wouldn't like to part with my money, and why should I ask you to part
with your hook?”
“But don't you see, Thady, I run all the risk?--may be I'll lose my
property;--the crocodile may carry it off. If we're to be partners, you
must risk a little as well as me. I'll be my hook and my rope, with all
the pleasure in life, if you'll be yourself--if you'll let me tie you to
them by the way of a bait.”
“Nonsinse, Michael! what good would I be? Sure he feeds upon blacks--the
crocodile does; and, fair as I am, he wouldn't know I was good to ate.
Now, as you've a fine dark complexion--”
“No, I havn't.”
“Faith! you have;--and it's what you're admired for, by me among many:
I'd like to have it myself. Why, thin, as you're within a few shades of
the raal thing, may be, in the dark, he'd take you for the raal thing.”
“Oh! thin, crocodiles ar'n't bamboozled so aisily; we'd better make
sure,--and I'll tell how we'll do it:--I'll get some soot, and black you
from head to foot.”
“I'd be afraid, Michael.”
“What harm could happen you, man? When he made his bite, wouldn't my
reap-hook stick in his jaws and stop him from shutting them, until I'd
pull him up?”
“Suppose he'd nibble and not bite?--suppose, too, he'd untie the cord
and make a meal of me, and then pick his teeth with your reap-hook?”
“I'll tie the knot so that he can't: or, I'll tell you what we'll
do;--we'll toss up which of us shall be bait.”
“With all my heart:--but what'll we toss with?”
“Isn't it with your money? You'll lend me your bull.”
“No, I won't lend you my bull, Michael.”
“Well! toss your bull yourself, and let me have your hog.”
“I won't do that, either; for I couldn't risk my money.”
“What! do you suspect me?”
“Far from it; but, as there's grass here, we might lose it, you know.”
“But I'll be responsible; and you can't doubt my honour.”
“Not a bit; but--what's as bad,--I doubt your means. If I lost my bull,
and you couldn't give me another if you would, that's the same thing to
me as if you wouldn't give me another if you could,--don't you see?”
“Well, I've another plan: and I think it must plaze you:--did you ever
throw a summerset?”
“I tried once, but didn't succeed.”
“That's just my own case; so we're even, and it don't matter which does
it. Now hark to this, Thady; you'll throw your summerset as well as you
can, and while you're throwing it. I'll cry 'head' or 'tail,' just which
I like: if I say 'tail,' and you I'll on your head, it's you that wins.”
“No, Michael; you must toss yourself; for I've no tail to my coat, and
you have.”
“Arrah, man! won't I lend you mine? Sure, we'll exchange.”
“Well, but suppose I lost?”
“Thin you'd strip yourself, and I'd black you.”
“But why strip myself, Michael?”
“Don't the crocodiles always catch people that's swimming? And suppose
they didn't, don't the blacks go naked? They do, Thady: so that if you
were in your clothes, the crature couldn't know you were a man, and we
wouldn't catch him. If there was a fish that ate apples, you wouldn't
bait your hook with a dumpling, would you?”
“I wouldn't: still, I couldn't leave my clothes.”
“Why not, thin, eh?”
“Bekase there's my bull and my hog in the pocket; and I'd not like to
risk them, with nobody on the bank, but yourself, to take care o' them.”
“I don't know how it is, Thady, but nothing plazes you;--you're too
particular by half.”
“I'm fool enough to be too fond of my money, I'm afraid.”
“I'm afraid you are:--but will I tell you what you'll do with it,--once
for all now?”
“What, Michael?”
“Why, thin, you'll just lend me two-and-sixpence, and I'll go and do
something in the way of speculation with it; so that, whin we meet
again, I'll be able to give you back your bull, with something handsome
to the tail of it.”
“That's not bad, Michael: but I'd be afraid we wouldn't have the luck of
meeting whin we'd wish. Who knows but one of us might be looking for the
other, all over the wide world, like a needle in a bundle of hay?”
“Thady, is it trash your trying to talk? People meets where hills and
mountains don't, you know.”
“That's true: but I've found out that though one meets with them one
don't want to see nine times a week, one goes a whole year, and more,
without getting a sight o' them one wishes to come across. Who knows
but, if I lent you my bull, the sight o' you would be good for sore
eyes?--For that rason, I'll not lay you under the obligation, I think,
Michael.”
“Oh! bad luck to you, and every bit of you! Get out o' that, for I don't
like you;--giving people trouble, by making believe you're a fool, whin
all the while you ar'n't!”
