But Tom was neither to be hushed nor whished. "Tell my fayther to get

up, and take Dick and Will with him to fetch the rest o' the brits and

rays, while Jack and I have some breakfast, for we are hungry above

a bit," he said; and he tumbled the fish out of the net, and told his

mother they had left ten times as many in the crike. What cared Tom

whether his father felt inclined to scold or not? He knew that the

booty would silently and overwhelmingly plead his pardon. And oh, the

trembling joy and pride of the poor mother,—her thoughts of large

pecuniary relief and admiration of her child's noble act, combining,

and causing her to prattle with so much elation that she scarcely knew

what she said!

Seven pounds, in sterling English money, Tom's poor father made of his

child's night adventure: a sum he had never approached for one day's,

no, nor one week's labour in his little boat, since he had possessed

it. Need it be said that Tom's father was proud of him? He loved all

his children: they and his wife were his jewels, his only idols in

the world; and to picture truly his yearnings for their happiness, as

he cast a thought towards his cottage, or counted his boys by their

little red caps, toiling, meanwhile, afar off from the beach where the

children straggled sometimes at great distances from each other, at

their hardy employ,—to tell what truly exalted thinkings passed hourly

through the mind of that poor fisherman, tossed upon the surge often

a whole day without a fragment of gain, and yet clinging with glowing

love to his wife and children on land,—oh, it would form a theme to

kindle the sweetest eloquence of the gentle yet godlike Shakspere

himself! But it was natural that Tom should become his father's

peculiar pride, for he was, indeed, a child to be proud of.

It was, therefore, a melancholy sound, the first request of that

heroic boy, when he became fourteen—a sorrowful note in the ears of

his doting parents—that he might become a sailor, and leave them! The

father and mother exchanged a dreary look, and said nought. It was a

request they might expect, one day or other, for the lad had always

raved about the darling life of a sailor, and he was now becoming of an

age when it was fit he should enter on such a profession as he intended

to follow for life: but yet they had always put the thought aside, and

clung to the enjoyment of possessing such a son, and beholding him as

"the light of their eyes," daily. Tom saw and felt what his parents

endured when he presented his first request, and he did not renew it

till another month had flown, and a Boston sloop was lying off the

cockle-sands, laden with timber from Hull, when he again asked if he

might go for a sailor. This time, however, the question was put under

circumstances which seemed to soften the dread of separation. Boston

was a Lincolnshire port, and a voyage thither and back, on trial, would

soon be performed, so that they would soon see their darling again; and

therefore his parents gave consent for Tom's departure.

The boy became as much the darling of the little crew in the sloop,

during their brief voyage, as he had been of his father and mother.

They gave him the name which stuck to him through life, as soon as they

had heard his history, to which, indeed, they were scarcely strangers,

for it was not the first time he had been on board their shallop.

And "Cockle Tom" was proud to tell his new name when he saw his home

again: it had been given him by sailors, and it was, therefore, more

honourable in his estimation than knighthood or nobility given by a

monarch would have been, had he known of either.

There was now no putting off the complete separation from their noblest

child for Tom's parents. He had fully made up his mind to live on

the sea, his darling element: and, besides, he had been to Hull, the

port to which the Boston sloop traded, and had seen the Greenland

whale-ships, and talked with the sailors till he was all excitement for

the noble daring of joining in an attack upon the vast sea-monsters,

and seeing the mountain icebergs, and hearing the roaring of the

white bears. His father therefore prepared clothing for the lad, and

began to think of setting out with him for Hull, in order to see him

safely committed, as a sailor-apprentice, to the care of some kind and

fatherly sort of Greenland captain.

It was a dull week that young Cockle Tom passed at home; for, despite

his enthusiasm, the complete separation from his parents was a thought

that cut him to the quick. Did, then, the fisherman's child, who had

been led forth to endure the cold sea wind, and labour, and hunger,

from infancy, love his parents? Ay, that did he, and with such a love

as you know nothing of, young spruce, who have been to boarding-school,

and have since become versed in all the hollownesses of "respectable

life." If there was a sacred corner in Tom's heart, it was that where

the precious images of his father and mother were enshrined. Toil,

fatigue, hunger, pain, loss of sleep, nay, death itself, he would have

encountered at any moment to benefit them; and, young as he was, he

formed strong judgments on men's characters who failed in parental

duty. He never swore but once in his life, before leaving home, and

that was when a young farmer in the parish married a flaunting wife,

and gave up his aged father, blind and palsy-stricken, to be placed

in an alms-house. "D—n his eyes!" exclaimed young Tom, while his own

eyes flashed fire, "I should like to grapple his weasand, as big as he

is!" That was a rude expression, and a strange one, too, for a boy of

fourteen; but while his mother reproved it with such a look as she had

never given him before,—and he blushed like scarlet, and promised,

with tears in his eyes, never to swear again,—yet she read within

Tom's heart, by the aid of those few syllables, the existence of a

principle which, she felt, more truly ennobled her child than the

highest earthly titles would have aggrandised him.

It was some relief to young Tom to reflect that his parents were now in

comparatively comfortable circumstances, and chiefly through his means.

The ice of timidity once broken, Jack had become more adventurous, and

within one year, by the joint efforts of the two brothers, so great

an increase took place in the fish the father had to offer for sale,

that he was enabled to buy the little cottage in which he lived, with

the garden adjoining, as well as to clothe his whole family. The next

year furnished a new and larger boat, and an extra horse, besides

stocking the little purse of the father with a few spare guineas in

gold—the noble old spade-aces which "looked so much like _real_

money," as our forefathers used to say, when they first saw the queer,

"fly-away-blow-away" paper money.

Did they cry—Tom, or his mother—when the separation came? Ay, and

brothers, and sisters, and father too, as he was about to depart with

him—real tears, to be sure; for, as much like their native oaks as

our genuine old English race were in their hardihood and endurance of

storms, their hearts were of the tenderest—in the right place. A still

severer feeling of desolation was experienced by Tom and his father

when they parted at Hull; but Tom "girt up the loins of his mind," and

buried his sorrow in listening to the sailors' talk, and in thinking

of his coming adventures.

And now "the history of Cockle Tom" may end; for our purpose is not

to write a long story, but to show how a simple and yet truly noble

character may be formed: and that purpose is accomplished as well as we

are able to reach it. For the remainder of Cockle Tom's life,—it was

that of the true English sailor,—full of generosity and noble daring,

shaded, here and there, with a dash of passion, or a fit of insobriety

at the end of a long voyage of suffering, but tinted to brilliancy

with many an act of exalted sacrifice. Five voyages Cockle Tom made to

Greenland, or the Straits; three to the West Indies, and one to the

East; six times he passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and visited

Malta, or Corfu, or Constantinople; and four times he voyaged to the

Guinea coast, ere he reached the age of thirty. That was the limit of

his life; but he had saved as many lives as he numbered years by that

time. As an expert swimmer,—as a soul that would venture even into the

jaws of death to save a drowning man,—as a shipmate that would always

take the severer share of toil and ease another,—as an agile and

clever mariner that was unexcelled in the rapidity and perfection with

which he could execute any manoeuvre in the management of his ship,—as

the heart of fun and merriment,—and as the lad whose purse was ever at

the command of a brother in need,—Cockle Tom was the glory and pride

of every "true British tar" who knew him.

And how fresh did his filial love remain amidst separation and newness

of scene! His father and mother kept that sacred corner in his heart,

perfectly unrivalled, for many a long year; and when he admitted

another fair image there it was not allowed to encroach upon the

consecrated room occupied by the old ones. He loved his wife, whom he

married at five-and-twenty, and she deserved his love; but he did not

love his parents the less for that. They received many a solid proof

of his affection, although they seldom saw him; and the news of his

death, though it did not distract them with unseemly grief, dimmed the

brightness of their declining days.

Cockle Tom lay in harbour at Hull, after his return from the fourth

Guinea voyage: his vessel was delivered of its cargo: a friend had

written "home" for him,—for his father's cottage was "home" with him,

even after he had married and had a little neat house in Hull. On the

morrow, his young wife and himself were to have set out to see his aged

parents once more, when, in the fineness of the evening, while numerous

pleasure-boats were jostling each other in the narrow space of the

harbour, thronged as it was with large and small craft, one boat upset,

and five human lives were in danger. In a moment, Tom had plunged from

the deck where he stood, and the next moment had placed two in safety

in one of the boats: a second struggle, and two more were rescued; but,

in attempting to save the last, the dying struggler, or the cramp,

overpowered him, and he sunk to rise no more! Such was the consistent

end of the life of Cockle Tom,—the "true British sailor."

"A bold peasantry, their country's pride," are fast fading: may our

other twin jewel in English national character—the noble sailor—ever

preserve its lustre!

THE

LAST DAYS OF AN OLD SAILOR;

OR,

"BUTTER YOUR SHIRT!

SING TANTARA-BOBUS, MAKE SHIFT!"

Among the few survivors of our "glorious" sea-fights which the Peace

sent home to Gainsbro', a busy little port on the Trent, was old

Matthew Hardcastle, a veteran of threescore and ten, and something

more. It was said that Matthew might have been discharged from

ship-board some years earlier; but his attachment to the sea was

extreme, and he was at length, to speak plainly, forced out of the navy.

Gainsbro' was, at that particular period, somewhat fertile in the

production of eccentric folk, for Joe Hornby was then to be seen in it,

with his hat stuck full of field flowers, and sometimes, to the peril

of its "crown," fixed on his head wrong side upwards, because "the

world was turned upside down;" and the septuagenarian spinster, Nelly

Fish, might be seen flaunting along the narrow causeway, her strange

pile of five or six straw hats, which she wore one upon another,

to show that "she knew all the fashions that had been, as well as

those that were;"—and Martin Jackson would, ever and anon, sally

forth in some odd guise that demonstrated his lunacy; for to-day he

might be seen covered with papers on which were written all kinds of

queer criticisms on the rulers of the day, and to-morrow he would go

through the streets clad in his wife's chemise for an outer robe, and

wearing an old horseman's helmet with a fox's tail for a plume, while

half-a-dozen terriers yelped away at his heels, following thick and

fast to the mad hunter's cries of "Yo-ho! yo-ho! Hark forward! Tantivy!

Yo-ho! yo-ho!"

