Aj Ai 0! 0; 1 ] 4| 1 7 4 !-:H! ; i!Hi';ii;ij: : -;;ii! : n;'!i;;!i:i"; iiiJ!!!!!!:;!!;!;)!:: iSii'ii ■m sHsiHl Isaijpi ii! il:iij: 'i:.-i::-l : .il '.!• :]■:'■■ ?/'."VWI- P»J,^m«, IRAQ PREFACE. It is proper to state that the majority of the papers in the present Volumes were contributed to the New Monthly Magazine during the Author's late Editorship of that periodical. Whether they deserved reprinting or repressing, must be determined between the public and the literary Court of Review. As usual the Reader will vainly look in my pages for any startling theological revelations, profound political views, philological disquisi- tions, or scientific discoveries. As fruitlessly will he seek for any Transcendental speculations, Antiquarian gossip, or Statistical Table Talk. And least of all will he find any discussion of those topics which occupy the leaders and misleaders of the daily prints : — for any enlightenment, Bude or Boccius, on the dark ways of Parliament and Downing Streets, or the dangerous crossing between the Church and the Catholic Chapel. He might as well expect to have his cigar lighted by the Sun or his " Arms Found" by the Morning Herald. As little will the anticipations be realized of the feminine reader, who seeks for love rhapsodies, higher flown than the Aerial Carriage ; for scenes of what is called Fashionable Life ; or the serious senti- mentalities of that new Paradoxurus the Religious Novel. She might as well go to St. Benet Sherehog for Berlin wool ; or hope to dance, at the Ball of St. Paul's, to Weippert's last New Quadrilles. My humble aim has been chiefly to amuse; but the liberal Utilita- rian will, perhaps, discern some small attempts to instruct at the same time. He will, maybe, detect in " The Defaulter," a warning against rash and uncharitable judgments; in the "Black Job," a " take care of your pockets," from the Pseudo-Philanthropists ; and in the "Omnibus" a lesson to Prudery. He may, possibly, discover Vlll in " The Earth-Quakers," a hit at the astrological quackery, not only of Doctor Dee, but of more modern Zadkiels ; and recognise in the " Grimsby Ghost," the correction of a Vulgar Error, that Spirits come and go on very immaterial errands. In the " Schoolmistress Abroad," a deliberate design is acknowledged, to show up that system of Boarding School Education which renders a Young Lady as eligible for a wife, as a strange female would be for a Housekeeper, with only a Twelfth Night character. Here this Preface might end : but old associations, and the ap- proach of a season specially devoted to hospitality, good-fellowship, charity, and the Christian virtues, irresistibly impel me to the expres- sion of a few benevolent wishes towards the World in general, and my own Country, nay, my own Country in particular. We have all an open, or sneaking kindness, for our peculiar province, as the sporting yeomanry well knew, and felt, when they translated Pitt's regimental motto which they pronounced " Pro Haris et Focis," — for our Hares and Foxes. In this spirit, my kindest aspirations are offered to my Readers, and in particular to those nearest home. If there be any truth in the statistics of publication, my Comic Annuals, heretofore, have afforded some slight diversion to the cares of Man, Woman, and Middlesex, and it is my earnest hope and ambition that my " Whimsicalities " may still serve the same purpose in the same " trumpery sphere." If a word may be added, it is a good one in favour of the Artist who has supplied the illustrations ; and who promises, by his pro- gressive improvement, that hereafter our "Leech Gatherers" shall not only collect in bags or baskets, but in portfolios. THOMAS HOOD. December 4, 1843. €\i IrjjnnliinstmH SUmufo AN EXTRAVAGANZA. DISCOVERING THE POLE. CHAPTER I. She tawght 'hem to sew and marke, All manner of sylkyn werke, Of her they were full fayne. Romance of Emare. A Schoolmistress ought not to travel — No, sir ! No, madam — except on the map. There, indeed, she may 10 WHIMSICALITIES. skip from a blue continent to a green one — cross a pink isthmus — traverse a Red, Black, or Yellow Sea — land in a purple island, or roam in an orange desert, without danger or indecorum. There she may ascend dotted rivers, sojourn at capital cities, scale alps, and wade through bogs, without soiling her shoe, rumpling her satin, or showing her ankle. But as to practical travelling, — real journeying and voyaging, — oh, never, never, never! How, sir ! Would you deny to a Preceptress all the excursive pleasures of locomotion ? By no means, miss. In the summer holidays, when the days are long and the evenings are light, there is no objection to a little trip by the railway — say to Weybridge or Slough — provided always — Well, sir ? That she goes by a special train, and in a first-class carriage. Ridiculous ! Nay, madam — consider her pretensions. She is little short of a Divinity ! — Diana, without the hunting ! — a modernized Mi- nerva ! — the Representative of Womanhood in all its purity ! — Eve, in full dress, with a finished education ! — a Model of Moral- ity ! — a Pattern of Propriety ! — the Fugle-woman of her Sex ! As such she must be perfect. No medium performance — no or- dinary good-going, like that of an eight-day clock or a Dutch dial — will suffice for the character. She must be as correct as a prize chronometer. She must be her own Prospectus personified. Spotless in reputation, immaculate in her dress, regular in he- habits, refined in her manners, elegant in her carnage, nice in her taste, faultless in her phraseology, and in her mind like — like — Pray what, sir ? Why, like your own chimney-ornament, madam — a pure crys- tal fountain, sipped by little doves of alabaster. THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 11 A sweet pretty comparison ! Well, go on, sir ! Now, look at travelling. At the best, it is a rambling, scram- bling, shift-making, strange-bedding, irregular-mealing, foreign- habiting, helter-skelter, higgledy-piddledy sort of process. At the very least, a female must expect to be rumpled and dusted ; perhaps draggled, drenched, torn, and roughcasted — and if not bodily capsized or thrown a summerset, she is likely to have her straightest-laced prejudices upset, and some of her most orthodox opinions turned topsyturvy. An accident of little moment to other women, but to a schoolmistress productive of a professional lameness for life. Then she is certain to be stared at, jabbered at, may be jeered at, and poked, pushed, and hauled at, by curious or officious foreigners — to be accosted by perfect and imperfect strangers — in short, she is liable to be revolted in her taste, shocked in her religious principles, disturbed in her temper, dis- ordered in her dress, and deranged in her decorum. But you shall hear the sentiments of a Schoolmistress on the subject. Oh ! a made-up letter. No, miss, — a genuine epistle, upon my literary honour. Just look at the writing — the real copy-book running-hand — not a t uncrossed — not an i undotted — not an illegitimate flourish of a letter, but each j and g and y turning up its tail like the pug dogs, after one regular established pattern. And pray observe her capitals. No sprawling K with a kicking leg — no trouble- some W making a long arm across its neighbour, and especially no great vulgar D unnecessarily sticking out its stomach. Her H, you see, seems to have stood in the stocks, her I to have worn a backboard, and even her S is hardly allowed to be crooked ! 12 WHIMSICALITIES. CHAPTER II. " Phoo ! phoo ! it's all banter," exclaims the Courteous Reader. Banter be banged ! replies tbe Courteous Writer. But pos- sibly, my good sir, you have never seen tbat incomparable schoolmistress, Miss Crane, for a Miss she was, is, and would be, even if Campbell's Last Man were to offer to ber for the pre- servation of the species. One sight of her were, indeed, as good as a thousand, seeing that nightly she retires into some kind of mould, like a jelly shape, and turns out again in the morning tbe same identical face and figure, the same correct, ceremonious creature, and in the same costume to a crinkle. But no — you never can have seen that She-Mentor, stiff as starch, formal as a Dutch hedge, sensitive as a Daguerreotype, and so tall, thin, and upright, that supposing the Tree of Knowledge to have been a poplar, she was the very Dryad to have fitted it ! Otherwise, remembering that unique image, all fancy and frost work — so incrusted with crip and brittle particularities — so bedecked alle- gorically with the primrose of prudence, the daisy of decorum, the violet of modesty, and the lily of purity, you would confess at once that such a Schoolmistress was as unfit to travel — un- packed — as a Dresden China figure. Excuse me, sir, but is there actually such a real personage ? Real ! Are there real Natives — Real Blessings to Mothers — Real Del Monte shares, and Real Water at the Adelphi ? Only call her * * * * * instead of Crane, and she is a living, breath- ing, flesh and blood, skin and bone individual ! Why, there are dozens, scores, hundreds of her Ex-Pupils, now grown women, who will instantly recognise their old Governess in the form with THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 13 which, mixing up Grace and Gracefulness, she daily prefaced their rice-milk, butter-puddings, or raspberry-bolsters. As thus : " For what we are going to receive — elbows, elbows ! — the Lord make us — backs in and shoulders down — truly thankful — and no chattering — amen." IUISS CRANE. 14: WHIMSICALITIES. CHAPTER III. " But the letter, sir, the letter- " Oh, I do so long," exclaims one who would be a stout young woman if she did not wear a pinafore, " oh, I do so long to hear how a governess writes home ! " " The professional epistle," adds a tall, thin Instructress, gen- teelly in at the elbows, but shabbily out at the fingers' ends, for she has only twenty pounds per annum, with five quarters in arrear. " The Schoolmistress's letter," cries a stumpy Teacher — only a helper, but looking as important as if she were an educational coachwoman, with a team of her own, some five-and-twenty skit- tish young animals, without blinkers, to keep straight in the road of propriety. " The letter, sir," chimes in a half-boarder, looking, indeed, as if she had only half-dined for the last half-year. " Come, the letter you promised us from that paragon, Miss Crane." That's true. Mother of the Muses, forgive me ! I had for- gotten my promise as utterly as if it had never been made. If any one had furnished the matter with a file and a rope ladder it could not have escaped more clearly from my remembrance. A loose tooth could not more completely have gone out of my head. A greased eel could not more thoroughly have slipped my memory. But here is the letter, sealed with pale blue wax, and a device of the Schoolmistress's own invention — namely, a note of interrogation (?) with the appropriate motto of " an an- swer required." And in token of its authenticity, pray observe that the cover is duly stamped, except that of the foreign post- THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 15 mark only the three last letters are legible, and yet even from these one may swear that the missive has come from Holland ; yes, as certainly as if it smelt of Dutch cheese, pickle-herrings and Schie * * * ! But hark to Governess ! " My dear Miss Parfitt, " Under the protection of a superintending Providence we have arrived safely at this place, which as you know is a sea-port in the Dutch dominions — chief city Amsterdam. " For your amusement and improvement I did hope to com- pose a journal of our continental progress, -with such references to Guthrie and the School Atlas as might enable you to trace our course on the Map of Europe. But unexpected vicissitudes of mind and body have totally incapacitated me for the pleasing task. Some social evening hereafter I may entertain our little juvenile circle with my locomotive miseries and disagreeables; but at present my nerves and feelings are too discomposed for the correct flow of an epistolary correspondence. Indeed, from the Tower-stair to Rotterdam I have been in one universal tremor and perpetual blush. Such shocking scenes and positions, that make one ask twenty times a day, is this decorum ? — can this be morals! But I must not anticipate. Suffice it that as regards i'n- ign travelling it is my painful conviction, founded on personal experience, that a woman of delicacy or refinement cannot go out of England without a;oing out of herself! " The very first step from an open boat up a windy ship-side is an alarm to modesty, exposed as one is to the officious but odious attentions of the Tritons of the Thames. Nor is the steamboat itself a sphere for the preservation of self-respect. If there is any feature on which a British female prides hers If, it is 16 WHIMSICALITIES. a correct and lady -like carriage. In that particular I quite coin- cide with Mrs. Chapone, Mrs. Hannah More, and other writers on the subject. But how — let me ask — how is a dignified de- portment to be maintained when one has to skip and straddle over cables, ropes, and other nautical hors cToeuvres — to scram- ble up and down impracticable stairs, and to clamber into in- accessible beds ? Not to name the sudden losing one's centre of gravity, and falling in all sorts of unstudied attitudes on a sloppy and slippery deck. An accident that I may say reduces the elegant and the awkward female to the same level. You will be concerned, therefore, to learn that poor Miss Ruth had a fall, and in an unbecoming posture particularly distressing — namely, by losing her footing on the cabin flight, and coming down with a destructive launch into the steward's pantry. " For my own part it has never happened to me within my remembrance to make a false step, or to miss a stair : there is a certain guarded carnage that preserves one from such sprawling denouemens — but of course what the bard calls the ' poetry of motion,' is not to be preserved amidst the extempore rollings of an ungovernable ship. Indeed, within the last twenty-four hours, I have had to perform feats of agility more fit for a monkey than one of my own sex and species. Par example : getting down from a bed as high as the copybook-board, and Avhat really is awful, with the sensation of groping about with your feet and legs for a floor that seems to have no earthly existence. I may add, the cabin-door left ajar, and exposing you to the gaze of an ob- trusive cabin-boy, as he is called, but quite big enough for a man. Oh, je ne jamais ! " As to the Mer Maladie, delicacy forbids the details ; but as Miss Ruth says, it is the height of human degradation ; and to THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 17 add to the climax of our letting down, we had to give way to the most humiliating impulses in the presence of several of the rising generation — dreadfully rude little girls who had too evidently en- joyed a had bringing up. " To tell the truth, your poor Governess was shockingly indis- posed. Not that I had indulged my appetite at dinner, being too much disgusted with a public meal in promiscuous society, and as might be expected, elbows on table, eating with knives, md even picking teeth with forks ! And then no grace, which assuredly ought to be said both before and after, whether we are to retain the blessings or not. But a dinner at sea and a school dinner, where we have even our regular beef and batter days, are two very different things. Then to allude to indiscriminate con- versation, a great part of which is in a foreign language, and ac- cordingly places one in the cruel position of hearing, without understanding a word of, the most libertine and atheistical sen- timents. Indeed, I fear I have too often been smiling com- placently, not to say engagingly, when I ought rather to have been flashing with virtuous indignation, or even administering the utmost severity of moral reproof. I did endeavour, in one instance, to rebuke indelicacy ; but unfortunately from standing near the funnel, was smutty all the while I was talking, and as school experience confirms, it is impossible to command respect with a black on one's nose. "Another of our Cardinal Virtues, personal cleanliness, is to- tally impracticable on ship-board : but without particularizing, I will only name a general sense of grubbiness ; and as to dress, a rumpled and tumbled tout ensemble, strongly indicative of the low and vulgar pastime of rolling down Greenwich-hill ! And then, in such a eostume to land in Holland, where the natives get 18 WHIMSICALITIES. up linen with a perfection and purity, as Miss Ruth says, quite worthy of the primeval ages ! That, surely is bad enough — but to have one's trunks rummaged like a suspected menial — to see all the little secrets of the toilette, and all the mysteries of a fe- male wardrobe exposed to the searching gaze of a male official — Oh shocking ! shocking ! " In short, my dear, it is my candid impression, as regards foreign travelling, that except for a masculine tally-hoying female, of the Di Vernon genus, it is hardly adapted to our sex. Of this at least I am certain, that none but a born romp and hoyden, or a girl accustomed to those new-fangled pulley-hauly exercises, the Calisthenics, is fitted for the boisterous evolutions of a sea-voyage. And yet there arc creatures calling themselves Women, not to say Ladies, who will undertake such long marine passages as to Bombay in Asia, or New- York in the New World ! Consult Arrowsmith for the geographical degrees. " Affection, however, demands the sacrifice of my own personal feelings, as my Reverend Parent and my Sister are still inclined to prosecute a Continental Tour. I forgot to tell you that during the voyage, Miss Ruth endeavoured to parlez franpois with some of the foreign ladies, but as they did not understand her, they must all have been Germans. " My paper warns to conclude. I rely on your superintending vigilance for the preservation of domestic order in my absence. The horticultural department I need not recommend to your care, knowing your innate partiality for the offspring of Flora — and the dusting of the fragile ornaments in the drawing-room you will assuredly not trust to any hands but your own. Blinds down of course — the front-gate locked regularly at 5 p.m. — and I must particularly beg of your musical penchant, a total abstinence on THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 19 Sundays from the pianoforte. And now adieu. The Reverend T. C. desires his compliments to you, and Miss Ruth adds her kind regards with which believe me, " My dear Miss Parfitt, " Your affectionate Friend and Preceptress, " Priscilla Crane. " P. S. — I have just overheard a lady describing, with strange levity, an adventure that befell her at Cologne. A foreign post- man invading her sleeping-apartment, and not only delivering a letter to her on her pillow, but actually staying to receive his money, and to give her the change ! And she laughed and called him her Bed Post ! Fi done ! Fi done ! " CHAPTER IV. Well — there is the letter — " And a very proper letter too," remarks a retired Seminarian, Mrs. Grove House, a faded, demure-looking old lady, with a set face so like wax, that any strong emotion would have cracked it to pieces. And never, except on a doll, was there a face with such a miniature set of features, or so crowned with a chaplet of little string-coloured curls. " A proper letter ! — what, with all that fuss about delicacy and decorum ! " Yes, miss. At least proper for the character. A Schoolmis- tress is a prude by profession. She is bound on her reputation to detect improprieties, even as he is the best lawyer who dis- covers the most flaws. It is her cue where she cannot find an indecorum to imagine it ; — just as a paid Spy is compelled, in a 20 WHIMSICALITIES. dearth of High Treason, to invent a conspiracy. In fact, it was our very Miss Crane who poked out an objection, of which no other woman would have dreamt, to those little button-mush- rooms called Pages. She would not keep one, she said, for his weight in gold. " But they are all the rage," said Lady A. " Every body has one," said Mrs. B. " They are so showy !" said Mrs. C. ■" And so interesting !" lisped Miss D. " And so useful," suggested Miss E. " I would rather part with half my servants," declared Lady A., " than with my handsome Cherubino !" " Not a doubt of it," replied Miss Crane, with a gesture of the most profound acquiescence. u But if / were a married woman, I would not have such a boy about me for the world — no, not for the whole terrestrial globe. A Page is unquestionably very a la mode, and very dashing, and very pretty, and may be very useful — but to have a youth about one, so beautifully dressed, and so indulged, not to say pampered, and yet not exactly treated as ■one of the family — I should certainly expect that every body would take him " " For what, pray, what ?" " Why, for a natural son in disguise." CHAPTER V. But to return to the Tour. — It is a statistical faet, that since 1814 an unknown number of persons, bearing an indefinite proportion to the gross total of the population of the British empire, have been more or less THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 21 "abroad." Not politically, or metaphysically, or figuratively, but literally out of the kingdom, or as it is called in foreign parts. In fact, no sooner was the Continent opened to us by the Peace, than there was a general rush towards the mainland. An Alarmist, like old Croaker, might have fancied that some of our disaffected Merthyr Tydvil miners or underminers were scuttling the Island, so many of the natives scuttled out of it. The out- landish secretaries who sign passports, had hardly leisure to take snuff. It was good, however, for trade. Carpet-bags and portman- teaus rose one hundred per cent. All sorts of Guide-books and Journey Works went off like wildfire, and even Sir Humphrey Davy's " Consolations in Travel " was in strange request. Ser- vants, who had " no objection to go abroad " were snapped up like fortunes — and as to hwd-riding " Curriers," there was nothing like leather. It resembled a geographical panic — and of all the Country and Branch Banks in Christendom, never was there such a run as on the Banks of the Rhine. You would have thought that they were going to break all to smash — of course making away beforehand with their splendid furniture, unrivalled pictures, and capital cellar of wines ! However, off flew our countrymen and countrywomen, like migrating swallows, but at the wrong time of year ; or rather like shoals of salmon, striving up, up, up against the stream, except to spawn Tours and Reminiscences, hard and soft, instead of roe. And would that they were going up, up, up still — for when they came down again, Ods, Jobs, and patient Gri- zels ! how they did bore and Germanize us, like so many flutes. It was impossible to go into society without meeting units. 