“I'm beginning to think you'd bad intuitions, Michael.”
“Do you think I'd chate my cousin?”
“You would thin,--I'll say that for your abilities,--if you could get
anything by it. Ar'n't you trying to bully me out o' my bull?”
“Get out o' that, I tell you!--go away intirely:--I dissolve the
partnership. Go at once, for I'm in a passion.”
“Who cares for you, Michael? Go away yourself. I'll engage you'll find
many's the one who wants a partner that's active, and won't mind about
capital; but I don't think he'll be a man of property. Why should you
crow over me, I'd like to know?--is it bekase you've a cock in your
eye?”
[Illustration: 435]
HANDSOME HANDS.
An elderly bachelor of my acquaintance is one of the warmest admirers in
the world of a beautiful female hand. “A fine hand,” he will say, “is
a vastly fine thing, sir. As I always turned my attention very
particularly to that part of the person, and have been king's page, and
this, that, and t'other about a court, during many of my best years, the
very finest of hands have fallen under my notice. Believe me, I am
not at all captious, but merely critical, or in a trifling degree
historical, when I say, that your fine hands of the present day, are
very different from the fine hands of the old school. My father was
convinced that bands had degenerated since Charles the Second's time;
but he could not help confessing that, in my time,--I mean, when he was
seventy, and I was thirty--hands were still handsome. And, mark me, he
spoke of hands generally:--but, adad! _now_, if you meet with a fine
hand once in a year or so, you're in luck, and ought to sacrifice a kid
to Fortune. The fact is, that fine hands are very much talked about,
but they are not properly cultivated; true beauty of form is no longer
understood or appreciated; and the classical style of hand is, I fear,
almost out of fashion. I am acquainted with two or three exquisite pair
in town, and one,--its fellow, unfortunately, is deformed--one matchless
hand at Putney. But nobody else admires them; I have them all to myself;
and what is most provoking, these treasures,--these living and lovely
reliques of a former age of grace and beauty,--these symbols of glorious
pedigree,--these aristocratic heir-looms, are thrown away upon persons,
who, if it were not for a spice of self-love, and that they're their
own, would deem them but middling specimens. They positively try to coax
them out of a beautiful into a barbarous style, so as to make them look
like those of their neighbours, which the senseless young fellows of the
modern school have the bad taste to admire. There never, perhaps, was
a woman with such delightful hands as the charming Aurelia Pettigrew,
afterwards Mrs. Watts, of Grange Hill, subsequently Mrs. Jervis, of
Eton; whom I attempted at once to console and immortalize, by a copy of
verses, written on the occasion of her having met with an accident, from
an awkward waiting-woman's scissors, which produced a slight, but, in
the opinion of many, a pleasing and piquant obliquity of the visual
organ. These are the stanzas:--
“'When Chloe wandered o'er the mead,
To pluck the grateful flower;
Strephon and every shepherd swain,
Confess'd her beauty's power.
Enamour'd Colin, gazing knelt,
And soon resign'd his breath;
While each fond youth ambitious sighed,
To die so sweet a death.
Two suns the earth could ne'er endure,
Nor man _her_ double glance;
So nature bade the right blaze on,
And turn'd the left askance.'
