Cambridge; and whilst there had sold about ten pounds worth of their
merchandise to a "_college-man_"--a collegian, whose name and address they
produced. The "college-man" did not pay them for the merchandise; but
promised to be ready with the money on a future day. When the day arrived,
however, he was "gone somewhere away," and they could not find him. Some
days more elapsed before he made himself visible; and then another day of
payment was appointed; but when that day came, he was gone away again. In
short, as the interpreter said, he was "always far off, round about in the
countries--sometimes here, and sometimes there, sometimes everywhere, and
sometimes nowhere at all." In all these eccentricities the poor Turks
endeavoured to keep up with him; and urged the chase so warmly, that it
would appear he began at length to grow confoundedly tired of it; and,
hopeless of exhausting their patience by this kind of wild-goose chase, he
hit upon the following queer contrivance to rid himself of their
troublesome presence:--Having apologized for the delay that had occurred,
he appointed to meet them on the following morning at a certain
public-house, about five miles from Cambridge, on the road to London. The
Turks were exact in keeping their appointment, and they had not waited
long before "the college-man" made his appearance. He was accompanied by a
young woman; and he proposed to the Turks that they should escort this
young woman to London and take great care of her, as she was very _dear_
to him, and wait altogether at the White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, till he
joined them; that he would follow them in a day or two at farthest, and
immediately on his arrival in town he would give them a cheque upon his
banker for the original debt, and the travelling expenses altogether! This
would have been a comical proposition to have made to an Englishman, but
it answered very well with the poor Turks, and they readily agreed to
it--not doubting but he would keep his word when they had a lady in pawn
who was so very "_dear_" to him; and they took their departure for the
metropolis by the first coach that passed; the "college-man" taking a
tender farewell of the lady, and the simple _Mussulmen_ escorting her
along the road with as much care as though they had been conducting some
fair Circassian to the Seraglio of the Grand Seignor! They arrived at the
White Horse Cellar in due course, and waited day after day for the
arrival of "the college-man;" but to their _astonishment_ he never came,
and their patience and faith evaporating together, they at length sought
redress, by applying to the Secretary of State, as above stated.
The magistrate said, it appeared that the collegian, by this unprincipled
trick, had "killed two birds with one stone,"--he had rid himself of his
creditor and his mistress at once. The stratagem, he said, was the more
unprincipled, inasmuch as it was played off upon foreigners, who were
utterly ignorant of the customs of the country, but unfortunately it did
not come within his jurisdiction, and therefore he could render no
assistance. His worship then recommended them to apply to a solicitor; and
the interpreter tried hard to make them understand the nature of a
solicitor, but the strangers only shook their turban'd heads and shrugged
their shoulders in reply; and, so doing, they walked out of the office.
JOHN BROWN.
One of the churchwardens of St. Anne's, Soho, appeared in custody before
the magistrate, to answer the complaint of John Brown.
John Brown--or, more courteously speaking, Mr. John Brown--is landlord of
a respectable inn, in Essex, and a jolly landlord he is--plump, unctuous,
and rosy; and being at that time blessed with a fine pair of bloodshot
eyes, his countenance looked as glowingly rubicund as a full-blown
Patagonian peony.
John Brown, it appeared, had a correspondent in London, named B--, who
some time before accepted a bill in his favour, and within a few days,
John Brown had received a letter from a Mr. D., informing him that his
friend Mr. B. would not be able to honour his acceptance, because _Mrs. B.
had eloped_! This was sad news for John Brown. He felt for his friend who
had lost his wife; he felt more for himself, who was likely to lose his
money; and, what with the wife and the money, and the money and the wife,
he was puzzled exceedingly. But he was not the man to sit idly twirling
his thumbs and bothering his brains, when there was a chance of mending
the matter by using his legs; and so, having set his affairs at home in
order, he came bang up at once to London, determined (like King Lear) to
do something--though what he knew not.
