired habits for the parson, and all the genteel people, of Caistor

and its vicinity.

"More by token—such folk as would pull down all the parish churches,

and murder all the Protestants!" added old Davy Gregson, a fat little

retired man of business, who liked to enjoy his joke,—sitting in a

corner of the old shop, and thrusting his tongue grotesquely into his

cheek,—although he was nearly fourscore.

"You will please to remember, gentlemen," interjected the barber,

driven to the extremity of his temper, "that _I_ am _not_ an advocate

either for cutting off kings' heads, or pulling down parish churches,

or murdering people of any religion, much more my own."

"But ye take part with rogues that do, neighbour Kucky," said Bobby

Sparrow, with provoking pertness,—"and the more's the shame to you!"

"Ay, marry, good faith—that he does!" exclaimed old Davy Gregson,

enjoying the barber's apparent soreness; "and it has always been held

that the abettor is as bad as the thief or the murderer!"

"If you mean to be respected, Kucky Sarson," growled old farmer Garbutt,

"be advised, and give up all your Jacobin notions. The Squire says it

would be ruin for this country to be without a king and an established

church. I had a famous talk with him on all these things at the rent-day;

and so he said: and if such gentlefolk as Squire Pelham don't know what

belongs to good government, I should like to know who does."

"Squire Pelham's great-grandfather was of a somewhat different

opinion," answered the barber: "Peregrine Pelham was his name; and he

signed the death-warrant of Charles Stuart."

"The Lord be merciful to us!" exclaimed old Davy, beginning to look

really alarmed—"why, that was in the time of the awful troubles that

my grandmother used to talk so sorrowfully about!—Surely you don't

wish that such grievous days were come again, do you, Kucky Sarson?"

"God forbid!" ejaculated farmer Garbutt, solemnly.

"You all _know_ I don't, before you ask me," answered the barber, with

some show of dignity. "I defy any one of you to say that there is a

quieter and more upright citizen in England than I am. Who can say that

I ever injured him? who dares say that I ever cheated any man of one

farthing—ay, or that I owe him one? And do I ever try to compel any

man to think as I think? Speak!—any one of you that can charge me with

an act of wrongfulness, or a single speech of intolerance!"

"Well, well—excuse us, Kucky! We all regard you as an excellent

neighbour. But you seem more short about taking a joke than usual,"

answered the dapper little master-tailor.

The barber merely bowed, and said, "Well, well—never mind, never

mind, neighbours! we are none the worse friends for a joke." But he

was conscious that he felt short-tempered, and heartily wished his

customers would shorten their stay, in order that he might visit

the gentleman at his inn. Agreeably to his wish, the farmer, the

master-tailor, and the retired man of business each shook hands

heartily with Kucky, after a few more sentences of restorative

kindness, and bid him "good-day." The barber forthwith doffed his apron

and fore-pocket, adjusted his neckerchief, brushed his hat, exchanged

his shop jacket for his holiday-coat, and crying "Shop, my dear!" to

his wife, hurried away towards the inn, where, according to the strange

gentleman's request, Kucky had promised to meet him.

To the barber's great mortification, when he arrived at the inn the

gentleman had been called out, and had left word that he would be

happy to receive his new acquaintance at six in the evening. Kucky

Sarson felt half disposed to be unhappy with disappointment; for he

feared that he would be unable to leave his shop at that busy hour of

the evening. He was hastening homeward, and striving to banish this

unpleasant feeling, when, passing by the end of a narrow street or

lane, he suddenly saw the strange gentleman in close conversation with

a ragged, dirty-looking female, who seemed by her uncouth garb and

sun-burnt complexion to belong to the wandering race of the gypsies.

The barber stopped short and gazed in astonishment at what he saw. The

woman bent her keen eyes upon him; but the strange gentleman seemed too

much absorbed in looking at and talking to the gypsy to be aware that

he was discovered.

The barber passed on to his shop, pondering much upon what he had

observed.—"What in the name of prudence and propriety!" soliloquised

Kucky, "can such a person have to do with a houseless out-cast and

vagabond of a gypsy?" The more he thought upon it, the more he

wondered; till, in the course of an hour, seeing that no one stepped

into the shop, he felt so exquisitely curious to know the meaning of

what he had seen, that he once more doffed his apron and shop-coat,

put on his holiday covering, and sallied forth again in search of the

strange gentleman's secret.

Turning the first corner of the street, he suddenly ran hard against

his old gossip, Davy Gregson, and nearly knocked him down in his haste.

"Hey-day, Kucky!" exclaimed Davy, "what a hurry you are in!—I reckon

you are posting away to see the gentleman dance with the gypsy!"

Davy Gregson's exclamation operated like lightning upon the barber: he

took to his heels and ran, in the direction from whence Davy came, with

all the mettle he possessed. Just as he was crossing the way, however,

at the end of one street with the intent to run down another, he was

suddenly seized by little Bobby Sparrow, the dapper master-tailor.

"What the dickens are you running so for, Kucky?" asked the little man;

"you'll be too late to see the gentleman huddle the gypsy—it's all

over, and——"

"Huddle the gypsy!" exclaimed Kucky, "I thought he was dancing with

her?"

"So he was: but he fell to kissing and huddling her after that,"

answered Sparrow.

"For Heaven's sake let me go see," cried the barber; and bolted away

again at the hazard of tearing his coat, which the tailor had kept hold

of. But before he had stretched one hundred yards, he was once more

stopped; and this time it was by the strong and effectual gripe of

gruff farmer Garbutt.

"Art thou mad, Kucky Sarson?" asked the farmer, "or what is the reason

that thou art scampering away at such a hare-brained rate?"

"The gypsy!" gasped the barber, still striving to run,—"the gypsy and

the gentleman!"

"Pshaw, man!—the gentleman has suddenly found his sister who was

stolen when she was young," said the farmer: "the gentleman has

explained it all himself, and has taken the young woman into the

Pelham's Arms, where he puts up. I thought thou hadst had more sense,

Kucky, than to run after any crowd that gathered in the street."

"Crowd!" echoed the barber, "was there a crowd then?

"A crowd!" repeated the farmer, "that was there, I assure thee. There:

good-bye, Kucky!" and so saying he loosed hold of his neighbour, who

was now in some degree cooled down.

Kucky Sarson did not set off to run again; but walked musingly on

towards the Pelham's Arms Inn, resolved, if possible, to get at the

bottom of the curious incidents just related. He was shown into the

strange gentleman's room at once, when he had intimated that it would

be inconvenient for him to call at six in the evening. And now the

barber felt completely embarrassed, and quite ashamed of his own

curiosity, in having forced himself upon the stranger so suddenly after

the affecting occurrence he had just been informed of by old farmer

Garbutt. In fact, Kucky had begun to stammer forth very odd apologies,

and was backing out of the room with a profusion of bows and scrapes,

when the gentleman rose, and leading his newly-recovered relative by

the hand, introduced her to his humble visitor. Kucky Sarson recognised

her face for the same he had seen in the narrow street a short time

before; but the altered dress and demeanour of the female caused him to

take her hand with much greater reverence than he would have shown had

that hand been offered him when he first saw its owner.

"I saw you a short time ago, when my brother had just discovered me,"

observed the female, as the barber took her hand.

"You did, madam," replied he, stammering with confusion, and surprised

at the peculiar grace wherewith, he now thought, the gypsy conducted

herself.

"No doubt you felt greatly surprised when you saw us," observed the

gentleman.

"I must say I did," answered the barber, still looking very bashful.

"Did you witness any of my capers in the street, my friend? I am

fearful that I have played a somewhat foolish part, for my elation

well nigh drove me out of my senses. Come, my good friend," concluded

the gentleman, noting the shy look of the barber, "let us sit down,

and, over a comfortable glass of wine, talk over this matter;—not

forgetting your family adage of 'Right is every man's, but Wrong is no

man's right.'"

They were seated accordingly; and the barber, having been plied

with a couple of glasses of claret, and his shame-facedness having

vanished, the gentleman renewed the conversation, with a look of great

good-humour.

"My good friend," said he, "I remember an observation of yours which,

it strikes me, you cannot always bring to bear upon your mind with the

force of a maxim, although you profess to have made it one: it was

that 'When we believe all men to be equal, we ought to treat every

man like a gentleman.' Now, tell me, frankly, did you not completely

forget your principles of equality at the moment you saw me with this

my beloved and only sister, in the guise of a vagabond gypsy?" The

gentleman took the hand of his recovered relative once more in his own,

and they looked with joy and love upon each other.

The barber felt conscience-stricken with the inconsistency between his

philosophy and his practice, in this notable instance, and, despite his

natural loquacity, remained dumb.

"Nay, my good friend," resumed the stranger; "do not think yourself

unlike other people. Let me see you rally, and display the spirit you

did this morning: all the world is too prone to fail in the act of

applying principles and professions to practice."

"I do, indeed, feel," said the barber at length, but still hanging down

his head, "that I have _not_ felt and acted as a disciple of the great

doctrine of equality ought to have felt and acted this day."

"And I think you will not fail to draw this great lesson from your

own experience, my friend," rejoined the gentleman, "that, however

intrinsically true it may be that we are all equal in the eye of Him

who made us, yet our birth, our early associations, our habits,—in

brief, the whole complexity of circumstances with which we are every

hour, nay, every moment, surrounded, renders it absolutely impossible

for any of us to act at all times, or even generally, upon the

conviction of that most undeniable and solemn truth."

"You are perfectly right, sir," replied the barber, conscious that the

stranger spoke the language of common sense, and feeling humbled into

willing discipleship.

"And, granting the doctrine of equality to be strictly true," continued

the gentleman, "yet how long, how very long must it be, ere the race

of mankind shall be able to throw off their prejudices—their present

artificial condition, shall we call it?—so completely as to reinduce

and reinstate that universal equality we have just agreed to be

natural."