“I did not sing the charms of her hands, for they were above all
praise:--small, plump, and graceful, with tapering fingers, and dimples
where the knuckles lay, which, to the eye of fancy, seemed to smile like
those in Love's own cheek. Miss Pettigrew was not of a very excellent
figure; nor had she, with the exception of her eyes, particularly
beautiful features; but her hands were matchless! They won her one
husband, and many hearts,--my own among them,--at nineteen; and another
husband with more than one suitor,--I was among'em, again--when she
was a widow, at forty. There are some Goths and Vandals, who would have
their nails half as long as the fingers:--filbert-nails, I think is the
term for such pretended beauties; which, in my opinion, bear a striking
resemblance to the convex side of the bowl of a horn spoon. But, though
I consider a deep margin to a nail vulgar in the extreme, and would
never, on any account, suffer its disk to peep over the Aurora-tinted
horizon of the finger's summit, yet, understand me, I am no advocate for
cutting them down to the quick. Of the two extremes,--a woman who pares
her nails to the skin's edge, and a Chinese lady, who suffers hers to
shoot forth into talons, I know not which is the more provoking. The
Chinese female has at least the custom of the country in her favour;
her, therefore, I have no right to blame, because it occurs that I am
not a Chinese: but if I meet with one of my countrywomen, with claws
at the ends of her fingers, I always long to call in a gardener or a
sheep-shearer, with the necessary implement to prune or clip them down
to a state of decorum. I do not possess sufficient talent to invent an
appropriate and adequate punishment for a lady who is so enamoured
with ugliness as to bite her nails. For her friends' sake, she ought to
cannibalize in private, and conceal the revolting relics of her feast by
wearing gloves, even in the presence of her most intimate friends. Those
little machines which look like old gloves cropped to the knuckles, are
gross outrages upon taste: they are called, I believe, mittens; and many
excellent young ladies wear them, particularly in the country, during
cold weather. The sight of a hand in one of these things invariably
produces an emotion of pity in my bosom for the four long, cold, naked
fingers, which protrude from the sockets of the stalls. In the matter of
gloves, women are frequently so rash and inconsiderate, as 'to make the
judicious grieve.' I have told every lady, with whom I have the honour
to be intimate, and who has happened to have large, ignoble hands, that
she ought not to wear tight gloves; I have declared, on the honour of a
gentleman, that they increase rather than dimmish the apparent size of
the hand: but my preaching has never proved of much effect. A lady with
an excellent, or even a good hand, should never have a wrinkle in
her glove; but it is an absurd notion of many, that mere tightness is
perfection: on the contrary, a glove that is well adapted to the hand
never appears tight, but fits smooth and unwrinkled as the fair skin
which it conceals. The kid should lie close against the palm of the
hand; the fingers should have no awkward bags at their extremities, and
no bridges between their bases; indeed, the glove should fit as though
it were an admirable mould, endowed with such elasticity as to assume
every variety of form into which graceful action can possibly throw the
hand. It, doubtless, has been to many persons, as well as to myself, a
matter of astonishment, that the thousand and one elegant and delicate
pieces of workmanship, in various materials, which seem to be fashioned
by the exquisite fingers of a Belinda, are found, on inquiry, to be the
productions of huge awkward paws, apparently fit only to wield flails
and pull about blocks of granite. A celebrated frizeur, whose name I
won't mention, has a very laudable antipathy to what he terms 'hugeous
hands--he is a little lax in his language, but a very good frizeur for
all that. Some years ago, he wanted a few assistants in his hair-cutting
rooms; and inserted an advertisement in the paper to that effect. Among
other applicants there was a good-looking youth, whose appearance, and
answers to the preliminary questions put on such occasions, were highly
satisfactory. 'Will your last master give you a character for civility?'
inquired the hair-dresser. The boy answered in the affirmative. 'Well,
and where are your gloves, young gentleman?' 'I don't wear any, sir!'
'Not wear gloves! I protest, I never heard of such a thing in all my
born days. Take your hands out of your breeches pockets then, boy, and
let me inspect them.' The boy, with some difficulty, produced a pair of
rather large and very high-coloured hands, and artlessly exhibited
them to the frizeur. 'Oh! go away, boy--go away,' exclaimed the latter,
recoiling three paces from the spectacle; 'you won't suit me at all: the
advertisement particularly said, Wanted a few _good hands_, you know.
It's not possible for me to take a young man into my establishment,
with great, large, red bits of beef, hanging out at the ends of his coat
sleeves.--Go along!'”
[Illustration: 439]
MISLED BY A NAME.
It was my fortune to pass a portion of my youth at a celebrated
watering-place, to which it was the fashion, at that time, with the
faculty, in all parts of the kingdom, to consign their patients, usually
in compliance with the desires of the latter, when medicine could be of
no more avail; and there was such a constant influx of pale people of
fortune, who were buried within so brief a period after the announcement
of their arrival, that I sincerely pitied persons of opulence,
because they seemed to be Death's favourite prey. Burials occurred so
frequently, that at least a tithe of the inhabitants were undertakers.
It was really laughable to witness the intrigue that took place in the
event of a death. The funeral was generally bespoke, even before
the patient had been given over by the resident physicians: the sick
gentleman's grocer, his tailor, his shoemaker, the master of the inn
where he had put up on his arrival, the person in whose house he was
expiring, the barber who shaved him when he was no longer able to shave
himself, his butler, who had become tainted with the mania of the
place, and the man over the way, whose wife was a laundress, were all
undertakers in disguise, and sighing for his dissolution. This is a true
sketch of the state of things some years ago, at ----, and, doubtless,
at many other equally celebrated resorts of the afflicted. The various
candidates for “a black job,”--that was the technical term,--frequently
formed a coalition of interests. One of the party was nominated to
bury the deceased, and divide the profits among all. Bribery to the
domestics, in these cases, was carried on to a shocking extent; for the
resident tradesmen of the place, rendered callous by custom, purchased
the votes of every individual who was likely to have any voice in the
election of an undertaker. Humorous mistakes frequently occurred in
the ardour of the pursuit, and in the rivalry existing between the real
gentlemen of the hearse, and those who were constantly on the alert to
obtain a share of their profits. A case occurs to my recollection,
which may, perhaps, be deemed not altogether devoid of interest.