In the first place, he called upon Mr. D., for Mr. B. was from
home--roving round the country in search of his faithless spouse, poor
man! John Brown and Mr. D. laid their heads together; and, indeed, John
Brown could not have come more opportunely, for Mr. D. had just got
intelligence that the runagate Mrs. B., and her paramour, Lieutenant H.,
were concealed at No. 19, Carlisle-street, Soho. "Ho! ho!" thought John
Brown to himself, "now I'll do the business genteelly--I'll get poor B.
his wife again--I'll _baste_ the blackguard that took her away, and I'll
get my bill honoured, _all quite regular_." Full of this hope and
expectation, he instantly sallied forth on his way to No. 19,
Carlisle-street, Soho; but, unfortunately, John Brown's memory "lacked
retention"--the number of the house imperceptibly evaporated as he went
along--by the time he reached Carlisle-street, _ten_ of the nineteen had
completely vanished from his recollection, and so he boldly knocked at the
door of No. 9. Now No. 9 was the residence of a most respectable maiden
lady, the daughter of a late magistrate, and of very retired habits. But
what was all that to John Brown? he had as little doubt of his having
mistaken the house as he had of his own existence.
The door was opened by one of the maid-servants, and John Brown, with his
fine flaming physiognomy, strode manfully into the hall. The girl, with
the open door still in her hand, stared after him with surprise.--"Shut
the door, young woman!" said the peremptory John Brown, "shut the door,
young woman, and show me up to the _missis_." "My mistress, Sir!" said the
astonished girl;--"it's impossible--she is not up." "Aye, that won't do
for me," replied John Brown, "I must, and I will see her directly--so show
me up stairs!" The girl became alarmed, and called her fellow-servant;
whilst John Brown continued marching about the hall, wiping the dewy
moisture from his blushing brows, and vociferating aloud, "You baggages!
you know all about it! But I won't be gammoned!--you know the _missis_ is
in bed with Lieutenant H.! But I'll have him out in spite of you!"
At length the two girls together prevailed upon him to moderate his choler
a little, and write a note to their mistress. They furnished him with pen,
ink, and paper, and he set about it lustily; but he wrote and wrote, and
could write nothing to his mind. He threw his coat off, and tried again;
but still it would not do. Then he recollected that he had been bled the
day before, and that the bandage might possibly impede the flow of his
thoughts as well as the motion of his pen. Up goes his shirt sleeve in an
instant; and stretching out his brawny arm, he ordered the girls to
unloose the bandage; but by this time they had no doubt that honest John
Brown was neither more nor less than a madman, and one of them slipped out
of door and requested Mr. N., the churchwarden, who resided immediately
opposite, to come to him. The churchwarden came, just as John Brown had
managed to unroll the bandage from his arm himself, and was taking pen in
hand to have another try at writing. He demanded John Brown's business
there, and John Brown told him all about it without bating an inch. When
he had done, the churchwarden told him he was either mad, or was labouring
under some gross mistake. John Brown was doubly fired at this--his
countenance, from a glowing red, became of a mahogany tint, and he
manifested symptoms of kicking up a row. But the churchwarden was not to
be frightened by "the blustering of a _turkey-cock_;" and so, quietly
grasping John Brown by the arm, he "_walked_ him out of the house;" and
walked him, and walked him along the street, till he had walked him into
the office of the lady's solicitor, in order that he might be dealt with
according to law for his strange intrusion into her house. But the
solicitor happened to be from home, and John Brown was suffered to go at
large; whereupon he repaired to the nearest tavern, took a bumper of
brandy and water to reconglomerate his faculties, and then applied at this
office for a warrant against the churchwarden,--who, as he said, had dared
to walk him out of one house into another.
The magistrate having heard the business from beginning to end, with great
patience, dismissed the warrant, and told John Brown he might think
himself well off that it was no worse.
This is the end of John Brown's adventures, as far as we are acquainted
with them.
JOHN SAUNDERS ON HORSEBACK: A NARRATIVE;
Showing how, like John Gilpin, he went further than he intended, and got
safe home again.
_Mr. John Saunders_, a remarkably soft-spoken, mild young man, of demure
carriage, slender proportions, and rather respectable appearance, was
placed at the bar, under a (not very violent) suspicion of having stolen a
horse; but it turned out that the suspicion was groundless, and that
instead of John Saunders stealing the horse, the horse stole John
Saunders!