"Very sensible, sir," interjected Kucky Sarson; "but I am just

thinking," he added, feeling some return of his usual confidence, "that

equality never will be reinstated, unless we spread its great doctrines

by all the means in our power. Equality must be enuntiated, maintained,

and defended, sir; or, like other truths which have lain hid for ages,

it will not produce any fruit."

"True, my good friend," answered the gentleman; "but permit me to

remind you that practice is more powerful than precept. If we each

sought to act towards our fellow-creatures as if they were really our

brethren and sisters, the principles of a true equality would soon gain

a citadel in each human heart. It is the putting into practice of this

deep conviction of our common brotherhood which is really most worthy

of our endeavours. We may contend against the artificial distinctions

which are established among men till doomsday; but if we do not, on

all occasions, display brotherly feeling towards our fellows, our

contention will produce no salutary effect."

"Indeed, sir," said the barber, "I feel you are by far the more

consistent philosopher of the two——"

"Nay," said the gentleman, cutting short the barber's strain of

intended panegyric; "I would not have you suppose that I am a perfect

practiser of the maxims I am recommending. I never yet found a man

who fulfilled his own definition of a philanthropist, a patriot,

or a philosopher,—that is, if his definition were worthy of being

termed one. I only press this fact upon your notice, my friend:

that I was once in the habit of talking as loudly about equality as

yourself,—nay, even dogmatically about it, and that is _not_ like

your way of talking; but I have ceased to talk about the name, and am

now endeavouring to spread the spirit of it. I try to do all the good

I can, to make every one as happy as I can, to banish all the misery

I can. I cannot always keep in mind that every human being I meet

is my brother or sister; for the force of old habit is such that a

pernicious aristocracy moves within me sometimes, but I try to keep it

down. My friend, I am preaching _to_ you, rather than conversing _with_

you; but we will now leave this subject for some lighter theme, if

you please; only permit me to say, in conclusion, that you must never

believe yourself to be a thorough disciple of Equality while a grain

of offence arises in your mind on seeing a gentleman converse with a

gypsy."

It would be tiresome to pursue any further the conversation of the

barber and the strange gentleman. Suffice it to say that Kucky Sarson

was an altered man from that day, though he never saw the gentleman

again. He subdued the habit of expressing his convictions in terms

which he knew must give offence and create prejudice, rather than

advance truth, couch them as courteously as he might in the flourish

of politeness. He turned his efforts, in the humble sphere of his

conventional existence, rather towards preparing the world for rigid

truth, than towards impelling the people into the acknowledgment

and practice of principles of which they had not as yet learned the

alphabet. These changes, to Kucky Sarson's honour be it spoken, came

over his spirit, not through cowardice,—for he possessed enough

of strength of mind and principle to have braved a prison, had he

thought his lot cast in the fitting and becoming time: it was honest

conviction which acted as a mollifier of Kucky's manners, and the

usefulness of the change in him was evidenced by the greater good he

effected in his modified character. He preserved his grandfather's

favourite saying to the last day of his life; and, as no one sought

more ardently to fulfil the character of an humble philanthropist,—to

alleviate distress wherever he found it,—to soften and dissipate

asperity of temper, and to create the genuine feeling of brotherhood,

and the practice of self-sacrifice among all men,—so his name and

favourite adage were remembered after his death; insomuch that when

a word tending to difference arose among the plain inhabitants of

Caistor-in-Lindsey, it was usually succeeded, and the difference

prevented, by some one observing, "Why, neighbours, what's the use of

wrangling? You know what good Kucky Sarson used to say,—'Right is

every man's, and Wrong is no man's right.'"

RAVEN DICK, THE POACHER;

OR,

"WHO SCRATCHED THE BULL?"

Kiah Dobson,—they always called him Kiah "for shortness sake," as we

used to say in Lincolnshire; but his full name was Hezekiah,—Kiah

Dobson was a hearty buck of a farmer, who ploughed about fifty acres,

and fed sheep and bullocks on about fifty others. He was a tenant of

good old Squire Anderson, the ancestor of the Yarboroughs, who are

called Lords in these new-fashioned times. Lindsey and its largest

landlord presented, it need scarcely be said, very different features

sixty years ago to those they present now. Squire Anderson kept a

coach, but he had not three or four, like his successor, the peer: he

had one good house at Manby, but he had not that and a much grander

one at Brocklesby, another at Appuldercome, in the Isle of Wight, and

another in town.

The farmers of Lindsey kept each a good nag, for market service, and

so forth; but it was a very, very scarce thing to find a blood horse

in their stables; and when their dames went to market, it was on the

pillion-seat, behind the farmer himself, and not in the modern kickshaw

gig. There were none of your strongholds of starvation, which the

famishing thousands call "Bastiles," in those days; and a horn of good

humming ale, and a motherly slice of bread and cheese, awaited the

acceptance of any poor man who happened to be journeying, and called

either at the hall of the squire or at the cottages of any of the

farmers on his extensive estates.

Kiah Dobson was nearing his cottage one November evening, a little

before dusk, when a figure caught his eye, the sight of which roused

his gall,—and yet Kiah was by no means a choleric or hasty-tempered

man. It was Raven Dick, the poacher, that the farmer was so wroth to

see; for Dick was beheld as the farmer had beheld him nearly fifty

times before,—with a bundle of dead hares under his arm. The farmer

turned to cross the home-close in another direction, willing, as it

seemed, to give Dick another fair opportunity of getting safely away.

But "the devil was in Dick for impudence," as Kiah used often to

say,—"if you gave him an inch, he would be sure to take an ell!" Not

content with imposing on farmer Dobson's good-nature forty-nine times

in the course of his harum-scarum life, he must e'en "try it on" for

the fiftieth, and so made the experiment just once too often.

"Farmer! how d'ye feel yoursen?" said Dick, striding up to Kiah Dobson,

and looking him full in the face, as bold as a bull-dog.

"Better than thou'lt feel, scapegrace! when thou gets thy hempen collar

on!" replied the farmer, snarling as angrily as a mastiff when he

doesn't like you.

"May be the thread of it isn't spun yet," retorted Dick, mocking the

farmer's angry tone.

"Surely, old Nick himself isn't more impudent than his children that

wear his own colour!" exclaimed Kiah, darting a withering look at

Dick's black face, for Dick's skin was even swarthier than a gypsy's;

and I might as well say now as at any other time, that the sable shade

of Dick's countenance, coupled with their knowledge of his wild way of

life, were the emphatic reasons why his neighbours gave him the epithet

of "Raven."

Now, above all things, Dick did not like these reflections on his

unfair colour; so, with something in the shape of an oath, Dick

turned his heel in dudgeon, and seemed, not at all to the farmer's

displeasure, to be bent on making his way home.

Dame Dobson, who was a stout country-wife, and was labouring lustily

at her churn, and scolding one of her maids, who had been idling, just

as her husband entered the cottage, caught a sight of the well-known

poacher with the hares under his arm ere the farmer could close the

door, and, with the anger that her maid had kindled, was ill prepared

to brook new provocation.

"Shame on thee, Kiah, for letting that rascal escape so often!"

she exclaimed, screaming so loudly that Dick could hear her words

distinctly, though nearly half way over the close; "it will come to the

Squire's ears at long-last, thou may depend on't! and then thou knowst

what will follow!"

"Hang the villain!" said Kiah, "he really deserves nabbing; and I've

half a mind to go after him and collar him; for, confound him! he grows

more brazenly impudent than a miller's horse! he's getting worse than

come-out!"

"You'll ha' no need to do that," said the incorrigibly idle maiden,

who had gone to the window to peep at the poacher, in spite of her

mistress's fierce scolding, "he's turned again, and has been listening

to you, and now he's coming hither as fast as shanks' horse can carry

him!"

And so it was, for Dick had changed his intent; and, with a perverse

will, now strode, at full stretch, towards the door of the farm house.

"Curse his gallows-neck!" exclaimed farmer Dobson, between his teeth,

when he heard the maiden's words: "has he such a brass-face as that

comes to? I'll nab him this time, or I'm a Dutchman else!"

Raven Dick's foot was on the grunsel almost before the farmer had

finished this last sentence; and throwing himself on a chair in the

kitchen, and the hares on the cottage floor, alike with the air and

impudence of one who braves the gallows, he asked for a horn of ale

and a lump of bread and cheese with as little ceremony as if he had

been a squire in his own mansion. Dick's audacity, however, had now

overstretched its mark. The farmer's strong fist was on Dick's frock

collar in a moment; the next, the farmer had dragged him from his seat;

and, in the third, Dick was prostrate on the cottage floor. Unluckily,

Kiah Dobson's anger overbalanced his caution; and, with the impetuosity

of his own force upon the poacher, Kiah brought himself, also, to the

floor.

Dick had so long careered it over the farmer's fields, by day and by

night, and had so often "snickled," or noosed the hares, as one may

say, under the farmer's nose, and the farmer had all the while taken

it so mildly, that the poacher was never more surprised in his life

than at this portentous assault upon his person by mild, good-natured

Kiah Dobson. Had it not been for his imaginary security of feeling, the

poacher would not so easily have been overthrown. And, as it was, Dick

was not disposed to believe that all was over with him; he speedily

succeeded in wriggling his body from under the farmer's weight, and,

in the course of a few minutes, had his knee upon Kiah's breast, and

began to grab the farmer so tightly by the throat that he soon grew

blacker than Dick himself. Luckily Dame Dobson's churn staff came to

the rescue. She pommelled the hard head of the poacher so soundly,

and her strokes came so thick and fast after each other, that he was

compelled to loose his hold on the farmer's throat, in order to catch

the churn-staff from the farmer's wife. The engagement, however, now

became more furious. Poor Kiah lay gasping on the floor, for some

moments, unable to rise, much less to aim a blow at the adversary;

but the war was at its height between Raven Dick and the dame, and

two stout maidens of her service. Mops, brooms, and brushes were

successively impelled with no playful force towards the seasoned skull

of the poacher, but were shivered with the rapidity of lightning, as

he dexterously caught hold of them, and wrested them from the hands of

his clamorous assailants. The din of female tongues was scarcely less

than the noise of blows; and when the more effective ammunition was all

expended, the discharge was confined, at last, to the small shot of

epithets, poured in every imaginable shape, from the fair musketry of

the three female belligerents' mouths.