An undertaker, who had received intelligence from one of the numerous
jackals of the place, that the doctors had received their last fee from
the friends of a patient, who lodged at Mr. B.'s house in a certain
crescent, immediately repaired to the scene of action. He knocked at
the door, but the footman (having received a bribe, and very particular
instructions from a rival undertaker, who had purchased the same
intelligence a few moments earlier from a the same identical jackal,
and who was then in the pantry, trying to buy over the butler,) told him
that he had mistaken the number; that his master was perfectly well; and
that, in all probability, the gentleman who was dying, lived at Mr. B.'s
other lodging-house, No. 7, in the same crescent.
“Do you know his name?” inquired the undertaker.
“The Reverend Mr. Morgan,” replied the footman.
“Do you know his servant?”
“Yes; he's a thick-set man, with a slight cast in his eye.”
“In or out of livery?”
“Out.”
“May I use your name?”
“With all my heart, on your tipping the usual.”
“There's a crown; it's all speculation,--neck or nothing; so I can't
afford more. What's your name?”
“I am Sir Joseph Morgan's under-butler.”
“Thank you;--good day:--but stop, allow me to trouble you with a
dozen of my cards; a judicious use of them may pay you: I come down
handsomely, and you may make it worth your while, as well as mine,
should anything occur in your family. Will you do what you can?”
“With pleasure.”
“Much obliged: and,--d'ye hear?--here's another: if you know of any
house where the ravens roost,--you understand me--stick it in the frame
of the house-keeper's looking-glass. Good morning!”
The Reverend Mr. Morgan, to whose lodgings the under-butler had referred
the undertaker, was a middle-aged gentleman, lately married, and in
daily expectation of having an heir to his name and the little freehold
which his uncle had devised to him in the county of Brecon. He was just
the sort of man that the under-butler had in his eye, when describing
his servant. As the undertaker approached the door of No. 7, the
reverend gentleman, in his usual neat, but homely dress, made his
appearance. The undertaker, suspecting that he was the servant, accosted
him the moment he had closed the door behind him, and the following
dialogue ensued:--
“Your most obedient, sir.”
“Yours, sir;--I ask pardon, but as I am in a hurry--”
“One moment--”
“Really, sir, if you knew the situation of affairs--”
“I do, sir;--I do, indeed.”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“Well, it's rather odd. But I cannot stand here gossipping. Mrs.
Morgan--”
“Ah! poor dear creature! but these things will happen, you
know:--transitory life--sublunary world--rad mortality--vale of
tears!--Going for the doctor?”
“No, not just yet; but--”
“Ah! still the event is pretty certain, I believe.”
“Why, yes; I flatter myself it is.”
“Good. Pardon me for being intrusive, my dear friend; but it lies in
your power to do me a favour, I think: will you?”
“Oh! yes,--anything;--provided it costs me nothing.”
“Not a penny:--you'll be in pocket by it. But, before I explain, allow
me to ask,--have you any interest with, or influence over Mrs. Morgan?
Be candid.”
“Why, sir, I think I ought to have.”
“Oh! I see:--a managed matter;--a candidate for dead men's shoes,
eh?--Ah! you sly dog!”
“Sly dog!”
“You'll soon be master, I guess.”
“I hope so; I have been long trying for it.”
“Ha, ha! I know it. Oh! I can see things. But now to business:--the fact
is, I'm a professional man.”
“Oh! are you?”
“Yes,--you understand:--and as soon as any thing occurs, call me in; and
I'll make matters agreeable to you.”
“But Mrs. Morgan,--she must be consulted: I'm just going to see a
gentleman on this very business.”
“To be sure Mrs. M. must be consulted! Far be it from me to think of
intruding myself without her permission. But you can use your influence.
A word in your ear: I'm empowered to mention the name of Sir Joseph
Morgan's under-butler. Manage it well, and I'll tip you a five pound
note.”
“Sir Joseph Morgan's under-butler! Me? Tip me?”