Such were some of the strange relics of humanity which afforded grave

problems for those who were able to moralise, or thought they were,

at that time, in Gainsbro'; but, amidst all and sundry of its human

catalogue, none of the curious articles thereof attracted more general

attention, as they passed to and fro in the streets of the little

town, than the veteran warrior-seaman, Matthew Hardcastle. Indeed,

Matthew was beheld, by "gentle and simple," in a different light to the

eccentrics, poor things! before mentioned. The world, in spite of its

conviction that it is wrong to laugh, laughs on at the antics and whims

of the helpless beings it calls "insane;" and Gainsbro' followed the

way of the world in laughing, too often, at poor Joe Hornby, and Nelly

Fish, and Martin Jackson; but it was by no means a custom to laugh at

Matthew Hardcastle.

Matthew was a tall, well-built old fellow, and did not lose an inch

of his height, notwithstanding his very advanced age. His brave face

resembled more the gnarled bark of an old oak than any other thing that

ever existed; it was a real sea-faring face, was Matthew's, if ever a

man wore one in this world. And then his wig! All the town talked of

Matthew Hardcastle's wig. It did not fall below the shoulders, like the

princely-looking old wigs of the days of Marlborough; but it was a very

grand, burly wig, for all that. It reached below the ears of the fine

old man, considerably; and it displayed five tiers of curls,—glorious

curls they were! Matthew's grand three-cocked hat, too,—for he and

old George Laughton, the currier, with his soul of independence, and

Charley Careless, the little high-spirited silversmith, were the

three last men in Gainsbro' who refused to put away the splendid

head-covering of their forefathers for the paltry upper gear of modern

times,—Matthew's three-cocked hat stood higher behind than it did

before, and, conjoined with the grandeur of his wig, caused Matthew to

look as bold and imposing as a brigadier major! And whoever met Matthew

on the causeway, rocking as he went with a regular naval kind of

motion, and supporting his aged steps by a bamboo in either hand, was

sure to say, "Good morning to you, Matthew! I hope you are quite well

this morning!" if they were considered to be his equals or superiors

in rank; while all the little boys and girls were wont to stop and

bow or courtesy to him, and say, "Your sarvant, Matthew!" Such was the

real honour paid to the aged sailor who had fought "the battles of his

country," as they were called.

The time came, however, when all this show of respect to the brave

old sailor ceased, for he lived too long! Twenty more years made his

age hard upon one hundred. That was a rare age to live; but it would

have been better for Matthew if he had died ten years earlier, for he

lived till the effects of the "glorious" battles in which he had been

engaged began to be felt—and felt grievously, even in that district,

which you will deem comparatively happy when viewed after your mind's

eye has been dwelling on the fathomless miseries of our dense hives of

manufacture. He lived till hungry and ragged labourers began to stand

daily in melancholy groups, and with folded arms, in the streets, and

till the parish authorities began to talk of pulling down the old

workhouse, to build a new "bastile" on the lovely green spot where the

children used to resort to play at sand-mills!

Matthew felt the change in the "civilisation," as it was called, of

the times, sensibly, as old as he was; but there was an inexhaustible

spring of vivacity in the old seaman's noble nature, and in spite of

age, infirmities, and bad times, Matthew Hardcastle was the merriest,

as well as the oldest man in Gainsbro'. "Butter your shirt, sing

tantara-bobus make shift!" Matthew would say, morning, noon, and night,

when the poor would be uttering their plaints in his ears; and the

whimsical saying, together with the jolly old fellow's way of uttering

it, many a time turned the mourning of his neighbours into mirth.

One day, a stranger heard this singular saying, as he was journeying

through the town, and passing by the street end of the alley where

Matthew was leaning on his two sticks to take the evening air, and

chatting with his neighbours, according to his custom. The traveller

could not fail to be struck with the saying, for he had heard it

before; and he had seen the veteran who uttered it before, though it

was many a long year since. The traveller stopped, and gazed on the old

sailor for a moment or two, and then stretched out his aged hand—for

he, too, was an old man—to grasp the hand of his ancient friend.

"Matthew Hardcastle! what, old Matthew!" he exclaimed.

Matthew stared, and seemed at a loss for a few seconds; but, at length,

he let one stick fall, as it were mechanically, and, clasping his old

friend's hand with the hearty gripe of a true sailor, cried aloud,

while the fire of his youth seemed once more to gleam from his eyes,—

"What! Paul Perkins! God bless thy heart! Why, I thought—but God bless

thy heart and soul, how art thou?—I thought thou hadst gone to Davy's

locker ten or fifteen years ago!"

"And I little thought that ever these old eyes were again to look upon

Matthew Hardcastle," replied Paul; "why, Lord save us, you must be an

amazing age! I am nearly threescore and ten, but you were a man in your

prime when I was but little older than a child, you know."

"Butter your shirt, sing tantara-bobus make shift!" answered jolly

old Matthew; "what matters it how old one may be? We shall live till

we die—kill us that dare!" And the pair of sound-hearted old tars

burst into a merry laugh that came up so clearly from the well-spring

of their hearts as to create a kindred merriment through the curious

crowd, which had by this time begun to gather round them, in the narrow

street.

"Well, but come, shipmate, this must not be a dry meeting," said Paul;

"suppose we step into the Red Lion, or the Black Horse, that I see on

the signs here, hard by, and wet our whistles together, once more. It

may be for the last time, you know, in this world."

"Avast, heaving!" replied Matthew; "I have no objection for Molly

Crabtree, here, to fetch us a jack of rum or so, and we can have

it in my little berth; but my old head won't bear the racket of a

public-house now, Paul."

"Well, well, have it your own way, Mat," replied the other; and the two

ancient men adjourned, as fast as their stiffened limbs would permit

them, to Matthew's little dwelling in the alley.

Matthew's hammock—for he could never be persuaded to sleep in a

bed—was slung at one corner of the narrow room, and just under it was

placed his arm-chair. He would fain have given up his usual seat, on

this occasion, to his friend; but Paul Perkins had too much real and

untaught courtesy to accept of it.

"No, no, keep on board your own ship, Matthew," he cried; "I won't do

any such thing: sit ye down, sit ye down."

And so Matthew sat down, with this entreaty, and reared his two sticks

against the wall, and doffed his rare hat, and showed his wig in all

its glory. Paul looked round the room, and could not help indulging

in the natural exultation of a sailor. Nelson, and Howe, and Duncan,

and Rodney, showed their gallant faces, according to the best skill

of some humble limner, over the little mantelpiece: a fine model of a

first-rate man-of-war—the work of Matthew's own fingers in his younger

days—stood, in unapproachable pride, upon a little dresser on the

opposite side of the dwelling; and, above it, a curious tobacco-pipe,

from some foreign shore, curled its enormous length around three or

four nails driven into the wall, and displayed the painted image of

a black-a-moor's head, at its extremity. Other odd fragments of a

sailor's fondness, such as small carved "figure-heads" of vessels,

wrought with the pocket-knife, to relieve hours of tedium, pouches of

kangaroo-skin, the favourite repositories of the sailor's favourite

weed, pipe-stoppers of bone, cut into grotesque shapes, and such-like

nick-knackeries decorated the walls, till scarcely a bare patch of them

could be seen.

"Well, and I suppose you're at home here, Mat, eh?" said Paul, his face

beaming with pleasure as he asked the question.

A sudden and unwonted shade came over Matthew's countenance: "Hum!"

said he, gloomily, "liked the old Dreadnought better; but she's

now—God bless her!—only a hull, like me. But butter your shirt!"

cried the gallant-hearted old fellow, bursting into his prevailing

gaiety,—"sing tantara-bobus make shift! we shall live till we

die—kill us that dare!" And again the old lads set up a merry laugh in

unison, and were as happy, for the nonce, as the proudest monarchs in

christendom.

Molly Crabtree now entered with the rum, and began to prepare the grog,

that real nectar for the sailor. The precious glass was mixed, and went

round over and over again; nor would the old sailors be said "nay" when

Molly looked modest about it: she was compelled to take a sip each time

when it came to her turn. Old shipmates were named, and the bravery

and virtues of the dead were honoured; hearty and kind wishes for the

welfare of the living were expressed; old stories were told, and the

joys of old times were recorded with a sigh; but sighing usually was

followed by a laugh amid the utterance of old Matthew's singular

expletive, "Butter your shirt! sing tantara-bobus make shift!"

"Upon my honour, Mat," at length said Paul, for, as it began to grow

towards midnight, the phraseology of the ancient mariners began to grow

more consequential,—more by token that the "jack" of rum had now been

repeated, for the third time—"upon my honour, Mat, you and I were no

skinkers in that hot action when you first wore the buttered shirt."

"Why, Lord ha' marcy on us!" cried Molly Crabtree, who had been

listening all along, and staring like an owl at twilight, during the

successive strange recitals of the two old seafarers,—"did Matthew

ever wear a real buttered shirt, then? For Heaven's sake tell us the

meaning on't!"

"That I will, ma'am," said Paul touching his hat as gallantly as an

admiral; "you see, it was during a severe engagement with the Dutchmen

that Mat and I were ordered to the main-top,—but hardly had we reached

it, when a shot from the enemy cut our mainmast fairly in two, and

hurled us both on to the enemy's deck, in the midst of more than a

hundred heavy-bottomed Dutchmen! To dream of fighting against such

odds, ma'am, you'll understand was, of course, out of all question; so

we quietly walked our bodies, to the tune of 'donner and blitzen,' down

below, to become close prisoners under hatches. Now it so happened,

d'ye see, ma'am? that the only fellow-prisoners we found in the hole

where they crammed us were cheeses and queer big tubs; and we felt a

nat'ral sort of a curiosity to rummage about the hole, when left in

the dark by ourselves. Clambering up some o' these huge tubs at one

end of the hole, we both lost footing together, and fell head over

heels into the midst of something that was remarkably soft; and there

we struggled, and struggled hard, too,—but 'twas all in vain, we

could not flounder out,—and so were content to remain closed on all

sides up to the neck, with just our heads bobbing out, and gasping for

breath. Shiver my timbers, if ever I was so pickled before or since! At

length the Dutchman was taken; and when some of our lads made their way

into the dark hole where we were, we began to hail 'em."—"Dreadnought

a-hoy!" said Mat: "The Union Jack a-hoy!" said I: "Who's there, in the

devil's name?" cried one: "Why that's old Mat Hardcastle's growl—where

the devil is he?" said first one of our lads and then another. And, as

sure as you're there, ma'am," continued Paul, growing more polite and

gallant as he proceeded, "what with one noise or another, it wasn't

until the lads had driven their marling-spikes through almost every

cask in the hole, that Mat and I were discovered up to the neck in one

of the Dutchmen's big butter firkins. We were a good deal ashamed,

ma'am, o' course, being as how we were soaked to the skin in the

grease, for it warmed, as we stuck in it; and no doubt by its melting,

we should ha' been able to have got out of it without help, if we had

had to stay much longer before we had been found. The worst of it was,

we could not get time to strip for some hours after, and this made us

both mighty uneasy, for many was the joke that was passed upon us as

to how we liked our buttered shirts. But Mat's heart was always light,

all his life long; and he answered all who asked that saucy question,

just as he puts by all sorrow now, with "Butter _your_ shirt! Sing

tantarara-bobus make shift!—and ever since then Matthew has kept his

saying; and it is not a bad one, either, let me tell you, ma'am! what

think ye?" concluded Paul Perkins, and took a stiffer pull at the grog

than he had ever done that night, thinking that he deserved it for his

cleverness, and feeling himself entitled to a double pull because he

had missed his turn by telling this yarn.