The scene had now become as laughable as previously it had been

serious. Raven Dick stood on a chair in the middle of the floor,

drawing his face into the most whimsical forms and mocking the women,

while they stood around him, each with hands on hip, and tearing

their throats with the effort to abuse and irritate, or otherwise to

shame him. The farmer, seeing what turn the war had taken, had seated

himself on a chair, and forgetting his anger, was shaking his sides

with laughter at the ludicrous and unwonted scene presented that night

in his kitchen. The affray at length shrank into silence; the women's

tongues were fairly wearied; they each sat down to rest; and so Dick

sat down, likewise.

"Dang it Dick, thou'rt a good woolled 'un!" said the hearty farmer;

"but thou art an idle rogue, after all."

"How so, Maister Kiah?" asked the saucy poacher; "why do you call me an

idle rogue?"

"Because thou art fonder of stealing than working," quickly replied the

farmer.

"Stealing, say you?" rejoined Dick, his brows knitting together; "I

scorn your words, Kiah Dobson!—You lie in your throat!—What do I

steal?"

"The 'squire's hares, by dozens, thou saucy varlet," answered Kiah.

"How come they to be the 'squire's hares?" asked Dick, fixing his eyes

very keenly on the farmer.

"By feeding and breeding on his land," answered Kiah Dobson.

"But don't _you_ plough the land, Farmer Dobson?"

"To be sure I do——"

"And don't _you_ buy the seed to sow upon the land?"

"Sartainly I do——"

"And don't _you_ sow the seed when you have bought it?"

"Ay, and I can sow a breadth with here and there a fellow in any——"

"Pshaw!—don't _you_ watch the corn while it is growing, weed it, and

attend to it till it is ripe? and do not _you_, with the sweat of your

own brow, and the help of those you hire with your own purse, reap the

corn, and gather it into the stack-yard?—and don't _you_, afterwards,

pay many a shilling in wages for Roger Brown, and Tim Wilson, and

others, to thrash your corn for you?—and don't you consider the corn

_yours_ when you are taking it to market?—and don't you think _you_

have a right to receive the money for which you sell it?"

"Ay, and I would fain be knowing, Dick, who besides has so good a right

to it as I have," replied the farmer, starting to his feet with warmth,

and not apprehending the drift of Dick's queries.

"Then the corn which these poor hares have eaten during the summer,"

said Dick, pointing to the dead animals which lay on the floor, "was

_your_ corn, and _not_ the 'squire's, for you pay him his rent, don't

you, Kiah?"

"Zounds, ay! to the very day," instantly and proudly replied the farmer.

"And yet _you_ durst not kill a hare, and be seen in doing it," said

Dick, not permitting a moment's pause to take place.

"Me kill a hare!" exclaimed Kiah, scratching his head, and colouring

very deeply; "Lord! you know, Dick, I've no licence; and, besides, the

'squire always reckons the hares his own, you know."

"Does he?" said Dick, with a peculiar sneer, "then he's a fool for so

doing.—Why, Farmer Dobson, don't you remember how, last latter-end,

three persons came from Lincoln, and went shooting like wild devils

over the whole estate, murdering and bagging all they could see? And

it's more than likely you'll have a greater number of the Lincoln

Minster Jackdaws, as the 'squire called 'em, this month than you had

last November; and will the 'squire be such a fool as to call the hares

his own then, when the black thieves are packing off with them, think

you?"

"Dang it! thou talks very odd, Dick!" said the farmer, sitting down

very quietly, fixing his eyes on the floor, and scratching his head

harder than before; "thou talks very odd, but what thou say'st is as

true as the gospel, for all that."

"That it is, as sure as eggs are eggs," added the dame, into whose mind

conviction had been entering a little more quickly than into that of

her husband.

"There now!" exclaimed Dick, springing from his seat, and feeling proud

of the power of his argumentation, when he saw both the farmer and his

wife brought over so triumphantly to his side of the question. "There

now, you see, Kiah Dobson, a man may be judged very wrongly, and be

condemned for a thief and a rogue by many who are either—saving your

presence, farmer—thorough fools or rogues themselves, and yet, all

the while, he may be quite as honest as his neighbours. Now, don't you

think it hard, Kiah, under all the circumstances, that _you_ are not

allowed to kill a hare when you like?"

"I'm not thinking so much about that," replied Farmer Dobson, his eyes

still bent very thoughtfully downward—"I'm not thinking so much about

that, as I am wondering how, in the name of Old Nick, these things came

to be as they are. You see, Dick, it was the same in my father's time,

though I've heard him say that my grandfather used to tell how, in

the time of the great troubles, folks killed game when and where they

liked; but that was only owing to the unsettled state of things, for

these laws about the game were made before that time I take it, Dick."

"According to what I've learned about it," said Dick, looking still

more proud than before, and feeling himself superior in information to

the rest of the company, "these Game Laws, as they are called, began

with William the Conqueror, the king that I dare say you've heard of,

farmer, that came from beyond the sea, and got possession of this

country, when——"

"Likely, likely," said the farmer, yawning, and growing wearied of

Dick's learning; "I don't care two straws who first made such laws,

Dick; but I'm sure of one thing—that it must be wrong, when one thinks

on it, that the great folk should claim the wild creatures God Almighty

makes himself as their own, when, all the while, they have no more

right to 'em than other folk."

"To be sure it's wrong, farmer," said Dick. "What right could any man

have, whether he were a king, or a 'squire, or a parson, to say to

all the people of this country, or any other country, 'You shall none

of you kill a stag, or a hare, or a pheasant, under pain of losing a

hand, or going to prison?' The only wonder is, farmer, that people have

submitted to these laws so long and so quietly."

"Why, you see, Dick," continued the farmer, whose common sense was of

a more solid character than Dick's, though his perceptions were not

quite so acute at the outset of an enquiry—"you see, Dick, this law

is contrived, like most other laws, to draw a number of folk into the

love and the liking of it: it isn't simply _one_ man _now_, whatever it

might have been formerly, that is interested in keeping up these Game

Laws. Rich folks generally think they ought to do no other but uphold

'em. They say, that all the game would soon be destroyed if every body

was allowed to kill hares and pheasants when and where they like.

The 'squire, too, sends presents, you know, to his acquaintances the

great folk in London, and elsewhere; and if hares and pheasants and

partridges were as common with poor folk as with rich, why, the great

folk would soon scorn to have 'em on their tables. 'There are wheels

within wheels,' as the miller says, Dick. Rich folk are sure to hang

together on their side of the wheat-sack; and that is the reason—more

than their money, Dick, mind ye! more than their money—why they are

so much more powerful than the poor. And for the self-same reason that

they _are_ so powerful, Dick," concluded the farmer, seeming determined

to finish his speech in spite of the poacher's evident dislike to it,

"I think it is far better for all who love peace and quietness, and a

whole skin, to keep out of harm's way. You understand me, Dick! Come,

dame, fill us a good jug of ale, and let us have a bit of bread and

cheese, or a mouthful of bacon, and Dick and I will talk these things

over a bit, just in a quiet and sensible way."

The dame hasted to set her hospitality before her spouse and the

poacher; and it soon became hard to say which most excelled in the

act of doing justice to it. The strong ale, however, was most freely

partaken by the poacher, and, under its potency, Dick's tongue soon

began to indulge itself with a tolerably large licence.

"I' faith, farmer," he said, "you gave me a roughish reception when I

crossed your threshold; you must do things gentlier another time, when

you're disposed for a cramp: it's only a fool-hardy sort of a thing to

take a bull by the horns: it's ten times wiser, when he makes a butt at

you, to scratch him a bit, and coax him, and smooth him down."

The farmer was a little nettled by Raven Dick's taunting tone and the

devilry of his eye; but he thought one scuffle enough for a day, and

so replied with a somewhat forced look of good humour, "I hardly think

it's wisest at all times, Dick. I think, for my own part, the only way

sometimes is to take a bull by the horns. And besides, Dick, whoever

heard o' such a thing as scratching a bull? You may scratch an angry

cur, you know, Dick," he concluded with a laugh, "but a bull!—no, no,

Dick, scratching a bull won't do at all!"

"I know what I say, Farmer Dobson," cried Dick aloud, thumping one

hand upon the table, and pouring the ale on the outside of the horn,

instead of into it, with the other, "I know what I say,—and I say

_scratching_!"

"Speak in the house, Dick!" retorted the farmer, colouring, "thou wilt

not talk better sense for shouting. I tell thee that that bull's only a

fool of a bull that will stand scratching! Wilt thou make me believe,

think'st thou, that any body would be such a goose, for instance, as to

try to scratch my old white bull in the second home close? Thou won't

venture to scratch him, I'm pretty sartain, Dick, with all thy brag and

bluster to boot!"

"Won't I?" cried Dick, fiercely; "why, what do ye fancy is to hinder

me, eh! old clod-pate?"

"Dick, Dick!" said the farmer, cooling himself with the remembrance

that the poacher was a much younger and inexperienced man than himself,

and tapping the wild youth admonishingly on the shoulder, "it is far

wiser for a man to go steadily about getting his bread, than either

to scratch bulls, or to snickle hares, depend on't. I don't say but

that you have as much right to practise one as t'other, if you feel

inclined; only, you are almost sure to repent it in the end, in either

case: you understand me, Dick?"

"'Od dang it!" hiccupped Dick, setting his ragged hat on one side, and

looking at the farmer as if he intended him to understand he was no

ordinary hero, "do ye think, Kiah Dobson, that I fear aught that may

happen? I say I _will scratch_ your bull; ay, and I'll tame him, too,

as I've tamed you?"