It appeared that as Mr. Stephen Marchant, of Turnham-green, was riding
quietly homewards from town, between eight and nine o'clock in the
evening, his horse got a pebble in one of his feet, which made him go
lame, and Mr. Marchant alighted to extract it. Whilst he was busied in
this operation, who should come up offering assistance but John Saunders,
with a large white band-box in one hand, and an umbrella in the other. Mr.
Marchant accepted his help with many thanks; and John Saunders, setting
down his band-box in the road, began grubbing away at the unlucky pebble
with the spike of his umbrella, whilst Mr. Marchant held up the foot of
the horse; and he grubbed and grubbed at it, so earnestly, that at last
the spike of the umbrella "broke off as short as a carrot." Well, what was
to be done now? Why Mr. Marchant, thinking he could knock out the pebble
with a large stone, asked John Saunders to hold the horse whilst he looked
for one; and John Saunders readily undertook to do so; but whilst Mr.
Marchant was groping about, in the dark, for the stone, he saw, to his
utter astonishment, John Saunders on the back of the horse, scampering
away towards Kensington as if the deuce was in him--his umbrella tucked
close under his arm, and his great white band-box banging about from side
to side _like mad_, as he said.
Mr. Marchant stood aghast for a moment, and then followed, crying "Stop
thief! Stop thief!" with all his might. Every horseman on the road, the
horse-patrol and many foot passengers, hearing this cry, scampered after
John Saunders with might and main, and the hue and cry sounded far and
wide--
"Stop thief! stop thief!--a highwayman!"
Not one of them was mute;
And all and each that passed that way
Did join in the pursuit.
And still, as fast as he drew near,
'Twas wonderful to view
How in a trice the turnpike men
Their gates wide open threw.
--Tramp! tramp! away he went, through merry Kensington, down Phillimore
Place, dashing by Holland House, and so away for Hammersmith, with a
continually increasing rabble rout at his heels. But John Saunders gained
upon them at every bound of his steed; he shot through Hammersmith-gate
with the rapidity of lightning, and wheeling round to the left, down
Fulham-lane, he got so far a-head of his pursuers, that they could see
nothing but his great white band-box--as it went bobbing and swinging
from side to side at his back. Down Fulham-lane, however, they followed
him, slap bang!--and on they went, hallooing and hooting, through mud and
through mire, through fog and moonshine, till at last he took a desperate
leap over the fence of a ploughed field; and when the foremost of his
pursuers came up to the gap, even the bobbing of his band-box was
invisible!--In _plain_ terms, he fairly "tipped 'em the double"--he was
vanished; and Mr. Marchant having thus lost his horse, was under the
annoying necessity of--getting home how he could.
On the following morning Mr. Marchant repaired to town on foot, to give
notice of the robbery to the police; and almost the first object that
caught his eye, on getting into Piccadilly, was John Saunders--still
mounted on his Bucephalus, but without either band-box or umbrella. He
stared at John Saunders--John Saunders stared at him; and they gradually
drew near to each other without a word being uttered on either side.
Having conglomerated, John Saunders offered him his horse again--telling
him he had "mounted it by accident," and it ran away with him; that he
wished it at the _dooce_, almost, for taking him so far from home; and
that he was come to town for the sole purpose of advertising in the
_noosepapers_ for its owner. When he had told the astonished Mr. Marchant
all this, he dismounted; gave the bridle rein into Mr. Merchant's hand,
and then produced the manuscript of his intended advertisement. But Mr.
Marchant having no idea of a man's "mounting a horse by _accident_,"
seized John Saunders by the collar, and gave him in charge to one of the
passing patrol, who brought him to this office.
So far was Mr. Marchant's statement of the affair; and, he having
concluded, John Saunders was called upon for his defence.
John Saunders, as we have already stated, was a remarkably mild, quiet
young man; and he told a story--or rather a story was drawn out of him bit
by bit, of which the following is the substance:--He resided with his mama
at Clapham--was himself "brought up in the glass line," (and truly he
seemed as _transparent_ as glass,) but was then out of business. On the
afternoon preceding the night on which he met with Mr. Marchant and his
wicked horse, his _mama_ sent him to her milliner's, at Kensington, to
bring home a bonnet and feathers which she had sent there to be "done up."
