JONATHAN PINCHBECK, THE SLUM AUTOLYCUS
It was application time in a London police-court. All sorts of people,
with all sorts of difficulties, had stepped, one after another, into the
witness-box, and had put all sorts of questions to the patient
magistrate. They had gone away more or less satisfied with the various
answers the experience of the magistrate suggested, when, last of all,
there stepped in front of him a quaint-looking elderly man. Below the
average size, with a body somewhat bent, grey hair, and a bristly white
moustache, together with a complexion of almost terra-cotta hue, he was
bound to attract attention. When looked at more closely, other
characteristics could be noted: his lips were full and tremulous, his
eyes were strained, and there was a look of pathetic expectancy over his
face.
He handed a paper to the magistrate, and said: "Read that, your
Worship." His Worship read it. It was an order from the relieving
officer to the manager of the "stone-yard" for Jonathan Pinchbeck to be
given two days' work. "Jonathan Pinchbeck! is that your name?" said the
magistrate, looking at the quaint old man. "Yes, that's me." "Well,
what do you want? Why don't you go and do the work?" "Well, your
Worship, it is like this: I have been to the stone-yard, and they have
got no work to give me." "Well," said the magistrate, "I am sure that I
have no stones for you to break." "But I don't want you to give me work!
I ask you for a summons against the Vestry for four shillings," he said.
"Surely they are bound to find me work or give me the money. I am out of
work, and my wife is ill."
The magistrate told him that the matter could not be decided in a
police-court, and that he had better go to the County Court. Very
dejectedly the old man stepped down, and silently left the court. I
followed him, and had some conversation with him. He was a
dock-labourer, but had grown old, and could no longer "jostle," push,
and fight for a job at the dock gates, for younger men with broader
shoulders stepped up before him. He gave me his address, so in the
afternoon of the same day I went to Mandeville Street, Clapton Park. The
landlady told me that Pinchbeck was not at home, but that he occupied
with his wife one room "first-floor front," and that his wife was an
invalid.
I was about to leave when a husky voice from the first-floor front, the
door of which was evidently open, called out: "Is it a gentleman to see
Jonathan? Tell him to come up." I went up. I shall not forget going up,
for I found myself in the queerest place I had visited. I was in
Wonderland. The owner of the voice that called me up, Mrs. Pinchbeck,
sat before me--huge, massive, and palpitating. She was twenty stone in
weight, but ill and suffering. Asthma, dropsy, and heart disease had
nearly done their work. It was a stifling day in July, and she drew
breath with difficulty.
She sat on a very strongly-made wooden chair, and did not attempt to
rise when I entered the room. The chair in which she was sitting was
painted vermilion red, and studded with bright brass nails. Every chair
in the room--of which there were four--the strong kitchen table, the
strong wooden fender, and the powerful bedstead, were all vermilion red,
embellished with brass nails. One directing mind had constructed the
lot. When my surprise was lessened, I sat down on a red chair beside the
poor woman, and entered into conversation. Her replies to my questions
came with difficulty, but, despite her illness, I noticed that she was
proud of her quaint husband, and especially proud of the furniture he
had made for her, for the household goods were his workmanship.
"He had only a saw, a hammer, and some sandpaper," she said, nodding at
the furniture, "and he made the lot."
They were well-built, and calculated to bear even Mrs. Pinchbeck.
"Vermilion red was his favourite colour," she said, "and he thought the
bright yellow of the nails livened them up. They had been made a good
many years, but he sometimes gave them a fresh coat of paint."
Pinchbeck and she had been married many years; they had no children.
They lived by themselves, and he was a very good husband. But there
were other wonders in the room beside the poor woman and the brilliant
furniture, and they soon claimed attention.
In front of me stood a monumental cross some feet in height, and made
apparently of brown marble. The cross stood on three foundation steps of
brown marble, and at intervals round the body of the cross were bands of
yellow ribbon.
She saw me looking at it. "That's all tobacco," she said; "it is made of
cigar-ends." There was a descriptive paper attached to the cross.