"Better not," replied the farmer drily; "better go quietly home, Dick,

and try to earn thy living honestly, like thy father and thy brother

Ned."

"To Jericho with 'em both!" roared Raven Dick, bouncing up from his

seat: "they're fools both of 'em! I don't intend to slave for ever, and

never have any fun, like them. No, no! I'll have a hare when I like;

ay, and I'll scratch a bull when I like, too!—so here goes!" and out

sallied the intoxicated poacher, snatching up the dead hares as he

went, and placing them under his arm as before. Farmer Dobson and the

dame followed, for their curiosity was, naturally, too highly excited

to permit their remaining behind.

Just as Dick vaulted over the first hedge, for he was in too heroic a

vein to think of taking the stile, though it was close by, Dick met

one who was no stranger to him. It was the squire's gamekeeper. The

moon shone brightly, and the gamekeeper looked hard at Dick, and still

harder at the hares under his arm. But although the gamekeeper had his

gun with him as usual, he most likely felt unwilling to encounter one

so strong, and withal so reckless as he knew Raven Dick to be, for he

did not speak to him. Dick spoke to the gamekeeper, notwithstanding.

"Heigho!" said he, "brother poacher! how are you for fun? just stop

and look at me, while I scratch Kiah Dobson's old bull, will ye?"

and off he went along the hedge-row in quest of his new game, while

the gamekeeper and the farmer and his wife stood gazing after him in

astonishment.

Scarcely sooner said than done! Dick came up to the bull as he lay in

the pasture, quietly and unsuspectingly chewing the cud, and Dick began

to scratch the bull. It need hardly be said that if Dick thought this

very funny, the horned beast's thoughts were of another complexion.

The bull rose, blurred, and ran bang upon Dick, goring his ribs,

throwing him up, and, bounding to the other side of the field, left

the scratcher senseless upon the grass, and all before you could have

found breath to say, "Jack Robinson!" had you been looking on, like the

gamekeeper and farmer and dame Dobson.

Nothing in the wide world could have given the gamekeeper greater

pleasure than Dick's overthrow. "Farmer Dobson," said he, "now is the

time to nab the rascal: fetch your wheelbarrow, and we'll put him into

it, and take him away to the next constable's, and he shall put him

into the close-hole, till justice can be had upon him: it will do the

Squire's heart good, I'm sure, to learn that we have noosed the Raven

at last, after he has noosed so many score brace o' game."

Kiah Dobson's heart felt reluctant to assist in imprisoning Dick,

'scapegrace, although he knew him to be: but how could he refuse

compliance with the request of the squire's gamekeeper, for there lay

the hares by the poacher's side? Besides, as Kiah often used to say,

when he related the story in after years, he reflected that although

Dick was so good a logician on the evils of the Game Laws, yet he had

become so outrageously daring in bidding defiance to danger, that he

feared ill would come on it, if a timely check were not given to his

course. So Kiah went and fetched the barrow, and he and the gamekeeper

lifted Dick into it, and away they wheeled him to the next constable's

house. A surgeon attended to Dick's wounds, when he had brought him to

his senses a little; and, the next week, the squire himself, sitting

in judicial state at the hall of Manby, committed Dick to the House of

Correction for six months.

Dick found the labour of knocking hemp—the usual employ of prisoners

in the gaols of North Lincolnshire at that period—to be but pitiful

"fun." And when he reflected that he would be likely to come there

again, or to some worse place, if he ever afterwards ventured to renew

his practice of "snickling" hares, he steadily resolved to "work like

his father and his brother Ned," as Farmer Dobson advised. Dick's views

on the Game Laws never altered; but he felt, after this sorrowful

experience, it would be worse than folly to dream of violating them

with impunity, in a country where "the rich all hung together on their

own side of the wheat sack," as Kiah Dobson had observed. Now and

then, when he happened to have shaken hands too freely with his old

acquaintance Sir John Barleycorn, even years after his imprisonment,

Raven Dick would be liable to relapse into some shade of his old

feeling, and putting on a "gallows-look," as the landlord of the

Harrows and Plough, in Froddingham, used to call it, he would threaten

to return to his old trade. But there was one saying which, when

"passed about" on the long settle of the public-house, was always sure

to raise a hearty chorus of laughter at Dick's expense, and to have the

effect of dispelling, in a twinkling, all Dick's dreams of having more

"fun:" it was—"Who scratched the Bull?"

TIM SWALLOW-WHISTLE, THE TAILOR;

OR,

"EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY."

Tim Swallow-whistle, the tailor, lived at Horncastle, a thriving little

agricultural town in the centre of Lincolnshire, and now well-known

even to the verge of Europe for its prodigious yearly horse fair, to

which Russ and Pruss, Netherlander and Austrian, Frenchman, Swiss,

and Italian, with even, at times, the turban'd Turk, may be beheld

flocking to purchase from the rare show of steeds: "but let that

pass!" Tim was not one of your fashionable tailors, it is true, but he

was reckoned an "uncommon neat hand" at his trade. Indeed, old Cocky

Davy, who was a very emperor among the Lincolnshire tailors, always

declared Tim to be the cleverest apprentice that ever received his

indentures at his hands. Old Cocky—he was so termed on account of the

particular loftiness of his carriage—Old Cocky had one especial maxim;

it was, "Strike your needle dead, you dog; and make your thread cry

'twang!'"—and no one apprentice that ever sat upon Davy's shop-board

so fully gratified his master by the gallant and complete style in

which he fulfilled this maxim, as did Tim Swallow-whistle. Cocky Davy

was often heard to say—ay, and to swear it too, when in his cups—that

it did his heart good to see the masterly manner in which Tim used

to strike the cloth. And then, for finishing a button-hole, "Good

heavens!"—Cocky Davy would declare in the White Swan parlour, when the

clock was on the stroke of twelve—"why, Tim could turn the thing off

his fingers with every cast of the thread as regular and exact as if

he had worked it by geometry;" and then Cocky would thump his pewter

tankard with vehement force upon mine host's white wooden table, and

call to have it refilled for the last time that night.

It may easily be guessed that Tim Swallow-whistle was not only a clever

hand, but a hard-working lad, while an apprentice, or otherwise he

would not have worn such excelling commendations from a master who

was quite as frequently found in the parlour of the White Swan as in

his own shop, and therefore found it of incalculable value to himself

to possess an apprentice who would work hard while his master played.

Now, as a loitering apprentice usually makes a worthless, idle man, so

a diligent lad is almost invariably found to carry his early habits

of industry into mature life, and to make a stirring and prosperous

citizen, unless some untoward circumstances arise to bereave him

of the power for exertion, or to deprive him of its legitimate and

well-deserved fruits.

Tim Swallow-whistle did not belie the promise of his youth. He was full

forty years old when the incidents occurred we are about to relate;

and up to that time, as he used himself to say, "Nobody could ever say

he had an idle bone in his skin." But, let a man be as industrious

and well-disposed as he may, ten to one but somebody or other in this

crooked world will be found determined to find fault with him. So it

was with Tim: he "minded his own business" most emphatically; for he

was regularly found on his shop-board every morning, winter or summer,

as the clock struck five; and he seldom quitted it before seven at

night, unless on some special holiday occasion: he "paid every one

their own"—that is to say, he kept no scores, either at the baker's,

the butcher's, the grocer's, or at the alehouse: he had a whole coat

on his back—though there was, here and there, a patch in it of his

own neatest style of repair: and, to conclude the catalogue of his

competency in his own language, "he had always something to eat when

other folk went to dinner."

Tim contrived to keep up to this standard of comparative comfort, too,

in spite of a breeding wife, who had stocked his cottage with nine

"small children," though he was not married till he was thirty. With

so many excellences, who could have thought that any one would be bad

enough to attempt to mar Tim's well-earned happiness? But the world

is, what we have just termed it, a crooked world; and so poor Tim was

doomed to meet with undeserved annoyance.

Just opposite Tim's little shop lived a great professor of

sour-godliness. Unluckily, he was not only of the same homely trade

with Tim, but was enabled to hold up his head more loftily among his

fellow-tradesmen, by reason that a maiden aunt happened to die and

leave him a neat little freehold that brought him in 50_l._ a-year, in

addition to his earnings by the shears, needle, and thimble. Jedediah

Prim—for so was this fortunate tailor called—was adjudged by his

neighbours to be ill-disposed towards his poorer brother snip, solely

because Tim had always sufficient employ for himself and an apprentice,

whereas Prim's manners were so uninviting, and his character so mean,

that he barely ensured occupation for his own solitary needle.

Since Prim, at heart, was a worshipper of Mammon above all other

gods, it was not at all wonderful that he felt envious at his

neighbour's trade. Nevertheless, Prim ever affected the greatest

scorn of these neighbourly charges of avarice and envy, and most

piously averred that he had no other distaste to "the man over the

way," as he called Tim, than that which was created in his soul by

"the ungodly man's profaneness!" "He is every day selling his soul

to Satan by the whistling of the Evil One's own tunes!" was Prim's

godly lamentation over the evil ways of his neighbour. This was a

severe hit at the only kind of recreation in which poor Tim indulged.

He had been a hard whistler, as well as a hard worker, from a lad;

and from the peculiarity of his way of whistling, which very much

resembled an endless twitter, Tim caught the curious _soubriquet_ of

"Swallow-whistle" among his fellow-apprentices at Cocky Davy's, and

kept it to his dying day.