Molly Crabtree only answered with a hearty laugh, and Paul laughed too,

but Matthew laughed louder and longer than either of them, for he was

'a practised laugher, and lived by it,' as he used jokingly to say. But

now the fourth measure of grog was done, and it was too late to buy

more; so the conversation began to grow less boisterous. Molly rose

to depart; and the two veterans were left by themselves. Paul urged

Matthew to get into his hammock, and Matthew urged Paul; but neither

could prevail on the other, and so at last they fairly fell asleep in

their chairs, and neither of them awoke,—though they each snored

as loud as a rhinoceros,—until Molly Crabtree came and opened the

shutters some hours after sunrise the ensuing morning. Their limbs were

tolerably stiff, and their heads ached beyond a joke, it may easily be

guessed, for it was many a long day since either of them had gone to

sleep groggy. They made the best of their aches and pains, however,

when they awoke, and, after a hearty renewed gripe of friendship,

thrust each a lumping quid of tobacco into his mouth, and then quietly

awaited the preparation of breakfast by Molly Crabtree.

Now, as natural as our forefathers always reckoned it to be to get

drunk, or, at least, tipsy, with an old friend, when you met him after

a long absence or separation, yet it was always felt to be not less

natural that the cosy companions of the preceding night talked like

sober men the next morning. So it was with Matthew Hardcastle and Paul

Perkins.

"Matthew,—I've been thinking," began Paul, very measuredly, as he was

sipping the cocoa-sop out of a bright brown earthen porringer, with a

spoon, in imitation of his host,—"I've been thinking,—we shall soon

be in our last port."

"True, very true," said Matthew, "and, d'ye know, Paul? I would not

much care if we had the same voyage to go again, save and except a

little at the end on't."

"Then we don't think alike," said Paul, dropping his spoon into the

porringer, and looking thoughtful: "I'm sure, Mat, you'll bear me

witness that I'm no skinkerly coward; but, splice me, if I don't think

that all this warring and fighting, and blowing up of poor men's limbs

is, after all, a great piece of wickedness. And, besides that, I've

thought very much of late,—and particularly since I've seen the times

change so much,—that this setting of poor Englishmen on to fight poor

foreigners, and poor foreigners to fight poor Englishmen, is only a

deep scheme, on the part of the rich abroad and the rich at home, to

keep the poor down."

"Say you so, Paul?" exclaimed Matthew, also resting his spoon on the

brim of the porringer, and looking very intently upon his friend; "why,

you know, Paul, if we had not gone to fight the foreigners, they would

have come to fight us."

"But who amongst 'em was it that wanted to fight? just think of that,

Matthew," rejoined Paul, very earnestly. "You and I had no quarrel with

the French, or the Dutch, or the Spaniard, you know. And what poor

foreigners, think you, had any quarrel with the people here? No, no,

depend on it, Matthew, the poor never made these wars, nor ever thought

of fighting, or wished to fight, on either side: it was the rich—'our

betters,' as they are called—who began the quarrel, and then pushed

us, or dragged us, into it, to lose our limbs, or shed our blood, or

escape if we could."

"'Pon my word," said Matthew, shaking his wig, very significantly,

"I've had some such thoughts as these now and then,—and you're

making a strong yarn on't, Paul, I confess,—but what's the use of

muddling one's old brains with such things? You know what I always say,

Paul,—'Butter your shirt——"

"Nay, but avast a bit, Mat," said Paul, looking invincibly serious; "we

are getting fast into our last port, as I said before; and, if we have

been unthinking fools all our lives, I don't see why we should not open

our eyes and look about us a bit, before we step on the last shore.

Times are harder now than ever you and I knew 'em; and, as much fuss

as there used to be made about an old seaman, all that sort of thing

is gone. I question if you and I live a few years longer, and grow

cranky,—and, God knows, I begin to feel queer, night and morning,—but

folks will grow weary of waiting on us, and the parish wolves will haul

us away to the workhouse, and pocket our little pensions."

"God Almighty forbid!" ejaculated Matthew, very fervently.

"But 'tis very likely to come to pass, however, let me tell you,"

rejoined Paul; "you knew Jerry Simpson: he was berthsman with us,

if you remember, and lost an arm at Trafalgar. He wouldn't go into

Greenwich college, but went and settled in Shoreditch, with his old

sister. She died two twelvemonths ago, and poor old Jerry soon grew

helpless—so they took him into the parish poor-house, pocketing his

pension, and he died there, of sheer grief, about six months ago. That

was a rum reward for fighting for his country so bravely as Jerry

did——"

"By G—d it was!" exclaimed old Matthew, involuntarily—for the

fine old fellow had not uttered an oath for years before: "the Lord

ha' mercy upon me for swearing, poor old sinner that I am!" he

continued:—"but you don't say that that's true about Jerry Simpson, do

you, Paul? why he used to rush into a gun-boat like a ravenous wolf!

Shiver my old timbers! but a braver sailor than Jerry never stepped

upon deck!"

"'Pon the word of a sailor, what I have said is true," replied Paul,

"for I saw it with my own sorrowful eyes. But now don't you perceive,

Matthew," resumed Paul, eager to take advantage of the impression this

fact had made, "that the change in the state of things is owing to the

heavy taxes caused by the war, and——"

"Why, you see, Paul, I don't understand these things," said Matthew,

impatiently; "but I feel you are right about us poor dogs never wishing

to bite the foreigners—for I never had such a thought till I got on

board ship. But why is it that great folks wish to shed blood at such

a rate? What do they want, and what would they have? 'Zounds! if I

have but my bit o' bacco, and can rest at night, I'm as happy as any of

'em. And then, again, Paul, why is it—excuse me, Paul, if I seem to

talk foolish; I'm older than you, but you always had more book larning,

I'm well aware—why is it that the poor don't let the rich fight their

battles themselves, if they want any fighting?"

"Why, there, now, you old billy-goat!" exclaimed Paul, laughing; "you

know that both you and I were dragged off by the press-gang, just as we

were about to step on shore at Wapping; and were not thousands hauled

away, in the same manner, throughout the war? 'Why is it that we don't

let 'em fight their own battles themselves' indeed! why, you know, Mat,

the poor dogs are compelled to obey the rich ones, in this world. What

I want you to see is that the rich dogs make these wars on purpose to

keep the poor dogs under. And yet I don't know, Matthew, that either

you or I can alter things: it is past our time o' life; and, besides, I

believe the whole consarn will before long tumble to pieces of itself,

for the world's about tired of it."

"Blow me!" exclaimed Matthew, completely wearied of the subject, and

anxious to resume his usual careless and happy vein, "if I can see the

use of all your palaver, Paul: you may be right, in the main, but then

you make no sail, take as many tacks as you will. You still end by

saying the poor dogs are forced to bark and bite as the rich dogs bid

'em; and you own that we're both too old to do aught towards bettering

things; and, besides, you say the consarn's doomed to fall to pieces by

its own rottenness; and so, instead of bothering my old brains about

it, I still say, as I did when we got out of the Dutchmen's firkin,

'Butter your shirt! sing tantarara-bobus make shift!'"

The argument was ended with a hearty laugh on both sides, for, as

toughly as Paul had spun his yarn, it was clear, from his last

observation, that he was beginning to esteem his work as "labour in

vain." That day and another passed in calling old times to mind; and,

on the fourth day, the two ancient friends and fellows in many a storm

and broil, parted, never to meet again on the lee-shore of Time.

Old Matthew Hardcastle kept up his gaiety of heart till his last day,

though that day was, to the full, as doleful as his trusty friend Paul

Perkins had prognosticated it would be. Reader,—if ever it falls in

your way to visit old Gainsbro', you will learn that, in the main,

what I am about to relate is too true. In proportion as Matthew became

helpless, people were wearied with waiting upon him; and, disgraceful

to relate! the old warrior-seaman was, at length, neglected till his

aged body swarmed with filth. Instead of respect, disgust was now

expressed for him, by an unreasonable world. Paul Perkins' prophecy

came true to the letter: the parish "worthies" came to "take care of

him;" they took him to the poor-house; he was stripped stark-naked

in the wash-house; and cold water was "swabbed," as he himself would

have said, upon his aged body to cleanse him! Even in that moment, the

brave companion of Howe and Nelson strove to keep up the gaiety of

his noble heart, and once essayed his old saying, "Butter your shirt!

sing"——But his aged lips quivered, and his jaws chattered with the

cold,—and his bold old heart broke with the barbarous treatment he was

undergoing!

Oh! this is a world of wrong; and it will take a great deal of effort

to right it, if ever it be righted at all. Reader! if you even think,

with Paul Perkins, that the bad system under which so many groan, will,

at length, fall to pieces by virtue, or rather by the vice, of its own

imperfections,—is it not, still, sensible and philanthropic to be

doing what little we can to hasten what we feel to be "a consummation

devoutly to be wished?"

DOROTHY PYECROFT'S PREACHING;

OR,

"CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME."