"Jonathan collected the cigar-ends, and he made them into that monument,
and he made the calculations in his head, and I wrote them down," she
said, referring to the paper. "He walked more than ninety thousand miles
to collect the cigar-ends," she said. I asked permission to read the
descriptive paper attached, and after permission--for I saw the whole
thing was sacred to the suffering woman--I detached it. I was lost in
interest as I read the paper, which was well written, and contained some
curious calculations. I found on inquiry that Jonathan could neither
read nor write, but he could, as she said, "calculate in his own head."
The document consisted of a double sheet of foolscap, which was covered
on the four pages with writing and figures in a woman's hand. Briefly it
told of the great deeds of Jonathan, who, as I have previously said, was
a dock-labourer. He had lived in Clapton Park for more than thirty
years, and he had walked every day to and from the East London Docks, a
five-mile tramp every morning, and a return journey at night of equal
length. Hundreds of times his journey had been fruitless, so far as
getting a day's work was concerned; but, like an industrious bee,
Jonathan returned home every night laden with what to him was sweeter
than honey--cigar-ends that he had gathered from the pavements, gutters,
and streets he traversed and searched during his daily ten-mile tramp.
They lay before me, converted into a massive monumental cross, erected
upon three great slabs of similar material. On each side of it stood a
smaller cross, as if it were to show off the dimensions of the great
cross. The paper stated that the whole of the cigar-ends collected
weighed one hundredweight and three-quarters. It also told how far the
cigars would have reached had they been placed end to end; one cigar was
reckoned at three inches, four to a foot, twelve to a yard, and seven
thousand and forty to a mile. The paper also told how much they cost at
twopence each, how long they took to smoke at one half-hour each, also
how much duty the Government had received on each at four shillings per
pound. Thirty years of interminable tramping, with his eyes on the
ground like a sleuth-hound, had Jonathan done. Hour after hour he had
sat in his little home contemplating his collection, and making his
mental calculations while his wife wrote them down, and then in its
glory arose his great monument.
Handing the paper to Mrs. Pinchbeck, I proceeded to examine the cross. I
felt it, and found it hard, solid, firm, and every edge square and
sharp. I wondered how he had converted such unlikely materials as
cigar-ends into such a solid piece of work. The poor woman told me that
from all the cigar-ends he brought home he trimmed off the burnt ends,
and carefully placed them in a dry place; then he made a great wooden
frame, screwed together, the inside of which represented the cross. In
this frame he arranged end-ways layer after layer of his cigar-ends,
pressing them and even hammering them in; now and again he had poured in
also a solution of treacle and water, placing more cigar-ends until it
was pressed and hammered full. Then it was left for months to slowly
dry. It was a proud day for the couple when the wooden frame was
removed, and the great triumph of Jonathan's life stood before them.
But the tobacco cross did not by any means exhaust the wonders of the
room. All round strange things were hanging from the ceiling, threaded
on a string like girls thread beads and boys thread
horse-chestnuts--rough, flat-looking things, about the size of a plate
and of a dirty brown colour. "Whatever have you got there, hanging from
the ceiling?" I said. The answer came in a hoarse whisper: "Tops and
bottoms." Tops and bottoms! tops and bottoms! I looked at them, and
cudgelled my brains to find out what tops and bottoms were. I had to
give it up, and the hoarse whisper came again: "Tops and bottoms." There
the "tops" hung like a collection of Indian scalps, and there hung the
"bottoms" like a collection of burned pancakes. On examining one string
of them, I found attached the inevitable paper, on which was written
"1856."
"Oh," I said, "these are the tops and bottoms of your bread. Why did
you cut your bread in that way?" "It was Jonathan's fancy," she said. It
might have been her husband's idea, but she had entered heartily into
it, for she had saved the crusts from all their loaves; she had written
the papers and particulars that were attached to them, and she was proud
of the old crusts, some of which dated from the time of the Crimean War.