Now, whistling or twittering are but very humble kinds of melody, but

I care not however lowly or merely imitative may be the degree of the

divine faculty of music that a human creature may be endowed with, I'll

warrant him, there will be something like real nobility of heart or

mind about him, let his vocation and whereabouts in this ill-arranged

world be what it may. And truly, so much might, without hesitancy,

be affirmed of twittering Tim the tailor of Horncastle. With all his

knowledge of the ill-will borne towards him by Prim the puritan, Tim

Swallow-whistle would have sprung off his shop-board like a bounding

fawn, and with a bounding heart of joy, to have done the envious

Jedediah a good turn. Yet, with all his bountiful good-nature, Tim

possessed a fair share of shrewdness. He had lived long enough to learn

that over-weening envy usually overshoots its mark, and most severely

punishes its own voluntary slaves. Thus, of all men in the little town

of Horncastle, Tim Swallow-whistle was least disturbed at what every

one talked of as a scandalous matter, namely, the envy and malevolence

of Jedediah Prim, the religious tailor. "Never mind; 'every dog has his

day!'" Tim would reply, and twitter away again, to every successive

tale his neighbours brought him, about what Prim said, and what Prim

did: for you never knew of two neighbours being "at outs" in your life,

but a host of voluntary messengers, on either side, could be found to

fetch and carry fuel to maintain the heat between them.

What moved Tim Swallow-whistle more than any other event in his life

was the fact of Prim the puritan being made overseer of the poor, and

throwing Tim's poor old grandmother entirely upon his maintenance. The

aged woman had nearly reached a century of years; and, at the mere

cost of half-a-crown per week to the parish, was nursed in her second

childhood by Tim's widowed mother, who lived in a little cottage, hard

by her son. Tim had willingly, nay eagerly, contributed to supply the

wants of the two aged women through all the difficulties felt by a man

situated as he was, with an increasing family, for there was not a

grain of sordidness in his noble nature; but it was no joke for poor

Tim to have the entire weight of the burthen cast upon him. For several

days after the announcement was formally made him—and pious Prim took

care to have the devilish satisfaction of performing the annoying

business himself—poor Tim suspended his twittering, and "struck his

needle dead" in a savage mood of reflection. Tim's reflection ended,

however, in the way that, with such a heart, it was natural for it

to end,—in the manly resolve that he would work the very skin off

his fingers, and go without a meal every day in the week, rather

than permit his old grandmother to want. "Every dog has his day!"

echoed Tim, recovering his wonted elasticity of spirits; "Jedediah

Prim will not be overseer of the poor for the parish of Horncastle

to all eternity;" and away he burst into a mellifluous twitter that

floated, in the form of "Merrily danced the Quakers," gaily across the

street, and entered into the very "porches of the ears" of Prim the

puritan, much to the deadly annoyance of that heart of envy. During

the continuance of Tim's overture for the day, there entered into his

cottage a travelling tinker, who besought leave of the tailor to light

his pipe.

"Ay, lad, and welcome," blithely answered Tim; and away he went

twittering his old burthen of "Merrily danced the Quakers."

"Marry, good faith, maister!" said the tinker, folding his arms and

looking as if he felt inclined for 'a bit of chat,' as they say in

Lincolnshire; "why, that was the very tune my poor old mother was so

fond of! I can't help feeling fond on't, d'ye know, maister; for my

mother was a good mother to me—the Lord rest her soul!" and the

hardy tinker's voice faltered in a way that showed his heart had its

tender place, notwithstanding his rough exterior. Tim's twittering was

arrested; the tinker had touched him on a tender chord, and his whole

heart vibrated, sympathetically.

"Sit you down a while, friend, and smoke your pipe quietly," said Tim,

pointing to a seat near his shop-board; "I'll tell our Becky to get out

the copper kettle for you to mend as soon as she comes down stairs; we

haven't used it these three years for want o'mending."

"And times have been too hard for you to have it mended before, I

reckon, maister," said the tinker.

"Nay, as for that," replied Tim with a smile and a shake of the head,

"they're not much mended now; I find it to be only a cross-grained

world, I'll assure you, friend; but I always make it a maxim to take

things as easy as I can; for, as I always say, 'Every dog has his day,'

and among the rest of the poor dogs one doesn't know but one's own turn

to have a day may come yet."

"Right, maister, right!" ejaculated the tinker, drawing a full breath

at his pipe, and puffing out a full cloud of satisfaction; "there's

sartainly a comfort in thinking so: yet it isn't a pleasing thing to be

striving to do one's best, and to pay every one their own, and yet to

be trampled upon, as poor folks too commonly are in this world."

"Very true, friend," chimed in Tim Swallow-whistle, assenting readily

to a remark that reminded him so strikingly of his own experience;

"very true: there's nothing that gives an honest man any uneasiness

equal to that: for my part, I've no wish to be richer or loftier than

my neighbours; but I must say the man must feel it hard who's ill-used,

after striving to do the best he can for everybody as well as himself."

"Well, you see, maister, it shows that what the Scripter says is true,

'that money is the root of all evil,'" rejoined the tinker; "for you'll

always observe that a man begins to trample upon you as soon as he

happens to begin to get on in the world a little better than yourself."

"'Tis too often the case, friend," said Tim, not fully approving of the

tinker's sweeping remark, but still feeling the forceful truth of it in

his own case; "and yet I can't understand how it should be so."

"At any rate, maister," said the tinker, interrupting the other, "one

can understand one thing: that if things could be put more on a level

in this world, there wouldn't be such foul dealings as we see now; for

if one man wasn't allowed to be so much stronger in the pocket than

another, all men would be more likely to gain respect; all this bowing

and scraping of poor to rich would be at an end, I mean."

"Why, yes," interjected the tailor, stopping his needle when it was but

half way through the cloth and feeling a disposition to be abstracted;

"that's true enough—true enough, friend: but for my part I don't

see how the vast difference between the rich and the poor is to be

remedied. You see it's the nat'ral course of things: some folk are

idle, and others unlucky; while money makes money, when a man once gets

hold on't—that is, if he tries to turn it over, and takes care of it

as it gathers."

"Just so, maister; that's all very true as far as it goes," rejoined

the tinker; "but I think that's not exactly what the parson calls the

end o' the chapter. I'm but a plain man, and no great scholar; but I

always take Brimmijem and Sheffield in my yearly round, and one hears a

bit o' long headed-talk, maister, now and then in such places: you'll

excuse me if I tell you a little of what I think about these things."

"Prythee, don't mention that, in that sort of a way," said Tim,

hastily; "I'll assure thee that there's nobody likes a man that speaks

his mind better than I do."

"Thank ye, maister," continued the tinker; "then I'll tell you what I

think: I think there ought to be a law to compel folk that make money

so fast to use it in making their fellow-creatures happy, instead of

spending it on finery and foolishness."

"Why, you would make folks kind and good by law then, friend! Hum! I

can't see," disputed Tim, again suspending his needle, and looking

very metaphysically upon the corner pane of his shop window, "I can't

see how that scheme would be likely to succeed. Excuse me, friend, but

I think you are talking about may-be's that'll never fly."

"Look ye, now, maister," resumed the tinker, laying down his pipe,

raising his hand with the fore-finger pointed, and looking greatly in

earnest to substantiate his theory; "this is my point: God Almighty

made us all of the same flesh and blood, not some of china and the

rest of brown marl: he made us to live like brothers; and if one had

better wit than the rest, it was his duty to use it for the benefit of

all his brothers and sisters, as well as for his own benefit. So, if a

man by money makes money, since he can't do that without the help of

other folk, I maintain that that money ought to be distributed, and all

that it will buy, for the benefit of all, but more especially for the

comfort of those whom the money-maker made use of in making his money."

"You mean, if I understand you," said Tim Swallow-whistle, looking as

much like a logician as he knew how, in order to keep the tinker in

countenance—"you mean, my friend, that when men with full pockets

employ men with empty ones, and by the labour of the poor make their

full pockets flow over, there ought to be a fairer division of the

profit."

"That's exactly what I mean, maister," answered the tinker, smiling

with enthusiasm, "you have hit the nail on the head, completely: I

think there ought to be a law, ay, and I think it's more needed than

any other law, to prevent the rich from employing the poor just for

what wages they please, and to so order things that every man who makes

money by other men's labour shall be compelled to give his workmen such

a share of his profits as will enable them and their wives and children

to live in decency and comfort, instead of rich men being allowed to

grow richer and wantoner every day, while their poor slaves go, often,

with naked backs and hungry bellies. Ah, maister," concluded the tinker

in a tone where the heart was heard, "you know little about the real

suffering there is in England; but I can tell you one thing,—and that

is, that in the manufacturing places, where this pinch-gut system is

most felt, thousands say they won't stand it much longer!"

The tinker ended this speech in a tone of voice so loud that Tim

Swallow-whistle felt prompted to look round him for listeners. To his

great chagrin, Prim the Puritan stood pricking his ears, but a few

yards from Tim's door, with his back turned towards it, but evidently

collecting every seditious syllable uttered by the travelling tinker.

Tim placed his fore-finger significantly to his lips; and the tinker,

marking the direction of Tim's eyes, took the hint, and immediately

turned the conversation to the subject of the copper tea-kettle. The

tailor's wife was called down-stairs; the kettle was produced; the

bargain was readily struck; and the tinker proceeded, out of doors,

with his vocation. Tim Swallow-whistle, meanwhile, being left to

uninterrupted reflection, turned over and over again, in his mind, the

weighty thoughts which had been started by the traveller. Tim could

not easily quell the indignation against money-making oppression which

the tinker's tale had raised within him; and the plain man's plain

reasoning, respecting the rights of the labouring poor, appeared to him

uncontradictable; yet all his sympathies for the distressed yielded,

at length, to the strength of his common sense, and the consciousness

that, care as much as he might, he could not alter the state of the

oppressed:—

"The world is _as it is_," said Tim to himself, mustering up as much

wisdom as he was master of; "it has not been right this many a long

year, if all that our forefathers said can be true: and, what's worse,

one doesn't see much chance of its being speedily set to rights. But

what's the use of grumbling at it, day after day? that would only

whitter the flesh off one's poor bones. No, no; what the man says is

true enough, no doubt," concluded the soliloquising Swallow-whistle;

"but I will not make myself uneasy about what I can't mend: at least I

won't any further than I can help. Let the world wag! I'll try to make

myself as easy as I can in it, with all its awkwardness. Every dog has

his day,—and perhaps mine will come yet."

