"Silent--"
"As the grave, madam."
This sufficed; the lady took a pinch of snuff--told me that she had been
recommended to employ me by Mr. Quireandquill; and I prepared for action.
She had a daughter young, beautiful, and innocent--but gay,
affectionate, and thoughtless; she had given her heart in keeping to one
who, though rich in love, lacked all other possessions; and, finally,
she had bestowed her hand where affection prompted. But the chilled
heart feels not like that which is warm with youth--its pulses beat not
to the same measure--its impulses impel not to the same arts; the mother
felt as a guardian and a parent--the daughter as a woman and a fond one;
the one had been imprudent--the other was inexorable; my first task was
to be the unwrenching of the holy bonds which united a child and her
parent,--the announcement of an abandonment utter and irrevocable; I
wrote the letter, and if I softened down a few harsh expressions, and
omitted some sentences of heart-breaking severity, surely it was no
breach of faith, or if, indeed, it were, it was one for which, even at
this time, I do not blush.
The old lady saw her letter sealed and addressed, and departed; and I
hastily partook of a scanty breakfast, the produce of my first
episolatory speculation. I need not have been so precipitate in
dispatching my repast, for some dreary hours intervened ere the arrival
of another visiter. One, however, came at length; a tremulous, almost
inaudible, stroke upon the door, and a nervous clasp of the latch, again
spoke hope to my sinking spirits; and, with a swift step, I rose and
gave admittance to a young and timid girl, blushing, and trembling, and
wondering, as it seemed, at the extent of her own daring. This business
was not so readily despatched as that of the angry matron. There were a
thousand promises of secrecy to be given; a thousand tremors to
be overcome.
"I am a poor girl, Sir," she said at length, "but I am an honest one;
therefore, before I take up your time, I must know whether I can afford
to pay for it."
"That," said I, and even amid my poverty I could not suppress a feeling
of amusement, "that depends wholly on the subject of your epistle;
business requires few words, and less ingenuity, and is fairly paid for
by a couple of shillings; but a love letter is cheap at three and
sixpence, for it requires an infinity of each."
"Then I may as well wish you good day at once, Sir, for I have but
half-a-crown in the world that I can call my own, and I cannot run into
debt, even to write to Charles." There was a tear in her eye as she rose
to go, and it was a beautiful blue eye, better fitted to smiles than
tears; this was enough, and, even poor as I was, I would not have missed
the opportunity of writing this letter, though I had been a loser by the
task. Happy Charles! I wrote from her dictation, and it is wonderful how
well the heart prompts to eloquence, even among the uneducated and
obscure. In all honesty, though I had but jested with my pretty
employer, this genuine love-letter was well worth the three and
sixpence--it was written, and crossed, and rewritten at right angles,
and covered on the folds and under the wafer, and, finally, unsealed to
insert a few "more last words." It was a very history of the heart!--of
a heart untainted by error--unsophisticated by fashion--unfettered by
the world's ways: a little catalogue of woman's best, and tenderest, and
holiest feelings, warm from the spirit's core, and welling out like the
pure waters of a ground spring. How the eye fell, and the voice sunk, as
she recorded some little doubt, some fond self-created fear; how the
tones gladdened, and the blue eyes laughed out in joy, as she spoke of
hopes and prospects, to which she clung trustingly, as woman ever does
to her first affection. What would I not have given to have been the
receiver of such a letter?--What to have been the idol of such a heart?
And, as she eagerly bent over me to watch the progress of her epistle,
her hand resting on my arm, and her warm breath playing over my brow,
while at intervals a fond sigh escaped her, she from time to time
reminded me of the promises I had made never to betray her secret--
beautiful innocent! I would have died first. She was with me nearly two
hours, and left me with a flushed cheek, her letter in one hand and her
half-crown in the other--had I robbed her of it, I should have merited
the pillory.
My third customer was a stiff, tall, bony man, of about fifty-five, and
for this worthy I wrote an advertisement for a wife. He was thin, and
shy, and emaciated--a breathing skeleton, in the receipt of some hundred
and twenty pounds a-year; a martyr to the rheumatism, and a radical. He
required but little; a moderate fortune; tolerable person; good
education; perfect housewifery; implicit obedience; and, finally, wound
up the list of requisites from mere lack of breath, and modestly
intimated that youth would not be considered an objection, provided that
great prudence and rigid economy accompanied it. He was the veriest
antidote to matrimony I ever beheld!
My calling prospered. I wrote letters of condolence and of
congratulation; made out bills, and composed valentines; became the
friend of every pretty girl and fine youth in the parish; and never
breathed one of their mighty secrets in the wrong quarter. In the midst
of this success, a new ambition fired me--I had been an author for
months; but though I had found my finances more flourishing, the bays
bloomed not upon my brow; and I was just about to turn author in good
earnest, when a distant relation died, and bequeathed to me an annuity
of four hundred pounds a-year; and I have been so much engaged ever
since in receiving the visits of some hitherto unknown relatives and
connexions, that I have only been able to compose the title-page, and to
send this hint to destitute young gentlemen who may have an epistolatory
turn; and to such I offer the assurance, that there is pleasure in being
the depositary of a pretty girl's secrets. "There are worse occupations
in the world, _Yorick_, than feeling a woman's pulse."--_The Inspector_.
* * * * *