“Oh, honour! honour among thieves, you know. Ha, ha! Harkye;--the moment
he goes off--”
“Goes off! Who?”
“The parson.--I say, the moment he goes off--”
“Ah!”
“Smuggle me up to his wife.”
“To Mrs. M.? Smuggle you?”
“Oh! these things must be done with decorum, you know.”
“Well, but--”
“Leave me to manage the rest. I flatter myself that my talent and
experience will ensure us the desired success. Act well your part, and
depend upon it I shall be the happy man.”
“The happy man!”
“Ay; see him home, as we say.”
“See who home?”
“Why, M., to be sure.”
“M.?”
“Yes. Really, though, now I look at you, you don't seem to follow my
ideas exactly.”
“Not with that precision which I could wish.”
“Psha! In plain English, then,--the parson being about to kick the
bucket--”
“Kick the--”
“Ay,--hop the twig,--or pop off the hooks:--pick and choose, I've a
variety.”
“And pray, sir, what may his kicking the bucket be to you?”
“Thirty pounds, at least, if his widow's a trump, and things turn out
kindly.”
“I'm quite in a fog!--Pray, sir, who and what are you?”
“Didn't I say I was a professional man--an undertaker?”
“Oh! you're an undertaker, are you?”
“At your service.”
“Thank you. And so you think of seeing M. home, do you?”
“Yes; box him up, as we say;--Ha, ha!”
“And I'm to have five pounds--”
“Exclusive of the usual jollification on the occasion, with the mutes
and mourners; and an additional guinea, if you think proper to officiate
with a black stick and hat-band. Pull your hat over your eyes, hold
a white pocket-handkerchief to your face, and nobody will know
you:--that's the way to manage. Ha, ha!”
“Very good; very good, indeed. Ha, ha!”
“Ha, ha! But come--what say you to a cheerful glass on this melancholy
occasion? Sorrow is dry, you know;--I'll be a bottle.”
“You're very good. And so you're an undertaker, after all, are you?”
“To be sure I am:--come along.”
“And I'm to smuggle you up to Mrs. M., eh?--Ha, ha!--I must say I admire
your mode of doing business much.”
“Tact, my dear fellow,--tact and decorum; I display no other talents.”
“Your gay manner, too--”
“Yes; 'we're the lads for life and joy,' as the song says. I'm naturally
cheerful; but when I feel pretty sure of my man--as I now do--oddsheart!
I'm as merry as a grig. Take my arm.” The undertaker marched off
in triumph with his supposed prey leaning on his arm, towards a
neighbouring tavern; but whether the reverend gentleman blighted his
hopes by an early explanation, or forgot Mrs. M. for a few moments
longer, and partook of the proffered bottle, “the chronicler cannot
state.”
[Illustration: 444]
In my little parlour, where,
Seated in an easy chair,
At the dull decline of day,
Oft I doze an hour away;--
Yester-eve I had a dream,
Of such seeming misery,
That, at last, my own loud scream,
Roused me to reality:
And, though strange my say may seem,
Sleep I'd rather never more,
Than hear again what then I bore.
Time, methought, was journeying fast:
Years, like moments, fleetly passed;
Still on they flowed,--behind,--before,
Across what seemed a dismal sea,
To break like billows on the shore
Of measureless Eternity.
From all his leaden clogs releas'd,
Anon, the speed of Time increas'd;
Till even light could scarcely vie,
With the speed of a passing century.
The hills were grey,--the world was old;
Its hour was come, its sands were told;
The knell of a million years had rung;
And I, alone, continued young,
And, now, the work of woe began,
Despair through every bosom ran;
Death stalked abroad in open day,
And, visibly, attack'd his prey:
No more by slow disease he work'd,
Or in the cup of nectar lurk'd;
No host was now in battle slain,
No man set up,--a butt for Pain
To shoot her lingering arrows through;
No more the earth devour'd a town;
But Death walk'd openly in view,
And, with his scythe, mow'd myriads down.
I clos'd my eyes,--I saw no more,
Until a voice close to my ear,--
A voice I ne'er had heard before,
So dismal that I quail'd with fear,
And utter'd that wild horrid scream,
Which rous'd me from my wretched dream!
Bade me awake, methought, and see
Him, whose doom it was to be,
The last of human kind!
An awful form before me stood,
Whose aspect boded aught but good:
His looks were grim, his locks were grey;
He seem'd like one near life's last goal;
And thrice, methought, I heard him say,
That he came to cast my soul!