This was no elevated moral channel in which Tim's thoughts were running

when the tinker re-entered; but it was one which had served to drain

Tim's heart from the troublous inundation of discontent, amid the toils

and difficulties of his whole mature life. Tim invited the tinker to

take another pipe, and entered on the old subject in a way that showed

his mind was made up.

"Well, my good friend," he began, "I have been thinking about what has

fallen to your lot to see; and I must take the liberty to tell you,

that although I cannot help feeling grieved for the distress of others,

yet I very much doubt the wisdom of a man dwelling on these thoughts of

sorrow till he feels a disposition to be discontented with every thing

around him."

"So do I, maister," chimed in the tinker, interrupting Tim,—"so do I:

but when one sees and hears of things that one knows to be wrong, one

can hardly prevent one's sen, you know, from turning 'em over in one's

mind, and trying to think how they could be righted. I'm not a man

given to low spirits, mysen, maister; I contrive to keep my heart up,

and go on; though I don't think the world's quite right, for all that."

"I'm glad to hear what you said just now," continued Tim: "I assure you

I've some little rough usage to bear; but I always find cheerfulness,

and a disposition to make the best o'things, by far the wisest way of

living."

"So do I, maister," again burst in the tinker, very much to the

annoyance of the tailor, who wanted to come to the end of his "say,"

without interruption—"so do I; only, you know there's no harm in

talking about these things, now and then. And, besides, maister, you

know, the world never will be any better, if we all shut our eyes, and

say we see no wrong in it."

"Right, very right," replied Tim, a little bit put out of the path

he had intended to take, but still resolved to make direct for his

point, if he could; "I don't deny that: but how long will it be

before the world is bettered, even if we keep our eyes open, and tell

aloud of all the wrong we know in it? You and I are not the first

who have discovered the world to be wrong, depend on't. Tinkers and

tailors," continued Tim, smiling as he proceeded, "have been found

in many countries, as far as my little book-larning informs me, who

have imagined they could repair the rents in the world; but, in too

many cases, these fellows were the very greatest practisers upon the

helplessness of their weaker brethren. As for the few who have been in

earnest, they have usually been silenced, in one way or other, by those

whose interest it was to keep up the wrong in the world. That the world

never will be better," concluded Tim, "I will not undertake to say;

but the day, I fear, is so far distant, my good friend, that you and I

will neither of us be likely to live to see it. Don't take it amiss;

but I can't help thinking so."

The tinker was ready with an answer; but two customers of Tim's here

came in, and the travelling tinker, thinking that it would be both

ill-mannered and wearisome to the tailor for him to stay, and attempt

to renew the conversation, wished Tim "Good day," and prepared to set

out again on his journey. Tim extended his hand, and returned the

tinker's friendly gripe in a way that told the traveller his few strong

hints would be thought of on another day.

With all Tim Swallow-whistle's shrewdness, he was perfectly free

from craft. The thoughts created in his mind by this conversation

with the travelling tinker naturally found their way, now and then,

into his exchanges of opinion with his customers. Prim the Puritan

was not slow in learning this: in fact, his evil nature had plotted

Tim's destruction from the moment that he overheard the conversation

between Tim and the tinker. Spies were sent to draw the tailor out;

and, eventually, poor Tim was set down in the day-book of every

influential man in Horncastle as a "dangerous and seditious fellow."

From that day, poor Tim Swallow-whistle's business began to decline.

The trial was a bitter one to Tim; for his aged grandmother sank

to the grave, beholding the clouds of adversity gather around her

grandchild's dwelling; but, in the serenity of death, steadfastly

directed her weeping descendant to trust in uprightness, and it would

be his comfort. Then his mother sickened and died,—yielding, after a

hard struggle, to the Last Enemy, but expiring with an exultant smile,

after assuring her child that her own greatest consolation was that she

had been dutiful to her mother, and she was confident he would yet see

bright days as the reward of his spotless filial piety.

In vain Tim asked for parochial relief in the hour of his sore

straitness, when his wife's health failed with the labour of waiting

upon her sick relatives, and when Tim's earnings dwindled to a starving

pittance by reason of his being compelled to wait upon those around

him that could not help themselves. Prim held the purse-strings of the

parish tight. Tim fasted often when his neighbours fed, and fed well:

but he never despaired. "Every dog has his day," he still thought, but

refrained from saying much, and still battled with thoughts that would

have unmanned him.

Tim was repeating to himself his old adage one afternoon, about six

months after his mother's death, when the clergyman of the parish

entered his cottage, and, to Tim's indescribable surprise, desired Tim

to take the measure of him for a new suit! Now the fact was, that the

clergyman was, necessarily, more than once in Tim's dwelling during

the successive illnesses of his grandmother and mother; and, although

prejudiced against the tailor, from the reports circulated to his

detriment, yet he was too sensible a man not to use his opportunities

of scrutinising Tim's real character, and too much a gentleman, in the

best sense of the word, to permit a poor but worthy man to suffer if his

own help could avail to relieve him. The clergyman saw that Tim wore his

heart too much on the outside of his waistcoat to be a rogue; and the

clergyman determined to help Tim by his patronage and his "good word."

The prejudices against Tim, however, were not dispelled all at once,

though many began to look upon him with new eyes when they heard that

the town-parson had actually given him orders for a new suit. The

climax of the poor tailor's sorrows was now, however, gone by; and the

future was preparing for him its triumphs and joys. One event gave him

some trouble; but what kind of trouble? Ah! it was of that kind which

is most truly troublous to a heart which has struggled to train itself

into correctness. The termination of Prim's two years of overseership

arrived, and the parish vestry would not pass his accounts, having

discovered him to be guilty of an immense embezzlement! Tim had real

trouble with his own heart throughout the whole of the day on which he

first learnt this fact. Exultation over his old enemy was the feeling

that strove to be uppermost; but Tim virtuously kept it down.

Succeeding years displayed a striking contrast in the lives of Tim

Swallow-whistle and Prim the Puritan. The houses which the cheating

overseer had recently bought with the fruits of his fraud were sold to

raise law-expenses; even his aunt's freehold went to the hammer for the

same purpose: and Prim only escaped a prison by some technical flaw in

the wording of the proceedings taken out against him. He was ruined,

however, and became comparatively a beggar, while his character sank

for life. Tim's honesty and industry, on the other hand, raised him

daily in the estimation of his neighbours. Competence, amounting, at

length, well-nigh to wealth, beamed upon him, and, ere his grey hairs

went down to the grave, he lived to leave a crown-piece, often, at the

door of the ragged and wretched man who was once his envious persecutor

and the oppressive overseer.—Tim Swallow-whistle preserved, even to

his dying day, that nobility of heart which forbade him to triumph

over a fallen enemy; but he would often repeat, half mechanically,

to himself, when passing from the poverty-stricken door of Prim the

Puritan, "_Every dog has his day_."

DAVY LIDGITT, THE CARRIER;

OR,

THE MAN WHO BROUGHT HIS NINEPENCE TO NOUGHT.

Louth, sixty years ago, as now, was the handsomest as well as the

largest town in the north of Lincolnshire, though you would not

then have seen in it, as you may now, if you go that way, a dashing

mail-coach, with a dashing red-coated and gold-laced guard, dash off

and dash in daily to and from Rasen, and Gainsborough, and Sheffield.

"Long" Ludforth, too—(they spell it "Ludford" on the maps; but,

doubtless, they who live there know better the name of the place

than your mere map-makers!)—Long Ludforth, too, was nearly as

deserving of its name, then, as now. And, in default of all other

means of conveyance for goods and passengers, Davy Lidgitt, the

carrier, traversed the ten miles of distance between the village and

market-town "every Wednesday and Saturday—twice a week, regular,"

as the inscription read on the front of his neat tilted cart; for

your new-fangled way of sticking the carrier's name on one side of

his vehicle had not then been invented by the tax-making gentry at

head-quarters.

Davy Lidgitt was excelled in diligence and punctuality by never a

carrier, even in those diligent and punctual times, and gained the

universal respect of his employers, and, what was of more solid value,

a neat little independence, to boot, as the reward of his life of

industry and uprightness. Davy,—it should be "Old Davy;" for that

was the name by which he was known for the greater part of his public

life,—Old Davy would have felt himself to be a happy man could he have

regarded young Davy, his son, as one who was likely to tread, morally

as well as physically, in his steps. But Old Davy Lidgitt, like all

other mortals, lacked the single ingredient in his cup which could give

it the power of making his bliss complete on this side the grave.

Not that young Davy was idle, or profligate, or devoid of wit,

according to some people's acceptation of the term. In fact, the

majority of the plain villagers of Long Ludforth agreed that, "if

aught, young Davy Lidgitt had ower much wit for one of his calling."

And, for activity, few could match young Davy. From a mere child he

aspired to wield his father's long whip, and at ten years old could

manage the brown mare and the black horse that composed the carrier's

team as well as Old Davy himself could manage them. Moreover, he was

always to be found about the cart or the stable, at the market-town,

when the goods were delivered, and could never be tempted to spend

either his time, health, or money at the ale-tap. Up to the age of

five-and-twenty,—when Old Davy, at sixty, fully retired to enjoy

the brief remnant of life in the snug but small cottage he had

purchased,—young Davy had not failed to accompany his father as

regularly as Wednesday and Saturday returned in each week to Louth

and back, attending so rigidly and cleverly to every item of parcel

and package, letter and message, that the villagers would one and all

declare "young Davy Lidgitt had a head like an almanack!"