All the world, in the village of Sturton-le-Steeple, had said so,

before the time of old Dorothy Pyecroft; but Dorothy did not join all

the world in saying so. Sturton is a homely little place, situate in

the pleasant shire of Nottingham, and lying within a couple of miles

of the Trent, and old Lincolnshire; and its church steeple forms a

pretty object in the landscape which you view from the hills above

Gainsboro'. Dorothy Pyecroft, from the time that she was a child but

the height of a table, went to Gainsboro' market with butter, eggs, or

poultry, as regularly as Tuesday returned in each week; for the hearty

old dame used commonly to boast that she had never known what it was

to have a day's illness in her life, although, at the season we are

beginning to gossip about, she was full threescore and ten. It was a

bonny sight to see the dame go tripping o'er the charming lea which

spreads its flowery riches from Sturton-le-Steeple to the banks of

noble Trent, by four of the clock on a gay summer's morning, with the

clean milking-pail under her arm, that was bare to the elbow. You would

have thought, at a distance, she had been some blithe maiden in her

teens. And then the cheerful and clear tone in which she summoned her

cows, calling to them as kindly as if they were her children—"Come, my

pratty creatures!" a call that was the signal for a treat of pleasing

pastoral music to the enthusiastic early angler on the Trent: the rich,

varied "low" of the cows,—alto, tenor, and bass,—answered that call,

in changeful echo across the stream; the angler's delighted ear caught

a treble, heavenward, from the matin lark, to complete the "harmony;"

and even the cackling of the geese, uttering their confused joy at the

sound of the dame's voice, seemed to mingle no unpleasing "discord"

with the natural chorus. By the time that her morning's milking was

over, the spoilt maidens of the village were only beginning to open

their kitchen window-shutters; and she usually passed the whole train

of them, loitering and chattering about their sweethearts, on their

way to the lea, as she returned home, with the rich load upon her

head, and her arms fixed as properly a-kimbo as could be shown by the

sprightliest lass that ever carried a milking-pail. Some little shame

was commonly felt among the loiterers as they passed the exemplary old

woman,—but it did not result in their reformation. Old Farmer Muxloe,

who was always abroad at daybreak, and usually chatted a few moments

with the dame just at the point where the footpath crossed the bridle-way

over the lea, often commented, in no very measured terms, on the decline

of discipline among milk-maids since the days when he was a lad.

"Ah, dame!" he used to say, "there have been sore changes since you

and I used to take a turn around the maypole; I'm sure the world gets

lazier and lazier every day."

"Why, you see, neighbour, fashions change," the old dame would

reply—for she ever loved to take the more charitable side of a

question; "maybe, things may change again, and folk may take to getting

up earlier, after a few more years are over."

"I'faith, I've little hope on't," the old farmer would reply, and shake

his head, and smile; "but there's nobody like thee, Dolly, for taking

the kindest side."

"Why, neighbour, I always think it the best," Dorothy would rejoin,

with a benevolent smile; "I never saw things grow better by harsh words

and harsh thinkings, in my time."

And then the old farmer would smile again, and say, "Well, well, that's

just like thee! God bless thee, Dolly, and good morning to thee!" and

away he would turn Dobbin's head, and proceed on his usual morning's

ride from field to field.

The work of her little dairy, added to the care of a humble household,

composed of an infirm and helpless husband, and an equally infirm

maiden sister,—with, all and sundry, a stout house-dog, two

tabby-cats, and a fruitful poultry-yard,—usually occupied Dorothy

Pyecroft through the bustling forenoon of each day; and when there

was no immediate call upon her skill and benevolence among sick

neighbours,—for she was the cleverest herb-woman in the village, and

exercised her knowledge of the healing art without fee, or willing

acceptance even of thanks,—she would sit in her polished high-backed

chair, and work through the livelong afternoon at her spinning-wheel,

drowsing her two infirm companions into a salutary rest and

forgetfulness with the humming monotony of her labour, but revolving

within her own mind many a useful and solemn thought, meanwhile.

Dorothy sat absorbed in this her favourite employ, one afternoon

in autumn, when an itinerant pedlar made his customary call at the

cottage-door. The dame's mind was so deeply involved in the contrivance

of one of her little plans of benevolence, that she did not recognise

the face of the traveller until he had addressed her twice.

"Any small wares for children? any needles, pins, or thimbles?" cried

the pedlar, running through the list of his articles with the glibness

of frequent repetition.

"No, Jonah: I want none," replied the dame, kindly; "but, maybe, you'll

take a horn o' beer, and a crumb or two o' bread and cheese?"

The pedlar assented, well pleased, and lowered the pack from his

shoulders, and set down the basket from his hand, next seating himself

in a chair without the ceremonial of asking, and in all the gladsome

confidence of welcome.

"Thank you, thank you, dame," he said, and smacked his lips with

pleasurable anticipation, as he took the horn of smiling beer and the

piece of bread and cheese from the dame's hand.

"You're welcome, Jonah," replied the dame, heartily. "Have you walked

far to-day? and what luck have you had?"

"I've come twenty miles, and have never taken handsel yet, dame,"

answered Jonah, in a melancholy tone.

"So, poor heart!" said Dorothy, very pitifully; "I must buy a trifling

dozen of needles of thee, however, before thou goest. I fear times are

hard, Jonah: I hear many and grievous complaints."

"Times are harder than ever I knew them to be, dame, I assure you,"

rejoined Jonah; "and they that have a little money seem most determined

to hold it fast. Sore murmurings are made about this by poor folk: but

I don't wonder at it, myself," concluded the worldly pedlar, "for, in

such sore times as these, there's no knowing what a body may come to

want: and, as the old saying goes, you know, dame, 'Charity begins at

home!'"—and Jonah buried his nose in the ale-horn, thinking he had

said something so wisely conclusive that it could not be contradicted.

"They say it was a parson who first used that saying," observed

Dorothy, glancing from her wheel, very keenly, towards the pedlar;

"but, for my part, Jonah, I am very far from thinking it such a saying

as a parson ought to use."

"Say you, dame?" said Jonah, opening his eyes very wide.

"Did charity begin at home with their master?" said Dorothy, by way of

explanation.

"Ah, dame!" said the pedlar, quickly discerning Dorothy's meaning, "I

fear but few parsons think of imitating their master now-a-days!"

"That's more than I like to say," observed the gentle Dorothy; "I think

there are more good people in the world than some folk think for;—but

I'm sure, Jonah, we all want a better understanding of our duty towards

each other."

"Right, Dame Dorothy, right!—that's the best sort of religion; but

there's the least of it in this world," rejoined the pedlar.

"Why, Jonah," continued the good dame, "I think there might easily be a

great deal more good in the world than there is. Every body ought to

remember how many little kindnesses it is in their power to perform for

others, without any hurt to themselves."

"Yes, a sight o'good might be done in that way, dame," observed the

pedlar, beginning very much to admire Dorothy's remarks; "and how much

more happy the world would be then!"

"Just so!" exclaimed Dorothy, her aged face beaming with benevolence;

"that is the true way of making the world happy, for all to be trying

to do their fellow-creatures some kindness. And then, you see, Jonah,

when once the pleasure of thus acting began to be felt, there would

soon be a pretty general willingness to make greater efforts, and

even sacrifices of self-interest, as it is wrongly called, in order

to experience greater pleasure, and likewise to increase the world's

happiness."

"Truly, dame," said the pedlar, "you do me good to hear you talk. I'm

but a poor scholar; yet I can tell, without book, that you must be

right."

"But then, you see, Jonah," continued the dame, half unconscious of

Jonah's last observation, "if every body were to say, 'Charity begins

at home,' this general happiness would never begin. I like best, Jonah,

to think of the example of the Blessed Being who came into the world

to do us all good. He went about pitying the miserable and afflicted,

and healing and blessing them. Charity did not begin at home with him,

Jonah!"

The tears were now hastening down Jonah's rough cheeks. How forcible

are lessons of goodness! how irresistibly the heart owns their power!

Jonah could not support the conversation further. Dorothy's plain and

unaffected remarks sunk deep in to his bosom; and when he rose up, and

buckled on his pack once more, and the aged dame gave him "handsel," or

first money for the day, by purchasing a few pins and needles, the poor

pedlar bade her farewell in an accent that showed he felt more than

common thankfulness for her kindness.

Alas! this is a world where good impressions are, too often, speedily

effaced by bad ones. Jonah called, next at the gate of a wealthy

squire, and, with hat in hand, asked for leave to go up to the

kitchen-door and expose his wares to the servants. The squire refused;

and when Jonah pleaded his poverty, and ventured to remonstrate, the

squire frowningly threatened to set the dogs upon him, if he did not

instantly decamp! Jonah turned away, and bitterly cursed the unfeeling

heart of the rich man,—avowing, internally, that Dorothy Pyecroft was

only a doating old fool,—for, after all, "Charity begun at home!"

Scarcely had the pedlar taken twenty steps from Dame Dorothy's cottage,

ere the village clergyman knocked at her door. The dame knew the young

parson's "rap-rap-rap!" It was quick and consequential, and unlike the

way of knocking at a door used by any one else in Sturton, who thought

it necessary to be so ceremonious as to give notice before they entered

their neighbour's dwelling. Dame Dorothy ceased her spinning, and rose

to open the door, curtesying with natural politeness, and inviting her

visitor to be seated.

"Thank ye!" said the parson, raising his brows superciliously, putting

the hook-end of his hunting-whip to his mouth, and striding about the

floor in his spurred boots; "sit you down, I beg, Dame Pyecroft! sit

you down—I'll not sit, thank ye!"

"I fear, sir, there is a great deal of suffering at present," said

Dorothy, sitting down, and fixing her mild blue eyes upon the

thoughtless young coxcomb, and feeling too earnestly in love with

goodness to lose any opportunity of recommending its glorious lessons.

"Oh!—suffering!—ay!" observed the young clergyman, in a tone that

showed he did not know what it was to think seriously: "you know there

always was a difference between the rich and the poor."

"But do you not think, sir, that the rich might lessen the difference

between themselves and the poor, without injuring themselves?" asked

Dorothy, in a tone of mild but firm expostulation.

"Why, as to that, I can't say exactly," replied the parson, apparently

brought to a halt in his thoughtlessness, and unable to extricate

himself from the difficulty in which his ignorance placed him; "I can't

say exactly; but, you know, Dame Pyecroft, some people have nothing to

give away, though they may be better off than many of the poor: with

such people, you know, Dame Pyecroft, the old proverb holds good, that

'Charity begins at home.'"

"I am grieved to hear _you_ quote that proverb, sir," said Dorothy;

"I had just been exerting my poor wits to show that that saying was

not a right one, in the hearing of poor Jonah the pedlar, before your

reverence came in."

"Not a right saying, Dame Pyecroft? Why, you know it is a very

old-established saying; and I think it a very shrewd one," rejoined the

clergyman.

"But it is not so old as the New Testament, sir," replied Dorothy, with

a winning smile; "and as shrewd as it is, do you think, sir, it was

ever acted upon by your Great Master?"

The young clergyman took his hook-whip from his mouth, laid it on the

table, took out his pocket-handkerchief, and, blushing up to the eyes,

sat down before he attempted an answer to the good old dame's meek but

powerful question.

"You will remember, Dame Dorothy," he said, at length, "that the

Saviour was in very different circumstances to all other human beings

that ever lived."

"But you will remember, sir," rejoined Dorothy, in the same mildly

pertinacious manner, "that that Blessed Being said to his disciples, 'I

have given you an example, that ye shall do as I have done to you: if I

have washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one another's feet.'"

"Yes: that is very beautiful," said the young clergyman, feeling the

irresistible force of goodness, and speaking as if he had never read

the passage in the book for himself: "the Saviour's example is very

beautiful."