22 WHIMSICALITIES. tens, hundreds, thousands of Rhenish Tourists — travellers in Ditchland, and in Deutchland. People who had seen Nimagen and Nim- Again — who had been at Cologne, and at Koeln, and at Colon — at Cob-longs and Coblence — at Swang Gwar and at Saint Go-er — at Bonn — at Bone — and at Bong ! Then the airs they gave themselves over the untravelled ! How they bothered them with Bergs, puzzled them with Bads, deafened them with Dorfs, worried them with Heims, and pelted them with Steins ! How they looked down upon them, as if from Ekren- breitstein, because they had not eaten a German sausage in Ger- many, sour krout in its own country, and drunk seltzer-water at the fountain-head ! What a donkey they deemed him who had not been to Assmanshauser — what a cockney who had not seen a Rat's Castle besides the one in St. Giles's ! He was, as it were, in the kitchen of society, for to go " up the Rhine," was to go up stairs ! Now this very humiliation was felt by Miss Crane ; and the more that in her establishment for Young Ladies she was the Professor of Geography, and the Use of the Globes. Moreover, si \iial of her pupils had made the trip with their parents, during the vacations, and treated the travelling part of the business so lightly, that in a rash hour the Schoolmistress determined to go abroad. Her junior sister, Miss Ruth, gladly acceded to the scheme, and so did their only remaining parent, a little, sickly, querulous man, always in black, being some sort of dissenting minister, as the " young ladies " knew to their cost, for they had always to mark his new shirts, in cross-stitch, with the Reverend T. C. and the number — " the Reverend" at full length. Accordingly, as soon as the Midsummer holidays set in, there was packed — in I don't know how many trunks, bags, and cap- THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 23 boxes, — I don't know what luggage, except that for each of the party there was a silver spoon, a knife and fork, and six towels. " And pray, sir, how far did your Schoolmistress mean to go ?" To Gotha, madam. Not because Bonaparte slept there on his flight from Leipsic — nor yet from any sentimental recollections. of Goethe — not to see the palace of Friedenstein and its museum — nor to purchase an " Almanach de Gotha" — nor even because His Royal Highness Prince Albert, of Saxe Gotha, was the Husband Elect of our Gracious Queen. " Then what for, in the name of patience ? " Why, because the Berlin wool was dyed there, and so she could get Avhat colour and shades she pleased. CHAPTER VI. " Now of all things," cries a Needlewoman — one of those to whom Parry alludes in his comic song of " Berlin Wool " — " I should like to know what pattern the Schoolmistress meant to work ! " And so would say any one — for no doubt it would have been a pattern for the whole sex. All I know is, that she once worked a hearth-rug, with a yellow animal, couchant, on a green ground, that was intended for a panther in a jungle : and to do justice to the performance, it was really not so very unlike a carroty- <;it in a bed of spinach. But the face was a dead failure. It was not in the gentlewomanly nature, nor indeed consistent with the professional principles of Miss Crane, to let a wild, rude, un- governable creature go out of her hands ; and accordingly the feline physiognomy came from her fingers as round, and mild, and innocent as that of a Baby. In vain she added whiskers to 24 WHIMSICALITIES. give ferocity — 'twas a Baby still — and though she put a circle of fiery red around each staring ball, still, still, it was a mild, inno- cent Baby — but with very sore eyes. And besides the hearth-rug, she embroidered a chair-cushion, for a seat devoted to her respected parent — a pretty, ornithological design — so that when the Reverend T. C. wanted to sit, there was ready for him a little bird's-nest, with a batch of speckled eggs. And moreover, besides the chair-bottom but, in short, between ourselves, there was so much Fancy work done at Le- banon House, that there was no time for any real. CHAPTER VII. There are two Newingtons, Butts, and Stoke : — but the last has the advantage of a little village-green, on the north side of which stands a large brick-built, substantial mansion, in the com fortable old Elizabethan livery, maroon-colour, picked out with white. It was anciently the residence of a noble family, whose crest, a deer's head, carved in stone, formerly ornamented each pillar of the front gate : but some later proprietor has removed the aristocratical emblems, and substituted two great white balls, that look like petrified Dutch cheeses, or the ghosts of the Celes- tial and Terrestrial Globes. The house, nevertheless, would still seem venerable enough, but that over the old panelled door, as if taking advantage of the fan-light, there sit, night and day, two very modern plaster of Paris little boys, reading and writing with all their might. Girls, however, would be more appro priate ; for, just under the first floor windows, a large board inti- mates, in tarnished gold letters, that the mansion is " Lebanon THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 25 House, Establishment for Young Ladies. By the Misses Crane." Why it should be called Lebanon House appears a mystery, seeing that the building stands not on a mountain, but in a flat ; but the truth is, that the name was bestowed in allusion to a remarkably fine Cedar, which traditionally stood in the fore court, though long since cut down as a tree, and cut up in lead pencils. The front gate is carefully locked, the hour being later than 5 p. m., and the blinds are all down — but if any one could peep through the short Venetians next the door, on the right hand into the Music Parlour, he would see Miss Parfitt herself stealthily playing on the grand piano (for it is Sunday) but with no more sound than belongs to that tuneful whisper commonly called " the ghost of a whistle." But let us pull the bell. " Sally, are the ladies at home ? " " Lawk ! sir ! — why haven't you heard ? Miss Crane and Miss Ruth are a pleasuring on a Tower up the Rhind — and the Reverend Mr. C. is enjoying hisself in Germany along with them." ***** Alas ! poor Sally ! Alas ! for poor short-sighted human nature ! " Why, in the name of all that's anonymous, what is the mat- ter?" Lies ! lies ! lies ! But it is impossible for Truth, the pure Truth, to exist, save with Omnipresence and Omniscience. As for mere mortals, they must daily vent falsehoods in spite of them- selves. Thus, at the very moment, while Sally was telling us — ■ but let Truth herself correct the Errata. For — " The Reverend Mr. C. enjoying himself in Germany — " Read — " Writhing with spasms in a miserable Prussian inn." 26 WHIMSICALITIES. For — " Miss Crane and Miss Ruth a-pleasuring on a Tour up the Rhine—" Read — " Wishing themselves home again with all their hearts and souls." CHAPTER VIII. It was a grievous case ! After all the troubles of the Reverend T. C. by sea and land — his perplexities with the foreign coins at Rotterdam — with the passports at Nimeguen — with the Douane at Arnheim — and with the Speise-Karte at Cologne — : — To be taken ill, poor gentleman, with his old spasms, in such a place as the road between Todberg and Grabheim, six good miles at least from each, and not a decent inn at either ! And in such weather too — unfit for anything with the semblance of hu- manity to be abroad — a night in which a Christian farmer would hardly have left out his scarecrow ! The groans of the sufferer were pitiable — but what could be done for his relief? on a blank desolate common without a house in sight — no, not a hut ! His afflicted daughters could only try to sooth him with words, vain words — assuasive perhaps of men- tal pains, but as to any discourse arresting a physical ache, — you might as well take a pin to pin a bull with. Besides, the poor women wanted comforting themselves. Gracious Heaven ! Think of two single females, with a sick, perhaps an expiring parent — shut up in a hired coach, on a stormy night, in a foreign land — ay, in one of its dreariest places. The sympathy of a third party, even a stranger, would have been some support to THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 27 them, but all they could get by their most earnest appeals to the driver was a couple of unintelligible syllables. If they had only possessed a cordial — a flask of eau de vie! Such a thing had indeed been proposed and prepared, but alas ! Miss Crane had wilfully left it behind. To think of Propriety producing such a travelling accompaniment as a brandy-bottle was out of the question. You might as well have looked for claret from a pitcher-plant ! In the mean time the sick man continued to sigh and moan — his two girls could feel him twisting about between them. " Oh, my poor dear papa !" murmured Miss Crane, for she did not " father " him even in that extremity. Then she groped again despairingly in her bag for the smelling-bottle, but only found instead of it an article she had brought along with her, Heaven knows why, into Germany — the French mark ! " Oh — ah — ugh ! — hah !" grumbled the sufferer. " Am I — te — die — on — the road !" "Is he to die on the road !" repeated Miss Crane through the front window to the coachman, but with the same result a* before ; namely, two words in the unknown tongue. " Ruth, what is yar vole ?" Ruth shook her head in the dark. " If he would only drive faster !" exclaimed Miss Crane, <«*i again she talked through the front window. " My good man — " (Gefallig?) " Ruth, what's gefallish?" But Miss Ruth was as much in the dark as ever. " Do, do, do, make haste to some- where — " ( Ja wolh !) That phlegmatic driver would drive her crazy ! Poor Miss Crane ! Poor Miss Ruth 1 Poor Reverend T. C. ! 28 WHIMSICALITIES. My heart bleeds for them — and yet they must remain perhaps for a full hour to come in that miserable condition. But no — hark — that guttural sound which like a charm arrests every horse in Germany as soon as uttered — " Burr-r-r-r-r !" The coach stops ; and looking out on her own side through the rain Miss Crane perceives a low dingy door, over which by help of a lamp she discovers a white board, with some great black fowl painted on it, and a word underneath that to her English eyes suggests a difficulty in procuring fresh eggs. Whereas the Alder, instead of addling, hatches brood after brood every year, till the number is quite wonderful, of little red and black eagles. However, the Royal Bird receives the distressed travellers un- der its wing ; but my pen, though a steel one, shrinks from the labour of scrambling and hoisting them from the Lohn Kutch into the Gast Haus. In plump, there they are — in the best inn's Dest room, yet not a whit preferable to the last chamber that lodged the " great Villiers." But hark, they whisper, Gracious powers ! Ruth ! ) „ . , .p. . ... , } What a wretched hole ! Gracious powers ! Pnscilla ! \ CHAPTER IX. I take it for granted that no English traveller would willingly lay up — unless particularly inn-disposed — at an Inn. Still less at a German one ; and least of all at a Prussian public-house, in a rather private Prussian village. To be far from well, and far from well lodged— to be ill, and ill attended— to be poorly, and poorly fed— to be in a bad way, and a bad bed.— But let us pull THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 29 up, with ideal reins, an imaginary nag, at such an outlandish Hostelrie, and take a peep at its " Entertainment for Man and Horse." Bur-r-r-r-r-rrrr ! The nag stops as if charmed — and as cool and comfortable as a cucumber — at least till it is peppered — for your German is so tender of his beast that he would hardly allow his greyhound to turn a hair — Now then, for a shout ; and remember that in Iileinewinkel, it will serve just as well to cry " Boxkeeper ! " as " Ostler ! " but look, tbere is some one coming from the inn-door. 'lis Katchen herself — with her bare head, her bright blue gown, her scarlet apron — and a huge rye-loaf under her left arm. Her right hand grasps a knife. How plump and pleasant she looks ! and how kindly she smiles at every body, including the horse ! But see — she stops, and shifts the position of the loaf. She presses it — as if to sweeten its sourness — against her soft, palpitating bosom, the very hemisphere that holds her maiden heart. And now she begins to cut — or rather haggle — for the knife is blunt, and the bread is hard ; but she works with good will, and still hugging the loaf closer and closer to her comely self, at last severs a liberal slice from the mass. Nor is she con- tent to merely give it to her client, but holds it out with her own hand to be eaten, till the last morsel is taken from among hei ruddy fingers by the lips of a sweet little chubby urchin ? — no — of our big, bony iron-gray post-horse ! Now then, Courteous Reader, let us step into the Stube, or Traveller's Room ; and survey the fare and the accommodation prepared for us bipeds. Look at that bare floor — and that dreary stove — and those smoky dingy walls — and for a night's lodging, 30 WHIMSICALITIES. yonder wooden trough — far less desirable than a shake-down of clean straw. Then for the victualling, pray taste that Pythagorean soup — and that drowned beef — and the rotten pickle-cabbage — and those terrible Hog-Cartridges — and that lump of white soap, flavoured with carraways, alias ewe-milk cheese — And now just sip that Essigberger, sharp and sour enough to provoke the " dura ilia Messorum" intb an Iliac Passion — and the terebinthine Krug Bier ! "Would you not rather dine at the cheapest ordinary at one, with all its niceties and nastities, plain cooked in a London cellar ? And for a night's rest would you not sooner seek a bed in the Bedford Nursery ? So much for the " Entertainment for Man and Horse" — a clear proof, ay. as clear as the Author's own proof, with the date under his own hand — GOOD ENTERTAINMENT FOR MAN AND HORSE. THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 31 Of what, sir ? Why that Dean Swift's visit to Germany — if ever he did visit Germany — must have been prior to his inditing the Fourth Voy- age of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, — namely to the Land of the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos, where the horses were better boarded and lodged than mankind. CHAPTER X. To return to the afflicted trio — the horrified Miss Crane, the desolate Ruth, and the writhing Reverend T. C. — in the small sordid, smoky, dark, dingy, dirty, musty, fusty, dusty best room at the Alder. The most miserable " party in a parlour " " 'Twas their own faults ! " exclaims a shadowy Personage, with peculiarly bard features — and yet not harder than they need to be, considering against how many things, and how violently, she sets her face. But when did Prejudice ever look prepossessing ? Never — since the French wore shoes a la Dryade! " 'Twas their own faults," she cries, " for going abroad. Why couldn't they stay comfortably at home, at Laburnam House ? " " Lebanon, Ma'am." " Well, Lebanon. Or they might have gone up the Wye, or up the Thames. I hate the Rhine. What business had they in Prussia? And of course they went through Holland. I hate flats ! " " Nevertheless, madam, I have visited each of those countries, and have found much to admire in both. For example " " Oh, pray don't ! I hate to hear you say so. I hate every Vody who doesn't hate every thing foreign." " Possibly, madam, you have never been abroad ? " 32 WHIMSICALITIES. " Oh, yes ! I once went over to Calais — and have hated my- self ever since. I hate the Continent ! " " For what reason, madam ? " " Pshaw ! I hate to give reasons. I hate the Continent — because it's so large." " Then you would, perhaps, like one of the Hebrides ? " " No — I hate the Scotch. But what has that to do with your Schoolmistress abroad ? — I hate governesses — and her Re- verend sick father with his ridiculous spasms — I hate Dissenters — They're not High Church." " Nay, my dear madam, you are getting a little uncharitable." " Charity ! I hate its name. It's a mere shield thrown over hateful people. How are we to love those we like properly, if we do not hate the others ? As the Corsair says, ' My very love to thee is hate to them.' But I hate Byron." " As a man, ma'am, or as an author ? " " Both. But I hate all authors — except Dr. Johnson." " True — he liked ' a good hater.' " " Well, sir, and if he did I He was quite in the right, and I hate that Lord Chesterfield for quizzing him. But he was only a Lord among wits. Oh, how I hate the aristocracy ! " " You do, madam ! " " Yes — they have such prejudices. And then they're so fond of going abroad. Nothing but going to Paris, Rome, Naples, Old Jerusalem, and New York. I hate the Americans — don't you ?" " Why, really, madam, your superior discernment and nice taste may discover national bad qualities that escape less vigilant ob- servers." THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 33 " Phoo, plioo — I hate flummery. You know as well as I do what an American is called — and if there's one name I hate more than another, it's Jonathan. But to go back to Germany, and those that go there. Talk of Pilgrims of the Rhine ! — I hate that Bulwer. Yes, they set out, indeed, like Pilgrim's Pro- gress, and see Lions and Beautiful Houses, and want Interpreters, and spy at Delectable Mountains — but there it ends ; for what with queer caps and outlandish blowses — I hate smock-frocks — they come back hardly like Christians. There's my own husband, Mr. P. — I quite hate to see him ! " " Indeed ! " " Yes — I hate to cast my eyes on him. He hasn't had his hair cut these twelvemonths — I hate long hair — and when he shaves he leaves two little black tails on his upper lip, and another on his chin, as if he was a real ermine." " A moustache, madam, is in fashion." " Yes, and a beard, too, like a Rabbi — but I hate Jews. And then Mr. P. has learnt to smoke — I hate smoke — I hate tobacco — and I hate to be called a Frow — and to be spun round and round till I am as sick as a dog — for I hate waltzing. Then don't he stink the whole house with decayed cabbage for his sour crout — I hate German cookery — and will have oiled melted but- ter because they can't help it abroad ? — aud there's nothing so hateful as oiled butter. What next ? Why, he won't drink my home-made wine — at least if I don't call it Hock, or Rude-some- thing, and give it him in a green glaas. I hate such nonsense. As for conversing, whatever we begin upon, if it's Harfordshire, he's sure to get at last to the tiptop of Herring-Brightshine — I hate such rambling. But that's not half so hateful as his Mono- manium." 34 WHIMSICALITIES. " His what, madam ?" " Why his hankering so after suicide (1 do hate Charlotte and Werter,) that one can 't indulge in the least tiff but he threatens to blow out his brains !" " Seriously ?" " Seriously, sir. I hate joking. And then there are his horrid noises ; for since he was in Germany he fancies that every body must be musical — I hate such wholesale notions — and so sings all day long, without a good note in his voice. So much for Foreign Touring ! But pray go on, sir, with the story of your Schoolmistress Abroad. I hate suspense." CHAPTER XL Now the exclamation of Miss Crane — " Gracious heavens, Ruth, what a wretched hole !" — was not a single horse-power too strong for the occasion. Her first glance round the squalid room at the Alder convinced her that whatever might be the geographical distance on the map, she was morally two hundred and thirty-seven thousand miles from Home. That is to say, it was about as distant as the Earth from the Moon. And truly had she been transferred, no matter how, to that Planet, with its no-atmosphere, she could not have been more out of her element. In fact, she felt for some moments as if she must sink on the floor — just as some delicate flower, transplanted into a strange soil, gives way in every green fibre, and droops to the mould in a vegetable fainting-fit, from which only time and the water-pot can recover it. Her younger sister Miss Ruth, was somewhat less disconcerted. She had by her position the greater share in the active duties at THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 35 Lebanon House : and under ordinary circumstances, would not have been utterly at a loss what to do for the comfort or relief of her parent. But in every direction in which her instincl and habits would have prompted her to look, the materials she sought were deficient. There was no easy-chair — no fire to wheel it to — no cushion to shake up — no cupboard to go to — no female friend to consult — no Miss Parfitt — no Cook — no John to send for the Doctor. No English — no French — nothing but that dreadful " Gefallig " or " Ja wohl " — and the equally incom- prehensible " Gnadige Frau !" As for the Reverend T. C, he sat twisting about on his hard wooden chair, groaning, and making ugly face3, as much from peevishness and impatience as from pain, and indeed sometimes plainly levelled his grimaces at the simple Germans who stood round, staring at him, it must be confessed, as unceremoniously as if he had been only a great fish, gasping and wriggling on dry land. In the mean time, his bewildered daughters held him one by the right hand, the other by the left, and earnestly watched his changing countenance, unconsciously imitating some of its most violent contortions. It did no good, of course ; but what else was to be done ? In fact, they were as much puzzled with their patient as a certain worthy tradesman, when a poor shattered creature on a shutter was carried into his Floor-cloth Manufac- tory by mistake for the Hospital. The only thing that occurred to either of the females was to oppose every motion he made, — for fear it should be wrong, and accordingly whenever he at tempted to lean towards the right side, they invariably bent him as much to the left. " Der herr," said the German coachman, turning towards Miss 36 WHIMSICALITIES. Priscilla, with his pipe hanging from his teeth, and venting a puff of smoke that made her recoil three steps backwards — " Der herr ist sehr krank." The last word had occurred so frequently, on the organ of the Schoolmistress, that it had acquired in her mind some important significance. " Ruth, what is krank ?" " How should I know," retorted Ruth, with an asperity apt to accompany intense excitement and perplexity, " In English, it's a thing that helps to pull the bell. But look at papa — do help to support him — you're good for nothing." " I am indeed," murmured poor Miss Priscilla, with a gentle shake of her head, and a low, slow, sigh of acquiescence. Alas ! as she ran over the catalogue of her accomplishments, the more she remembered what she could do for her sick parent, the more helpless and useless she appeared. For instance, she could have embroidered him a nightcap — Or netted him a silk purse — Or plaited him a guard-chain — Or cut him out a watch-paper — Or ornamented Ins braces with bead-work — Or embroidered his waistcoat — Or worked him a pair of slippers — Or open-worked his pocket-handkerchief. She could even — if such an operation would have been comforting or salutary — have rough-casted him with shell-work — Or coated him with red or black seals — Or encrusted him with blue alum — Or stuck him over with coloured wafers — Or festooned him — But alas ! alas ! alas ! what would it have availed her poor dear THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 37 papa in the spasmodics, if she had even festooned him, from top to toe, with little rice-paper roses ! CHAPTER XII. " Mercy on me ! " [N. B. Not on Me, the Author, but on a little dwarfish " smooth legged Bantam" of a woman, with a sharp nose, a shrewish mouth, and a pair of very active black eyes — and withal as brisk and bustling in her movements as any Partlet with ten chicks of her own, and six adopted ones from another hen.] " Mercy on me ! Why the poor gentleman would die whiles them lumpish foreigners and his two great helpless daughters were looking on ! As for that Miss Priscilla — she's like a born idiot. Fancy-work him, indeed ! I've no patience — as if with all her Berlin wools and patterns, she could fancy-work him into a picture of health. Why did'nt she think of something comfort- ing for his inside, instead of embellishing his out — something as would agree, in lieu of filagree, with his case ? A little good hot brandy-and-water with a grate of ginger, or some nice red-wine negus with nutmeg and toast — and then get him to bed, and send off for the doctor. I'll warrant, if I'd been there, I'd have unspasmed him in no time. I'd have whipped off his shoes and stockings, and had his poor feet in hot water afore he knew where he was." " There can be no doubt, ma'am, of the warmth of your hu- manity." " Warmth ! it's every thing. I'd have just given him a touch of the warming-pan, and then smothered him in blankets. Stick him all over with little roses ! stuff and nonsense — stick him into 38 WHIMSICALITIES. his grave at once ! Miss Crane ? Miss Goose rather. A poor helpless Sawney ! I wonder what women come into the world fur if it isn't to be good nusses. For my part, if he had been my sick father, I'd have had him on his legs again in a jiffy — and then he might have got crusty with blue alum or whatever else he preferred." " But madam — " " Such perfect apathy ! Needlework and embroidery, forsooth !" " But madam — " " To have a dying parent before her eyes — and think of no- thing but trimming his jacket ! " « But—" " A pretty Schoolmistress, truly, to set such an example to the rising generation ! As if she couldn't have warmed him a soft flanning ! or given him a few Lavender Drops, or even got down a little real Turkey or calcined Henry." " Of course, madam — or a little Moxon. And in regard t< Conchology." " Conk what ?" " Or as to Chronology. Could you have supplied the Patient with a few prominent dates ? " " Dates ! what those stony things — for a spasmodic stomach !" "Are you really at home in Arrowsmith ?" " You mean Arrow-root." " Are you an adept in Butler's Exercises ?" " "What, drawing o' corks ?" " Could you critically examine him in his parts of speech — the rudiments of his native tongue ?" " To be sure I could. And if it was white and furry, there's fever." THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 39 "Are you acquainted, madam, with Lindley Murray?" " Why no — I can't say I am. My own medical man is Mr. Prodgers." " In short, could you prepare a mind for refined intellectual in- tercourse in future life, with a strict attention to religious duties ?" " Prepare his mind — religious duties ? — Phoo, phoo ! he warn't come to that ! " " Excuse me, I mean to ask, ma'am, whether you consider yourself competent to instruct Young Ladies in all those usual branches of knowledge and female accomplishments " " Me ! What me keep a 'Cademy ! Why, I've hardly had an v Miss Someones. And when I look up at a little house, at a little window, over a barber-shop, I read on a paper Ladies School. Den I see Prospect House, and Grove House, and de Manor House — so many, I cannot call dem names, and also all schools THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 55 for de young females. Day Schools besides. And in my walks, always I meet some Schools of Young Ladies, eight, nine, ten times in one day, making dere promenades, two and two and two. Den I come home to my lodging's door, and below the knocker I see one letter — I open it, and I find a Prospectus of a Lady School. By and bye I say