I was prepared for other strange whims after my experience with the
vermilion furniture, the tobacco cross, and the "tops and bottoms," and
it was well that I was, for other revelations awaited me. I found a
great bundle of sugar papers--coarse, heavy papers, some blue, others
grey--neatly folded, tied together, and tabulated. These were the
wrappers that had contained all the sugar the worthy couple had bought
during their married life. A document attached gave particulars of their
weight, told also of how much they had been defrauded by the purchase of
paper and not sugar, told the price of sugar in various years, and the
variations of their losses. Next to these stood a pile of tea-wrappers,
tabulated and ticketed in exactly the same manner. Mr. and Mrs.
Pinchbeck had evidently a just cause of complaint against the grocers.
I cannot possibly reveal the whole contents of the room. Had a local
auctioneer been called in to make a correct inventory, he would surely
have fled in despair. Every available square inch of the room was fully
occupied with strange objects. In one corner was a pile of nails--cut
nails and wrought nails, French nails and old "tenpenny" nails, barndoor
nails and dainty wire nails--collected from the streets during
Jonathan's long life. They told the industrial history of those years,
and spoke eloquently of the improvement that had taken place even in
nail-making. They told, too, of the poor home-workers of Cradley Heath,
and of the women and children who had made them. Beside the nails was a
heap of screws--poor old blunted rusty things, made years before Mr.
Chamberlain introduced his improved pointed screws, lying mingled with
the Screws of present use, bright, slender, and genteel. Here was a heap
of shoe-tips, some of which had done duty forty years ago in protecting
the heels and toes of cumbrous boots that had stumbled and resounded on
the cobble-stone streets of those days. They, too, had a tale to tell,
for Blakey's protectors lay there mingled with old, heavy, rusty tips
that had protected "wooden shoon" in the days of long ago.
Decidedly, Jonathan was a modern Autolycus, a "snapper-up of
unconsidered trifles." He had almost established a corner in hairpins.
There they were, six hundred thousand of them, neatly arranged in starch
boxes, nicely oiled to prevent rust, box after box of them, every box
weighed and counted, the whole lot weighing, so the descriptive paper
says, two and a half hundredweight: hairpins from St. James's and
Piccadilly--for Jonathan, when work was scarce, had on special occasions
searched with magnetic eye the El Dorado of the West--hairpins from the
narrow streets of the East; hairpins from suburban thoroughfares;
hairpins from the pavements of the City; old, massive hairpins that
would almost have tethered a goat; demure, slender hairpins that would
nestle snugly in the hair, and adapt themselves comfortably to the head;
hairpins plain and hairpins corrugated--there they lay.
I was lost in wonder and imagination, and forgot the nasty cigar-ends in
picturing to myself the world of beauty that had worn and the delicate
hands that had adjusted those hairpins. But the hairpins were not alone
in their glory. Hatpins claimed attention, too. Cruel, fiendish things
they looked, as they lay closely packed in several boxes, with their
beaded ends and sharp, elongated points. I turned quickly from these,
for I knew only too well the fresh terror they added to life--especially
to a policeman's life. So I proceeded to examine the next
department--"babies' comforters"--with mingled feelings: two large boxes
full of them, horrible things!--ivory rings, bone rings, rubber rings,
and vulcanite rings, with their suction tubes attached, made to deceive
infant life, and to enable English babies to feed on air. Some day a
similar collection may form a valuable addition to a museum,
illustrating the fraud practised on babies in the twentieth century.
I forgot the presence of poor asthmatical Mrs. Pinchbeck on her red
chair, for the shelves that were fixed on the walls attracted me. These
were heavily laden with glass jars and bottles of various sizes
containing specimens of bread, sugar, tea, coffee, butter, and cheese of
varying dates. "Bread, 1856, 10d. per loaf, Crimean War." "Tea, 1856,
4s. 6d. per pound." "Sugar (brown), 1856, 6d. per pound." So ran some
of the descriptions that were attached to the various jars. But I had to
leave the examination of these till another time, when still more
wonders were revealed, of which I must tell you later.