"And does not your reverence perceive how easy and delightful it would

be for every one to begin to follow it?" immediately rejoined Dorothy,

taking advantage of the good impression which, she saw, was being made

on the mind of the young parson; "how easily might all who have enough

give even of their little superfluity; how easily might we all do each

other kindnesses which would cost us nothing! What solid pleasure this

would bring back upon each of our hearts; and how surely it would lead

us to make sacrifices, in order to experience the richer pleasure of

doing greater good! Oh, sir," concluded the good old creature, with

a tear that an angel might envy gliding down her aged and benevolent

cheek, "I cannot think that any one knows the secret of true happiness

who practises the precept—'Charity begins at home!'"

The young and inexperienced man gazed with a strange expression at

his new and humble teacher. This was better preaching than he had ever

heard or practised. His heart had been misled, but not thoroughly

vitiated, by a selfish and falsely styled "respectable" education.

He was too much affected to prolong the conversation then; but he

became, from that time, a pupil at the feet of the aged Dorothy. His

fine manners were laid aside. He became a real pastor. He was, from

that day, more frequently in the cottages of the poor, twenty times

over, than in the houses of the rich. He distributed of his substance

to relieve the wants of others, and lived himself upon little. He

forgot creeds to preach goodness, and pity, and mercy, and love. He

preached till he wept, and his audiences wept with him. His life was

an embodiment of the virtues he inculcated. And when, in the course of

five short years, he laid down his body in the grave, a victim to the

earnest conviction of his mind, the poor crowded around his hallowed

resting-place with streaming eyes, and loving, but afflicted hearts,

wishing they might be where he was when they died, since they were sure

his presence, they said, of itself would make a heaven!

The young clergyman interred Dorothy Pyecroft but half a year before

his own departure; and her last words were words of thankfulness that

ever she had shown the young man the fallacy of the proverb—"Charity

begins at home."

THE

MINISTER OF MERCY.

Leicester has the appearance of a new town as you glance at it, in your

rapid course on the Midland Counties Railway. And, if the "locomotives"

halt for a few minutes at a point on the line where you have a full

view of the goodly borough, the momentary impression which numerous

ancient church-towers gives you of the real antiquity of the place is

soon effaced by the extensive rows of newly-built houses that stretch

away on every side till they appear to cover almost the entire populous

area on which you are gazing. Successive gusts of prosperity for the

manufacturers, occurring at various periods during the last forty

years,—too often followed by severe depressions,—have in fact swelled

the town to more than double its size at the close of the last century.

Yet a few days' sojourn in the borough would afford a lover of

antiquity no inferior treat. The massive wall and arched vaults of a

ruin, believed to have formed part of a temple of Janus during the

ages that Britain was under Roman sway,—the ivied remains of the noble

abbey where the imperious and vice-regal Wolsey "laid his bones,"—the

sternly frowning "Newarke," or entrance-tower to the castle of the

Grantmesnels, Bellomonts, Blanchmaines, De Montforts, Plantagenets,

and other proud Earls of Leicester,—the solitary wooded mound on

which the castle itself anciently stood,—the rich minute carving of

the old churches,—the quaint interior of the old town-hall,—the

grotesque exterior of much of the really ancient part of the town,

composed of dwellings striped with timber and plaster, and decked with

ornamented or overhanging gables,—dwellings wherein the soldiers

of the fated kingly Crookt-back were billeted on the night before

Bosworth-field,—these, and sundry other features of historic chronicle

and change, could not fail to awaken eager interest in an antiquarian.

Our story, however, concerns itself less with the outward than the

inward, and regards rather the misery of the living than the pride of

the dead.

Passing along the ancient line of highway from York to London, from

the churchless burial-yard of St. Leonard, over the old North bridge,

revealing the meandering Soar and the meadows of the old monks; by the

curious Gothic west-door of the very ancient church of All Saints,

that almost compels you to stop and look at it; and then, by the

transverse streets, where the venerable "high cross" was taken down

but a few years ago, and reaching that part of the ancient principal

line of street called "Southgate," where modern Goths so lately took

down that most interesting historical relic, the house in which the

last regal Plantagenet slept the night before his death; (a splendid

gable filled with a world of old English associations, and breathing

a wholesome lesson to despotism from every atom of its mouldering

substance!) the traveller would come to a ruinous-looking entry of a

street on his right, bearing the chivalrous designation of "Red Cross

Street." At the door of a low, crumbling house about halfway down this

ancient bye-street, a dissenting minister stopped one winter's evening

some eight-and-twenty years ago, to make his usual call of duty and

benevolence. His gentle knock, however, was not answered; and, before

he could repeat it, he was saluted hastily by a rich manufacturer, a

member of his congregation, who was passing by on some business errand.

"You are the very man I wanted to see," said the minister in a very

earnest tone, seizing the manufacturer by one arm, as if he feared the

man of business might feel disposed to escape him: "I want half an

hour's conversation with you, sir."

"But I cannot stay now, sir," replied the manufacturer; "will you join

me in my morning ride in the gig to-morrow? Do, sir; it will do you

good."

"I will, I will; thank you, sir," answered the minister, in a quick,

nervous way that seemed to be usual with him; and they shook hands with

great apparent fervour, and bid each other "good night."

The dissenting minister did not find entrance into the low,

ruined-looking house, until a neighbour or two had forced open the

door. A light was then brought, and a picture of affecting interest was

revealed. A venerable silver-haired man lay breathing his last; and

by the side of his humble bed, with folded hands, knelt she who had

been the partaker of his joys and sorrows for sixty years, lost to all

consciousness except that of mental prayer for her departing husband.

The sound of the minister's voice seemed to arouse her for a moment;

but she relapsed again into complete obliviousness of all things, save

the one absorbing feeling created by the view of that gasping pallid

form that lay before her. So the minister knelt, likewise; and when

the neighbours who had entered with him had followed his example he

prayed audibly and earnestly, yet so reverently and pathetically,

that, while he prayed and wept, the neighbours thought themselves in

the presence of some superior being, with a soul of compass to embrace

and bless the whole human race, rather than a mere mortal. The face of

the dying man kindled, too, with wondrous feeling, when he heard the

sounds of that well-known and beloved voice, though he had seemed past

consciousness but a few moments before. And when the minister paused

in his petition, and saw the aged man's look fixed upon him, he said,

with unutterable sweetness and tenderness,—

"William, my dear old friend, is all well within?—is your hope still

blooming and full of immortality?"

The aged man raised his withered right hand with a last effort—waved

it thrice—smiled with an ineffable smile,—and expired!

The minister was raising the aged and speechless widow from her

kneeling posture, and placing her in an arm-chair, when her married

daughter and several other neighbours entered the house of death. The

minister recognised the daughter, and, after committing the widow

earnestly to her care, emptied his waistcoat pocket of the silver

it contained, and gave it, without counting, into the hands of the

astonished young woman, who stood staring, while the good man snatched

up his hat, and, saying "God bless you all! I'll call again to-morrow:

God bless you all!" hurried away in a moment.——

A tall, grave-looking man, in the habit of a gentleman, bowed

courteously to the dissenting minister, as he was turning the corner of

the High Street, and, addressing him by his name, uttered the customary

observations on the severity of the weather.

"Ah, my dear sir," spake the dissenting minister, unable, from the

state of his feelings, to answer in the same strain, "I wish I had had

you with me a quarter of an hour ago."

"Why, sir?" asked the gentleman.

"That you might have seen, for yourself, how a Christian can die,"

answered the minister.

"Ah!" replied the gentleman, with a look of serious concern, "there

you, and all truly Christian ministers, find a field of more exalted

enterprise than the whole world of turmoil and strife, put together,

can furnish. I envy you, my dear sir—I envy you, more than I can

express to you."

"It is, indeed, a field of exalted, of truly glorious enterprise, the

visiting of death-beds—the pouring of heavenly consolation into the

spirit that is leaving its frail clay tabernacle, and the gladdening of

the human wretchedness which is left to mourn and weep," burst forth

the good minister, forgetting that he stood in the bleak, cold, open

street, and not in his pulpit; "but, oh, my good friend, what a dark,

disconsolate scene would your Free-thinking make of the chamber of

death, were it as universally spread as you wish it to be!"

"It is there where you always have the advantage of me, sir," rejoined

the gentleman; "I have acknowledged it, again and again; and I feel the

force of that reflection so powerfully, sometimes, that I half resolve

to spend the remainder of my life in some scheme of philanthropy, and,

meanwhile, join in persuading men to believe Christianity, although I

do not believe its historical evidences are worth a straw——"

"But that would be wrong, sir!" said the minister interrupting the

other, very earnestly.

"So I think, sir," continued the gentleman; "and yet I feel sometimes

as if I should become guilty of a crime by striving to take away what

I regard as a pleasant deceit from men,—their chance, by imbibing a

full confidence in Christianity, of expiring not merely with calmness,

but with rapturous joy and triumph. Free-thinking will never enable

even the largest intellect, the most highly cultivated man, to die

thus; much less will it give such a death to an imperfectly educated

or ignorant man. But then, I reflect again, that it would be morally

and veritably criminal in me to join in strengthening what I sincerely

believe to be falsehood."

"And so it would, sir," said the dissenting minister, taking the

gentleman's arm, who offered it, that they might walk on to avoid some

degree of the cold; "so it would, sir: it would render you a very

contemptible creature. Let me tell you, sir, that with all the delight

I experience in fulfilling some little of my duty as a Christian

minister, the remembrance of it would not move me one inch towards

the bed of a dying man with the view of offering him the consolations

of revealed religion—if I believed such consolations to be a mere

farce. I would scorn to mock him with false hopes. You know how deeply

I regret your scepticism, my dear sir; but I would not see you veil

it through a spurious tenderness. No, sir: truth and sincerity are

the purest jewels in human character; even pity and benevolence,

themselves, are gems of inferior water."

"I wish all Christians were like yourself," said the gentleman, after a

pause of admiration for the great and good being with whom he felt it a

real privilege to walk; "but I see so little practice of goodness from

the hundreds around me who profess a religion that enthrones it, that

the sight tends much to confirm me in my old opinions."

"Indeed, sir," observed the minister, in a very grave tone, "I must

tell you that you will be guilty of great self-deceit, if you imagine

that the wickedness of hypocrites, or the slackness of lukewarm

professors, will form a valid excuse for your rejection of Christ's

mission, should you, one day, prove it true."

"I know it, my dear sir," replied the gentleman; "I know it well;

though I thank you for your kind and well-meant zeal in reminding me

of it. I will tell you one thought of mine, however,—and it is one

that fixes itself very forcibly before my judgment,—if callousness

to the sufferings of their workmen continues to increase among the

manufacturers as rapidly as it has increased for the last ten years,

Christianity will be openly scoffed at by the poor of the next

generation, in the very streets where we are now walking."