to my landlady, where is your oldest of daughters, which used to bring to me my breakfast, and she tell me she is gone out a governess. Next she notice me I must quit my appartement. What for I say. What have I done ? Do I not pay you all right like a weekly man of honour ? cer- tainty, mounseer, she say, you are a gentleman quite, and no mis- takes — but I wants my whole of my house to myself for to set it up for a Lady School. Noting but Lady Schools ! — and de widow of de butcher have one more over de street. Bless my soul and my body, I say to n^self, dere must be nobody born'd in London except leetle girls ! " CHAPTER XX. There is a certain poor word in the English language which of late years has been exceedingly ill-used — and it must be said, b} those who ought to have known better. To the disgrace of our colleges, the word in question was first perverted from its real significance at the very head-quarters of learning. The initiated, indeed, are aware of its local sense, — but who knows what cost and inconvenience the duplicity of the term may have caused to the more ignorant members of the coii! munity ? Just imagine, for instance, a plain, downright English- man who calls a spade a spade, — induced perhaps by the facilities of the railroads — making a summer holiday, and repairing Lo " ; WHIMSICALITIES. Cambridge or Oxford, may be with his whole family, to see ho aot exactly know what — whether a Collection of Pictures, Wax-Work, Wild d Indians, a Fat Ox, or a Fat Child — but at an s rate an "Exhibition!" More recently the members of the faculty have taken it into their heads to misuse the unfortunate word, and by help of its misapplication, arc continually promising to the car what the druggists really perform to the eyi — namely, to "exhibit" their medicines. If the Doctors talked of hiding them, the phrase would be more germane to the act : for it would be difficult to conceal a little Pulv. Rhei — Magnes. sulphat. — or tinct. jalapse, more effectually than by throwing it into a man's or woman's stomach. And pity it is that the term has not amongst medical men a more literal significance ; for it is certain that in many diseases, and especially of the hypocondriac class — it is certain, 1 say, that if the practitioner actually made "a show" of his ma- tt r'u I, the patient would recover at the mere sight of the " Exhi- bition." This was precisely the case with the Rev. T. C. Had he fallen into the hands of a Homceopathist with his infinitesimal doses, only fit to be exhibited like the infinitesimal insects through a solar microscope, his recovery would have been hopeless. But his better fortune provided otherwise. The German Medecin Rath, who prescribed for him, was in theory diametrically opposed to Hahnemann, and in his tactics he followed Napoleon, whose leading principle was to bring masses of all arms, horse, foot, and artillery, to bear on a given point. In accordance with this sys- tem, he therefore prescribed so liberally that the following articles were in a very short time comprised in his " Exhibition :" A. series of powders to be taken every two hours. THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD. 57 A set of draughts, to wash down the powders. A box of pills. A bag full of certain herbs for fomentations. A large blister, to be put between the shoulders. Twenty leeches, to be applied to the stomach. As Macheath sings, " a terrible show ! " — but the doctor, in common with his countrymen, entertained some rather exaggerated notions as to English habits, and our general addiction to high feeding and fast living — an impression that materially aggravated the treatment. " He must be a horse-doctor ! " thought Miss Crane, as she looked over the above articles — at any rate she resolved — as if governed by the proportion of four legs to two — that her parent should only take one half of each dose that was ordered. But even these reduced quantities were too much for the Rev. T. C. The first instalment he swallowed — the second he smelt, and the third he merely looked at. To tell the truth, he was fast trans- forming from a Malade Imaginaire, into a Malade Malgre Lui. In short, the cure proceeded with the rapidity of a Hohenlohe miracle — a result the doctor did not fail to attribute to the energy of his measures, at the same time resolving that the next English patient he might catch should be subjected to the same decisive treatment. Heaven keep the half, three quarters, and whole lengths of my dear countrymen and countrywomen from his Exhibitions ! His third visit to the Englishers at the Adler was his last. He found the Convalescent in his travelling dress, — Miss Ruth en- gaged in packing, — and the Schoolmistress writing the letter which was to prepare Miss Parfitt for the speedy return of the family party to Lebanon House. It was of course a busy time and the Medecin Rath speedily took his fees and his leave. 58 WHIMSICALITIES. There remained only the account to settle with the landlord of the Adler ; and as English families rarely stopped at that wretched inn, the amount of the bill was quite extraordinary. Never was there such a realization of the " large reckoning in a little room." " Well, I must say," murmured the Schoolmistress, as the coach rumbled off towards home, " I do wish we had reached Gotha, that I might have got my shades of wool." " Humph ! " grunted the Rev. T. C, still sore from tne recent disbursement. " They went out for wool, and they returned shorn." " We went abroad for pleasure," grumbled Miss Ruth, and have met with nothing but pain and trouble." " And some instruction too," said Miss Crane, with even more than her usual gravity. " For my own part I have met with a lesson that has taught me my own unfitness for a Governess. For I cannot think that a style of education which has made me so helpless and useless as a daughter, can be the proper one for young females who are hereafter to become wives and mothers, a truth that every hour has impressed on me since I have been a Schoolmistress Abroad." 59 m No sun — no moon! No morn — no noon — No dawn — no dusk — no proper time of day — No sky — no earthly view — No distance looking blue — No road — no street — no " t'other side the way" — No end to any Row — No indications where the Crescents go- No top to any steeple — No recognitions of familiar people — No courtesies for showing 'em — No knowing 'em ! No travelling at all — no locomotion, No inkling of the way — no notion — " No go " — by land or ocean — No mail — no post — No news from any foreign coast — No Park — no Ring — no afternoon gentility — No company — no nobility — No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease No comfortable feel in any member — No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flow'rs, no leaves, no birds, November ! 60 €\t €nmit nf 3L v aljuuit. A ROMANCE. Amongst the many castled crags on the banks of the Rhine, one of the most picturesque is the ruin of Lahneck, perched on a conical rock, close to that beautiful little river the Lahn. The Castle itself is a venerable fragment, with one lofty tower rising far above the rest of the building — a characteristic feature of a feudal stronghold — being in fact the Observatory of the Robber- Baron, whence he watched not the motions of the heavenly bodies, but the movements of such earthly ones as might afford him a booty, or threaten him with an assault. And truly, Lahneck is said to have been the residence of an order of Teutonic Knights exactly matching in number the famous band of Thieves in the Arabian Tale. However, when the sun sets in the broad blaze behind the heights of Capellen, and the fine ruin of Stolzenfels on the op- posite banks of the Rhine, its last rays always linger on the lofty tower of Lahneck. Many a time, while standing rod in hand on one or other of the brown rocks which, narrowing the channel of the river, form a small rapid, very favourable to the fisherman — many a time have I watched the rich warm light burning beacon- like on the very summit of that solitary tower, whilst all the river lay beneath in deepest shadow, save the golden circles that marked where a fish rose to the surface, or the bright corrusca- tions made by the screaming swallow as it sportively dipped its wing in the dusky water, like a gay friend breaking in on the THE TOWER OF LA H NECK. 61 cloudy reveries of a moody mind. And as these natural lights faded away, the artificial ones of the village of Lahnstein began to twinkle — the glowing windows of Duquet's hospitable pavilion, especially, throwing across the stream a series of dancing reflec- tions that shone the brighter for the sombre shadows of a massy cluster of acacias in the tavern-garden. Then the myriads of chafers, taking to wing, filled the air with droning — whilst the lovely fire-flies with their fairy lamps began to flit across my homeward path, or hovered from osier to osier, along the calm waterside. But a truce to these personal reminiscences. It was on a fine afternoon, towards the close of May, 1830, that two ladies began slowly to climb the winding path which leads through a wild shrubbery to the ruined Castle of Lahneck. They were unaccompanied by any person of the other sex ; but such rambles are less perilous for unprotected females in that country than in our own — and they had enjoyed several similar excursions without accident or offence. At any rate, to judge from their leisurely steps, and the cheerful tone of their voices, they apprehended no more danger than might accrue to a gauze or a ribbon from an overhanging branch or a stray bramble. The steepness of the ascent forced them occasionally to halt to take breath, but they stopped quite as frequently to gather the wild flowers, and especially the sweet valley lilies, there so abund- ant — to look up at the time-stained Ruin from a new point, or to comment on the beauties of the scenery. The elder of the ladies spoke in English, to which her com- panion replied in the same language, but with a foreign accent, and occasional idioms, that belonged to another tongue. In fact, she was a native of Germany, whereas the other was one of those many thousands of British travellers whom tho long peace, the 62 WHIMSICALITIES. steamboat, and the poetry of Byron had tempted to visit the " blue and arrowy " river. Both were young, handsome, and accomplished ; but the Fraulein Von B. was unmarried ; whilst Mrs. was a wife and a mother, and with her husband and her two children had occupied for some weeks a temporary home within the walls of Coblenz. It was in this city that a friendship had been formed between the German Girl and the fair Islander — the gentle pair who were now treading so freely and fearlessly under the walls of a Castle where womanly beauty might for- merly have ventured as safely as the doe near the den of the lion. But those days are happily gone by — the dominion of Brute Force is over — and the Wild Baron who doomed his victims to the treacherous abyss, has dropped into an Oubliette as dark and deep as his own. At last the two ladies gained the summit of the mountain, and for some minutes stood still and silent, as if entranced by the beauty of the scene before them. There are elevations at which the mind loses breath as well as the body — and pants too thickly with thought upon thought to find utterance. This was espe- cially the case with the English woman, whose cheek flushed, while her eyes glistened with tears ; for the soul is touched by beauty as well as melted by kindness, and here Nature was lavish of both — at once charming, cheering, and refreshing her with a magnificent prospect, the brightest of sunshine, and the balmiest air. Her companion, in the meantime, was almost as taciturn, merely uttering the names of the places — Ober-Lahnstein — Ca- pellen — Stolzenfels — Neider-Lahnstein — St. John's Church — to which she successively pointed with her little white finger. Fol- lowing its direction, the other lady slowly turned round, till her eyes rested on the Castle itself, but she was too near to see the THE TOWER OF LAHNECK. 63 ruin to advantage, and her neck ached as she strained it to look up at the lofty tower which rose almost from her feet. Still she continued to gaze upward, till her indefinite thoughts grew into a wish that she could ascend to the top, and thence, as if sus- pended in air, enjoy an uninterrupted new of the whole horizon. It was with delight, therefore, that on turning an angle of the wall she discovered a low open arch which admitted her to the ulterior, where after a little groping, she perceived a flight of stone steps, winding as far as the eye could trace, up the massy walls. The staircase, however, looked very dark, or rather dismal, after the bright sunshine she had just quitted, but the whim of the moment, the spirit of adventure and curiosity, induced her to proceed, although her • companion, who was more phlegmatic, started several difficulties and doubts as to the practicability of the ascent. There were, however, no obstacles to surmount beyond the gloom, some trifling heaps of rubbish, and the fatigue of mounting so many gigantic steps. But this weariness was richly repaid, whenever through an occasional loophole she caught a sample of the bright blue sky, and which like samples in gene- ral appeared of a far more intense and beautiful colour than any she had ever seen in the whole piece. No, never had heaven seemed so heavenly, or earth so lovely, or water so clear and pure, as through those narrow apertures — never had she seen any views so charming as those exquisite snatches of landscape, framed by the massive masonry into little cabinet pictures, of a few inches square — so small indeed, that the two friends, pressed cheek to cheek, could only behold them with one eye apiece ! The Eng- lishwoman knew at least a dozen of such tableaux, to be seen through particular loopholes in certain angles of the walls of Co- 64: WHIMSICALITIES. blenz — but these "pictures of the Lahneck gallery," as she termed them, transcended them all ! Nevertheless it cost her a sigh to reflect how many forlorn captives, languishing perhaps within those very walls, had been confined to such glimpses of the world Avithout — nay, whose every prospect on this side the grave had been framed in stone. But such thoughts soon pass away from the minds of the young, the healthy and the happy, and the next moment the fair moralist was challenging the echoes to join with her in a favourite air. Now and then indeed the song abruptly stopped, or the voice quavered on a wrong note, as a fragment of mortar rattled down to the basement, or a disturbed bat rustled from its lurking-place, or the air breathed through a crevice with a sound so like the human sigh, as to revive her melancholy fan- cies. But these were transient terrors, and only gave rise to peals of light-hearted merriment, that were mocked by laughing voices from each angle of the walls. At last the toilsome ascent w r as safely accomplished, and the two friends stood together on the top of the tower, drawing a long, delicious breath of the fresh, free air. For a time they were both dazzled to blindness by the sudden change from gloom to sunshine, as Avell as dizzy from the unaccustomed height ; but these effects soon wore off, and the whole splendid panorama, — variegated w T ith mountains, valleys, rocks, castles, chapels, spires, towns, villages, vineyards, cornfields, forests, and rivers, — was re- vealed to the delighted senses. As the Englishwoman had an- ticipated, her eye could now travel unimpeded round the entire horizon, which it did again and again and again, while her lips kept repeating all the superlatives of admiration. " It is mine Faderland," murmured the German girl with a natural tone of triumph in the beauty of her native country THE TOWER OF LAHNECK. 65 " Speak — did I not well to persuade you to here, by little bits, aud little bite, instead of a stop at Horcheim ? " " You did indeed, my dear Amanda. Such a noble prospect, would well repay a much longer walk." " Look ! — see — dere is Rhense — and de Marxberg " — but the ringer was pointed in vain, for the eyes it would have guided continued to look in the opposite direction across the Lahn. " Is it possible from here," inquired the Englishwoman. " to see Coblenz ? " Instead of answering this question, the German girl looked up archly in the speaker's face, and then smiling and nodding her head, said slily, " Ah, you do think of a somebody at home ! " " I was thinking of him, indeed," replied the other, " and re- gretting that he is not at this moment by my side to enjoy " She stopped short — for at that instant a tremendous peal, as of the nearest thunder, shook the tower, to its very foundation. The German shrieked, and the ever ready " Ach Cott ! " burst from her quivering lips ; but the Englishwoman neither stirred nor spoke, though her cheek turned of the hue of death. Some minds are ^nuch more apprehensive than others, and hers was unusually quick in its conclusions, — the thought passed from cause to consequence with the rapidity of the voltaic spark. Ere the sound had done rumbling, she knew the nature of the calamity as distinctly as if an evil spirit had whispered it in her ear. Nevertheless, an irresistible impulse, that dreadful attraction which draws us in spite of ourselves to look on what is horrible and approach to the very verge of danger, impelled her to seek the very sight she most feared to encounter. Her mind, indeed, recoiled, but her limbs, as by a volition superior to her own, dragged her to the brink of the abyss she had prophetically 66 WHIMSICALITIES. painted, where the reality presented itself with a startling resem- blance to the ideal pieture. Yes, there yawned that dark chasm, unfathomable by the human eye, a great gulf fixed — perhaps, eternally fixed — betwei D herself and the earth, with all it contained of most dear and precious to the heart of a wife and a mother. Three — only the three uppermost steps of the gigantic staircase still remained in their place, and even these as she gazed at them suddenly plunged into the dreary void; and after an interval which indi- cated the frightful depth they had to plumb, reached the bottom with a crash that was followed by a roll of hollow echoes from ihe subterranean vaults ! As the sound ceased, the Englishwoman turned away, with a gasp and a visible shudder, from the horrid chasm. It was with the utmost difficulty that she had mastered a mechanical inclina- tion to throw herself after the falling mass — an impulse very commonly induced by the unexpected descent of a large body from our own level. But what had she gained ? Perhaps but a more lingering and horrible fate — a little more time to break her heart in — so many more wretched hours to lanfent for her lost treasures — her cheerful home — her married felicity — her maternal joys, and to look with unavailing yearnings towards Coblenz. But that sunny landscape had become intolerable ; and she hastily closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands. Alas! she only beheld the more vividly the household images, and dear familiar faces that distractingly. associated the happiness of the past with the misery of the present — for out of the very sweetness -of her life came • intenser bitterness, and from its brightest phases an extremer darkness, even as the smiling valley beneath her had changed into that of the Shadow THE TOWER OF LAHNECK. 67 of Death ! The Destroyer had indeed assumed almost a visible presence, and like a poor trembling bird, conscious of the stooping falcon, the devoted victim sank down and cowered on the hard, cold, rugged roof of the fatal Tower ! The German girl, in the meanwhile, had thrown herself on her knees, and with her neck at full stretch over the low parapet, looked eagerly from east to west for succour — but from the mill up the stream to the ferry down below, and along the road on either side of the river, she could not descry a living object. Yes — no — yes — there was one on the mountain itself, moving among the brushwood, and even approaching the castle ; closer he came — and closer yet, to the very base of the Tower. But his search, whatever it . was, tended earthwards, for he never looked up. " Here ! — come ! — gleich ! — quick !" and the agitated speaker hurriedly beckoned to her companion in misfortune — " we must make a cry both togeder, and so loud as we can,'.' and setting the example she raised her voice to its utmost pitch ; but the air was so rarified that the sound seemed feeble even to herself. At any rate it did not reach the figure below — nor would a far louder alarm, for that figure was little Kranz, the deaf and dumb boy of Lahnstein, who was gathering bunches of the valley-lilies for sale to the company at the inn. Accordingly, after a desultory ramble round the ruins, he descended to the road, and slowly proceeded along the water side towards the ferry, where he disappeared. " Lieber Gott !" exclaimed the poor girl ; " it is too far to make one hear ! " So saying she sprang to her feet, and with her white handker- chief kept waving signals of distress, till from sheer exhaustion 68 WHIMSICALITIES her BraM refn ed their office. Bui not 3 so frequent on fine summer days in that favoui had visited the Bpot 'I b< re was a Kin h •■■ down the Rhine, and the holiday-makers had all proceeded with their characteristic uniformity in that direction. "Dere is nobody at all," said the German, dropping hex and head in utter deepondi ua I " •• .Vud if there were," added a hollow voice, "what human help could avail us at this dreadful heighl :" The truth of this reflection was awfully apparent; but who when life is at stake can p Bign hope, or its last fearful contingency though frail as a spider's thread encumbered with den dro] The German, in Bpite of her misgivings, resumed her watch; till after a long, weary, dreary hour, figure issued from a hut a little lower down on the opposite side of the Lahn, and stepping in!" a boat propelled it to the middle of the'stream. It was one of the poor fishermen who rented the water, and rowing directly to the rapid, In- made a casl or two with his net, imme- diately within the reflection of the Castle. But he w tanl to hear the cry that appealed t'> him, and too much absorbed in the success or failure of his peculiar lottery to 1- .. >k aloft. Like the deaf and dumb hoy, he passed on, hut in the opposite dir.v- tion, and gradually disappeared. "It will never be seen!" ejaculated the German girl, again dropping her arm — a doubtful prophecy, how. v. r, for immediately afterwards the Rhenish steamboat passed the mouth of the river, and probably more than one telescope was pointed to the romantic ruin of Lahneck. But the distance was great, and even had it been less, the waving of a white handkerchief would have been taken for a merry or a friendly salute. THE TOWER OF LAHNECK. 69 In the meantime the steamboat passed out of sight behind the high ground ; but the long streamer of smoke was still visible, like a day-meteor, swiftly flying along, and in a direction that made the Englishwoman stretch out her arms after the fleetino- vapour as if it had been a thing sensible to human supplication. " It is gone also ! " exclaimed her partner in misery. " And in a short while my liebe Mutter will see it come to Coblenz ! " The Englishwoman groaned. " It is my blame," continued the other, in an agony of self- reproach ; " it was my blame to come so wide — not one can tell where. Nobody shall seek at Lahneck, — dey will think we are dropped into de Rhine. Yes — we must die both ! We must die of famishmen — and de cornfields, and de vines is all round one ! " And thus hour passed after hour, still watching promises that budded and blossomed and withered — and still flowered again and again without fruition — till the shades of evening began to fall, and the prospect became in every sense darker and darker. Barge after barge had floated down the river, but the steersman had been intent on keeping his craft in the middle of the current in the most difficult part of his navigation — the miller had passed along the road at the base of the mountain, but his thoughts were fixed on the home within his view — the female peasant drove her cows from the pasture — the truant children returned to the village, and the fisherman drifting down the stream, again landed, and after hanging his nets up to dry between the trees on the opposite meadows, re-entered his hut. But none saw the signal, none heard the cry, or if they did it was supposed to be the shrill squeak of the bat. There was even company at the inn, for the windows of Duquet's pavilion began to sparkle, but the enjoyments of the party had stopped short of the romantic 70 WHIMSICALITY and the picturesque — they were quaffing Knew wein, and eating thick sour cream sweetened with Bugar, and flavoured with cin- namon, "It is hard, mine friend," Bobbed the German, " not ■ but for themseb "It i- unjust," might have retorted the wife an /think of my husband and children, and they think oi Why else did her Boba bo disturb the tranquil air, or wher did Bhe paint her beloved Edward and her two fair-haired boys with their fao - rted bj grief! The prea at and i torn — for time is nothing in Buch visions — Were almost simul- taneously before her, and the happy home of one moment \\a> transfigured at the next instant into the h— oc <-t' mourning. The contrast was agonizing but unspeakabl — one "t" tl odona woes which stupify the bouI, as when the body is not pi with a single wound, but mortally crushed. She was not merely stricken but stunned. "Mein Got! !" exclaimed the German girl, after a vain experi- ment on the passiveness of her companion, "why do you not speak something — what shall we d "Nothing,'' 1 answer.. 