Bidding Mrs. Pinchbeck "Good-afternoon," and promising her another
visit, I left her, for other suffering and troubled folk needed me.
Alas! that was the only time I saw the poor woman, for not much longer
was she able to rise from her bed, and in a few weeks there was a
strange funeral, at which Jonathan was chief mourner, and he was left
alone and friendless.
Hard times followed; old age crept on. Failing health and lack of
nourishment combined to make Jonathan of less value in the labour
market, so by-and-by he faced starvation. But by no means did he give up
collecting; his useless stores grew and grew until he had no longer room
to store them. Then he sold his pile of nails for a few shillings; his
screws and tips followed suit, and some of the fruits of his industry
vanished.
Sad to relate, a worse fate befell his cigar-ends, and the great triumph
of his life--his "monumental cross"--brought a second great sorrow into
the poor fellow's life. It occurred to him that he might obtain money by
exhibiting his work, so he hired a barrow, and, packing his crosses on
it, went into the streets to attract attention and collect coppers. He
secured plenty of attention, especially from boys, who made a "mark" of
the old man; ribald youth scoffed at him; policemen moved him on--but
the other "coppers" came not to him. The barrow cost one shilling per
week. A crisis had arrived; he must sell his tobacco. At eleven o'clock
one night I found him at my front door. There stood the barrow and the
tobacco. He wanted my advice about selling it. It was the only thing to
do. He had received notice to leave his room, and must look for a
smaller home at a less rental. The next day slowly and reluctantly
Jonathan pushed his barrow to Shoreditch. He had found a wholesale
tobacconist who might buy his tobacco at a price. "Bring it in," he
said, "and I will look at it." Jonathan took it in. Jonathan was taken
in, too. "Leave it here till to-morrow, and I will decide," said the
merchant. It was left, and Jonathan pushed an empty barrow on the return
journey. His room seemed empty that night; his wife was dead, and now
his monumental cross was gone. The next day he visited the tobacco
merchant, and found an officer of the Inland Revenue waiting for him.
The merchant had informed. Pinchbeck's tobacco was impounded, and he
himself was threatened with proceedings for attempting to sell tobacco
without holding a licence. In vain the poor old man protested; in vain
he argued and proved that his tobacco had paid duty, and that the State
had received its dues. His tobacco was detained, and Jonathan saw it no
more. Poor old Jonathan! How he cried over it! But the next day he
turned up at the police-court and asked for a summons against the Inland
Revenue for detaining his tobacco, and here again disappointment awaited
him, for the magistrate had no jurisdiction. It was a heavy blow to him;
his heart appeared to be broken, and all interest in life seemed to
have gone. I sympathized with him, and did my best to cheer him. He
moved to a smaller home, again parting with some of his museum. For a
brief time he struggled on, but he became ill.
For some months he lay in the workhouse infirmary, alone and unfriended,
and I thought the streets of London would know his peering eyes no more.
But there was more vitality in the old man than I expected. One cold
winter's day, when the snow was falling, I met a melancholy procession
of sandwich-men on Stamford Hill, among whom was Jonathan. The wind
buffeted him, and his hands and his face were blue with cold. "I could
not stand it any longer; I should have died if I had not come out," he
told me when I asked as to his welfare. He gave me his address, and the
quaint old man and I were again on visiting terms. Where he had bestowed
his strange collection during his sojourn in the workhouse I never
ascertained, but the bulk of it was in his new home. His things had been
taken care of, he said, but no more. "How are you going to live?" "They
allow me three shillings and sixpence from 'the house,' and I must pick
up the rest." So he proceeded to pick up, for his health improved and
his collection grew; but he did not pick up much money. The spring came,
and Jonathan grew young again. One fine morning I met him, looking quite
fresh and debonair. "Why, Jonathan," I said, "I really did not know you.