"You have only expressed what I expressed last Sunday morning from my

own pulpit, sir," returned the minister,—seeming too deeply affected

with his strong belief of the probability of such an event to be able

to add more.

"I hear that the wretched framework-knitters suffer more and more

from abatements of wages and other encroachments upon their means of

subsistence, of the most unfeeling and unprincipled character," resumed

the gentleman; "and although hundreds are without work at the present

time, and the complaints of suffering from want of food, fuel, and

clothing, are so loud and frequent, yet not a single rich manufacturer

of the many that profess religion, in Leicester, proposes to open

a public subscription for the poor, according to the humane custom

of past times. I heard a whisper that you had begun to stir up the

languid charity of some of your friends towards the commencement of a

subscription: was I rightly informed, sir?"

"It is the very subject I intend to broach to Mr.——, to-morrow

morning," replied the minister, with an enthusiastic glow suffusing his

expressive face.

"Please place your own name for that sum somewhere on the list," said

the gentleman, taking a note for 20_l._ out of his pocket-book and

giving it to the minister.

The good preacher was trying to stifle his grateful tears, in order

to thank the sceptic,—but the latter bowed and strode away; and the

good preacher, as he walked towards his own house in deep reflective

silence, had many thoughts of the true interpretation of such words as

"infidel" and "Christian" that would have startled his audience, if he

had uttered them before it on the following Sunday.

In spite of an agonised bodily system, the minister was early abroad

the next morning, and his glorious brow beamed with pleasure, when the

maid-servant announced that the rich manufacturer's gig was at the

door, and the conversation was near that he hoped would result in the

effective commencement of a subscription to relieve the misery, and

hunger, and cold, and disease, under which the depressed stockingers

and their families were groaning that severe winter. Yet the

philanthropist, with all his guilelessness, knew the man he had to deal

with, and proceeded in a somewhat circumlocutory way to his object. In

the end, he enforced the claims of man as a brother, the admirableness

and divinity of charity, and the indefeasible rights of the working man

as a substantial agent in the creation of wealth, with so much of the

potentiality of his transcendent eloquence, that the manufacturer, in

spite of the resistance his heart's avarice made to the godlike theme,

assented to the proposal that he should begin the public subscription.

But how heart-stricken with grief and shame did the golden-tongued

pleader feel when, on producing the little book he had prepared for

collecting the names of subscribers, the rich manufacturer hesitated as

soon as he had written his name, bit the end of his cedar pencil, and

then hastily put five pounds at the end of his name! The minister did

not thank him, for his soul was too noble to permit his tongue to utter

one word which his heart would not accompany: but he had, again, some

peculiar thoughts about the true interpretation of the words "infidel"

and "Christian."

Neither was the good man to be damped by such an inauspicious

beginning; but begging Mr.——would not drive on again till he, the

minister, had got safely out of the gig, bid the rich churl "good

morning," posted away to the house of another "of whom the world was

not worthy," but with whom Leicester was likewise blessed at that time:

the Rev. Mr. Robinson, vicar of St. Mary's, stayed till that good

man formed a little collecting book, and then left him to divide the

work of canvassing the town for names to form the subscription list.

Assisted occasionally by others, the dissenting minister persevered,

till, in the lapse of several days, and at the cost to himself of

excruciating visitations of increased pain in the night season, he

completed such a list as gave effectual relief to the hundreds of his

suffering fellow-creatures then inhabiting Leicester.

That labour was no sooner ended than he commenced a close inquiry into

the real state of the staple trade of the town; and, finding that the

reports of oppression and extortion, the foul fruits of avaricious

competition, were not exaggerated, he sat down and wrote an appeal in

behalf of the suffering framework-knitters that might have jeopardied

the favour and acceptance of a less able preacher with the wealthier

members of his congregation.

It might be imprudent to go on: the starving stockingers of Leicester

have no longer such an advocate; and, as highly as some profess to

esteem the memory of the truly good, they may feel angered by this

introduction of a portrait which, as imperfectly as it is delineated,

they will already have recognised to their shame. If a stranger to

old Leicester should ask whose is the portrait this faint limning is

intended to call to memory, it is hoped it will not be deemed an act

of desecration to introduce, in a volume of merely fugitive essays,

a name too truly holy to be lightly mentioned,—a name inscribed,

ineffaceably, in English literature, by the sunbeam of his peerless and

hallowed eloquence to whom it belonged,—the name of ROBERT HALL.

"MERRIE ENGLAND"—NO MORE!

The present generation,—the generation succeeding that in which

the eloquent philanthropist and the sceptical gentleman lived and

conversed,—has it witnessed any verification of the serious prophecy

uttered in that winter evening's conversation in the streets of

Leicester? The following brief but truthful sketch will furnish an

answer.

On an April morning in forty-two—scarcely four years bygone,—a

group of five or six destitute-looking men were standing on a

well-known space in Leicester, where the frustrum of a Roman milestone

(surmounted, in true Gothic style, with a fantastic cross) was

preserved within an iron palisade, and where the long narrow avenue

of Barkby Lane, enters the wide trading street called Belgrave Gate.

The paleness and dejection of the men's faces, as well as the ragged

condition of their clothing, would have told how fearfully they

were struggling with poverty and want, if their words had not been

overheard.

"Never mind the lad, John," said the tallest and somewhat the

hardest-featured man of the party; "he can't be worse off than he would

have been at home, let him be where he will. What's the use of grieving

about him? He was tired of pining at home, no doubt, and has gone to

try if he can't mend his luck. You'll hear of him again, soon, from

some quarter or other."

"But I can't satisfy myself about him, in that way, George," replied

the man to whom this rough exhortation was addressed; "if the foolish

lad be drawn into company that tempts him to steal, I may have to hear

him sentenced to transportation, and that would be no joke, George."

"I see nothing so very serious, even in that," observed another of

the group; "I would as lief be transported to-morrow as stay here to

starve, as I've done for the last six months."

"It would seem serious to me, though," rejoined John, "to see my own

child transported."

"Why, John, to men that scorn to steal, in spite of starvation,"

resumed George, "it's painful to see any child, or man either,

transported: but where's the real disgrace of it? The man that

pronounces the sentence is, in nine cases out of ten, a bigger villain

than him that's called 'the criminal.' Disgrace is only a name—a mere

name, you know, John."

"I'm aware there's a good deal o' truth in that," replied John; "the

names of things would be altered a good deal, if the world was set

right: but, as wrong as things are now, yet I hope my lad will never

steal, and have to be sentenced to transportation. I've often had to

hear him cry for bread, since he was born, and had none to give him:

but I would sooner see him perish with hunger than live to hear him

transported, for I think it would break my heart;—and God Almighty

forbid I ever should have to hear it!"

"Goddle Mitey!" said George, pronouncing the syllables in a mocking

manner, and setting up a bitter laugh, which was joined by every member

of the group, except the mournful man who had just spoken; "who told

thee there was one? Thy grandmother and the parsons? Don't talk such

nonsense any more, John! it's time we all gave it over: they've managed

to grind men to the dust with their priestcraft, and we shall never be

righted till we throw it off!"

"No, no," chimed in another, immediately; "they may cant and prate

about it: but, if their God existed, he would never permit us to suffer

as we do!"

"Well, I'm come seriously to the same conclusion," said one who had

not spoken before, and was the palest and thinnest of the group: "I

think all their talk about a Providence that disposes the lot of men

differently here, 'for His Own great mysterious purposes,' as they

phrase it, is mere mysterious humbug, to keep us quiet. What purpose

could a being have, who, they say, is as infinitely good as he is

infinitely powerful, in placing me where I must undergo insult and

starvation, while He places that man,—the oppressor and grinder, who

is riding past now, in his gig,—in plenty and abundance?"

"Right, Benjamin," said George; "they can't get quit of their

difficulty, quibble as they may: if they bedaub us with such nicknames

as 'Atheistical Socialists,' we can defy them to make the riddle

plainer by their own Jonathan Edwards, that they say good Robert Hall

read over thirteen times, and pronounced 'irrefragable.'"

"Just so," resumed Benjamin, "whether man be called a 'Creature of

Circumstance,' or a 'Creature of Necessity,' it amounts to the same

thing. And, then, none of the Arminian sects can make out a case: they

only prove the same thing as the Calvinist and the Socialist, when

their blundering argument is sifted to the bottom."

"So that, if there be a Providence," continued George, "it has

appointed, or permitted,—which they like, for it comes to the

same,—that old——should fling the three dozen hose in your face last

November, and that you should be out of work, and pine ever since; it

appointed that I should get a few potatoes or a herring, by begging, or

go without food altogether, some days since Christmas; and that each

of us here, though we are willing to work, should have to starve; while

it appointed that the mayor should live in a fine house, and swell his

riches, by charging _whole_ frame-rents, month after month, to scores

of poor starving stockingers that had from him but half week's work."

"And, with all their talk about piety," rejoined Benjamin, "I think

there is no piety at all in believing in the existence of such a

Providence: and since, it appears, it can't be proved that Providence

is of any other character, if there be One at all, I think it less

impious to believe in None."

John stood by while this conversation was going on; but he heard little

of it,—for his heart was too heavy with concern for his child,—and,

in a little time, he took his way, silently and slowly, towards other

groups of unemployed and equally destitute men, who were standing on

the wider space of ground, at the junction of several streets,—a

locality known by the names of "the Coal-hill," and "the Hay-market,"

from the nature of the merchandise sold there, at different periods, in

the open air.

"Have you found the lad yet?" said one of John's acquaintances, when he

reached the outermost group.

"No, William," replied the downcast father; "and I begin to have some

very troublesome fears about him, I'll assure you."

"But why should you, John?" expostulated the other; "he's only gone to

try if he can't mend himself——Look you, John!" he said, pointing

excitedly at what he suddenly saw; "there he goes, with the recruiting

serjeant!"

The father ran towards the soldier and his child; and every group on

the Coal-hill was speedily in motion when they saw and heard the father

endeavouring to drag off the lad from the soldier, who seized the arm

of his prize, and endeavoured to detain him. An increasing crowd soon

hemmed in the party,—a great tumult arose,—and three policemen were

speedily on the spot.

"Stick to your resolution, my boy!" cried the soldier, grasping the

lad's arm with all his might; "you'll never want bread nor clothes in

the army."

"But he'll be a sold slave, and must be shot at, like a dog!" cried

the father, striving to rescue his child,—a pale, tall stripling, who

seemed to be but sixteen or seventeen years of age.