1 a shuddering whisper, "except — .li.-!" A long pause ensued, during which the German girl more than once approached and looked down the pitch Mack orifice which had opened to the fallen stairs. Perhaps it look. | gloomy than by daylight in the full blaze of the sun, — perhaps she had read and adopted a melancholy, morbid tone of f< too common to German works, when they treat of voluntary death, or perhaps the Diabolical Prompter was himself at hand with the desperate suggestion, fatal alike to body and to soul, — but the wretched creature drew nearer and nearer to the d verge. THE TOWER OF LAHNECK. 71 Her pupose, however, was checked. Although the air was perfectly still, she heard a sudden rustle amongst the ivy on that side of the Tower, which even while it made her start, had whispered a nW hope in her ear. Was it possible that her sig- nals had been observed — that her cries had been heard ? 'And again the sound was audible, followed by a loud harsh cry, and a large Owl, like a bird of ill omen, as it is, fluttered slowly over the heads of the devoted pair, and again it shrieked and flapped round them, as if to involve them' in a magical circle, and then with a third and shriller screech sailed away like an Evil Spirit, in the direction of the Black Forest. Nor was that boding fowl without its sinister influence on hu- man destiny. The disappointment it caused to the victim was mortal. It was the drop that overbrimmed her cup. " No," she muttered, " dere is no more hopes. For myself I will not starve up here — I know my best friend, and will cast my troubles on the bosom of my mother earth." Absorbed in her own grief the Englishwoman, did not at first comprehend the import of these words ; but all at once their meaning dawned on her with a dreadful significance. It was, however, too late. Her eye caught a glimpse of the skirt of a garment, her ear detected a momentary flutter — and she was alone on that terrible tower ! ****** * And did she too perish ? Alas ! ask the peasants and the fish- ermen who daily worked for their bread in that valley or on its river ; ask the ferryman who hourly passed to and fro, and the bargeman, who made the stream his thoroughfare, and they will tell you, one and all, that they heard nothing and saw nothing, for Labour looks downward and forward, and round about, but 72 WHIMSICALITIES. not upward. Nay, ask the angler himself, who withdrew hia lly from the circling eddies of the rapids to look at the last beams of sunshine glowing on the lofty Ruin — and he answers that he never saw living creature on its summit, except once, when the Crow and the Raven were hovering about the building, and a screaming Eagle, although it had no nest th<-iv, was perched on the Tower of Lahneck. Note. — This story — (which some hardy critic affirmed was " an old Legend of the Rhine, to be found in any Guide-book,") — was suggested by the recital of two ladies, who attempted to ascend to the top of the Tower of Lahneck, but were deterred by the shaking of the stone stairs. They both consider, to this day, that they narrowly escaped a fate akin to the catastrophe of poor Amy Robsart ; and have viable shudderings when they hear, or read, of old Rhenish castles and oubliettes. T6 € d in tj Dnngjftxr. ON HER BIRTH-DAY. Dear Fanuy ! nine long years ago, While yet the morning sun was lew, And rosy with the Eastern glow The landscape smil'd — Whilst low'd the newly-wakened herds — Sweet as the early song of birds, I heard those first, delightful words, « Thou hast a Child ! " Along with that uprising dew Tears glisten'd in my eyes, though few To hail a dawning quite as new To me, as Time : It was not sorrow — not annoy — But like a happy maid, though coy, With grief-like welcome even Joy Forestalls its prime. So mayst thou live, dear ! many years, In all the bliss that life endears, Not without smiles, nor yet from tears Too strictly kept : When first thy infant littleness I folded in my fond caress, The greatest proof of happiness Was this — I wept. 74 'tli our judgments join In censure <•',' his Beeming. Hamlet. " What is the matter with Mr. Pryme?" The Bpeaker was a tall, dark man, with grizzled hair, black a long nose, a wide mouth, and the commercial feature of a pen behind his right ear. He had several tamed asked himself the same question, but without any satisfactory solution, and now ad- dressed it to a little sandy -haired man, who was standing with his back to the office fife. Both were clerks in oment office, as well as the party whose health or deportment was in- volved in the inquiry. " What is the matter with Mr. Pryme .' " " Heaven knows," said the sandy Mr. Phipps, at the same time lifting up his eyebrows towards the organs of wonder, and shrug- ging his shoulders. " You have observed how nervous and fidgety he is ? " " To be sure. Look at the fireplace : he has done nothing all the morning but put on coals and rake them out again." " Yes, I have been watching him and kept count,*' interposed Mr. Trent, a junior official; "he has poked the fire nineteen THE DEFAULTER. 75 times, besides looking five times out of tlie window, and twice taking down liis bat and banging it up again." " I got birn to cbange me a sovereign," said tbe dark Mr. Grimble, " and be first gave me nineteen, and tben twenty-one shillings for it. But look bere at bis entries," and be pointed to an open ledger on tbe desk, " be bas dipped promiscuously into tbe black ink and tbe red ! " Tbe tbree clerks took a look a-piece at tbe book, and tben a still longer look at eitber. None of tbem spoke : but eacb made a face, one pursing up bis lips as if to blow an imaginary flageo- let, anotber frowning as if witb a distracting beadacbe, and tbe tbii'd drawing down tbe corners of bis moutb, as if be bad just taken, or was about to take, pbysic. " Wbat can it be ? " said Mr. Pbipps. " Let's ask bim," suggested Mr. Trent. " Better not," said Gnmble, " you know bow bot and toucby be is. I once ventured to cut a joke on bim, and be bas never tborougbly forgiven it to tbis day." " Wbat was it about ? " inqubed tbe junior. " Wby be bas been married about a dozen years witbout baving any cbildren, and it was tbe usual tbing witb us, wben be came of a morning, to ask after tbe little Prymes, — but tbe joke caused so many rows and quarrels, tbat we bave given it up." " Where is he ? " asked Mr. Pbipps, witb a glance round tbe office. " In tbe Secretary's private room. But busb ! bere be comes." Tbe tbree clerks hastily retreated to their several desks, and began writing witb great apparent diligence ; yet vigilantly watching every movement of the nervous and fidgety Mr. Pryme, who entered tbe room witb an uneven step, looking rather flushed '6 WHIMSICALITIES. ind excited, and vigorously rubbing his bald bead with his silk landkerchief. Perhaps he noticed that he was observed, for be ooked uneasily and suspiciously from one clerk to the oth< r; but each face preserved a demure gravity, and the little, stout, bald, florid gentleman repaired to his own place. The Morning Post, damp, and still unfolded, was lying on his disk; he took it up, dried it at the fire, and began to read — but the n^xt minute he laid down the paper, and seizing the poker made several plunges at the coals, as often against the bars as between them, till the metal rang again. Then he resinned the Post — but quickly re- linquished it — quite unable to fix his attention on the typ< — an incompetence perfectly astounding to the other clerks, who con- sidered reading the newspaper as a regular and important pari of the official dut " By Jove," whispered Mr. Phipps to Mr. Grimble, whom he had approached under the pretence of delivering a document, "he cannot Post the news any more than his ledger." Mr. Grimble acquiesced with a grave nod and a grimace; and Mr. Phipps returning to his desk, a silence ensued, so profound that the scratching of the pens at work on the paper was distinctly audible. The little bald cashier himself had begun to write, and for some minutes was occupied so quietly that curiosity gave way to business, and the three clerks were absorbed in their calcula- tions, when a sudden noise caused them to look up. Mr. Pryme had jumped from his high stool, and was in the act of taking down his hat from its peg. He held it for a w T hile in his hand, as if in deep deliberation, then suddenly clapped it on his head, but as suddenly took it off again — thrust the Morning Post into the crown, and restored the beaver to its place on the wall. The next moment he encountered the eye of Phipps — a suspicion that THE DEFAULTER. 11 he was watched seemed to cross him, and his uneasiness increased. He immediately returned to his desk, and began to turn over the leaves of an account-book — but with unnatural haste, and it was evident that although his eyes were fixed on the volume, his thoughts were elsewhere, for by degrees he went off into a re- verie, only rousing now and then while he took huge pinches of snuff. At last, suddenly waking up, he pulled out his watch — pored at it — held it up to his ear — replaced it in his fob, and with a glance at his hat, began drawing on his gloves. Perhaps he would have gone off — if Mr. Grimble had not crossed over from his desk, and placed an open book before him, with a re- quest for his signature. The little bald, florid man, without re- moving his glove, attempted to write his name, but his hand trembled so that he could hardly guide the pen. However, he tried to carry off the matter as a joke — but his laugh was forced, and his voice had the quavering huskiness of internal agitation. " Ha ! ha ! — rather shaky — too much wine last night — eh, Mr. Grimble ?" The latter made no reply, but as he walked off with the book under his arm, and his back towards Mr. Pryme, he bestowed a deliberate wink on each of his associates, and significantly imitated with his own hand the aspen-like motion he had just observed. The others responded with a look of intelligence, and resumed their labours ; but the tall, dark man fell into a fit of profound abstraction, during which he unconsciously scribbled on his blotting paper, in at least a score of places, the word EMBEZZLEMENT. 78 WHIMSICALITIES. CHAPTER II. "And do you really mean to say, Mr. Author, thai so respect- able a bald man had actually appropriated the public moc Heaven forbid, madam. My health is tar too infirm, and my modesty much too delicate to allow me to undertake, off-hand, the work of twelve men; and who sometimes are not strong enough, the whole team, to draw a correct inference. As yet, Mr. Pryme only labours under suspicion, and a verj hard labour it is to be sentenced to before conviction. I5ut permit me to ask, do you really associate baldness with respectability .' " Of course, sir. All bald men arc respectable." It is indeed a very general impression — so much so, that were I a criminal, and anxious to propitiate a Judge and a Jury at my trial, I would have my head shaved beforehand as clean monk's. And yet it is a strange prepossession, that we should connect guilt with a fell of hair, and innocence with a hare sconce! Why, madam, why should we conceive a bald man to be less delinqent than another ? " I suppose, sir, because he has less for a catchpole to lay hold of ?" Thank you, ma'am! The best reason I have heard for a pre- judice in all my life ! CHAPTER III. The little bald, florid man, in the mean time, continued his nervous and fidgety evolutions — worrying the fire, trying on his hat, and gloves, snuffing vehemently, coughing huskily, and THE DEFAULTER. 79 winking perpetually — now scurrying through folios — then drum- ming what is called the Devil's tattoo on his desk, and moreover, under pretence of mending his pens, had slashed half-a-dozen of them to pieces — when he received a fresh summons to the Secre- tary's room. The moment the door closed behind him, the two clerks, Phipps and Trent, darted across to Mr. Grimble, who silently exhibited to them the shaky autograph of the agitated cashier. They then adjourned to the fire, where a pause of profound cogitation ensued ; the Junior intensely surveying his bright boots — Mr. Phipps industriously nibbling the top of his pen — while Mr. Grimble kept assiduously breaking the bituminous bubbles which exuded from the burning coals with the point of the poker. " It is very extraordinary !" at last muttered Mr. Phipps. " Very," chimed in the Junior Clerk. Mr. Grimble silently turned his back to the fire, and fixed his gaze on the ceiling, with his mouth firmly compressed, as if meaning to signify, " that whatever he might think, he would say nothing " — in case of any thing happening to Mr. Pryme, he was the next in seniority for the vacant place, and delicacy for- bade his being the first to proclaim his suspicions. " You don't think he is going off, do you ?" inquired Mr. Phipps. Mr. Grimble turned his gaze intently on the querist as though he would look him through — hemm'd — but said nothing. " I mean off his head." " Oh — I thought you meant off to America." It was now Mr. Phipps's turn to look intently at Mr. Grimble, whose every feature he scrutinized with the studious interest of a Lavater. 80 WHIMSICALITIES. " Why you surely don't mean to say " " I do." " What that he has " « Yes." " Is it possible ! " Mr. Grimble gave three disti net and deliberate nods, in reply to which, Mr. Phipps whistled a long phe-e-e-e-e-ew ! All this time the Junior had been eagerly listening to the mys- terious conference, anxiously looking from one Bpeaker to the other, till the hidden meaning suddenly revealed itself to his mind, and with tin- usual indiscretion of youth he immediately gave it utterance. " Why then, Grimble, old Pryme will be transported, and you will walk into his shoes." Mr. Grimble frowned severely, and laid one forefinger on his lips, while with the other he pointed to the door. But Mr. Pryme was still distant in the Secretary's private room. " Well, I should never have thought it ! " exclaimed Mr. Phipps. " He was so regular in his habits, and I should say very moderate in his expenses. He was never given to dress (the young clerk laughed at the idea), and certainly never talked like a gay man with the other sex (the Junior laughed again). I don't think he gambled, or had any connexion with the turf. To be sure he may have dabbled a little in the Alley — or perhaps in the Dis- counting line." To each of these interrogative speculations Mr. Grimble re- sponded with a negative shake of the head, or a doubtful shrug of the shoulders, till the catalogue was exhausted, and then, with his eyes cast upward, uttered an emphatic " God knows ! " " But have you any proof of it ?" asked Mr. Phipps. THE DEFAULTER. 81 " None whatever — not a particle. Only what I may call a strong — a very strong presentiment." And as if to illustrate its strength, Mr. Grimblo struck a blow with the poker that smashed a large Staffordshire coal into shivers. BROKE BY A FALL OF THE STOCKS. " Then there may be nothing wrong after all ! " suggested the good-natured Mr. Phipps. " And really Mr. Pryme has always seemed so respectable, so regular, and so correct in business " " So did Fauntleroy, and the rest of them ;" muttered Mr. Grimble, " or they would never have been trusted. However, it's a comfort to think that they had no children, and that the capital punishment for such offences has been abolished." 4* 82 WHIMSICALITIES. "I can hardly believe it!" ejaculated Mr. Phippa. " My dear fellow," said the young clerk, " there is no mistake about it. I was watching hiinwhen the messenger came to fetch him to the secretary, and he started and shook as it' he had ex- pected a policeman." Mr. Phipps said no more, but retreated to his place, with his elbows on his desk, and his head between his hands, began sor- rowfully to ruminate on the ruin and misery impending over the unfortunate cashier. lie could well appreciate the nervous alarm and anxiety of the wretched man, liable at any moment to d tion, with the consequent disgrace, and a punishment scarcely preferable to death itself. His memory reminded him that Mr. Pryme had done him various services, while his imagination pic- tured bis benefactor in the most distressing situations — in the station-house — at Bow-street — in Newgate — at the Bar of the Old Baily — in a hulk — in a convict-ship, with the common herd of the ruffianly and the depraved — and finally toiling in life-long labour in a distant land. And as he dwelt on these dreadful and dreary scenes, the kind-hearted Phipps himself became quite un- hinged ; his own nerves began to quiver, whilst his muscles sym- pathizing with the mental excitement, prompted him to such rest- less activity, that he was soon almost as fidgety and perturbed as the object of his commiseration. Oh ! that the guilty man, forewarned of danger by some pro- vidential inspiration, might have left the office never to return ! But the hope was futile : the door opened — the doomed Mr. Pryme hastily entered — went to his own desk, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and clutching his bewildered bald head with one fe- vered hand, began with the other to turn over the leaves of a journal, without perceiving that the book was upside down. THE DEFAULTER. 83 " Was there ever," thought Phipps, " such an infatuation ! Ho has evidently cause for alarm, and yet lingers about the fatal spot." How he yearned to give him a hint that his secret was known — to say to him, " Go ! — Fly ! ere it be too late ! Seek some other country where you may live in freedom and repent." But alas! the eyes of Grimble and Trent were upon him, and above all the stern figure of inexorable Duty rose up before him, and melting the wax of Silence at the naming sword of Justice, imposed a seal upon his lips. CHAPTER IV. " Gracious Goodness ! " exclaims Female Sensibility, " and will the dear fresh-coloured bald little gentleman be actually trans- ported to Botany Bay ! " My dear Miss — a little patience. A criminal before such a consummation has to go through more processes than a new pin. First, as Mrs. Glasse says of her hare, he has to be caught, then examined, committed, and true-billed — arraigned, convicted, and sentenced. Next, he must, perhaps, be cropped, washed, and clothed — hulked and shipped, and finally, if he does not die of sea-sickness, or shipwreck, or get eaten by the natives, he may toil out his natural term in Australia, as a stone-breaker, a cattle- keeper, or a domestic servant ! " Dear me, how dreadful ! And for a man, perhaps, like Mr. Pryme, of genteel habits and refined notions, accustomed to all the luxuries of life, and every delicacy of the season. I should really like to set on foot a little private subscription, for providing him with the proper comforts in prison and a becoming outfit for his voyage." 84 WHIMSICALITIES. My dear young lady, 1 can appreciate your motives and do honour to your feelings. But before you go round with your book among relations, acquaintance, and strangers, soliciting pounds, shillings, and pence, from people of broad, middling, and narrow incomes, just do me the favour to look into yonder garret) exposed to us by the magic of the Devil on Two Sticks, and con- sider that respectable young woman, engaged past midnight, by the light of a solitary rush-light, in making shirts al three-half- pence a piec, and shifts for nothing. Look at her holloa • Iht withered cheeks, and emaciated frame, for it is a part of the infernal bargain that she is to lose her own health and find her own needles and thread. Reckon, if you can, the thousands of weary stitches it will require to sew, not gussets and seams, but body and soul together : and perhaps, after all her hard sewing, having to sue a shabby employer for the amount of her pitiful earnings. Estimate, if you may, the terrible wear and tear of head and heart, of liver and lungs. Appraise, on oath, the value of youth wasted, spirits outworn, prospects blasted, natural affec- tions withered in the bud, and all blissful hopes annihilated ex- «pt those beyond the grave "What! by that horrid, red-faced, bald-pated, undersized little monster ! " No Miss — but by a breach of trust on the part of a banker of genteel habits and refined notions ; accustomed to all the luxuries of life, and every delicacy of the season. " Oh, the abominable villain ! And did he ruin himself as -well as the poor lady ? " Totally. " And was transported \ " Quite. THE DEFAULTER. 85 "What, to Botany?" No, Miss. To the loveliest part of Sussex, where he is con- demned to live in a commodious Cottage Residence, with pleasure- ground and kitchen-garden annexed — capital shooting and fishing, and within reach of two packs of hounds ! " Shameful ! Scandalous ! — why it's no punishment at all." No, Miss. And then to think of the hundreds and thousands of emigrants — English, Scotch, and Irish — who for no crime but poverty are compelled to leave their native country — the homes and hearths of their childhood — the graves of their kindred — the land of their fathers, and to settle — if settling it may be called — in the houseless woods and wildernesses of a foreign clime. " Oh, shocking ! shocking ! But if I was the government the wicked fraudulent bankers and trust-breakers should be sent abroad too. Why shouldn't they be punished with passage- money and grants of land as well as the poor innocent emigrants, and be obliged to settle in foreign parts ? " Ah ! why, indeed, Miss — except — "Except what, sir?" Why, that Embezzlers and Swindlers, by all accounts, are such very bad Settlers. CHAPTER V. But Mr. Pryme ?— That little bald, florid, fidgety personage was still sitting on his high stool at his desk, snuffing, coughing, winking, and pretend- ing to examine a topsyturvy account book — sometimes, by way of variation, hashing up a new pen, or drumming a fresh march with his finger-s — 86 WHIMSICALITIES. Mr. Grimble was making some private calculations, which had reference to his future income-tax, on a slip of office-paper — Mr. Trent was dreaming over an imaginary trial, in which be was a witness at the Old Baily — And Mr. Phipps was fretting over the predestined capture of the infatuated cashier — when all at oner; there was a noise that startled the clerkly trio from their seats. The nervous Mr. Pryme, by one of his involuntary motions, had upset his leaden inkstand — in trying to save the inkstand he knocked down his ruler — in catching at the ruler he had let fall the great journal — and in scrambling after the journal he had overturned his high stool. The clatter was prodigious, and acting on a nature already over-wrought sufficed to discompose the last atom of its equanimity. For a moment the bewildered author of the work stood and trembled as if shot — then snatching his hat, and clapping it " skow-wow any how " on his head, rushed desperately out of the office. " Thank God!" ejaculated Mr. Phipps, drawing a long breath, like a swimmer after a dive. "I say, Grimble," exclaimed thy Junior Clerk — "it's a true bill!" But Mr. Grimble was already outside the door, and running down the stone-stairs into the hall seized on the first office-mes- senger that offered. " Here — Warren ! — quick ! — Run after Mr. Pryme — don't let him out of your sight — but watch where he goes to — and let me know." THE DEFAULTER. 87 CHAPTER VI. Now according to the practice of the regular drama, which professes to represent the greater stage of the world, whenever a robber, murderer, or traitor has escaped, it is a rule for theatrical policemen, constables, runners, guards, alguazils, sbirri, or gen- darmes, to assemble and agree to act in concert — that is to say, by singing in chorus that the villain has bolted, and musically ex- horting each other to " follow, follow, fol-de-rol-de-rol-0 ! " without i moment's delay. An arrangement perhaps conducive to dramatic convenience and stage effect, but certainly quite inconsistent with the usages of real life or the dictates of common or uncommon sense. 88 WHIMSICALITIES. Messrs. Grimble, Phipps, and Trent, however, were aot theatri- cal, so instead of joining in a trio or a catch, they first held a consultation, and thru proceeded in a body to the Secretary, to whom they described the singular behaviour of Mr. Pryme. " Very singular, indeed," said the Secretary. a l observed it myself, and inquired if he -was in good health. No — yes--no. And Mrs. Pryme? Yes — no — yes. In Bhort, he did not seem to know what he was saying." "Or doing," put in Mr. Trent. "He threw a shovel of coals into the iron safe." " With other acts,' 1 added Mr. Grimble, "therevera of official." "Tell him at once," whispered Mr. Trent. "In short, sir," said Mr. Grimble, with a most sepulchral tone, and the face of an undertaker, " I am sorry, deeply sorry and con- cerned to say that Mr. Pryme has suddenly departed." "Indeed ! But he was just the sort of man to do it." The three clerks stared al each other, for they had all thought exactly the reverse of the little, bald, florid, ex-cashi r. "Short-necked, sanguine, and of a full habit, you know," con- tinued the Secretary. " Poor fellow ! " "I am sorry, deeply sorry and concerned to say," repeated Mr. Grimble, "that I mean he has absconded." " The devil he has ! " exclaimed the Secretary, at once jumping to his feet, and instinctively buttoning up his pockets — " but no — it's impossible!" and he looked towards Trent and Phipps for confirmation. " It's a true bill, sir," said the first, " he has bolted sure enough." The other only shook his head. " It's incredible !" said the Secretary. " Why, he was as THE DEFAULTER. 