How well and fresh you look!" "Yes, bless the Lord! He gives me strength
to walk." "I wonder why He does that?" I foolishly said; but I expected
the answer I got. "To find things that nobody else would find, and to
prove that teetotallers are fools," he said. "But, Jonathan, I am a
teetotaller." "I can't help that, can I? Look here, you can tell me how
many gallons of water there is in a barrel of beer, but you can't tell
me how much paper you bought when you thought you were buying tea and
sugar." I humbly admitted my ignorance, and asked him what he was
finding. "All sorts of things. Come in and see them when you are down my
way." I went again to his "palace of varieties," and saw a cross of
about eighteen inches high, standing in a neat wooden base, which was
painted a bright vermilion, and a smaller cross made of cigarette-ends
standing beside it. Pointing to the latter, he said: "That's to lie on
my breast when I am in my coffin, and that" (the bigger one) "is to lie
on my coffin when I'm buried. I don't want any wreaths." Small chance of
wreaths at a parish funeral when this, our dear brother, is
unceremoniously committed to the earth, I thought; but he was fearful
about his tobacco. "You won't tell, will you? Don't give the show away,"
he said. I advised him not to offer the tobacco for sale this time. "Not
me; I'll die first," he promptly replied.
His cigar and cigarette ends amounted to over thirty pounds in weight,
which he had pressed into various shapes. A strange piece of
architecture, with many turrets and towers, all shining like burnished
silver, claimed attention. "What have you here?" "Five hundred empty
milk-tins. I have saved them all. They have all been full. I always use
the 'Milkmaid' brand." "I suppose you alter your plan of your building
sometimes?" "Oh yes," he said; "I make cathedrals sometimes."
Twenty-four flat cardboard boxes, with covers on, attracted me. "What
have you got in these boxes?" "Ah! I have got something to show you,"
and he proceeded to take off the lids. One look dazzled me, for never in
my life had I seen such a weird combination of brilliant colours; the
old vermilion seemed quite pale and insipid in comparison. Blues,
greens, yellows, and pinks of every shade predominated; but almost every
other colour and shade of colour was represented, and their combined
effect was stupendous. Some of the boxes were full of little cubes,
others of narrow strips; some full of flat pieces about one inch square;
others with the same substance graduated in different sizes. "All
orange-peel, Mr. Holmes, picked up in the streets; all of it would have
been wasted but for me." "But what good is it now?" I asked. He looked
sadly at me, and said: "Good, good! Why, it shows what can be done."
Whether it was worth the doing did not concern him; but my question had
offended him, so I had to make peace. Half a crown soothed his wounded
feelings. I then asked him how he did it all. "Picked 'em up, flattened
'em, cut 'em up, and coloured 'em," was all I could get out of him. "Do
you know what's in these boxes?" producing four boxes of similar
pattern, and opening them. They contained small cubes of material, and
their colours, at any rate, were of modest hue. I confessed again my
ignorance. "Taste!" I was much alarmed, but I tasted. "Potatoes?"
"Right," he said. "That's how I save all my potatoes. They do to put in
my broth." "But how do you get them all to this size and colour?" I
asked. "That's my secret," he said. I asked him if he was saving "tops
and bottoms" now. "Only the new uns; I have made use of the old uns.
I'll show you." He went on his knees, and from a store under his bed he
produced several three-pound glass jars full of some brown meal, of
varying degrees of coarseness. "All good--all good food! Microbes can't
live in bread fifty years old. These are 'tops and bottoms.'" He had
broken up his old bread, pounded it with a hammer, put the crumbs
through different sized sieves, and stored the resulting material in
glass jars. "Beats Quaker Oats, Grape Nuts, and 'Sunny Jim,'" he said.
"I can stand a siege. I just boil some water, take two spoonfuls of
'Milkmaid,' two tablespoonfuls of 'tops and bottoms,' and I have good
milk porridge in three minutes. I have a pot of Bovril, too, and when I
want some soup, hot water, Bovril, and desiccated potatoes or
potato-powder give it to me. The old man is not such a fool as people
think!" But again he put me into a tight place. He wanted me to buy, or
find customers for, his granulated "tops and bottoms." He felt sure if
people only knew how good and nice the "food" was, they would buy it
readily.