He went to Kensington--called upon a friend, who gave him some Scotch
ale--went to the milliner, who put the bonnet and feathers in a large
white band-box, and he was quietly returning home to Clapham with it, when
he fell in with the gentleman, and his horse with a pebble in his foot:
but he wished he never had fallen in with them; for he had been made very
miserable by it. He offered his services to get the pebble out, and
spoiled his umbrella; he undertook to hold the horse while the gentleman
looked for a stone, and the Scotch ale, having got into his head, as he
supposed, induced him to get on the horse's back--quite contrary to his
intention. The horse ran away with him directly--directly contrary to the
way he wished to go--he was hurried along, in a dreadful manner, he knew
not whither, till the horse stopped at Brompton; and then he found that
the large white band-box was worn almost to tatters by its excessive
agitation on horseback, and that one of the feathers of his mother's
bonnet was sadly broken. He then considered within himself that it would
be impossible to find the gentleman to whom the horse belonged that night;
and, having bought a new band-box for his mother's bonnet, he rode home to
Clapham, put the horse in a butcher's stable, gave it some corn, had his
own supper, and went to bed dreadfully tired. In the morning he got up
early, wrote an advertisement about the horse, and was coming to town to
put it in the papers, when he met the gentleman, who was very angry with
him, and gave him into custody.
Mr. Marchant, in reply, said he was inclined to believe his story, but he
thought it right he should be told authoritatively that he was not to play
such pranks with impunity.
The magistrate, therefore, gave John Saunders a suitable admonition, and
dismissed him.
'PON MY HONOUR IT'S TRUE.
A German mechanic having laid information at this office that a countryman
of his, named Schultz, residing in Green Street, Leicester Square, was
kept in a state of durance, in his own house, by an Englishwoman, who, he
verily believed, had a design both upon his life and property, the
magistrate sent some officers to bring the parties before him.
They accordingly proceeded to the house, but the English lady peremptorily
refused them admission, and it was several hours before they were able to
effect an entrance. At length, however, they brought the parties to the
office in a hackney coach--for the lady was too magnificent to walk, and
the poor old German was so afflicted with paralysis, that he was carried
before the magistrate on the back of one of his countrymen.
He was indeed a miserable object--his limbs utterly useless--his eyes dull
and unnaturally protruding--his beard unshaved--his hair matted with
feathers--and his whole person disgustingly filthy.
The lady, on the contrary, was a fine bouncing woman, of rather handsome
countenance, gaily dressed in a fashionable bonnet and plume, and her fat
white fingers covered with glittering rings. Nevertheless she bodily
professed that she _loved_ the poor emaciated, dirty, paralytic old man;
and she affirmed that all her attentions to him were purely disinterested.
He was exactly in the same state, she said, when she first became
acquainted with him, five years ago--not worth a single sixpence, over
head and ears in debt, half crazy, of filthy habits, lame, old, and
impotent--and yet she _loved_ him--loved him for himself alone. ("Oh! who
doth know the bent of woman's phantasy?" as Master Spenser saith.)
She delivered these _fibs_--for fibs they surely must be--in the short,
quick, _staccato_ manner, perfectly at her ease, and alternately munching
an orange and blowing her nose between every word. She had a solicitor,
too, in attendance upon her--a little wee man, inclining to threescore,
who evidently spent more in hair-powder than in soap; and to him she
appealed at the close of every sentence she uttered--"'Pon my honour it's
true!--there's my solicitor, ask him;" and the solicitor as regularly
bowed his powdered little head in assent.
The wretched old German stated, that this lady came as a lodger to his
house in the first instance, and took every opportunity of attending to
him in his illness; till at length, finding she had ingratiated herself
with him, she proposed to him to make her his wife. This he very
ungallantly declined; and she contented herself with only passing for his
wife, and assuming more than the privileges of one. She turned out his
lodgers, and got creatures of her own in lieu of them. She forbade his
friends and countrymen from coming near him. She pretended they only
wanted to rob him, and prevailed on him to make his will, leaving all his
property to her; and having accomplished this, she confined him in a
little room, fed him scantily, and beat him whenever he remonstrated with
her on her altered conduct. In conclusion, he expressed his thankfulness
that he had been rescued from her tyranny, and implored the magistrate to
protect him from her in future.
The magistrate said he could easily afford protection to his person, but
he wished to protect his property also.