89 steady as a quaker, and as correct as clock-work ! Mr. Griinble, have you inspected his books ?" " I have, sir." " Well, sir ?" " At present, sir, all appears correct. But as the accounts are kept in this office it is easier to embezzle than to detect any defalcation." " Humph ! I do not think we are worse in that respect than other public offices ! Then, if I understand you, there is no dis- tinct evidence of fraud ?" " None whatever, sir," replied Mr. Phipps. " Except his absconding," added Mr. Grirnble. " Well, gentlemen, we will wait till ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and then if Mr. Pryme does not make his appearance we shall know bow to act." The three clerks made three bows and retired, severally pleased, displeased, and indifferent at the result of their audi- ence. "We may wait for him," grumbled Mr. Grirnble, "till ten o'clock on doomsday." At this moment the door re-opened, and the Secretary put out his head. " Gentlemen, I need not recommend you to confine this mat- ter, for the present, to your own bosoms." But the caution was in vain. Warren, the messenger, had given a hint of the affair to a porter, who had told it to another, and another, and another, till the secret was as well buzzed and blown as if it had been confided to a swarm of blue-bottles. In fact, the flight of Mr. Pryme was known throughout the several offices, where, according to English custom, the event became a 00 WHIMSICALITIES. subject for betting, and a considerable Bum was laid out at Cto4, and afterwards at *l to 2, against the re-appearance of the cashier. CHAPTER VII. "Well, Warren F "Well, Mr. Grimble, nr!" The three clerks on returning to their office, had found tho messenger at the door, and took him with them into the room. " Well, I followed up Mr. Pryme, sir, and the first thing he did were to hail a cab." " And where did he drive to ." •• To nowheres at all — coz why, afore tl al> could pull round off the stand, away he goes — that'- Mr. Pryme— -walking ai the rate of five miles an hour, more or less, bo as not easy to be kept up with, straight home to his own house, number !». where instid of double knocking at the door, he ring'd to be lei in at the hairy bell." A DOUBLE KNOCK. " Very odd !" remarked Mr. Grimble. THE DEFAULTER. 91 " Well, lie staid in the house a goodish while — as long as it might take him, like, to collect his porterble property and vally- bles — when all at once out he comes, like a man with his head turned, and his hat stuck on hind part afore, for you know he'd wore it up at the back like a curricle one." " A clerical one — go on." "Why then, away he cuts clown the street, as hard as he can split without busting, and me arter him, but being stiffish with the rheumatiz, whereby I soon found I was getting nowheres at all in the race, and in consekence pulled up." " And which way did he run ? " " "Why then, he seemed to me to be a-making for the bridge." " Ah, to get on board a steamer," said Mr. Grimble. " Or into the river," suggested Mr. Trent. Mi-. Phipps groaned and wrung his hands. " You're right, you are, Mr. Trent, sir," said the Messenger with a determined nod and wink at the junior clerk. " There was a gemman throwed himself over last Friday, and they did say it was becos he had made away with ten thousand Long Annuitants." " The poor, wretched, misguided creature ! " " Yes he did, Mr. Phipps, sir — right over the senter harch. And what's wus, not leaving a rap behind him except his widder and five small little children, and the youngest on em's a suckin' babby." "Thank God!" exclaimed Mr. Phipps, "that Mr. Pryme is not a family man." 92 WHIMSICALITIES CHAPTER VIII. Poor Mr. Phipj a ! As soon as li . be walked home to his lodg- ings in Westminster, but ai a slower pace than usual, and \\ith a 3 heart, for his mind was full of sorrow and misgiving at the too probable fate of the unfortunate Defaulter. The figui Mr. Pryme followed him wherever he went: it seemed to glance over his shoulder in the looking-glass; ami when he went to wash his hands, the pale drowned face of the cashier shone up through the water, instead of the pattern at the bottom of the basin. For the firsl time since his clerkship he could not enjoy that favourite meal, hi- tea. The black bitterness in his thoughts overpowered the flavour of the green leaf — it turned the milk, and neutralized the sugar on his palate. He took but one bite out of his crumpet, and th n resigned it to the cat. Supper v as out of the question. His mental agitation, acting on the i of the stomach, had brought on a siclc headache, which indis- posed him to any kind of food. In the mean while for the first strange time be became intensely sensible that he was a bachelor, and uncomfortably conscious of bis loneliness in tbe world. Tho company of a second person, another face, only to look at, would have been an infinite reUef to bim — by diverting his attention from tbe one dreadful thought and tbe one horrible image that, do what be would, kept rising up before bim — sometimes like a shadow on tbe wall, sometimes like a miniature figure amid tbe intricate veins of tbe marble mantle pie :& — and anon in tho cbiaro-oscuro of tbe fire. To get rid of the e haunting illusions, be caught up a book which happened to be '".? c wcond volume of THE DEFAULTER. 93 " Lamb's Letters," and stumbled on the following ominous pas- " Who that standeth, knoweth but he may yet fall ? Your hands, as yet, I am most willing to believe, have never deviated into other's 'property. You think it impiossible that you could enr commit so heinous an offence; but so thought Fauntleroy once ; so have thought many besides him, who at last have expiated as he hath done."" The words read like a fatal prophecy ! He dropped the book in horror, and falling on his knees, with tearful eyes and uplifted hands, besought Providence, if it saw fit, to afflict him with the utmost miseries of sickness and poverty, but to save him — even by stroke of sudden death to save him — from ever becoming a Defaulter ! This devotional act restored him in some degree to tranquillity ; but with night and sleep all his horrors returned. The face of Mr. Pryme, no longer florid but pale as a plaster-cast, was con- tinually confronting him, now staring at him through transparent waters, and now between massive iron bars. Then the dismal portrait would abruptly change to a full-length, which was as suddenly surrounded by a cluster of children, boys and girls of different ages, including one or two infants, — a family he under- stood, by the intuition of dreams, to be illegitimate, and that they were solemnly consigned by the Suicide to his care and mainte- nance. Anon the white figure vanished, and a black one ap- peared in its place, a female, with the very outline, as if cut in paper, of the widowed Mrs. Pryme, and who by some mysterious but imperative obligation he felt that he must espouse. The next moment this phantom was swept away by a mighty rush of black waters, like those in Martin's grand picture of the Deluge, 94 WHIMSICALITIES. and on or beneath the dark flood again floated the pale effigy of the Suicide entire and apparently struggling for dear life, and sometimes shattered he knew not how, and drifting about in passive fragments. Then came a fresh rush of black v. gradually shaping itself into an immense whirlpool, with the white, corpse-like figure, but magnified to a colossal Bize, rapidly whirling in the centra of the vortex, whilst obscure forms, black and white, of children, femali 3, and alas! not a few gigantic Demon shape-, revolved more slowly around it. In short, the poor fellow ne\er passed bo wretched a night since he was born ! CHAPTER IX. "And did Mr. Pry me really drown himself!" My dear Felicia, if Female Curiosity had always access, as yoo have, to an author's sanctorum, — if she could stand or sit, as you can, at his elbow whilst composing his romances of real or unreal life, — if she might ask, as you do, at the beginning or in the mid- dle of the plot, what is to be its d( ' — "Well, sir, what then?" Why, then, Messieurs Colburn, Saunders and Otley, Bentley, Churton, and Newby — not forgetting A. K. Newman — might retire for good to their country boxes at Ponder's End, Leather- head, and Balham Hill, for there would be no more novels in three volumes. — Nay, the authors themselves, serious and comic, both or neither, might retreat forever into the Literary Alms- houses, if there are any such places — for there would be no more articles of sixteen pages — and "to be continued" — in the maga- zines. All would be over with us, as with the Bourboas, could THE DEFAULTER. 95 Female Curiosity thus foresee, as Talleyrand said, " Le commence- ment de la fin ! " " Well, but — if your story as you say is ' an owre true tale, then Mr. Piyme must have been a real man — an actual living- human being — and it is positive cruelty to keep one in suspense about his fate ! " Dearest ! — the tale is undoubtedly true, and there was such a personage as Mr. Pryme — " Was ! Why then he did embezzle the money, and he did throw himself off Westminster Bridge ? But had he really an illegitimate family ? And did Mr. Phipps actually marry the widow according to bis dream ? " Patience ! — and you shall hear. CHAPTER X. The morrow came, and the Hour — but not the Man. Messrs. Grimble, Phipps, and Trent were assembled round the office-fire — poor Phipps looking as white as a sheet, for ten o'clock had struck, and there was no Mr. Pryme. At five minutes past ten the Secretary came in from his own room with his golden repeater in his hand — he looked anxiously round the office, and then in turn at each of the three clerks. Mr. Phipps sighed, Mr. Trent shook his head, and Mr. Grimble shrugged up his shoulders. " Not here yet ? " " Nbr won't be," muttered Mr. Grimble. "What odds will you lay about it?" whispered the giddj Mr. Trent. " The office-clock is rather fast," stammered out Mr. Phipps. 96 WHIMSICALITIES. "No — it is exact by mv time," Baid the Secretary, and he held out his watch for inspection. ■• He was always punctual to a minute," observed Mr. Grimble. "Always. I fear, gentlemen, we must apply for a war •" The Secretary paused, for he heard the Bound of a foot at the door, which hastly opened, and in walked Mr. Pryme '. I ! An apparition could scarcely have caused a greater trepidation. The Secretary hurriedly thrust his repeater into liis breeches-poo- Mr. Grimble retreated to his own desk — Mr. Phipps stood stock-still, with his eyes and mouth wide open — while Mr. Trent, though he was a loser on the event, bursl into a loud laugh. •• 1 am afraid, gentlemen," said Mr. Pryme, looking verj ish and stammering, " I am afraid that my — my — my ridiculous behaviour yesterday has caused you - a — une i —on my account." No answer. "The truth is — I was ly anxious and nervous — and agitated — very agitated indeed!" The little florid man coloured up till his round, shiny, bald head was as Bcarlet as a love-apple. "The truth is — after bo many disappointments — I did nut like to mention the thing — the affair — till it was quite certain — till it was all over — for fear of being quizzed. The truth i- — the truth is " " Take time, Mr. Pryme," said the Secretary. '•Why, then, sir — the truth is — after fifteen year — I'm a Father — a happy Father, sir — a fine chopping boy, gentlemen — and Mrs. P. is as charming — that's to say, as well — as can be expected !" 07 The world is with me, and its many cares, Its woes — its wants — the anxious hopes and fears That wait on all terrestrial affairs — The shades of former and of future years — Foreboding fancies, and prophetic tears, Quelling a spirit that was once elate — Heavens ! what a wilderness the earth appears, Where Youth, and Mirth, and Health are out of date ! But no — a laugh of innocence and joy Resounds, like music of the fairy race, And gladly turning from the world's annoy I gaze upon a little radiant face, And bless, internally, the merry boy Who " makes a son-shine in a shady place." MY SON AND HAIU. $ jj i & n 1 1 if - (£ u n k r r 5 * Now 'a ih<- time and dow'b the hour ! To be worried, toss'd, and Bhaken, Down — down — down, derry down — 1 .1 i us take to the road ! Amanda, let us quit the town — ther lei as range the fields — i he hills and far away, life let us cherish. Old Ballw b. The Earth-quakers arc by ao means a new Sect. They have appeared at various times in England, and particularly in 1750, -when they were so numerous that, according to Horace Walpole, "within three days, seven hundred and thirty coaches were counted passing Hyde-park-corner with whole parties rem into the countrj !" The same pleasant writer has preserved several anecdotes of the persuasion, and especially records that the female members, to guard against even a shock to their con- stitutions, made "earthquake gowns" of a warm stuff, to sit up in at night, in the open air ! Nor was the alarm altogether un- founded, fur the earth, he .says, actually shook twice at regular intervals, so that fearing the terrestrial ague fit would become periodical, the noble wit proposed to treat it by a course of bark. However, there were some slight vibrations of the soil, and sup- posing them only to have thrown down a platter from the shelf to the floor, the Earth-quakers of 1750 have an infinite advan- tage over those of 1842, when nothing has fallen to the ground but a fiddle-de-Dee prediction. Still, if the metropolis has not exhibited any extraordinary * In 1S42, according to the prediction of Dr. Dee, an astrologer of the time of Quoen Elizabeth, London was to be destroyed by an earthquake. Hood here whimsically hits oif the half-earnest alarm which was considerably prevalent as the predicted day approached. THE EARTH-QUAKERS. 99 physical convulsion, its inhabitants have presented an astounding- Moral Phenomenon. Messrs. Howell and James best know whether they have vended or been asked for peculiarly warm fabrics — the court milliner alone can tell if she has made up any new-fashioned robes de nuit, a la bivouac, or coiffures adapted to a nocturnal fete champetre. The coaches, public and private, which have passed Hyde-park-corner have not perhaps been counted, but it is notorious that the railway carriages have been crammed with passengers, and the Gravesend steamers were almost swamped by the influx of rapid Earth-quakers, all rush- ing, sauve qui peut ! from the most ridiculous bugbear ever licked into shape by the vulgar tongue. Nor yet was the " Movement Party " composed exclusively of the lower classes ; but comprised hundreds of respectable Londoners, who never halted till they had gone beyond the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction, a flight unworthy even of Cockney ism, which implies at least a devoted attachment to London, and an unshaken confidence in the stability of St. Paul's. The Irish indeed, the poor blundering, bull-making Irish, had some excuse for their panic. The prophecy came from a prophet of their own religion, and appealed to some of then - strongest prejudices. They had perhaps even felt some precursory agita- tion not perceptible to us English — whilst the rebuilding of the ruined city promised a famous job for the Hibernian bricklayers and hodmen. Nay, after all, they only exhibited a truly national aptitude to become April fools in March. But for British back- bone Protestants, who have shouted " No Popery," and burnt Guy Fauxes, to adopt a Roman Catholic legend — for free and independent householders who would not move on for a live policeman, to move off, bag and baggage, at the dictum of a 100 WHIMSICALITIES. very dead monk — \\ li<> can doubt, after Bach a , that a Nincom Tax would be very productive! As a subjec for a comic picture, there could 1"; no richer for a modern Hogarth than the return of a party of Earth- quakers to the metropolis — that very metropolis which w have been knocked down, a> Robins would Bay, in one lot devoted City which Credulity had lately painted a> lying pros- trate on its Corporati >n ! In the mean time, good luck enables me to illustrate the great earthquake of 18i2 by a few letters obtained, no matter how, or at what expense. It is to be regretted thai type can '_: : - imitation of the hand-writings ; Buffice it thai one of the notes has actually been boob d ly a well-known collector, as a genuine aatograph v( St. Vitus. i. i. TO PETER CRISP, ESQ. Ivy-Colta;;c, fe\enoaks. Dear Brother, — You are of course aware of tin- awful \ imita- tion with which we arc threatened. As to F. and myself, business and duties will forbid our leaving London, but Robert and James will be hum'' for the usual fort- night at Easter, and we are naturally anxious to have the deal boys out of the way. Perhaps you will make room for them at the cottage ? I am, dear Brother, Yours affectionately, Margaret Faddy. THE ANSWER. Dear Sister, — As regards the awful visitation, the last time the dear boys were at the Cottage they literally turned it topsy- turvy. THE EARTH-QUAKERS. 101 As such, would rather say — keep Robert and James in town, and send me down the Earthquake. — Your loving brother, Peter Crisp. TO MESSRS. H. STALEY AND CO. Caraomile-street, City. Gentlemen, — As a retired tradesman of London to rural life, but unremittingly devoted to the metropolis and its public build- ings, am deeply solicitous to learn, on good mercantile authority, if the alarming statements as to a ruinous depression in the Cus- tom-house, St. Paul's, and other fabrics, stands on the undeniable basis of fact. An early answer will oblige, Your very obedient servant, John Stokes. Postscriptum. — My barber tells me the Monument has been done at Lloyd's. THE ANSWER. Sir, — In reply to your favour of the 14th inst., I beg to sub- join for your guidance the following quotations from a supplement to this day's " Price Current :" "March 16. — In Earthquakes — nothing stirring. Strong Ca- racca shocks partially inquired for, but no arrivals. Lisbons ditto. A small lot of slight Chichesters in bond have been brought for- ward, but obtained no offers. Houses continue firm, and the holders are not inclined to part with them. In Columns and Obelisks no alteration. Cathedrals as before. Steeples keep up, and articles generally are not so flat as anticipated by the specu- lators for a fall." — I am, sir, for Staley and Co., Your most obedient servant, Charles Stuckey. 102 WHIMSICALITIES. xo. in. TO DOCTOR DODOE, F.A.S., LONDON. Dear Doctor, — As you are an Antiquarian, and as such well acquainted, of course, with Ancient MSS. and Monkish Chronicles, perhaps you will be so obliging as to give me your opinion of the Earthquake predicted by Dr. Dee and the Monk of Dree, and whether it is mentioned in Doomsday Book, or Icon Basilisk, <>r any of the old astrological works. — Yours, dear Doctor, A n astasia Shrewsbury. THE ANSWER. Dear Madam, — 1 have no recollection of such a Prediction in any of the books you mention ; but I will make a point of looking into the old chronicles. In tin- moan time it strikes me, that if any <>ne should have foretold an Earthquake it was Ingulphw. I am, dear Madam, your very humble Servant, T. Dodge. NO. IV. TO MR. BENJAMIN II O C K I N . Barbican. Dear Ben, — About this here hearthquack. According to advice I rit to Addams who have bean to form Parts, and par- tickly sow Amerikey, witch is a shockin country, and as to wat is dun by the Natives in the like case, and he say they all run out of their Howses, and fall down on their nees and beat their brests like mad, and cross theirselves and call out to the Virgin, and all the popish Saints. Witch in course with us Christians is out of the question, so there we are agin at a non plush — and our minds perfecly misrable for want of making up. One minit it's go and the next minit stay, till betwixt town and country, I allmost wish I was no wheres at all. But how is minds to be made up when if you ax opinions, theres six of one and half a duzzon of the THE EARTH-QUAKERS. 103 tother- — for I make a pint of xtracting my customers sentiments pro and con, and its as ni a ti as can be. One books the tbing to cum off as sbure as tbe Darby or Hoax, while another suspends it till the Day of Judgment. And then he's upset by a new cum- mur in with the news that half St. Giles is cast down, and the inhabbifants all Irish howling, quite dredful, and belabbering their own buzzums and crossing themselves all over as if it saved the Good Friday buns from being swallered up. So there we are agin. All dubbious. As for Pawley he wont have it at anny price but says its clear agin Geology and tbe Wolcanic stratuses ; which may sarve well enuff to chaff about at Mekanical Innstitu- shuns but he wont gammon me tbat theres any sucb remmedy for a Hearth Quack as a basun of cbork — no nor a basim of gruel nayther. Well wat next. Why Podmore swares when he past tbe Duck of York he see his hiness anoddin at the Athenium Club as if he ment to drop in pervided he didnt pitch in to the Unitid Servis. So there we are agin. For my own share I own to sum misgivins and croakins, and says you, not without caws wen six fammilis in our street has gone off alreddy and three moia packin up in case. Besides witch Radley the Bilder have knocked off work at his new Howsis for fear of their gettin floored and missis Sims have declined her barril of tabel beer till arter the shakin. Wen things cum to sich aspects they look serus. But suppose in the end as Gubbins says its all a errer of that Dr. Dee — wat a set of Dee'd spooneys we shall look. So there we are agin. Then theres Books. It appear on reading the great Lisbon catstrophy were attendid by an uncommon rush of the See on the dry Land and they do say from Brighton as how the Breakers have reached as far as Wigney's Bank. That's 104 WHIMSICALITIES. in fever agin of the world losing its ballance. Howsomever I have twice had the shutters up, and once got as fur as the hos in the Shay cart for a move off. but was stopt by the Maid and the Prentis both axin a hole holliday for tho sixtenth and in sich a stile as convinced if I didnt grant they would take french leaves. And then who is to mind the house and Shop not to name two bills as cum doo on the verry day and made payable on tho premmises. Whereby if I dont go to smash in bodily I must in bisness. So there we are agin. In the interum theres my Wife who keeps wibratin between hopes and fears like the pendulum of a Dutch Clock and no more able to cum to a conclusion. But she inclines most to fever the dark side of the Picter and com- pares our state to Purgatory, to Dam someboddy with a sword hanging over his head by a single hair. As a nateral conscious she cant eat her wittels and hears rumblins and has sich tremlins she dont know the hearth's agitatings from her own. Being squeemisk besides, as is reckoned by her a verry bad sign, becos why theres a hearth pi ack in Robbinson Cruso who describe the motion to have made his Stomich as sick as anny one as is tost at See. Well in course her flutters aggravates mine till between our selves I'm reddy to bolt out of house and home like a Rabbit and go and squat in the open Fields. And wats to end all this sus- pense. Maybe a false alarm — and maybe hall to huttums indoors or else runnin out into a gapin naberhood and swallerd up in a crack. Whereby its my privit opinion we shall end by removing in time like the Rats from a fallin house even if we have to make shift with a bed in the garden, but witch is prefferable to an ever- lastin sleep in the great shake down that nater is preparing. Thats to say if the profesy keeps its word — for if it dont we are THE EARTH-QUAKERS. 