I had to change the subject, and asked him what was in the box over the
head of his bed, so securely attached to the wall. I was just going to
handle it when he sang out: "Don't touch it! don't touch it, or you'll
blow up the whole house!" "What is it?" "Explosives," he said. "I may
want them; I'm not going to the workhouse again." I did not touch them,
but got away as far as possible. Jonathan then produced an ordinary
medicine-bottle, about half full of some liquid. "That's the last bottle
the doctor ever sent my wife, and half of it was enough. I'm saving the
other half; I may require it. No workhouse or parish doctor for me." I
began to feel creepy; but the old man continued: "Lift that little
bucket out of the corner, and tell me what's in it." I lifted it, and
examined it, and said: "It is three parts full of charcoal, on the top
of which is a quantity of sulphur. There is a piece of candle fixed in
the sulphur and a box of matches attached to the handle of the bucket."
"Right," he said. "When my food is gone, I may put that bucket beside my
bed, lock my door, light that candle, and lie down to sleep. I may do
that, or I may blow the show up, or I may take that half-bottle of
medicine. I haven't decided yet."
There was no appearance of boasting or jesting about the old man; his
lips quivered, and he evidently meant what he said. But life has too
much interest for him at present, and so long as he can find things and
employ his strange talents in strange ways, Jonathan will not hasten his
end. But when the streets know him no more, when his fading eyesight and
his dwindling strength prevent him finding things, when he feels his
dependence on others and can no longer burnish his milk-cans, then, and
not before then, Jonathan will make his choice, and he may light his
candle.
But the end was not yet, neither did it come in catastrophic fashion. I
had not seen him for months, but, wishing to know how the old man was
getting on, I ran down to his little home to renew our acquaintance; but
he had disappeared, for the workhouse infirmary had received him.
THE PASSING OF JONATHAN.
Poor old Jonathan! The byways and thoroughfares of London know him no
longer. Hairpins lie in scattered profusion on our pavements East and
West, and babies' comforters may be seen in the mud and slime of our
gutters; but hairpins and comforters lie unheeded, for Jonathan has
passed.
The peering eyes, the quaint face, the bent body, and the bulging
pockets of my old friend are now memories, for Jonathan has passed. Poor
old Jonathan! my heart goes out to him as I think of him in his new and
last earthly home--surely the saddest of all earthly homes--a lunatic
asylum; for I know that even there his heart is with his treasures, and
his poor brains are concerned about the mass of things he had been so
long in collecting, and the rubbish that he had so passionately loved.
Fifty long years ago he commenced his self-imposed task; fifty years,
with bent back and eyes on the ground, had he traversed thousands of
miles with wearied feet, but with a brave and expectant heart.
Load after load he had carried home as he returned day after day to his
little hive, like a bee laden with honey. Who can estimate the amount of
interest and even pleasure he had experienced during those fifty years,
as he added little by little to his great store? Surely the joy that a
collector of curios experiences was no stranger to the heart of
Jonathan. And now the asylum! It is all too sad; we could wish it far
otherwise.
But Jonathan has some compensations, for he lives in the past, and joys
in the knowledge of what he has accomplished; but he does not know the
cruel fate of his great collection, and surely it is to be wished that a
kindly Providence may preserve him from the knowledge, for such
knowledge would bring to him the greatest sorrow of his life. So in the
asylum Jonathan's heart is with his treasures; they still exist, and
their value is "beyond the price of rubies."