"Why, what in the world, then, could it be," you will ask, "that caused

old Davy to look upon a lad, with his son's commendations, in the light

of disparagement?" If the truth must be told, we must begin at the

beginning. Young Davy showed sundry symptoms of a disposition that his

father did not like, even when a child: he would hook the gears one day

in one mode and another day in another, often to the provocation of

some such harsh exclamation on the part of the senior Lidgitt, as—"'Od

rabbet thee! thou'st been at thy kickshaw tricks again, with the old

mare's belly-band: she'll be kicking thy busy brains out some of these

days!" And many a kick, to say troth, young Davy received for these

"kickshaw" tricks: but he persevered, with the belief that the way of

harnessing a cart-horse might be improved. Yet his father could never

discern that either in this or any other of his displays of genius,

such as clipping or tying the manes of the horses in whimsical forms,

or hanging their collars, and halters, and so forth, in "apple-pie

order," as the old man called it, in the home stable—I say, old Davy

could never arrive at the conclusion that young Davy, in any of these

intended "improvements" ever effected a real one.

"But, Lord love thee, Davy!" Betty Lidgitt would usually say, when

her spouse had been relating his boy's latest whim, in her ears, at

supper-time,—"Lord love thee, Davy, he's only a child; and thou knaws

childer will be childer: one can't set old heads upo' young shouthers:

he'll give over with his meagrims when he grows older: thou wants

patientness, Davy,—patientness! Thou knaws I tell'd thee so, before we

were married!"

These pleasant motherly excuses for the lad quieted the father for some

years; but, one day, when the young "Reformer" had proceeded so far as

to take away the horse-shoe from the door-jamb,—that mystic surety of

good luck to the cottage by the opinions of every inhabitant of Long

Ludforth, and which the parson had never said was wrong,—old Davy

could forbear no longer to put into execution a resolve that had been

for some months forming in his mind.

"Betty! I'll take him to Wise Tom, and have his planet ruled!" said he,

"for I feel sartain and sewer some'at isn't right about the lad: he's

the very devil for mischief! Lord ha' marcy on us, if the young varment

hasn't tucken the horse-shoe away now! some'at will be happening us I'm

sewer!"

And, on the following Monday morning, when his team had rested a day

after their usual Saturday's travel, old Davy Lidgitt arose betimes,

and, calling up his son, set forth with him on the way to Welton, to

visit the astrologer.

It will be long before the memory of old Tom Cussitt, "the wise man of

Welton," will be forgot in Lindsey. "Cusworth" was his proper name,

but old Lindsey folk made it a rule to shorten folks' names when they

had to use them often, and there were few names more frequently in

a peasant's mouth, at that time of the day, for twenty miles round

Louth, than that of "Tom Cussitt." Good Lord! if one were to tell all

the stories one has heard of his discoveries of stolen goods by the

stars; of the marks he was wont to put on the thieves, that the owners

of the goods might know the rogues when they saw 'em; of the wondrous

way in which he could show a love-sick maiden her future husband in the

old-fashioned witch-looking mirror that hung in his darkened room; and

of the strange facts he foretold to some people, when he "cast their

nativities,"—that mystic process in which he never erred a hair's

breadth,—why, it would take a twelvemonth to go through the labour!

But, to attend to old and young Davy. It was but half-a-dozen miles

from Long Ludforth to Welton, and so they and their little team were

soon there.

Young Davy, it may be guessed, gazed hard at the "Wise Man," and

thought him an awful-looking personage, though Tom Cussitt was, at that

time of day, a somewhat handsome-looking man. His fine clear blue eye

was not, as yet, overhung with those bushy, unsightly brows that marked

him in old age; his fair, ruddy skin was not, as yet, disfigured and

concealed by the filthy long gray beard he afterwards wore; nor had

his fine manly height yet contracted a stoop. Old Davy had often seen

Wise Tom before, having frequently conveyed customers to his cottage,

and therefore he did not stare at him with wonder or surprise, like the

lad. As for Tom, he, of course, stared at neither father nor son, being

quite prepared, like Sidrophel, to say to every comer—

"I did expect you here, and knew,

Before you spake, your business, too."

Not that Tom Cussitt was one of your ordinary conjurers,—your mere

schemers who take up the trade to scrape a shilling from the gulls

among mankind. Many a rich man has gone from Tom's door without being

able, although he proffered pounds to the star-gazer, to obtain one

syllable from him in solution of the great problem of futurity which

the rich man desired so much to know. Nor did Tom usually set about

the process of solving a "horary question," or "telling a fortune,"

with the imposing forms of books and almanacks. On some special

occasions he would resort, like other clerks of the starry craft, to

these learned appearances; but, more customarily, a single strong

pithy remark, or two, delivered over his pipe, and in the course of a

general conversation in which he engaged his visitors, comprised the

gist of his prophecy respecting the future life of an inquirer, or of

his direction for the recovery of stolen goods or chattels. Whatever

might be the wise man's own confidence in the rules of prognostication

by the stars, every shrewd observer noted that the prophet delivered

his oracles rather by the gauge and admeasurement which his strong

common sense enabled him to form of human character, and the accuracy

by which it enabled him to judge of circumstances, than by any exercise

of mathematical or other description of learned skill.

Old Davy was too full with the budget of young Davy's vagaries to need

much craft on the part of one who wished to draw him out. The Wise Man

quickly kenned what kind of stuff the young chap was made of, and did

not feel that it required any great exercise of his wisdom to ken it,

either. Old Davy, however, with all his fears for the lad's capricious

inclinations, and their probable consequences when he himself might

be lain in the grave, was scarcely prepared for the stunning severity

of the single definitive sentence wherewith Wise Tom summed up his

prophecy of young Davy's "fortune."

"Well, then, Maister Cussitt," said Davy the elder, taking his pipe

from his mouth, after the lapse of an hour's chat, "and so what do you

think of him? I've tell'd you the day, I'm sewer, quite exact; and I've

told you the hour at which Betty brought him into the world, as near as

I can remember."

"Reach us a spell, my lad!" said Cussitt to the younger Davy, and

pointed to a neat wire case that hung against the wall, and contained

long strips of paper wrapped up for pipe-lighters.

"You'll want two," said the very sharp lad, "for my fayther's pipe's

out, an' all!"

"Is it, lad?" said old Davy, looking eagerly into the head of his

pipe. "Lord! what eyes thou hast! there's nothing can 'scape thee, I

declare!" And he chuckled with pleasure at his boy's acuteness.

"And so what think you, then," he asked again—"what think you, Maister

Cussitt, will be our Davy's luck?"

Young Davy had just lighted the two spells, had held them to the pipes,

severally, and had thrown the papers, neither of them half consumed,

upon the fire.

"Think!" exclaimed the wise man, eyeing the youngster fiercely, and

glancing at the father with a look that seemed to ask if there was now

any need to tell what he thought—"think!" said he; "why, that he'll

bring his ninepence to nought!" And he thrust his middle finger into

the pipe-head to put out the fire in the tobacco, and placed the pipe,

sternly, on the mantle-piece.

Old Davy's face fell; and he also laid down his pipe. Tom Cussitt

took his large-skirted hat from the peg, called to his maid for the

milking-kit, and prepared, according to his wont, to go forth and milk

his cows; for he followed husbandry in humble and industrious style

during the greater part of his life, notwithstanding his astrological

profession. "Good morning, Davy Lidgitt!" he said; and left father and

son, alike wonder-stricken, by the fire-side.

There, however, they did not remain many minutes, but were on their

way to Ludforth; and a melancholy way it seemed to old Davy. Betty

Lidgitt felt as melancholy as her husband when he had related Tom

Cussitt's laconic prophecy. Yet she strove to comfort her spouse with

the encouraging remembrance, that "the Wise Man had not said much; and,

for the little that he did say, why, belike, it was meant more for

caution than aught worse." Old Davy was willing to think so, but could

not succeed in persuading himself of it; and, indeed, young Davy showed

"too much of the cloven foot," as his father somewhat sourly said, at

times, "to lead a body to think that the imp of mischief would ever

leave him;" so that, to his dying day, poor old Davy would, ever and

anon, sigh over his remembrance of Tom Cussitt's short but sorrowfully

significant saying.

The story would become tiresome by going over the catalogue of a

thousandth part of young Davy Lidgitt's doings in the "improving way,"

during the dozen years that intervened between the visit to the Wise

man of Welton and old Davy's retirement from business as a carrier.

Nor is it needful to chronicle similar deeds of the son that occurred

from that period to the day of the father's death,—though some of

these latter sorely harassed the old man's temper,—especially young

Davy's purchase of coloured collars for the horses, and a fancy tilt,

that cost thrice the price of the old one, and let in the rain! It was

when old Davy was "safe under the sod," as the sexton said when he had

finished the covering of his grave, and clapped it soundly with his

spade in token of admiration for his own work,—it was then that young

Davy began to let all the world in Long Ludforth see there was a man

amongst them that possessed brains.

First, the "reformer" pulled down his father's low cottage, and engaged

a swaggering builder to erect a tall four-storied house of brick,

with a slated roof, on the same spot, taking in the little spot that

had glowed so delightfully for many a year with roses, and pansies,

and marigolds. True, the purse of two hundred spade-aces, left by his

economical parent, did not suffice to finish the house in the style he

had devised; so he warned the bricklayer to stop at three stories,

and to leave out some of the fantastic stone ornaments he had procured

at Louth. He sold the ornaments and some of the other extra materials

which had already been brought upon his premises; but he permitted a

tradesman to take them on credit, and was never paid for them. Then,

finding the house was likely to remain unroofed for lack of money, he

was constrained to go a-borrowing; but the errand and the reception he

met reminded him strongly of one of his old father's sayings, which

he used to think very simple when the old man was alive,—"He that

goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing!"—but young Davy did not think the

proverb quite so simple, now. The farmers shook their heads at him,

wherever he went, and said "No;" without a syllable of preface or

addenda. And as for the monied men at Louth, they had all taken their

gauge of young Davy Lidgitt, as well as the Wise Man of Welton; and the

"man of improvements" could only borrow on a hard mortgage.

"And who are you to put into this new house when it is finished,

_Mister_ Lidgitt?" asked Grumley, the grocer, of Louth, very politely,

one day, as he was riding past, and saw young Davy standing by to look

at the builders.