The solicitor here informed his worship, that the complainant had no
property to protect--inasmuch as he had given the lady a bill of sale of
all he possessed, in consideration of a hundred pounds she had lent him at
different times.
This, the wretched old foreigner denied. He declared that she had never
lent him but 13_l._, and even that she forced upon him; that he knew
nothing of any bill of sale, and that she had taken away the lease of his
house, and hid it.
A long desultory altercation ensued, and eventually this disinterested
lady was ordered to find bail for repeatedly assaulting the object of her
love; and not being prepared with any, she was delivered into the custody
of the gaoler, whilst the old man was carried out of the office again on
the back of his countryman.
BEER--NOT BODIES.
A poor hunchback'd little printer, whose dreary destinies have driven him
to seek an asylum in St. Clement's workhouse, was brought before the
magistrate, charged on suspicion of being a _resurrection man_.
His accusers, a couple of large-sized watchmen, told the following story;
or rather, a story to the following effect:--In the dead of the night,
"when churchyards yawn, and graves give up their dead," a man came to
these watchmen and told them, he verily believed there were three
resurrection men at work among the graves in the burial-ground adjoining
St. Clement's workhouse--that identical burying-ground which contains all
that is left in this world of the once merry Joe Miller. The watchmen,
having received this intelligence, and trimmed their lanterns, went
straightway to the burial-ground, and clambering over the iron railing,
they searched the whole place, grave by grave, until at last they
found--not three stout resurrection men, with pick-axes and spades; but
one solitary being--the poor hunchbacked unfortunate little pauper printer
above mentioned. He was sitting, all alone, on the top-mast round of a
ladder; which ladder was reared against the window of a house bordering on
the burial-ground; and in that window there was a dim glimmering light;
and, therefore, the watchmen took the moping little man into custody, and
had him away to the watch-house.--For they had heard that bodies had
often been conveyed away from the burial-ground through the windows of
that house, and so out at the front door in St. Clement's-lane, and away
at once to the dissecting-rooms--Guy's Hospital, perchance, or the
cadaverous halls of Blenheim-street. Bodies, now-a-days, as they said,
fetched a big price, and who so likely to be tempted by a big price as a
poor pennyless pauper; _ergo_, the little hunchback printer, being a poor
pennyless pauper, and being at such a time of night in such a place, with
a ladder reared against such a house, offering every facility for such a
purpose, must, no doubt, be concerned in some such deadly doings. And, as
a further proof, if any were wanting, one of the watchmen concluded his
evidence in these remarkable words:--
"Your worships, I have no doubt in the world, that at _some future time_
bodies _have been taken_ through that very house!" Whereupon, Sir RICHARD
observed, that the opinion would have had more weight, if the _tenses_ had
been less confused. It afterwards appeared, however, that _future_ and
_former_ were synonymous terms in this watchman's vocabulary, and so his
opinion became intelligible.
Mr. Minshull now asked the pauper printer what he was doing in the
burial-ground at that time of night; adding, "I am afraid, my friend, you
were there with the intention of stealing dead bodies."
"Not a bit of 'em, your worship--not a bit of 'em," replied the
printer--"Lord bless you, Sir!--it was _beer_, and not _bodies_, that I
was looking for!" He then told his story; from which it appeared that the
master of the workhouse had treated him and the other paupers with a
modicum of beer on the preceding evening in honour of the season, for it
was Christmas-eve; and this small taste stimulating their stomachs for
more, little hunchback undertook to forage for some, after the master
should be gone to bed. Accordingly, when the master was fast asleep,
little hunchback crept down stairs with a subscription of tenpence in one
hand, and "the workhouse can" in the other; and with the assistance of the
lamplighter's ladder he got out of the yard into the burial-ground. He
then pulled the ladder after him, and reared it against a house in which
he saw a light; and, tapping gently at the window, it was opened by a
gentleman in a white nightcap, to whom little hunchback said, "Beg pardon,
Sir! but would you be kind enough to get us half-a-gallon of mild beer, in
this 'ere can?" "The gentleman said he would, and welcome," continued he;
"and God knows, I was sitting on the top of the ladder, waiting for it,
and thinking of nothing in the world but the beer, when the watchmen came
and took me."