Jonathan grew feebler. With increasing age sandwich-boards grew too
heavy for him, and the grasshopper became a burden when it was
discovered that kind friends, for charity's sake, supplemented the
miserable sum (three shillings and sixpence) allowed him weekly by the
"parish," and which served to pay his rent; and this discovery was
brought to the knowledge of the said "parish"; then the "parish," with
all the humanity it was capable of, stopped the allowance, and Jonathan
was left to his own exertions. So he got behind with his rent; his
worries increased; he got less food and of a poorer quality, and illness
came upon him. By-and-by the dreaded day arrived when the gates of a
great workhouse opened for him and closed upon him. Jonathan was
separated from his treasures. This was the unkindest cut of all, and it
proved too much for his tottering reason, and the infirmary ward of the
great workhouse was supplanted by a ward in a well-known pauper lunatic
asylum, where it is to be hoped that Jonathan's days will be few. The
old man had for many years been a great sufferer, and it has always been
a marvel to me how he went through his innumerable wanderings and tasks,
subject always to a great physical disability and intense pain.
I have previously told my readers that Jonathan could not read or write:
his wonderful memory enabled him to dispense with those requirements;
but he could not forget, neither does he forget now, so his treasures
have acquired an added value. No fabled cave ever contained the riches
that his poor home contains. Day by day they increase in value, and he
lives in the certain hope that some portion may be sold, that the
"parish" may be repaid for the cost he imposed on it, and that some
friendly hand will knock at the door of the asylum, and some friendly
voice will cry, "Open, sesame," that he may come forth a free man to
join the residue of his quaint collection. And it is well, poor old
Jonathan! that thou shouldst live in this belief, and that thou shouldst
hug those delusions, for in thy case a false hope is better far than a
knowledge of the truth. Live on, then, quaint old man, long or short as
the days may be--live on in the world of thy own creating.
But to my friends who may read this sketch of real life, the plain,
unvarnished truth is due. Jonathan's accumulation of treasures passed
into the fiery furnace of the local dust-destructor, and from thence
leapt into thin air or emerged as "clinkers." It sorely puzzled the
"parish," which had disposed of Jonathan, how to dispose of Jonathan's
effects, but it promptly annexed the vermilion chairs. The parish
labourers, not behind time, promptly annexed the tobacco, and the
"crosses," that were to lie "one on my breast inside the coffin and one
on the lid," disappeared, to be devoted, doubtless, to a less honourable
cause.
But the hairpins that had nestled in the hair of many fair ladies no one
would look at; no scrap merchant would buy them; so into the fiery
furnace of the dust-destructor they went. Hatpins--instruments of
torture, weapons of offence or defence, that had added many a danger to
life--followed the hairpins. Babies' comforters--the fiery furnace
roared for them, and licked its hot lips as it sucked them in. Think of
it, mothers, who mock your children with such civilized productions!
"Tops and bottoms," hoary scalps of fifty years ago, "granulated tops
and bottoms," that drove "Sunny Jim" to despair, had scant
consideration. In they went, and the flames leapt higher and higher as
box after box of Jonathan's treasure fed them, till, "like the baseless
fabric of a vision," they dissolved, and "left not a wrack behind."
But the "parish" looked suspiciously at and walked warily round the box
of explosives wherewith Jonathan had the means of "blowing up the
blooming show." This was carefully deposited in a cistern of water
before it was carried off. But the fiery dragon at the dust-destructor
refused the "Milkmaid" milk-tins, and, alone in their glory, sole
representatives of Jonathan's power, they remained in Jonathan's room,
for even the dust-collector fought shy of them. Like pyramids they stood
as silent witnesses of the past. How they missed Jonathan! Their lustre
was tarnished; there was no friendly hand to polish them now; neither
was there any subtle brain to devise new styles of architecture for
them. Well had it been for the "Milkmaids" if they had suffered the
fiery fate of their many companions, for a far worse fate awaited them;
for when the nights were dark, and fogs deadened sound, Jonathan's old
landlady would steal craftily with an apron full of "Milkmaids," and
drop one in the gutter, throw others over the garden-walls, dispose of
some on pieces of unoccupied ground, till all were gone. The painter and
paperhanger were afterwards required in Jonathan's room.