"Man-butcher!—Blood-hound!" shouted several voices in the crowd:

whereat the policemen raised their staves, and called aloud to the

crowd to "stand back!"

"I demand, in the Queen's name, that you make this fellow loose his

hold of my recruit!" said the soldier, in a loud, angry tone, to the

policemen; two of whom seemed to be about obeying him, when a dark,

stern-browed man among the crowd, of much more strong and sinewy

appearance than the majority of the working multitude who composed it,

stepped forward, and said,—

"Let any policemen touch him that dare! If they do they shall repent

it! There's no law to prevent a father from taking hold of his own

child's arm to hinder him from playing the fool!"

The men in blue slunk back at these words; and the soldier himself

seemed intimidated at perceiving the father's cause taken up by an

individual of such determination.

"Tom," said the determined man to the lad, "have you taken the

soldier's money?"

"Not yet," answered the lad, after a few moments' hesitation.

"Then he shall have my life before he has thee!" said the father,

whose heart leaped at the answer, and infused so much strength into

his arm, that with another pull he brought off his lad, entirely, from

the soldier's hold. The crowd now burst into a shout of triumph; and

when the soldier would have followed, to recapture his victim, the

stern-browed man confronted him with a look of silent defiance; and

the red-coat, after uttering a volley of oaths, walked off amidst the

derision of the multitude.

"Don't you think you were a fool, Tom, to be juggled with that

cut-throat?" said the stern-browed man to the lad, while the crowd

gathered around him and his father.

"I wasn't so soon juggled," replied the lad; "he's been at me this

three months; but I never yielded till this morning, when I felt almost

pined to death, and he made me have some breakfast with him,—but

he'll not get hold of me again!"

"That's right, my lad!" said one of the crowd; "the bloody rascals have

not had two Leicester recruits these two years; and I hope they'll

never have another."

"No, no, our eyes are getting opened," said another working-man; "they

may be able to kill us off by starvation, at home; but I hope young and

old will have too much sense, in future, to give or sell their bodies

to be shot at, for tyrants."

"Ay, ay, we should soon set the lordlings fast, if all working-men

refused to go for soldiers," said another.

"So we should, Smith," said a sedate-looking elderly man; "that's more

sensible than talking of fighting when we've no weapons, nor money to

buy 'em, nor strength to use 'em."

"Then we shall wait a long while for the Charter, if we wait till we

get it by leaving 'em no soldiers to keep us down," said a young,

bold-looking man, with a fiery look; "for they'll always find plenty of

Johnny Raws ready to list in the farming districts."

"And we shall wait a longer while still if we try to get it by

fighting, under our present circumstances," answered the elderly man,

in a firm tone; "that could only make things worse, as all such fool's

tricks have ended, before."

"You're right, Randal, you're right!" cried several voices in the

crowd; and the advocate of the bugbear "physical force" said not

another word on the subject.

"No, no, lads!" continued the "moral force" man, "let us go on,

telling 'em our minds, without whispering,—and let us throw off their

cursed priestcraft,—and the system will come to an end,—and before

long. But fighting tricks would be sure to fail; because they're the

strongest,—and they know it."

"Yes, it must end,—and very soon," observed another working-man;

"the shopkeepers won't be long before they join us; for they begin to

squeak, most woefully."

"The shopkeepers, lad!" said the dark-looking man, who had confronted

the soldier; "never let us look for their help: there is not a spark of

independence in any of 'em: they have had it in their power, by their

votes, to have ended misrule, before now, if they had had the will."

"Poor devils! they're all fast at their bankers', and dare no more vote

against their tyrants than they dare attempt to fly," said another.

"There is no dependence on any of the middle class," said the

dark-looking man; "they are as bad as the aristocrats. You see this

last winter has passed over, entirely, without any subscription for the

poor, again,—as severe a winter as it has been."

"Ay, and work scarcer and scarcer, every day," said another.

"They say there are eight hundred out o'work now, in Leicester,"

said the elderly, sedate man, who had spoken before; "and I heard a

manufacturer say there would be twice as many before the summer went

over: but he added, that the people deserved to be pinched, since they

would not join the Corn Law Repealers."

A burst of indignation, and some curses and imprecations, followed.

"Does he go to chapel?" asked one.

"Yes; and he's a member of the Charles Street meeting," said the

elderly man.

"There's your religion, again!"—"There's your saintship!"—"There's

your Christianity!"—"There's their Providence and their Goddle

Mitey!"—were the varied indignant exclamations among the starved

crowd, as soon as the answer was heard.

"I should think they invented the Bastile Mill, while they were at

chapel!" said one.

"Is it smashed again?" asked another.

"No; but it soon will be," answered the man who confronted the soldier.

These, and similar observations, were uttered aloud, in the open

street, at broad day, by hundreds of starved, oppressed, and insulted

framework-knitters, who thus gave vent to their despair. Such

conversations were customary sounds in John's ears, and, having

recovered his son, he took him by the arm, after this brief delay, and,

walking slowly back towards the Roman milestone, the two bent their

steps down the narrow street called Barkby Lane.

After threading an alley, they reached a small wretchedly furnished

habitation; and the lad burst into tears, as his mother sprung from her

laborious employ at the wash-tub, and threw her arms round his neck,

and kissed him. Two or three neighbours came in, in another minute,

and congratulating the father and mother, on their having found their

son, a conversation followed on the hatefulness of becoming "a paid

cut-throat for tyrants," the substance of which would have been as

unpleasing to "the powers that be" as the conversation in the street,

had they heard the two. The entry, into the squalid-looking house, of

another neighbour, pale and dejected beyond description, gave a new

turn to the homely discourse.

"Your son has come back, I see, John," said the new-comer, in a very

faint voice: "I wish my husband would come home."

"Thy husband, Mary!" said John; "why, where's he gone? Bless me, woman,

how ill you look!—What's the matter?"

The woman's infant had begun to cry while she spoke; and she had bared

her breast, and given it to the child: but—Nature was exhausted! there

was no milk;—and, while the infant struggled and screamed, the woman

fainted.

She recovered, under the kindly and sympathetic attention of the

neighbours; and the scanty resources of the group were laid under

contribution for restoring some degree of strength, by means of food,

to the woman and her child. One furnished a cup of milk, another a

few spoonfuls of oatmeal, another brought a little bread; and when

the child was quieted, and the mother was able, she commenced her sad

narrative. She had not, she said, tasted food of any kind for a day and

two nights: she had pawned or sold every article of clothing, except

what she had on, and she was without a bonnet entirely: nor had her

husband any other clothes than the rags in which he had gone out, two

hours before, with the intent to try the relieving officer, once more,

for a loaf, or a trifle of money: to complete their misery, they owed

six weeks' rent for the room in which lay the bag of shavings that

formed their bed; and, if they could not pay the next week's rent, they

must turn out into the street, or go into the Bastile.

Her recital was scarcely concluded, when the sorrowful husband

returned. He had been driven away by the relieving officer, and

threatened with the gaol, if he came again, unless it was to bring his

wife and child with him to enter the Union Bastile!—and the man sat

down, and wept.

And then the children of misery mingled their consolations,—if

reflections drawn from despair could be so called,—and endeavoured to

fortify the heart of the yielding man, by reminding him that they would

not have to starve long, for life, with all its miseries, would soon be

over.

"I wonder why it ever begun!" exclaimed the man who had been yielding

to tears, but now suddenly burst out into bitter language: "I think

it's a pity but that God had found something better to do than to make

such poor miserable wretches as we are!"

"Lord! what queer thoughts thou hast, Jim!" said the woman who had

previously fainted, and she burst into a half-convulsive laugh.

"Indeed, it's altogether a mystery to me," said the man who had so

recently found his son; "we seem to be born for nothing but trouble.

And then the queerest thing is that we are to go to hell, at last, if

we don't do every thing exactly square. My poor father always taught

me to reverence religion; and I don't like to say any thing against

it, but I'm hard put to it, at times, Jim, I'll assure ye. It sounds

strange, that we are to be burnt for ever, after pining and starving

here; for how can a man keep his temper, and be thankful, as they say

we ought to be, when he would work and can't get it, and, while he

starves, sees oppressors ride in their gigs, and build their great

warehouses?"

"It's mere humbug, John, to keep us down: that's what it is!" said

Jim: "one of these piety-mongers left us a tract last week; and what

should it contain but that old tale of Bishop Burnet, about the widow

that somebody who peeped through the chinks of the window-shutters saw

kneeling by a table with a crust of bread before her, and crying out in

rapture, 'All this and Christ!' I tell thee what, John, if old Burnet

had been brought down from his gold and fat living, and had tried it

himself, I could better have believed him. It's a tale told like many

others to make fools and slaves of us: that's what I think. Ay, and I

told the long-faced fellow so that fetched the tract. He looked very

sourly at me, and said the poor did not use to trouble themselves about

politics in his father's time, and every body was more comfortable then

than they are now. 'The more fools were they,' said I: 'if the poor

had begun to think of their rights sooner, instead of listening to

religious cant, we should not have been so badly off now:' and away he

went, and never said another word.

"But I don't like to give way to bad thoughts about religion, after

all, Jim," said John: "it's very mysterious—the present state of

things: but we may find it all explained in the next life."

"Prythee, John," exclaimed the other, interrupting him, impatiently,

"don't talk so weakly. That's the way they all wrap it up; and if a

guess in the dark and a 'maybe' will do for an argument, why any

thing will do. Until somebody can prove to me that there _is_ another

life after this, I shall think it my duty to think about this only.

Now just look at this, John! If there be another life after this, why

the present is worth nothing: every moment here ought to be spent in

caring for eternity; and every man who really believes in such a life

would not care how he passed this, so that he could but be making a

preparation for the next: isn't that true, John?"

"To be sure it is, Jim; and what o' that?"

"Why, then, tell me which of 'em believes in such a life. Do you

see any of the canting tribe less eager than others to get better

houses, finer chairs and tables, larger shops, and more trade? Is old

Sour-Godliness in the north, there, more easily brought to give up a

penny in the dozen to save a starving stockinger than the grinders that

don't profess religion? I tell thee, John, it's all fudge: they don't

believe it themselves, or else they would imitate Christ before they

tell us to be like him!"