105 better in our own beds than fleaing elsewhere. And praps ketch our deaths besides. Witch reminds me our Medical Doctor wont hear of hearthquackery and says theres no simtoms of erupshun. So there we are agin. But St. Pauls, and all Saint Giles's is pel contra. And to be sure as Pat Hourigan says of the Irish, ant we seven fifths of us hod carriers and bricklairs, and do you think as we'd leave the same, if we did'nt expect more brick and Hiding materials than we carry on our heads and sholders. Witch sar- tingly would strongly argy to the pint, if so be their being Roman Cathliks did'nt religiously bind one watever they beleave, to beleave quite the reverse. And talking of religion, if one lis- tened to it like a Christin, instid of dispondin it would praps say trust in Providence and shore up the j>rernisis. And witch may be the piusest and cheapest plan arter all. But bisness interrups Its the Gibbenses maid for an Am. Ive pumpt out on her that the fammily is goin to Windser for Change of air. And Widder Stradlin is goin to Richmond for change of Scene. Yes as much as I am goin to the Lands end for change of a shilling. And now I think on it there were a suspishus mark this morning on the Public House paper, namely Edgingtons advertisement about Tents. So arter all the open Air course of conduct — but annother cum in — Poor Mrs. Hobson, in the same perplext state as myself. To be sure as she say a slite shock as wouldnt chip a brass or iron man would shatter a chaney woman all to smash. But wats the use of her cummin to me to be advised wen I carnt advize my- self ? Howsomever a word or two from your Ben would go fur to convict me — Only beggin you to considder that Self Preseva- shun is the fust law of Nater, and the more binding as its a law 106 WHIMSICALITIES. a in.in is allowed to take into his own hands. As the crisus approach, a speedy answer will releave the mind of Your loving Brother, James Hockix. P.S. — Since riting the abuv the Reverend Mister Grumpier, as my wife sits under, have dropt in and confirmed the wust. He THE REV. MR. CRUMPLER. say its a Judgment on the Citty and by way of Cobberrobberation has named several partis in our naberhood as is to be ingulphed. That settles us, and in course will excuse cuttin short. THE EARTH-QUAKERS. 107 NO. V. TO MRS. **** No. 9, Street. Madam, — It may seem stooping to take up a dropped corre- spondence, but considering that an Earthquake ought to bury all animosities, and enjoying the prospect of an eternal separation Christian charity induces to say I am agreeable on my part for the breach between us to be repaired by a shaking of hands. I am, Madam, Yours, &c, Belinda Huffin. THE ANSWER. Madam, — I trust I have as much Christian charity as my neighbours — praps more — and hope I have too much true religion to believe in judicious astronomy. And if I did, hava never heard that earthquakes was remarkable for repairing breaches. When every thing else shakes, I will shake hands, but not be- fore. I am, Madam, Yours, t dying words which her poor mother had been unable to utter. In her mind's eye she was still watch- ing those dreadful contortions which disfigured the features of her dying parent during her convulsive efforts to speak — she still saw those desperate" attempts to write, and then that leaden fall of the. cold hand, and the long scratch of the random pencil that broke off for ever and ever the mysterious revelation. A more romantic or ambitious nature would perhaps have fancied that the undi- vulged secret referred to her own birth ; a more avaricious spirit might have dreamed that the disclosure related to hidden trea- sure ; and a more suspicious character might have even supposed that death had suppressed some confession of undiscovered guilt. But the plain matter-of-fact mind of Mary Mullins was incapa- ble of such speculations. Instead of dreaming, therefore, of an airy coronet, or ideal bundles of bank-notes, or pots full of gold and silver coin, or a disinterred skeleton, she only stitched on, and then wept, and then stitched on again at the motley coverlet, wondering amongst her other vague wonders why no little dirty boys, or ragged little girls, came as usual for penny candles and rushlights. The truth being that the gossips had considerately muffled up the shop-bell, for vulgar curiosity had caused a consi- derable influx of extra custom, so that thanks to another precau- THE GRIMSBY GHOST. 121 tion in suppressing noises, the little chandler's shop presented the strange anomaly of a roaring trade carried on in a whisper. Owing to this circumstance it was nearly midnight before the shop-shutters were closed, the street door was locked, the gas turned off, and the sympathising females prepared to sit down to a light, sorrowful supper of tripe and onions. In the mean time the candles in the little back parlour had burned down to the socket, into which one glimmering wick at last suddenly plunged, and was instantly drowned in a warm bath of liquid grease. This trivial incident sufficed to arouse Miss Mullins from her tearful stupor ; she quietly put down the patch- work, and without speaking, passed into the shop, which was now pitch-dark, and with her hand began to grope for a bunch of long sixes, which she knew hung from a particular shelf. In- deed, she could blindfolded have laid her hand on any given article in the place ; but her fingers had no sooner closed on the cold clammy tallow, than with a loud shrill scream that might have awakened the dead — if the dead were ever so awakened — she sank down on the sandy floor in a strong fit ! " La ! how ridiculous ! What from only feeling a tallow- candle ?" No, ma'am ; but from only seeing her mother, in her habit as she lived, standing at her old favourite post in the shop ; that is to say, at the little desk, between the great black coffee-mill and the barrel of red-herrino-s. CHAPTER V. " What ! a Ghost — a regular Apparition ?" Yes, sir, a disembodied spirit, but clothed in some ethereal 6 122 WHIMSICALITIES. substance, not tangible, but of such a texture as to bo visible to the ocular sense. "Bali! ocular nonsense! All moonshine! Ghosts be hang- ed I — no such things in nature — too late in the day for them, by a whole century— quite exploded — wen! out with the old wii No, no, sir, the ghost- haw had their day, and were all laid long ago, before the wood pavement What should they come for? The potters and the colliers may rise for higher wages, and the chartists may rise for reform, and Joseph Sturge may rise for his health, and the sun may rise, and the bread may rise, and the sea may rise, and the rising generation may rise, and all to some good or bad purpose ; but that the dead and buried should rise, only to make one's hair rise, is mure than I can credit." They may have some messages or errands to the living. "Yes, and can't deliver them for want of breath ; or can't execute them for the want of physical force. Just consider your- self a ghost " Excuse me. " Pshaw ! I only meant for the sake of argument. I say, suppose yourself a ghost. "Well, if you come up out of your grave to serve a friend, how are you to help him ? And if it's an enemy, what's the use of appearing to him if you can't pitch into him P "Why, at least it is showing your Spirit. " Humph ! that's true. Well, proceed." CHAPTER VI. There is nothing more startling to the human nerves than a female scream. Not a make-believe squall, at a spider or a THE GRIMSBY GHOST 123 mouse, but a real, shrill, sharp, ear-piercing shriek, as if from the very pitchpipe of mortal fear. Nothing approaches it in thrilling effect, except the railway whistle ; which, indeed, seems only to come from the throat of a giantess, instead of that of an ordinary woman. The sudden outcry from the little shop had therefore an ap- palling effect on the company in the little back parlour, who for the moment were struck as dizzy and stupified by that flash of sound, as if it had been one of lightning. Their first impulse was to set up a chorus of screams, as nearly as possible in the same key ; the next, to rush in a body to the shop, where they found the poor orphan, as they called her, insensible on the floor. The fit was a severe one ; but, luckily the gossips were experi- enced in all kinds of swoons, hysterics, and faintings, and used each restorative process so vigourously, burning, choking, pinch- ing, slapping, and excoriating, that in a very few minutes the patient was restored to consciousness, and a world of pain. It was a long time, however, before she became collected enough to give an account of the Apparition — that she had seen her Mother, or at least her Ghost, standing beside her old desk ; that the figure had turned towards her, and had made the same dreadful faces as before, as if endeavouring to speak to her — a communication which took such effect on the hearers that, with one exception, they immediately put on their bonnets and departed ; leaving old Mrs. Dadley, who was stone deaf, and had only imperfectly heard the story, to sleep with Miss Mullins in what was doomed thence- forward to be a Haunted House. The night, nevertheless, passed over in quiet ; but towards morning the ghostly Mother appeared again to the daughter in a dream, and with the same contortions of her mouth attempted to speak her mind, but with the same ill 1 24 WHIMSICALITIES. success. The secret, whatever it was, seemed irrevocably com- mitted to Silence and Eternity. In the mean time, ere breakfast, the walking of Widow Mulhns had (ravelled from one end of Grimsby to the other; and for the rest of the day the little chandler's shop at the corner of Swivel-street was surrounded by a mob of men, women, and children who came to gaze at the Haunted House — not without some dim anticipations of perhaps seeing the Ghost at one of the windows. Few females in the position of Mary Mullins would have remained under its roof; but to all invitations from well-meaning people she turned a deaf ear, she had been born and bred on the premises — the little back-parlour was her home — and from long service at the counter, she had become — to alter a single letter in a line of Dibdm's — All one as a piece of the shop. As to the Apparition, if it ever appeared again, she said, " the Ghost was the Ghost of her own Parent, and would not harm a hair of her head. Perhaps, after the funeral, the Spirit would rest in peace : but at any rate, her mind was made up, not to leave the house — no, not till she was carried out of it like her poor dear Mother." CHAPTER VII. " And pray, Mr. Author, what is your own private opinion ? Do you really believe in Ghosts, or that there was any truth in the story of this Grimsby Apparition ?" Heaven knows, madam ! In ordinary cases I should have ascribed such a tale to a love of the marvellous ; but, as I before THE GRIMSBY GHOST. 125 stated, Miss Mullins was not prone to romance, and had never read a work of fiction in her whole life. Again, the vision might have heen imputed to some peculiar nervous derangement of the system, like the famous spectral illusions that haunted the Berlin Bookseller, — but then the young woman was of a hardy consti- tution, and in perfect health. Finally, the Phantom might have been set down as a mere freak of fancy, the offspring of an ex- cited imagination, whereas she had no more imagination than a cow. Her mind was essentially common-place, and never travel- led beyond the routine duties and occurrences of her every-day life. Her very dreams, which she sometimes related, were re- marked as being particularly prosaic and insipid ; the wildest of them having only painted a swarm of overgrown cockroaches, in the shop-drawer, that was labelled " Powder Blue." Add to all this, that her character for veracity stood high in her native town ; and on the whole evidence the verdict must be in favour of the supernatural appearance. " "Well — I will never believe in Ghosts !" No madam. Not in this cheerful drawing-room, whilst the bright sunshine brings out in such vivid colours the gorgeous pat- tern of the Brussels carpet — no, nor whilst such a fresh westerly air blows in at the open window, and sets the Columbines a-danc- ing in that China vase. But suppose, as King John says, that The midnight bell Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth, Sound one unto the drowsy race of night : If this same were a churchyard, where we stand — the grass damp — the wind at east — the night pitch dark — a strangely ill odour, and doubtful whistlings and whisperings wafted on the fitful gust. l26 whimsicalitib8. ■• wvii.m. ;— ' Why, then, madam, instead of disbelieving i would be ready, r Bright and the chill of the air — '• To '1" what, -ir : — " To swallow the first Bpirits thai off CHAPTER VIII. The second night, at the same hour, the same Melodran •• domestic inter* »t" was repeal ■ !, excepl thai this time the maternal Phantom confronted hex daughter >'n the landing-place at the top of the Btairs. Another fainting-fit was the i quence ; but before her .-• rted her, the | rcreature had time to ol identical writhings and twitchin distorted mouth, the convulsive stru speak which had so appalled her, whilst her departed parent was still in the flesh. Luckily, the gossips, backed by two or three she skeptics, had ventured to return to the Haunted House, where they were Btartled as before by a shrill feminine scream, and again found Miss Mullins on the ground in a Btate of insensibility. The fit, however, was as fan atable as the former one, and the usual strong measures having been promptly resorted to, she again became alive to external impressions, — and in particular that a pint of aquafortis, or something like it, was going down her throat the wrong way — that her little-finger had been in a hand-vie. — her temples had been scrubbed with sand and cayenne pepper, <.r some other such stimulants, and the tip of her nose had been scorched with a salamander or a burning feather. A conscious- THE GRIMSBY GHOST 127 ness, in short, that she was still in this lower sphere, instead of the realms of bliss. The story she told on her recovery was little more than a second edition of the narrative of the preceding night. The Ghost had appeared to her, made all sorts of horrible wry mouths, and after several vain attempts at utterance, all ended in a con- vulsive gasp, had suddenly clasped its shadowy hands around its throat, and then clapped and pressed them on its palpitating bosom, as if actually choking or bursting with the suppressed communication. Of the nature of the secret she did not offer the slightest conjecture ; for the simple reason that she had formed none. In all her days she had never attempted successfully to guess at the commonest riddle, and to solve such an enigma as her mother had left behind her was, therefore, quite out of the question. The gossips were less diffident ; their Wonder was not of the Passive, but of the Active kind, which goes under the alias of Curiosity. Accordingly, they speculated amongst them- selves without stmt or scruple, on the matter that the Spirit yearned so anxiously to reveal ; — for instance, that it related to money, to mmder, to an illegitimate child, to adulterated articles, to a forged will, to a favourite spot for burial ; nay, that it concerned matters of public interest, and the highest affairs of the state, one old crone expressing her decided conviction that the Ghost had to divulge a plot against the life of the Queen. To this excitement as to the Spectre and its mystery, the con- duct of the Next of Kin afforded a striking contrast : instead of joining in the conjectural patchwork of the gossips, she silently took up the old variegated coverlet, and stitched, and sighed, and stitched on, till the breaking up of the party left her at liberty to go to bed. L28 WHIM8ICALITJE8, ■• And did Bhe dream again of the Oh , Miss; butwith this difference; that the pucl mouth distinctly pronounced the word Mary, and then so and twisted oul a few more sounds or syllables, bul in a gibberish as unintelligible as the chatter of a monkey, or an Irvingite sen- tence of the Unknown Tongue. CHAPTER IX. The third night came— the third midnight— and with it the Apparition. It made the same frightful grimaces, and, Btrange to relate, contrived to pronounce in a hollow whisper tin- very word which it had uttered in M dream. Hut the jumble of inarticulate Bounds was wanting— the jaws gaped, and the ■ visibly struggled, but then- was a dead, yes, literally a dead silei On this occasion, how daughter «. I i « 1 not faint away ; she bad privately taken care to be at the hour of twelve in the midst of her female friends, and her Mother appeared to her in the doorway between the little back-parlour and the shop. The Shadow was only revealed to herself. One of the gossip>, i: declared afterwards that she ha. I Been widow Mulling, "as like as a likeness cut out in whit" paper, but so transparent that she could look right through her body at the chaney Jemmy Jessam) on the mantel-piece." But her story, though accepted as a true bill by nine-tenth tiic inhabitants of Grimsby, was not honoured by any one who was present that night in the little back-parlour. The two ing green eyes of Miss Mullins had plainly been turned, not on the fire-place, but towards the door, and her two bony foiv-fin^ers THE GRIMSBY GHOST. 129 had wildly pointed in the same direction. Nevertheless, the more positive the contradiction, the more obstinately the story- teller persevered in her statement, still adding to its circumstanti- alities, till in process of time she affirmed that she had not only seen the Ghost, but that she knew its secret ; namely, that the undertaker and his man had plotted between them to embezzle the body, and to send it up in a crate, marked " Chaney — this side upwards," to Mr. Guy in the Borough. CHAPTER X. On the fourth uight the Ghost appeared at the usual time, with its usual demeanour, — but at the shop instead of the par- lour-door, close to the bundle of new mops. On the fifth, behind the counter, near the till. On the sixth night, again behind the counter, but at the other end of it beside the great scales. On the seventh night which closed the day of the funeral, in the little back-parlour. It had been hoped and predicted, that after the interment, the Spirit would cease to walk — whereas at midnight, it re-appeared, as aforesaid, in the room behind the shop, between the table and the window. On the eighth night it became visible again at the old desk between the great black coffee-mill and the herring barrel. In the opinion of Miss Mullins, the Spectre had likewise crossed her path sundry times in the course of the day — at least she had noticed a sort of film or haze that interposed itself before sundry objects — for instance, the great stone-bottle of vinegar in the shop and the framed print of " the Witch of Endor calling up Samuel," in the back room. On all these occasions the Phan- 6* 130 WHIMSICALITIES. twin had exhibited the Mine argent impulse to Bpeak, with the Bame spasmodic action of the features, and if possible, a ^t ill more intense expression of anxiety and anguish. The despairing gestures and in. >t !■ •!)■> of the visionary arms and hands were more and in. it-.- vehement. It was a tragic pantomime, t>> have driven any other spectator raving mad ! Even tin- dull phlegmatic nature of Mi b Mullins at last b to be Btirred and excited by the reiteration of so awful a : and her curiosity, slowly bul surely, became interested in the undivulged secret which could thus keep a disembodied spirit from it^ appointed resting-place, the weighty necessity which could alone recall a departed soul to earth, after it had <>n. perienced the deep calm, and qniet of the grave. The row of ill.- mourner h fretting—- she could no Longer eat, drink, or sleep, or Bit still, — the patchwork quilt was thrust away in a corner, and as t.> the Bhop, th>' little dirty boy, and the little ragged girl were <.Kli._--.-d t" repeal their retail orders thrice over t.> the bewildered creature behind the counter, who even then was apl to go t-. the wrong box, can, or canniater, — to Berve them out train-oil instead of treacle, and soft- soap in lieu of Dorset butter, Whal wonder a rumour went throug msby that she was crazy} But instead of going out of her mind, she had rather rum., into it, and fur the first strange time was ex< i her untrained faculties, on one of the most perplexing mysteries that had ever puzzled a human brain. No marvel, then, that she gave change twice over for the same sixpence, and sent little Sniggers home with a bar of soap instead of a stick of brim- stone. In fact, betw< en 1; r own absence of mind, and the pre- sence of mind of her customers, she sold so many good barj THE GRIMSBY GHOST. 131 that the purchasers began to wish that a Deaf and Dumb Ghost would haunt every shop in the town ! CHAPTER XL According to the confession of our first and last practitioners, the testimony of medical works, and the fatal results of most cases of Trismus, there is no surgical operation on the human subject so difficult as the picking of a Locked Jaw. No skeleton key has yet been invented by our body-smiths that will open the mouth thus spasmodically closed. The organ is in what the Americans call an everlasting-fix — the poor man is booked — and you may at once proceed to put up the rest of his shutters. This difficulty, however, only occurs in respect to the physical frame. For a spiritual lock-jaw there is a specific mode of treat- ment, which, according to tradition, has generally proved success- ful in overcoming the peculiar Trismus to which all Apparitions are subject, and which has thus enabled them to break that me- lancholy silence, which must otherwise have prevailed in their intercourse with the living. The modus operandi is extremely simple, and based on an old-fashioned rule, to which, for some obscure reason, ghosts as well as good little boys seem bound to adhere, i. e., not to speak till they are spoken to. It is only ne- cessary, t erefore, if you wish to draw out a dumb Spirit, to utter the first word. Strange to say, this easy and ancient prescription never occurred to either Miss Mullins or her gossips till the ninth day, when Mrs. Humphreys, happening to stumble on the old rule in her son's spelling-book, at the same time hit on the true cause of the silence of the " Mysterious Mother." It was immediately determined L32 WHIMSICALITIES that the same eight, or al least the very tir>t time the Spii appeared, it .-liould be Bpoken to; the very terms of the filial address, like those of a Royal Speech, b ing agreed on b band, at the Bame council. Whether the orator, the appointed hour and the expected auditor considered, would rememb , admitted doubt: however it was learned, by rote, and having fortified herself wil of cordial and ackers having fortified themselves with two, the trembling Mary awaited the awful interview, conning over to herself the concerted formula, which to assist ber memory had been com- mitted to paper. " Muther, if so be you ar my muther, and as Buch being B] to, sj ir now and ever after hold your Tui CHAPTER Ml. One — Two — Three — Four — Fiv< — Six — Seven — Eight — —Ten— Eleven— TWEL"\ E! The Hour was come and the Clhost. True to the Last >tr. .k.- of the clock, it aj pe a figure projected from a magic lan- t rn. "ii the curtain at the foot of the bed — for, through certain private reasons of her own. Miss Muilins had resolved nol only to Lone, but t ■ r — as the French ladies do — in her chambre a coucher — Perhaps she did not care that any < ar but her. own should receive a disclosure which might involve matters of the most delicate nature: a secret, that might per- chance affect the reputation of her late parent, or her own position. However, it was in solitude and from her pillow, that with starting eyeballs, and outstretched arms, she gazed for the ninth time on the silent Phantom, which had assumed a list THE GRIMSBY GHOST. 133 expression, and an expectant attitude, as if it had been invisibly present at the recent debate, and had overheard the composition of the projected speech. But that speech was never to be spoken. In vain poor Mary tried to give it utterance ; it seemed to stick, like an apothecary's powder, in her throat — to her fauces, her pa- late, her tongue, and her teeth, so that she could not get it out of her mouth. The Ghost made a sign of impatience. Poor Mary gasped. The Spirit frowned and apparently stamped with its foot. Poor Mary made another violent effort to speak, but only gave a sort of tremulous croak. The features of the Phantom again began to work — the mus- cles about the mouth quivered and twitched. Poor Mary's did the same. The whole face of the Apparition was drawn and puckered by a spasmodic paroxysm, and poor Mary felt that she was imitating the contortions, and even that .hideous grin, the risus sardonicus, which had inspired her with such horror. At last with infinite difficulty, she contrived by a desperate effort to utter a short ejaculation — but brief as it was it sufficed to break the spell. The Ghost, as if it had only awaited the blessed sound of- one single syllable from the human voice, to release its own vocal organs from their mysterious thraldom, instantly spoke. But the words - are worthy of a separate chapter. 134 WHIMSICALITIES CHAPTER Mil. u J£ary/ it arnU booked — but there's tuppence for suvl • it 1/ u mlii r nine I n — "It is much to the Discredit of Ghosts," — says Johannes I -ui - tennis, in his "Treat seof Apparitions," — "that they doe so commonly re- visit the Earth on such trivial Errands as would hardly justify a Journey from London to fork, mnoh leas from one World to another. Grave and weighty ought to 1»' the Matter that can awaken a Spirit from the deep Slumbers of the Tomb : solemn and potent must he the Spell, to induce the liberated Soul, divorced with such mortal Agony from its human Clothing, to put on merely such flimsy Atoms, as may render it visible to the Eye of Flesh. For neither willingly ii-t wantonly doth the Spirit of a .Man forsake its sabterrane Dwelling, in the awful Question by the Ghost of Samuel to the Witch of Bndor— " W I on disquieted M«-, EPIGRAM. 