Young Davy looked foolish at the question; for, having neither father

nor mother, brother nor sister, in the world, he could only answer

that he had no one to put into it but himself.

The grocer earnestly begged his company to dinner, when he next

came to Louth; and young Davy felt so much flattered by so unusual

an invitation, that he instantly accepted it. And young Davy found

Mr. Grumley very cordial, and Mrs. Grumley exceedingly kind,—but,

above all, the _Misses_ Grumley were the most interesting creatures

he had ever seen! The eldest, especially, won his respect,—or, he

did not exactly know what to call it,—for he had thought more about

improvements in horses, and carts, and stables, and houses, than

aught else, all his life. But the eldest Miss—_the_ Miss Grumley, by

emphasis of courtesy—talked so sensibly about the clever improvements

that young Mr. Brown had made in his farm-house, at Raithby, now his

father was dead; and how he had married Miss Green, the chandler's

daughter, and had bought such a nice gig!

To tell the reader at once, what he plainly sees is about coming to

pass, young _Mister_ Davy Lidgitt married _Miss_ Grumley; and he also

bought a nice gig—but it was bought on credit!

Proceeding with his "reforms" and "improvements," Davy turned _daily_

carrier from Long Ludforth to Louth, in a smart, light van, having

disposed of his father's old cart. But now young Davy began _to

think_,—not willingly, but perforce,—for bills were pouring in

upon him that he could not pay. But Mr. Grumley was ready to _join in

a note_, since young Davy had already performed that kindness, more

than once, for his father-in-law. Still young Davy was compelled to

think; for, more than once, his grand _daily_ trip in the new van to

Louth did not afford freightage enough to cover the expense of the two

toll-gates which "improvement" had set up between Long Ludforth and

Louth market-place. So Davy fell off to "every other day" as a carrier.

This was his first retrograde "reform," but, alas! it was not his last.

Expenses daily became heavier. Mrs. Lidgitt was gay when a grocer's

daughter in a market town; but she felt it requisite and becoming to

"take the lead" in dress, since her settlement in a village, where the

affair, too, was so comparatively easy. And then, in the course of

two years, two little Lidgitts were squalling about the house; and,

in addition to one regular maid-servant, and an occasional help from

a stable-boy, a nurse was introduced as a constant member of Davy's

household establishment.

The visit of a lawyer, one day, put the family into a flutter. Davy was

taken aside, and informed that Mr. So-and-so had resolved to call in

his mortgage. Davy's heart sunk, until he thought he must have dropped;

but how overjoyed he became when Lawyer Gripple so cheerfully offered

himself as mortgagee to succeed his client Mr. So-and-so! Yet, when

the new mortgage-deed was completed, Davy found himself, somehow or

other, a hundred pounds more in debt for his house than before!

Young Davy Lidgitt now began to _think_ more deeply, and proposed

some curtailments of weekly expenditure to his wife; but she wept

so passionately at the mention of them, that Davy's heart smote

him for his cruelty. Then he tried to resolve on lessening his own

"appearances;" but pride gat the better of him, and he dashed along,

till at the end of one more year, Lawyer Gripple suddenly "called in

his money," and followed up the call ere Davy could answer it, or

procure another friend, by taking possession of Davy's house, and

telling him that thenceforth he ceased to be any thing but a tenant,

and for that title must pay him—Lawyer Gripple—twenty pounds a-year.

Before Davy could recover his surprise at this rapacious deed, Mr.

Grumley failed in very heavy responsibilities, with very small assets,

and young Davy was sent to prison for the debts to which he had pledged

himself on account of his father-in-law.

To end a sorrowful story as speedily as possible, it remains but

to say, that when poor Davy got out of gaol he found his wife and

her children nearly starving and in rags, and living in a scanty,

down-coming cottage, not half the size of that wherein his father and

mother had lived so many years in contentment and prosperity—his house

was not only entirely gone, but his van and horses were sold, and his

business had passed, months before, into the hands of an industrious

stranger.

Penniless, sick, and wretched, poor Davy Lidgitt was compelled to apply

to the parish for bread, and he had no alternative but to obey their

direction, and break stones on the road!

He was beheld in that employ for many years after—a fallen,

broken-spirited man;—and often would the aged women observe to each

other,—as they passed him by to work in the fields, and remembered

Tom Cussitt's prophecy, to which Davy's father would so often recur in

his neighbours' hearing,—"So much for the man who hath brought his

ninepence to nought!"

THE FISHERMAN AND THE FIDDLER;

OR,

"DON'T SAY SO TILL YOU ARE SURE."

It is a long day since Zed Marrowby and Phil Garrett passed quietly

away from this wilderness of confusion and wrong, and their names are

well-nigh forgotten. But they were, each of them, so unlike other folk

in their way of life, and in their old-fashioned habits of thinking and

talking, that there is no wonder they have slipped out of the world's

memory as well as out of the world itself. Two odd old fellows they

were deemed for many a year, albeit there are few happier old fellows,

upon the whole, than they were. And who were they?

Zed was an humble fishermen on the Trent, and never knew what it was

to be possessed, at once, of twenty shillings in his life. His father

was called Zedekiah, but the son never reached that long-name dignity.

Zed was taught the art and mystery of fishing with an angle, fishing

with set lines and hooks, fishing with nets—in brief, all kinds of

fresh-water fishing, when a boy, by his father,—whose father and

grandfather before him were each and all fishermen. Zed was a bachelor

all his life long, and that means fourscore and five; and Zed never had

but one bosom-friend, and that was blind Phil Garrett the fiddler.

Phil could not trace his ancestry in an uninterrupted line for several

generations like his friend Zed. In fact, it may seem strange to a

world so wise as the world is now-a-days, but Phil Garrett never knew

who was his own father! His earliest recollections were of hard usage

by all around him save his mother, who herself died of hard usage, and

left him to the ruthless world, a blind orphan at a tender age. There

was as great doubt about Phil's true Christian name as there was about

his parentage: some said it was Philip, and others said it ought to be

Philander; here and there one contended it must be Philibert, while his

godmother, Abigail, inclined to believe it was Philemon, but even she

could not justly remember—for, as she used to say, "the parson quite

took away her recollection of it, by hemming and hawing, and being so

long about the trifling matter of sprinking the child—and all the

while she was pretty sartain the christening-cake would be burnt under

the wood-ashes, for she made it herself, and placed it under the dish

at the last moment, in order that it might not be spoilt while they

were at church." However, Phil contrived to teach himself to play on

the fiddle when a boy, and thereby managed to win his own living,

without ever seeing the sun, or knowing exactly, either his own name,

or the name of his father.

Zed and Phil were nearly of an age, and became attached to each other

when they were in their teens: indeed, from that period of life they

were inseparable, except on special occasions. It was a singular

companionship, was that of Zed Marrowby, the fisherman, and blind Phil

Garrett, the fiddler. As soon as day broke, through spring, summer,

and autumn, Zed might be seen wending his way among the osiers, on the

banks of old Trent, towards his small narrow boat; and blind Phil,

with his fiddle-case under his arm, might be seen leaning on Zed's

left shoulder, and hurrying along with him. No matter how heavily it

rained, or strongly it blew, the two happy old fellows were as constant

in their time of rising, and of their embarkation, as the sun was in

mounting above the east, unless Phil happened to be engaged for a

wedding or a wake, for the blind fiddler was in high request for all

the rustic rejoicings around Torksey, where the singular companions

lived—I mean, at Marton, and Sturton, and Fenton, and Newton, on

the Lincolnshire side of the Trent; and not less at Laneham, and

Dunham, and Drayton, and Rampton, and Leverton, on the side of merry

Nottinghamshire.

Winter, you would say, would be but a dreary season for the two old

cronies, since it would put a stop to their voyaging, and, by confining

them within doors, would make them impish and melancholy. But you are

wrong, if you say so. There were nets and lines to make and to mend,

and the past to recount, and the future to reckon upon; and Phil would

play on his fiddle while Zed would sing, and when Phil's arm was weary

with scraping, and Zed's throat was sore with piping, Zed would listen

till he fell asleep with Phil telling ghost-stories and fairy-tales,

and love-ditties and robber-ventures,—all of which he had learned

from his godmother, old Abigail Cullsimple, at once the most famous

herb-woman, midwife, and tale-teller, in her own day and generation,

for threescore miles round about ancient Torksey on the Trent,—nay,

it were perilous to assert that she ever had an equal, in these three

combined qualifications, throughout the whole region of Lindsey.

It would take some thousands of pages to narrate half the adventures

in rain and fair weather, of the fisherman and fiddler, during their

threescore years of friendship. Let it suffice to take up their

life-story for some two or three days of the last summer they spent

together in this world, commencing with a fine morning in which they

unmoored their little boat somewhat earlier than usual, in order to

reach Littleborough for a wedding, before the turn of the tide. The

morning was such a delicious one, that, old as they were, the two old

voyagers could not restrain their feeling of pleasure at the balmy

and refreshing effect it had upon their weather-beaten frames; and,

blind as poor Phil was, you could not have failed, had you seen his

expressive face when under very pleasurable emotion, to discern that

it scarcely needs the language of eyes to demonstrate the heart's

happiness. Their little skiff darted like a fowl along the stream, so

finely did opening nature seem to nerve the old men's arms, and puff

their little sail; the very fishes seemed scarcely to have time to take

alarm while the oars plashed amid the liquid silver, but darted and

gambolled after each other,—the rapid dace and the delicate bleak, and

the golden-finned perch,—every moment to the surface of the stream,

exulting, as it seemed, in the solar glory. It was a morning to fill

with music every human soul that has any music in itself. The sweet

matin lute of the lark thrilled through the heavens, and the still

sweeter voice of the blythe milk-maid, as she tripped it, fresh and

rosy, over the lea, was heard waking the echoes with her plaintive

love-melody. Zed and Phil were too true children of Nature to disobey

her influences, and thus chanted their hearts' sedate joy, as they bent

at the oar:—