Reader! the conversation shall not be prolonged, lest the object

of this sketch should be mistaken. These conversations are _real_:

they are no coinages. Go to Leicester, or any other of the suffering

towns of depressed manufacture, where men compete with each other in

machinery till human hands are of little use, and rival each other in

wicked zeal to reduce man to the merest minimum of subsistence. If

the missionary people—and this is not said with a view to question

the true greatness and utility of their efforts—if they would be

consistent, let them send their heralds into the manufacturing

districts, and first convert the "infidels" there, ere they send

their expensive messengers to India. But let it be understood that

the heralds must be furnished with brains, as well as tongues; for

whoever enters Leicester, or any other of the populous starving hives

of England, must expect to find the deepest subjects of theology, and

government, and political economy, taken up with a subtlety that would

often puzzle a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge. Whoever supposes the

starving "manufacturing masses" know no more, and can use no better

language, than the peasantry in the agricultural counties, will find

himself egregiously mistaken. 'Tis ten to one but he will learn more of

a profound subject in one hour's conversation of starving stockingers

than he would do in ten lectures of a university professor. Let the

missionary people try these quarters, then; but let their heralds "know

their business" ere they go, or they will make as slow progress as

Egede and the Moravians among the Greenlanders. One hint may be given.

Let them begin with the manufacturers; and, if they succeed in making

_real_ converts to Christianity in that quarter, their success will

be tolerably certain among the working-men, and tolerably easy in its

achievement.

There is no "tale" to finish about John or his lad, or Jem and

his wife. They went on starving,—begging,—receiving threats of

imprisonment,—tried the "Bastile" for a few weeks,—came out and

had a little work,—starved again; and they are still going the same

miserable round, like thousands in "merrie England." What are your

thoughts, reader?

SETH THOMPSON, THE STOCKINGER;

OR,

"WHEN THINGS ARE AT THE WORST,

THEY BEGIN TO MEND."

Leicestershire stockingers call that a false proverb. "People have

said so all our lives," say they; "but, although we have each and all

agreed, every day, that things were at the worst, they never begun to

mend yet!" This was not their language sixty years ago, but it is their

daily language _now_; and the story that follows is but, as it were, of

yesterday.

Seth Thompson was the only child of a widow, by the time that he was

six years old, and became a "winding boy," in a shop of half-starved

framework-knitters at Hinckley,—a kindred lot with hundreds of

children of the same age, in Leicestershire. Seth's mother was a tender

mother to her child; but he met tenderness in no other quarter. He was

weakly, and since that rendered him unable to get on with his winding

of the yarn as fast as stronger children, he was abused and beaten by

the journeymen, while the master stockinger, for every slight flaw in

his work,—though it always resulted from a failure of strength rather

than carelessness,—unfeelingly took the opportunity to "dock" his

paltry wages.

Since her child could seldom add more than a shilling or fifteen-pence

to the three, or, at most, four shillings, she was able to earn

herself,—and she had to pay a heavy weekly rent for their humble

home,—it will readily be understood that neither widow Thompson nor

Seth were acquainted with the meaning of the word "luxury," either in

food or habits. A scanty allowance of oatmeal and water formed their

breakfast, potatoes and salt their dinner, and a limited portion

of bread, with a wretchedly diluted something called "tea" as an

accompaniment, constituted their late afternoon, or evening meal; and

they knew no variety for years, winter or summer. The widow's child

went shoeless in the warm season, and the cast-off substitutes he wore

in winter, together with lack of warmth in his poor mother's home,

and repulses from the shop fire by the master and men while at work,

subjected him, through nearly the whole of every winter, to chilblains

and other diseases of the feet. Rags were his familiar acquaintances,

and, boy-like, he felt none of the aching shame and sorrow experienced

by his mother when she beheld his destitute covering, and reflected

that her regrets would not enable her to amend his tattered condition.

Seth's mother died when he reached fifteen, and expressed

thankfulness, on her death-bed, that she was about to quit a world

of misery, after being permitted to live till her child was in

some measure able to struggle for himself. In spite of hard usage

and starvation, Seth grew up a strong lad, compared with the puny

youngsters that form the majority of the junior population in

manufacturing districts. He was quick-witted, too, and had gathered

a knowledge of letters and syllables, amidst the references to cheap

newspapers and hourly conversation on politics by starving and

naturally discontented stockingers. From a winding-boy, Seth was

advanced to the frame, and, by the time he had reached seventeen, was

not only able to earn as much as any other stockinger in Hinckley,

when he could get work, but, with the usually improvident haste of the

miserable and degraded, married a poor "seamer," who was two years

younger than himself.

Seth Thompson at twenty-one, with a wife who was but nineteen, had

become the parent of four children; and since he had never been

able to bring home to his family more than seven shillings in one

week, when the usual villainous deductions were made by master and

manufacturer, in the shape of "frame-rent" and other "charges,"—since

he had often had but _half_-work, with the usual deduction of _whole_

charges, and had been utterly without work for six several periods,

of from five to nine weeks each, during the four years of his married

life,—the following hasty sketch of the picture which this "home of

an Englishman" presented one noon, when a stranger knocked at the door,

and it was opened by Seth himself, will scarcely be thought overdrawn:—

Except a grey deal table, there was not a single article within the

walls which could be called "furniture," by the least propriety of

language. This stood at the farther side of the room, and held a

few soiled books and papers, Seth's torn and embrowned hat, and the

mother's tattered straw bonnet. The mother sat on a three-legged stool,

beside an osier cradle, and was suckling her youngest child while she

was eating potatoes and salt from an earthen dish upon her knee. Seth's

dish of the same food stood on a seat formed of a board nailed roughly

across the frame of a broken chair; while, in the centre of the floor,

where the broken bricks had disappeared and left the earth bare, the

three elder babes sat squatted round a board whereon boiled potatoes

in their skins were piled,—a meal they were devouring greedily,

squeezing the inside of the root into their mouths with their tiny

hands, after the mode said to be practised in an Irish cabin. An empty

iron pot stood near the low expiring fire, and three rude logs of wood

lay near it,—the children's usual seats when they had partaken their

meal. A description of the children's filthy and bedaubed appearance

with the potatoe starch, and of the "looped and windowed" rags that

formed their covering, could only produce pain to the reader. Seth's

clothing was not much superior to that of his offspring; but the clean

cap and coloured cotton handkerchief of the mother, with her own

really beautiful but delicate face and form, gave some relief to the

melancholy picture.

Seth blushed, as he took up his dish of potatoes, and offered the

stranger his fragment of a seat. And the stranger blushed, too, but

refused the seat with a look of so much benevolence that Seth's heart

glowed to behold it; and his wife set down her porringer, and hushed

the children that the stranger might deliver his errand with the

greater ease.

"Your name is Thompson, I understand," said the stranger; "pray, do you

know what was your mother's maiden name?"

"Greenwood,—Martha Greenwood was my poor mother's maiden name, sir,"

replied Seth, with the tears starting to his eyes.

The stranger seemed to have some difficulty in restraining similar

feelings; and gazed, sadly, round upon the room and its squalid

appearance, for a few moments, in silence.

Seth looked hard at his visitor, and thought of one whom his mother had

often talked of; but did not like to put an abrupt question, though he

imagined the stranger's features strongly resembled his parent's.

"Are working people in Leicestershire usually so uncomfortably

situated as you appear to be?" asked the stranger, in a tone of deep

commiseration which he appeared to be unable to control.

Seth Thompson and his wife looked uneasily at each other, and then

fixed their gaze on the floor.

"Why, sir," replied Seth, blushing more deeply than before, "we married

very betime, and our family, you see, has grown very fast; we hope

things will mend a little with us when some o' the children are old

enough to earn a little. We've only been badly off as yet, but you'd

find a many not much better off, sir, I assure you, in Hinckley and

elsewhere."

The stranger paused again, and the working of his features manifested

strong inward feeling.

"I see nothing but potatoes," he resumed; "I hope your meal is

unusually poor to-day, and that you and your family generally have a

little meat at dinner."

"Meat, sir!" exclaimed Seth; "we have not known what it is to set a bit

of meat before our children more than three times since the first was

born; we usually had a little for our Sunday dinner when we were first

married, but we can't afford it now!"

"Good God!" cried the stranger, with a look that demonstrated his agony

of grief and indignation, "is this England,—the happy England, that I

have heard the blacks in the West Indies talk of as a Paradise?"

"Are you my mother's brother? Is your name Elijah Greenwood?" asked

Seth Thompson, unable longer to restrain the question.

"Yes," replied the visitor, and sat down upon Seth's rude seat, to

recover his self-possession.—

That was a happy visit for poor Seth Thompson, and his wife and

children. His mother had often talked of her only brother who went for

a sailor when a boy, and was reported to be settled in some respectable

situation in the West Indies, but concerning whom she never received

any certain information. Elijah Greenwood had suddenly become rich, by

the death of a childless old planter, whom he had faithfully served,

and who had left him his entire estate. England was Elijah's first

thought, when this circumstance took place; and, as soon as he could

settle his new possession under some careful and trusty superintendence

till his return, he had taken ship, and come to his native country and

shire. By inquiry at the inn, he had learnt the afflictive fact of his

sister's death, but had been guided to the poverty-stricken habitation

of her son.

That was the last night that Seth Thompson and his children slept on

their hard straw sacks on the floor,—the last day that they wore rags

and tatters, and dined upon potatoes and salt. Seth's uncle placed

him in a comfortable cottage, bought him suitable furniture, gave him

a purse of 50_l._ for ready money, and promised him a half-yearly

remittance from Jamaica, for the remainder of his, the uncle's, life,

with a certainty of a considerable sum at his death.

Seth and his wife could not listen, for a moment, to a proposal for

leaving England, although they had experienced little but misery

in it, their whole lives. The uncle, however, obtained from them

a promise that they would not restrain any of their children from

going out to Jamaica; and did not leave them till he had seen them

fairly and comfortably settled, and beheld what he thought a prospect

of comfort for them, in the future. Indeed, on the very morning

succeeding that in which Seth's new fortune became known, the hitherto

despised stockinger was sent for by the principal manufacturer of

hosen, in Hinckley, and offered "a shop of frames," in the language

of the working men; that is, he was invited to become a "master," or

one who receives the "stuff" from the capitalist or manufacturer,

and holds of him, likewise, a given number of frames,—varying from

half-a-dozen to a score or thirty, or even more; and thus becomes a

profit-sharing middleman between the manufacturer and the labouring

framework-knitters. Seth accepted the offer, for it seemed most natural

to him to continue in the line of manufacture to which he had been

brought up; and his uncle, with pleasurable hopes for his prosperity,

bade him farewell!—

"Well, my dear," said Seth to his wife, as they sat down to a

plentiful dinner, surrounded with their neatly-dressed and happy

children, the day after the uncle's departure, "we used to say we

should never prove the truth of the old proverb, but we have proved it

at last: times came to the worst with us, and began to mend."

"Thank God! we have proved it, my love," replied the wife; "and I wish

our poor neighbours could prove it as well."