135 and called Me up? " And yet, forsooth, a walking Phantom shall break the Bonds of Death, and perchance the Bonds of Hell to boot, to go on a Mes- sage, which concerns but an Individual, and not a great one either, or at most a Family, nor yet one of Note, — for Example, to disclose the lurking Place of a lost Will, or of a Pot of Money in Dame Perkins her back Yard, - -Whereas such a Supernatural Intelligencer hath seldom been vouchsafed to reveal a State Plot — to prevent a Royal Murther, or avert the Shipwrack of an whole Empire. Wherefore, I conclude, that many or most Ghost Stories have had their rise in the Self-Conceit of vain ignorant People, or the Arrogance of great Families, who take Pride in the Belief, that their mundane Affairs are of so important a Pitch, as to perturb departed Souls, even amidst the Pains of Purgatory, or the Pleasures of Paradise." (Epigram ON THE ART-UNIONS. That Picture-Raffles will conduce to nourish Design, or cause good Colouring to flourish, Admits of logic-chopping and wise sawing, But surely Lotteries encourage Drawing ! L36 3 'ilMiirk 3 n li . BOUKCE OF THE MUCH. No ubt the pleasure is as great, < >f being cheat. .1 as to oheat II' moras. The history of human-kind to trace Since Eve — the first of dopes — our doom unriddled, A certain portion of the human race % Has certainly a taste for being diddled. Witness the famous Mississippi dreams ! A rage that time seems only to redouble — The Banks, Joint-Stocks, and all the flimsy schemes, For rolling in Pactolian streams, That cost our modern rocnies so little trouble. A BLACK JOB 137 No matter what, — to pasture cows on stubble, To twist sea-sand into a solid rope, To make French bricks and fancy bread of rubble, Or light with gas the whole celestial cope — Only propose to blow a bubble, And Lord ! what hundreds will subscribe for soap ! Soap ! — it reminds me of a little tale, Tho' not a pig's, the hawbuck's glory, When rustic games and merriment prevail — But here's my story : Once on a time — no matter when — A knot of very charitable men Set up a Philanthropical Society, Professing on a certain plan, To benefit the race of man, And in particular that dark variety Which some suppose inferior — as in vermin, The sable is to ermine, As smut to flour, as coal to alabaster, As crows to swans, as soot to driven snow, As blacking, or as ink to " milk below," Or yet a better simile to show, As ragman's dolls to images in plaster ! However, as is usual in our city, They had a sort of managing Committee, A board of grave responsible Directors — A Secretary, good at pen and ink — A Treasurer, of course, to keep the chink, And quite an army of Collectors ! Not merely male, but female duns, Young, old, and middle-aged — of all degrees — With many of those persevering ones, Who mite by mite would beg a cheese ! And what might be their aim ? To rescue Afric's sable sons from fetters — To save their bodies from the burning shame Of branding with hot letters — 138 whimsicalities. Their shoulders from the cowhide's bloody strokes, Their Decks from iron \ okes .' To end or mitigate the ills of slavery, The Planter's avarice, the Driver's knavery .' To school the heathen Negroes and enlighten To polish up and brighten 'em, And make them worthy of eternal bliss? Why, no — the simple end and aim was this — Reading a well-known proverb much amiss — To wash and whiten 'em! They look'd so ugly in their sable hides ; So dark, so dingy, like a grubby lot Of sooty sweeps, or collier-, and besides, However the poor elves Might wash themsel Nobody knew if they were clean or not — On Nature's fairness they were quite a blot! Not to forget more Berious complaints That even while they joined in pious hymn, So black they were and grim, In fare and limb, They look'd like Devils, though they sang like Saints! The thing was undeniable! They wanted washing! not that slight ablution To which the skin of the White Man is liable, Merely removing transient pollution — But good, hard, honest, energetic rubbing And scrubbing, Sousing each sooty frame from heels to head With stiff, strong, saponaceous lather, And pails of water — hottish rather, But not so boiling as to turn 'em red! So spoke the philanthropic man Who laid, and hateb'd, and nursed the plan — And oh ! to view its glorious consummation ! The brooms and mops, The tubs and slops, The baths and brushes in full operation ! A BLACK JOB. 139 To see each Crow, or Jim, or John, Go in a raven and come out a swan ! While fair as Cavendishes, Vanes, and Russels, Black Venus rises from the soapy surge, And all the little Niggerlings emerge As lily-white as mussels. Sweet was the vision — but alas ! However in prospectus bright and sunny, To bring such "visionary scenes to pass One thing was requisite, and that was — money ! Money, that pays the laundress aDd her bills, For socks and collars, shirts and frills, Cravats and kerchiefs — money, without which The negroes must remain as dark as pitch ; A thing to make all Christians sad and shivery, To think of millions of immortal souls Dwelling in bodies black as coals, And living — so to speak — in Satan's livery ! Money — the root of evil, — dross, and stuff ! ' But oh ! how happy ought the rich to feel, Whose means enabled them to give enough To blanch an African from head to heel! How blessed — yea thrice blessed — to subscribe Enough to scour a tribe ! ° While he whose fortune was at best a brittle one, Although he gave but pence, how sweet to know, He helped to bleach a Hottentot's great toe, Or little one ! Moved by this logic, or appall'd, To persons of a certain turn so proper, The money came when call'd, In silver, gold, and copper, Presents from " Friends to blacks," or foes to whites, " Trifles," and " offerings," and " widow's mites," Plump legacies, and yearly benefactions, With other gifts And charitable lifts, Printed in lists and quarterly transactions. 140 WHIMSICALITIES. As thus— Elislia Brettel, An iron kettle. The Dowager Lady Scannel, A piece of flannel. Rebecca Pope, A bar of soap. The Blisses 1 towels, Half-a-dozen towels. The Master Rush's, Two scrubbing-brushes. .Mr. T. Groom, A stable broom, And Mrs. Grubb, A tub. Great were the sums collected ! And great results in consequence expected. But somehow, in the teeth of all endeavour, According to reports At yearly court--. The blacks, cont'onud them ! were as black as ever ! Yes ! spite of all the water sous'd aloft, Soap, plain and mottled, hard and soft, Soda and pearl^h, huckaback and sand, Brooms, brushes, palm of hand, And scourers in the office, strong and clever, In spite of all the tubbing, rubbing, scrubbing, The routing and the grubbing, The blacks, confound them, were as black as ever ! In fact, in his perennial speech, The Chairman ownd the niggers did not bleach, As he had hoped, From being washed and soaped, A circumstance he named with grief and pity; But still he had the happiness to say, For self and the Committee, By persevering in the present way, A BLACK JOB. 141 And scrubbing at the Blacks from day to day, Although he could not promise perfect white, From certain symptoms that had come to light, He hoped in time to get them gray ! Lull'd by this vague assurance, The friends and patrons of the sable tribe Continued to subscribe, And waited, waited on with much endurance — Many a frugal sister, thrifty daughter — Many a stinted widow, pinching mother — With income by the tax made somewhat shorter, Still paid implicitly her crown per quarter, Only to hear as ev'ry year came round, That Mr. Treasurer had spent her pound ; And as she loved her sable brother, That Mr. Treasurer must have another ! But, spite of pounds or guineas, Instead of giving any hint Of turning to a neutral tint, The plaguy negroes and their piccaninnies Were still the colour of the bird that caws — Only some very aged souls Showing a little gray upon their polls, Like daws ! However, nothing dashed By such repeated failures, or abash'd, The Court still met ; — the Chairman and Directors, The Secretary, good at pen and ink, The worthy Treasurer, who kept the chink, And all the cash collectors ; With hundreds of that class, so kindly credulous, Without whose help, no charlatan alive, Or Bubble Company could hope to thrive, Or busy Chevalier, however sedulous — Those good and easy innocents in fact, Who willingly received chaff for corn, As pointed out by Butler's tact, Still find a secret pleasure in the act Of beinir pluck'd and shorn ! 142 WHIMSICALITIES. However, in long hundreds there they were, Thronging the hot, and close, and dusty court, To hear once more addresses from the Chair, And regular Report Alas! concluding in the usual strain, That what with everlasting wear and tear, The scrubbing brushes hadn't got a hair — The brooms — mere stumps — would never serve again — The soap was gone, the flannels all in shreds, The towels worn to threads, The tubs and pails too shattered to be mended — And what was added with a deal of pain, But as accounts correctly would explain, Tho' thirty thousand pounds had been expended — The Blackamoors had still been washed iu vain! "In fact, the negroes were as black as ink, Yet, still as the Committee dared to think, And hoped the proposition was not rash, A rather free expenditure of cash — " But ere the prospect could be made more sunny — Up jump'd a little, lemon coloured man, And with an eager stammer, thus began, In angry earnest, though it sounded funny: " What ! More subscriptions ! No — no — no — not I ! You have had time — time — time enough to try! They won't come white! then why — why — why — wyh— why, More money .''' "Why!" said the Chairman, with an accent bland, And gentle waving of his dexter hand, " Why must wo have more dross, and dirt, and dust, More filthy lncre, in a word, more gold ? — The why, sir, very easily is told, Because Humanity declares we must ! We've scrubb'd the negroes till we've neariy bttUuj '»ra And finding that we cannot wash them white. But still their nigritude offends th« sighi We mean to gild 'em .' " 143 ffltz. <0nriittn. A HORTICULTURAL ROMANCE, CHAPTER I. What sweet thoughts she thinks Of violets and pinks. L. Hunt. Each flow'r of tender stalk whose head, tho' gay Carnation, purple, azure, or speck'd with gold, Hung drooping unsustain'd, them she upstays. Milton. How does my lady's garden grow ? Old Ballad. Her knots disorder'd, and her wholesome herbs Swarming with caterpillars. Richard II. I love a Garden ! " And so do I, and I, and I," exclaim in chorus all the he and she Fellows of the Horticultural Society. " And I," whispers the philosophical Ghost of Lord Bacon. " And I," sings the poetical Spirit of Andrew Marvel. " Et moi aussi," chimes in the Shade of Delille. " And I," says the Spectre of Sir William Temple, echoed by Pope, and Darwin, and a host of the English Poets, the sonorous voice of Milton resounding above them all. " And I," murmurs the apparition of Boccaccio. " And I, and I," sob two Invisibles, remembering Eden. " And I," shouts Mr. George Robins, thinking of Covent Garden. " And I," says Mr. Simpson — formerly of Vauxhall. 144 WHIMSICALITIES. "And I," sing ten thousand female voices, all in unison, as if drilled by Ilullali, — but really, thinking in concert of the Gardens of Gul. [What a string I have touched !] "We all love a Garden!" Bhout millions of human voices, male, female, and juvenile, bass, tenor, and treble. From the East, the West, the North, and the South, the universal burden swells on the wind, as if declaring in a roll of thunder that we all love a Garden. But no — one solitary voice — thai of Hamlet's Ghostly Father, exclaims in a sepulchral tone, " I don't !" No matter — we are all but unanimous ; and so, Gentle Readers, I will at once introduce to you my Heroine — a woman after your own hearts — for Bhe is a Gardiner byname and a Gardiner by nature. CHAPTER II. At Number Nine, Paradise Place, so called probably because every house stands in the middle of a little garden, lives Mrs. Gardiner. I will not describe her, for looking through the green rails in front of her premises, or over the dwarf wall at the back, you may see her any day, in an old poke bonnet, expanded into a gipsy-hat, and a pair of man's gloves, tea-green at top, but mouldy-brown in the fingers, raking, digging, hoeing, rolling, trowelling, pruning, nailing, watering, or otherwise employed in her horticultural and floricultural pursuits. Perhaps, as a neigh- bour, or acquaintance, you have already seen her, or conversed with her, over the wooden or brick-fence, and have learned in answer to your kind inquiries about her health, that she was MRS. GARDINER. 145 pretty well, only sadly in want of rain, or quite charming, but almost eaten up by vermin. For Mrs. Gardiner speaks the true " Language of Flowers," not using their buds and blossoms as symbols of her own passions and sentiments, according to the Greek fashion, but lending words to the wants and affections of her plants. Thus, when she says that she is " dreadful dry," and longs for a good soaking, it refers not to a defect of moisture in her own clay, but to the parched condition of the soil in her par- terres : or if she wishes for a regular smoking, it is not from any unfeminine partiality to tobacco, but in behalf of her blighted geraniums. In like manner she sometimes confesses herself a little backward, without allusion to any particular branch, or twin-, of her education, or admits herself to be rather forward, quite irrelevantly to her behavior with the other sex. Without this key her expressions would often be unintelligible to the hearer, and sometimes indecorous, as when she told her neighbour, the bachelor at Number Eight, a propos of a plum-tree, that " she was growing quite wild, and should come some day over his wall." Others again, unaware of her peculiar phraseology, would give her credit, or discredit, for an undue share of female vanity, as well as the most extraordinary notions of personal beauty. " Well," she said one day, " what do you think of Mrs. Mapleson ?" meaning that lady's hydrangea. " Her head's the biggest — but I look the bluest." In a similar style she delivered herself as to certain other sub- jects of the rivalry that is universal amongst the suburban vota- ries of Flora : converting common blowing and growing sub- stantives into horticultural verbs, as thus : " Miss Sharp crocussed before me — but I snow-dropped sooner than any one in the Row." 146 WHIMSICALITIES. But this identification of herself with the objects of her love was not confined to her plants. It extended to every thing that was connected with her hobby — her gardening implements, her garden-rails, and her garden-wall. For example, Bhe complained once that she could not rake, she had lost so many of her teeth — Bhe told the carpenter the boys climbed over her so, that he should stick her all over tenter-hooks — and sent word to her landlord, a builder, th- snails bred so between her bricks, that he must positively come and new point her. " Phoo ! phoo !" exclaims an incredulous Gentle Reader — " she is all a phantom I" Quite the reverse, sir. She is as real and as substantial as Mrs. Baines. Ask Mr. Cherry, the newsman, or his boy, John Loder, either of whom will tell you — on oath if you require it — that he serves her every Saturday with the Gardiner's Chronicle. CHAPTER III. My first acquaintance with Mrs. Gardiner was formed when she was " in populous city pent," and resided in a street in the very heart of the city. In fact, in Bucklersbury. But even there her future bent developed itself as far as her limited ways and means permitted. On the leads over the back warehouse, she had what she delighted to call shrubbery : viz. — A Persian Lilac in a tea-chest, A Guelder Rose in a washing-tub, A Laurustinus in a butter -tub, A Monthly Rose in a Portugal grape-jar, and about a score of geraniums, fuchsias, and similar plants in pots. But besides shrubs and flowers, she cultivated a few vege- MRS. GARDINER. 147 tables — that is to say, slie grew her own sallads of " mustard and crest" in a brown pan ; and in sundry crockery vessels that would hold earth, but not water, she reared some half dozen of Scarlet Runners, which in the proper season, you might see climbing up a series of string ladders, against the back of the house, as if to elope with the Mignionette from its box in the second-floor window. Then indoors, on her mantel-shelf, she had hya- cinths and other bulbs in glasses — and from a hook in the ceiling, in lieu of a chandelier, there was suspended a wicker-basket, containing a white biscuitware garden-pot, with one of those pen- dant plants, which as she described their habits and sustenance, are " fond of hanging themselves, and living on hare." But these experiments rather tantalized than satisfied her passion. Ware- house-leads, she confessed, made, but indifferent gardens or shrubberies, whilst the London smoke was fatal to the complexion of her mop rose and the fragrance of her southernwood, or in her own words, " I blow dingy — and my old man smells sutty." Once, indeed, she pictured to me her beau ideal of " a little Paradise," the main features of which I forget, except that with reference to a cottage ornee, she was to have "a jessamy in front, and a creeper up her back." As to the garden, it was to have walks, and a lawn of course, with plenty of rich loam, that she might lay herself out in squares, and ovals, and diamonds — butter- tubs and tea-chests were very well for town, but she longed for elbow-room, and earth to dig, to rake, to hoe, and trowel up, — in short, she declared, if she Avas her own missis, she would not sleep another night before she had a bed of her own — not with any reference to her connubial partner, but she longed, she did, for a bit of ground, she did not care how small. A wish that her 148 WHIMSICALITIES. husband at last gratified by taking a bit of ground, he did not care how -mall, in Bunhill Fields. The widow, selling off the town house, immediately retired to a villa in the country, and 1 had lost Bighl of her for some months when one May morning taking a walk in the Buburbs, whilst passing in front of Number Nine, Paradise Place, I over- heard a rather harsh voice exclaiming, as it' in expostulation with a refractory donkey — "Come up! Why don't you come up ." It was Mrs. Gardiner, reproaching the tardiness of her b K I immediately accosted her, bul as she did not recognise me, det srmined to preserve my incognito, till I had drawn her out a little to exhibit her hobby. "Rather a late spring, ma'am '.' , "Werry, sir, — werry much bo indeed. Lord knows when I shall be out of th" rarth, 1 almost think I'm rotted in the ground." " The flowers are backward, indeed, ma'am, [have hardly seen any except some wall-flowers further down the row." " Ah, at Number two — Miss Sharp's. She's poor and sing} — but I'm double and bloody." " You seem to have some fine stocks." "Well, and so I have, though I say it myself. I'm the real Brompton — with a stronger blow than any one in the place, and as to sweetness, nobody can come nigh me. Would you like to walk in, sir, and smell me ?" Accepting the polite imitation, I stepped in through the little wicket, and in another moment was rapturously sniffing at her stocks, and the flower with the sanguinary name. From the walls I turned off to a rosebush, remarking that there was a very fine show of buds. MRS. GARDINER. 149 " Yes, but I want sun to make me bust. You should have seen me last June, sir, when I was in my full bloom. None of your wishy washy pale sorts (this was a fling at the white roses at the next door) — none of your Provincials, or pale pinks. There's no maiden blushes about me. I'm the regular old red cabbage ! " And she was right, for after all that hearty, glowing, fragrant rose is the best of the species — the queen of flowers, with a ruddy embonjioint, reminding one of the goddesses of Rubens. Well, next to the rosebush there was a clump of Polyanthus, from which, by a natural transition, we come to discourse of Auriculas. This was delicate ground, for it appeared there was a rivalry between Number Nine and Number Four, as to that mealiness which in the eye of a fancier is the chief beauty of the flower. However, having assured her, in answer to her appeal, that she was " quite as powdery as Mr. Miller," we went on very smoothly through Johnquils, Narcissuses, and Ranunculus, and were about to enter on "Anymonies," when Mrs. Gardiner suddenly stopped short, and with a loud " whist ! " pitched her trowel at the head of an old horse, which had thrust itself over the wx>oden fence. " Drat the animals ! I might as well try flowering in the Zoo- logical, with the beasts all let loose ! It's very hard, sir, but I can't grow nothing tall near them front rails. There was last year, — only just fancy me, sir — with the most beautiful Crown Imperial you ever saw — when up comes a stupid hass and crops off my head." I condoled with her of course on so cruel a decapitation, and recovered her trowel for her, in return for which civility she plucked and presented to me a bunch of Heartsease, apologizing that " she was not Bazaar (pro Bizarre) but a very good sort." " It's along of living so near the road," she added, recurring 150 WHIMSICALITIES. to the late invasion. " yesterday I was bullocked, and tomorrow 1 suppose I shall be pigged. Then there's the blackguard men and boys, picking and stealing as they go by. I really expect that Borne day or other they'll walk in and strip mel" I sympathized again; bul before the condolement was well finished there was another "whist!" and another cast of the missile. "That's a dog! They're always rampaging at my front, and there goes the cat to my back, and shell claw all my bark off in scrambling out of reach! Howsomever that's a lint- lupin, ain't it;" 1 assured hex that it deserved t<> \«- exhibited t.. the Horticul- tural Society. "What, to tli'' flower show.' No thankee. Miss Sharp did, .iinl made sure of a Bankside Medal, and what do you think they her I Only a cerkittitit ! " "Shameful!" 1 ejaculated, "why it was giving her nothii all," and once more I restored the trowel, which, however, had hardly settled in its owner's hand, than with a third " whist !" <>fi' it flew again like a rocket, with a descriptive announcement of the enemy. "Them horrid poultry! Will you-believe it, sir. that 'ere cock flew over, and gobbled up my Hen-and-Chickens !" "What! l all your pretty chickens and their dam ?' " " Yes, all my daisy? [Reader ! — if ever there was a verbal step from the Sublime U the Ridiculous — that was it.] MRS. GARDINER 151 CHAPTER IV. My mask fell off. That destructive cock was as fatal to my incognito as to the widow's flowers : for coming after the cat and the dog, and the possible pigs, and the positive bullock, and the men, and the boys, and the horse, and the ass, I could not help observing that my quondam acquaintance would have been better off in Bucklersbury. " Lord ! and is it you ?" she exclaimed with almost a scream ; " well, I had a misgiving as to your woice," and with a rapid vol- ley of semiarticulate sounds the Widow seized my right hand in one of her own, whilst with the other she groped hurriedly in her pocket. It was to search for her handkerchief, but the cambric was absent, and she was obliged to wipe off the gushing tears with her gardening glove. The rich loam on the fingers, thus irrigated, ran off in muddy rivulets down her furrowed cheeks, but in spite of her ludicrous appearance I could not help sympa- thizing with her natural feelings, however oddly expressed. " She could not help it," she sobbed — " the sight of me over- came her. When she last saw me, — He was alive — who had always been a kind and devoted husband — as never grudged her nothing — and had given her that beautiful butter-tub for her laurustiny. She often thought of him — yes, often and often — while she was gardening — as if she saw his poor dear bones under the mould — and then to think that she came up, year after year — " flourishing in all her beauty and flagrance " — and he didn't. — " But look there " — and smiling through her tears, she pointed towards the house, and told me a tale, that vividly re- minded me of her old contrivances in Bucklersbury. " It's a table-beer barrel. I had it sawed in half, and there it L52 WHIMS IC [LITIES. i-, holding them two hollows, on each t. Bui I Bhian't blow, you know, for a sentry '. " \'n\ hand some indi ed ! "Ain't the] i And there's my American creeper. Mi— Sharp pretends to creep, but Lor bless ye, afore ever Bhe gets up I first floor window, 1 shall be running all over the roof of the will*. You see I'm over the portico already." A compliment to her climbing powers was due of course, and I paid it on the Bpot; but we were uol yel done with cre< All at once the Widow plucked off her garden bonnet, and dash- ing it on the gravel began dancing on it like a mad woman, or like a Scotch lassie tramping her dirty linen. At last when it was quite flat, she picked the 1 net up again, and carefully open- ing it, explained the matter in two w< i •■ A near-wig!" And then she went on to declare to me that they were the plagues of her life — and there \sa> no destroying them. "It's unknown the crabs and lobsters I've eaten on purpose, but the nasty insects won't creep into my claws. And in course you know what enemies they are to carnations. Last year they ruined my Prince Albert, and this year 1 suppose they'll spoil the Prince of Wales ! " CHAPTER V. A propos of names. I do wish that our Botanists, Concologists, and Entomologists, and the rest of our scientifical Godfathers and Godmothers would sit soberly down, a little below the clouds, and revise their classical, scholastical, and polyglottical nomenclatures. Yea, that MRS. GARDINER. 153 our Gardeners and Florists especially would take their watering pots and rebaptize all those pretty plants, whose bombastical and pedantical titles are enough to make them blush, and droop their modest heads for shame. The Fly-flapper is bad enough, with his Agamemnon butterfly and Cassandra moth — What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba 1 but it is abominable to label our Flowers with antiquated, out- landish, and barbarous flowers of speech. Let the Horticulturists hunt through their Dictionaries, Greek and Latin, and Lem- priere's Mythology to boot, and they will never invent such apt and pleasant names as the old English ones, to be found in Chaucer, Spencer, and Shakspeare. Oh, how sweetly they sound, look, and smell in verse — charm- ing the eye and the nose, according to the Rosicrucian theory, through the ear ! But what is a Scutellaria Macrantha to either sense ? Day's Eyes, Oxeyes, and Lippes of Cowes have a pasto- ral relish and a poetical significance — but what song or sonnet would be the sweeter for a Brunsvigia ? There is a meaning in Windflowers, and Cuckoo-buds, and Shepherd's Clocks, whilst the Hare-bell is at one associated with the breezy heath and the leporine animal that frequents it. When it is named, Puss and the blue-bell spring up in the mind's eye to- gether — but what image is suggested by hearing of a Schizanthus retusus ! Then, again, Forget-me-Not sounds like a short quotation from Rogers' " Pleasures of Memory," Love-lies-Bleeding contains a whole tragedy in its title — and even Pick-your-Mothers-heart-out involves a tale for the novelist. But what story, with or without a moral, can be picked out of a Dendrobium, even if it were sur- 154 WHIMSICALITIES. Darned Clutterbuckii, after the egotistical or Bycophantical t";ishion of the present day ' There was a jockey once who complained bitterly of the Bale <>t a race-horse, just when he had Learned to pronounce it> nam" properly — Roncesvalles ; but what waB that hardship, to the mis- fortune of a petty nurseryman, perhaps, losing hi^ Passion-Flower □ he had jusl gol by heart Ta Pinnatistipula J •■ I; form it altogether!" It looks selfish, in the learned, to invenl such difficult n »men- clatures, as if they wished to keep th<' character, habits, origin, and properties of new plants to themselves. Nay, more, il im- plies a want of affection for their professed favourites — the very objects of their attentions. "How — a want of affection, sir :" Yea — even so, my worthy Adam '. For mark mi — if you really loved your plants and flowers — " Well. Si Why, then, you wouldn't call them Buch hard names. CHAPTER VI. To return to Mrs. Gfardiner. The widow having described the r the earwigs, beckon- ed me towards her wall, and was apparently about to introdn to a peach-tree, when abruptly turning round to me, she inquired if I knew anything of Chemicals; and without giving time to reply, added her reason to the question. " Cos I want you to pison my Hants." Your aunts ! " Yes, the hemmets. As to Dr. Watts, he don't know nothing MRS. GARDINER. 155 about 'era. They won't collect into troops to be trod into dust, they know better. So I was thiuking if you could mix up sum- mut luscious and dillyterious — " She stojjped, for a man's head suddenly appeared above the dwarf wall, and after a nod and a smile at the widow, saluted her with a good morning. He was her neighbour — the little old bachelor at Number Eight. As he was rather hard of hearing, my companion was obliged to raise her voice in addressing him, and indeed aggravated it so much that it might have been heard at the end of the row. " Well, and how are you, Mr. Burrel, after them East winds ?" " Very bad, very bad indeed," replied Mr. Burrel, thinking- only of his rheumatics. " And so am I," said Mrs. Gardiner, remembering nothing but her blight : " I'm thinking of trying tobacco-water and a squiringe." " Is that good for it ? " asked Mr. B., with a tone of doubt and surprise. " So they say : but you must mix it strong, and squirt it as hard as ever you can over your affected parts." " What, my lower limbs ? " " Yes, and your upper ones too. Wherever you are raag- gotty." " Oh ! " grunted the old gentleman, " you mean vermin." " As for me," bawled Mrs. G., " I'm swarming ! And Miss Sharp is wus than I am." " The more's the pity," said the old gentleman, " we shall have no apples and pears." " No, not to signify. How's your peaches ? " " Why, they set kindly enough, ma'am, but they all dropped off in the last frosty nights." 156" WHIMSICALITIES. - All, it ain't th.- frost," roared Mi-. <;. "You've got down to the gravel — I know you have — you look bo rusty and scrubbj '. " '• 1 wish you a good i iring, ma'am," Baid the little old ba lor, turning very red in the Ewe, and making rather a precipitate retreat from the dwarf wall — as who wouldn't tlui< attacked at in lii- person and his peach-tri "To be Bure he was dreadful unproductive," the Widow " l.iut a good sort of body, and ten times pleasanter than her next- door neighbour at Number Ten, who would keep coming over her wall till she cut off hia pumpkin." She now led me round the house to her " back," where Bhe showed me her grassplot, wishing Bhe was greener, and a it' Bhe oughl uot to have a rolL 1 longed to say, on Greenwich authority, that abou ' lay was the proper Beason for the operation, but the joke might have led to a check in her hor- ticultural confidences. In the centre of the lawn thi re was an oval bed, with a stunted shrub in the middle, showing some or tour clusters of purple blossoms, which the Widow regarded with intense admiration. "You have heard, 1 Buppose, of a mashy soil for roddydan- dums? Well, look at my bloom, — quite as luxurus as it' I'd been stuck in a bog ! " There was no disputing this assertion ; and so she led me "ff to her vegetables, halting at last, at her peas, some few rows of Blue Prussians, which she had probably obtained from Waterloo, they were so long in coming up. " Backard, an't I ? " Yes, rather. " Wery — but Miss Sharp is backarder than me. She's hardly MRS. GARDINER. 157 out of the ground yet — and please God, in another fortnight I shall want sticking." There was something so comic in the last equivoque, that I Avas forced to slur over a laugh as a sneeze, and then contrived to ask her if she had no assistance in her labours. " What, a gardener ? Never ! I did once have a daily job- ber, and he jobbed away all my dahlias. I declare I could have cried ! But's very hard to think you're a valuable bulb, and when summer comes you'-re nothing but a stick and a label." Very provoking indeed ! " Talk of transplanting, they do nothing else but transplant you from one house to another, till you don't know where you are. There was I, thinking I was safe and sound in my own bed r and all the while I was in Mr. Jones's." It's scandalous ! " It is. And then in winter when they're friz out, they come round to one a beggin' for money. But they don't freeze any charity out of me." All ladies, however, are not so obdurate to the poor Gardeners in winter — or even in summer, in witness whereof here follows a story. CHAPTER VII. An elderly gentlewoman of my acquaintance, on a visit at a country house in Northamptonshire, chanced one fine morning to look from her bed-chamber, on the second story, into the pleasure ground, where Adam, the Gardener, was at work at a flower- border, directly under her window. It was a cloudless day in July, and, the sun shone fervidly, on the old man's bald, glossy 158 WHIM8ICALITI1 pate, from which it reflected again in a number of rays, as shining and pointed aa bo many new pins and needles. •• Bless me!" ejaculated the old lady, "it's enough bo broil all the brains in his bead;" and unable to bear the Bight, she with- drew from the casement. Bui lf-r concern and her curiosity were too much excited t" allow her to remain in peace. Again and again she took a ] p, and whenever ■ a, two Btories below, -1 the same bare round cranium, Bupernaturally red, and almosl intolerably bright, as if it had b< '•» in the very focus of a burning glass. It made her bead ache to think of it ! Nevertheless she could not long remove her eyes, she was cinated towards that glowing is larks are said to be by the dazzling of a mirror. In the mean time, to ber overheated fancy, the bald pate ap- peared to grow redder and redder, till it actually seemed red hot. it would hardly have surprised her it' the blood, boiling a gallop, bad gushed out of the two ears, or if the head, after Bmoking a little, had burst into a flame by spontaneous combustion. It Would never have astonished her had he danced off in a frenzy of brain fever, or suddenly dropped down dead from a stn the sun. However he did neither, but stall k.j.t work, work, working on in the blazing heat, like a Balamander. " It don't signify," muttered the old lady, "if Ik- can Btand it I can't," and again she withdrew from the spectacle. Bui it was only for a minute. She returned to the window, and tixi' eyes on the bald, shining, glowing object, considerately pitched on it a cool pot of beer — not literally, indeed, but in the shape of five penny pieces, screwed up tight in brown-paper. Moral. — There is nothing like well-directed benevolence ! MRS. GARDINER. 159 CHAPTER VIII. " Yes, all gardeners is thieves ! " As I could not dispute the truth of this sweeping proposition from practical experience, I passed it over in silence, and con- tented myself with asking the Widow whence she acquired all her horticultural knowledge, which she informed me came " out of her Mawe." " It was him as give me that too," she whimpered, " for he always humoured my flowering ; and if ever a grave deserved a strewing over it's his'n — There's a noble old helm V Very, indeed. " Yes, quite an old antique, and would be beautiful if I could only hang a few parachutes from its branches." I presume you allude to the parasites ? " Well, I suppose I do. And look there's my harbour. By and by, when I'm honey-suckled I shall be water-proof, but I ain't quite growed over enough yet to sit in without an umbrella." As I had now pretty well inspected her back, including one warm corner, in which she told me she had a good mind to cow- cumber — we turned toward the house, the Widow leading^the way, when wheeling sharply round, she popped a new question. " What do you think of my walk ?" Why that it is kept very clean and neat. " Ah, I don't mean my gravel, but my walk. At present you see I go in a pretty straight line, but suppose I went a little more serpentiny — more zigzaggy — and praps deviating about among the clumps — don't you think I might look more picturesque ?" I ventured to tell her, at the risk of sending her ideas to her front, that if she meant her gait, it was best as it was ; but that if 160 WHIMSICALITIES. she alluded to her path, a straight one was still the best, con- sidering the size of her grounds. " Well, I dare say you're right," she replied, " for I'm only a quarter of a haker if you measure me all round." By this time we were close to the house, where the appearance of a vine suggested to me the query whether the proprietor ever gathered any grape-. "Ah, my wine, my wine," replied the Widow, with a- grave a shake of the head, and as melancholy a tone as if she had really drunk to fatal excess of the ruby juice. " That wine will be the death of me, if somebody don't nail me up. My poor head won't bear ladder work, and so all training or pruning myself is out of the question. Howsomever, Miss Sharp is just as bad, and so I'm not the only one whose wine goes where it should'nt." Not by hundreds of dozens, thought I, but there was no time allowed for musing over my own loss by waste and leakage : I was roused by a " now come here," and lugged round the corner of the house to an adjacent building, which bore about the same proportion to the villa as a calf to a cow. " This here's the washus." So I should have conjectured. " Yes, it's the washus now — but it's to be a greenus. I intend to have a glazed roof let into it for a conservatory, in the winter, when I can't be stood out in the open air. They've a greenus at Number Five, and a hottus besides — and thinks I, if so be I do want to force a little, I can force myself in the copper !" The Copper ! " Yes. I'm uncommon partial to foreign outlandish plants — and if I'm an African, you know, or any of them tropicals, I shall almost want baking." MRS. GARDINER. 161 These schemes and contrivances were so whimsical, and at the same time so Bucklersburyish, that in spite of myself, my risible muscles began to twitch, and I felt that peculiar internal quiver about the diaphragm which results from suppressed laughter. Accordingly, not to offend the Widow, I hurried to take my leave, but she was not disposed to part with me so easily. " Now come, be candid, and tell me before you go, what you think of me altogether. Am I shrubby enough ? I fancy some- times that I ought to be more deciduous." Not at all. You are just what you ought to be — shrubby and flowery, and gravelly and grassy — and in summer you must be a perfect nosegay. "Well — so I ham. But in winter, now, — do you really think I am green enough to go through the winter ?" Quite. Plenty of yews, hollies, box, and lots of horticultural laurels. [I thought now that I was off — but it was a mistake.] " Well, but — if you really must go — only one more question — and it's to beg a favour. You know last autumn we went steam- ing up to Twitnam ?" Yes— well ? " Well, and we went all over Mr. What's-his-name's Willa." Pope's — well ? " Well then, somebody told us how Mr. Pope was very famous for his Quincunx. Could you get one a slip of it V 162 WHIMSICALITIES CHAPTER IX. "Well, t">r my part," exclaims Fashion, "those who please may garden;butl shall be quite satisfied with what 1 gel from my Fruiterer, and my Greengrocer, and my bouquets. For it seems to me, Sir, according to your d sscriptioo of thai Widow, and her operations, that gardening must be more of a trouble than a plea- sure. To think of toiling in a mosl unfashionable bonnel and filthy gloves, for the Bake of a few Bowers, that one may buy as good or better, and made artificially by the first hands in Paris! Not to name the vulgarity of their breeding. Why I should faint if 1 thought my orange flowers came out of a grocer's tea- chest, or my cameHia out of the butter-to doubl of it, Madam, and that you would never come to if kled with common water instead of Eau de Cologne. "Of course not. I loath i pure water — ever Bince I have heard that all London bathes in it — the lower classes and all. If (hut is what one waters with, I could never garden. And then those nasty creeping things, and the earwigs! I really believe that on ■ of them crawling into my head, would be enough to drive out all my intellect- ! " Beyond question, Madam. " I did once see a Lady gardening, and it struck me with horror ! How she endured that odious caterpillar on her clothes without screaming', surpasses my comprehension. No, no — it is not Lady's work, and I should say not even Gentlemen's, though some profess to be very fond of it." Why as to that, Madam, there is a style of gardening that might even be called aristocratical, and might be indulged in by the very first Exquisite in your own circle. MRS. GARDINER. 163 "Indeed, Sir?" Yes, in the mode, Madam, that was practised in his own gar- den by the Poet Thomson, the Author of the " Seasons." " And pray how was that, Sir ? " Why by eating the peaches off the wall, with his hands in his pockets ; or in other words, gobbling up the fruits of industry, without sharing in the labour of production. " Oh, fie ! that's Radical ! What do you say, my Lord ? " " Why, 'pon honour, your ladyship, it doesn't touch me — for I only eat other people's peaches — and without putting my hands in my pockets at all." AN UNFORTUNATE BEE-INQ. 164 WHIMSICALITIES. CHAPTER X. " But do you really think, Sir," asks Chronic Hypochondriasis, "that gardening is such a healthy occupation?" I do. But better than my own opinion, I will give you the sentiments of a celebrated but eccentric Physician "ii the Bubject, when In- was consulted by a Patient afflicted with your own disease. " Well, Sir, what's the matt. ■]• with you?" B aid the bluff Doctor. -Why nothing particular, Doctor, if you mean any decided complaint. Only I can't .-at, an. I 1 can'1 drink, and I can't Bleep, and I can't walk — in short, I can'l enjoy any thing except being completely miserable." It was a clear case of Hypochondriasis, and so the Physician merely laid down the ordinary Banitorj rules. " But you haven't prescribed, Doctor," objected the Patient. " You haven't told me what L am to take." " Take exercise." "Well, but in what shape, Doctor?" " In the shape of a spade." " What— dig like a horse ?" " No — like a man." " And no physic ?" " No. You don't want draughts, or pills, or powders. Take a garden — and a Sabine farm after it — if you like." " But it is such hard work ?" "Phoo, phoo. Begin with crushing your caterpillars — that's soft work enough. After that you can kill snails, they're harder — and mind, before breakfast." " I shall never eat any ! " MRS. GARDINER. 165 " Yes you will when you have earned your grub. Or hoe, and rake, and make yourself useful on the face of the earth." " But I get so soon fatigued." " Yes, because you are never tired of being tired. Mere indo- lence. Commit yourself to hard labour. It's pleasanter than having it done by a Magistrate, and better in private grounds than on public ones." " Then you seriously suppose, Doctor, that gardening is good for the constitution ?" " I do. For King, Lords, and Commons. Grow your own cabbages. Sow your own turnips, — and if you wish for a gray head, cultivate carrots." " Well, Doctor, if I thought—" " Don't think, but do it. Take a garden, and dig away as if you were going to bury all your care in it. When you're tired of digging, you can roll — or go to your walls, and set to work at your fruit-trees, like the Devil and the Bag of Nails." " Well, at all events, it is worth trying ; but I am sadly afraid that so much stooping — " " Phoo, phoo ! The more pain in your back, the more you'll forget your hyps. Sow a bed with thistles, and then weed it. And don't forget cucumbers." " Cucumbers ! " " Yes, unwholesome to eat, but healthy to grow, for then you can have your frame as. strong as you please, and regulate your own lights. Melons still better. Only give your melon to the melon bed, and your colly to the collyflowers, and your Melan- choly's at an end." " Ah ! you're joking, Doctor ! " " No matter. Many a true word is said in jest. I'm the only 166 WHIMSICALITU 8 physician, I know, who prescribes it, bul take a gard n— the first remedy in //'■ world — for when Adam was put into on.- he was quite , if no- body else does." And with gentle \riolence she drew me into a nook behind a privet hedge, and with Borne emotion asked me it' I knew where 1 was. My answi r i was in the n< gative. "It's Bucklersbury." The words operated like a Bpell on my memory, and I imme- iliat.lv recognised the old civic Bhrubbery. Fes, there they were, The Persian hilar, the Guelder Rose, the Monthly Rose, and the Laurustinus, but looking bo fresh and flourishing, that it was no wonder 1 had not known them ; and besides the cheats and tubs were either gone, or plunged in the earth. "Not quite so grubby as I were in town," said the Widow, "but the same plants. Old friends like, with new faces. Just take a sniff of my laylock — it's the Bame Bmell as I had when in London, except the smoke. And there's my monthly rose — look at my complexion now. You remember how smudgy I was afore. Perhaps you'd like a little of me for old acquaintance," and plucking from each, she thrust into my hand a bouquet big enough for the Lord Mayor's coachman on the Ninth of November. " Yes, we've all grown and blowm together," she continued, look- ing from shrub to shrub, with great affection. " We 've withered MRS. GARDINER. 167 and budded, and withered and budded, and blossomed and sweetened the air. We 're interesting, ain't we ?" O very — there's a sentiment in every leaf. " Yes, that's exactly what I mean. I often come here to enjoy 'em, and have a cry — for you know he smelt 'em and ad- mired 'em as well as us," and the mouldy glove might again have had to wipe a moistened eye, but for an alarm familiar to her ear, though not to mine, except through her interpretation. " My peas ! my peas ! old Jones's pigeons !" And rushing off to the defence of her Blue Prussians, she gave me an opportunity of which I availed myself by retreating in the opposite direction, and through the wicket. It troubles me to this day that I cannot remember the shutting it : my mind misgives me that in my haste to escape it was most probably left open, like Abon Hassan's door, and with as unlucky conse- quences. Even as I write, distressing images of a ruined Eden rise up before my fancy — cocks and hens scratching in flower borders — pigs routing up stocks or rolling in tulips — a horse cropping rose- buds, and a bullock in Bucklersbury ! and all this perhaps not a mere vision ! That woeful Figure, with starting tears and clasp- ed hands contemplating the scene of havoc, not altogether a fiction ! Under this doubt, it will be no wonder that I have never re- visited the Widow, or that when I stroll in the suburbs my steps invariably lead me in any other direction than towards Paradise Place. 168 WHIMSICALITIES. CHAPTER XL I have told a lie ! I have written the thing that is not, and the truth came not from my pen. There was deceit in my ink, and my paper is stained with a falsehood. Nevertheless, it was in ignorance thai I erred, and consequently the lie is white. When I told you, Gentle Reader, thai any day you pleased you mighl behold my heroine, Mrs. Gardiner, 1 was not aware that Mrs. < l-ardiner was no more. v - No more!" No — for by advices just received, Bhe is now Mrs. Burrel, the wife of the quondam little old Bachelor at Number Eight " What ! — married ! Why then she did go over the wall to him as sh ■ promised." No, miss — he came over to her. •■ What!— By a rope ladder?" No — there was no need for so romantic an apparatus. The wall, as already described, was a dwarf one, about breast high, over which an active man, putting one hand on the top, might have vaulted with ease. How Mr. Burrel, unused to such gym- nastics, contrived to scramble over it, he did not know himself; but as he had scraped the square toes of each shoe — damaged each drab knee — frayed the front of his satin waiscoat — and scratched his face, the probability is, that after clambering to the summit, he rolled over, and pitched headlong into the scrubby holly bush on the other side. For a long time it appears, without giving utterance to the slightest sentiment of an amorous nature, he had made himself particular, by constantly haunting the dwaif w T all that divided MRS. GARDINER. 169 him from the widow, — overlooking- her indeed more than was proper or pleasant. For once, however, he happened to look at the right moment, for casting his eyes towards Number Nine, he saw that his fair neighbour was in a very disagreeable and dan- gerous predicament — in short, that she was in her own water- butt, heels upwards. He immediately jumped over the brick partition, and bellowing for help, succeeded, he knew not how, in hauling the unfortunate lady from her involuntary bath. " Then it was not a suicide ? " By no means, madam. It was simply from taking her hobby 8 170 WHIMSICALITIES. to water. In plainer phrase, whilsl endeavouring to establish an aquatic lily in her water-butt, Bh< overbalanced herself and Gall in. The rest may be guessed. Before the Widow waa dry, Mr. Burrel had declared his passion — Gratitude whispered that with- out him she would have been "no better than a dead lignum vita" — and Bhe gave him her hand. The marriage day, however, was nol fixed. At the desire of the bride, it was left to a contingency, which was resolved by her "orange-flowering" last Wednesday — and so ended the " Horti- cultural Romance" of Mrs. G-ardirj 3. Ikrtrli nn tjjj Hn air. " All have their exita and their entrances." It is a treat to see Prudery get into an omnibus. Of course she rejects the hand that is held out to her by male Civility. It might give her a squeeze. Neither does she take the firsl va- cant place; but looks out for a seat, if possible, between an inno- cent little girl and an old "woman. In the mean time the omni- bus moves on. Prudery totters — makes a snatch at Civility's nose — or bis neck — or anywhere — and missing her hold rebounds to tbe other side of the vehicle, and plumps down in a strange gentleman's lap. True modesty would have escaped all these indecorums. 171 The following story I had from the lips of a well-known Aero- naut, and nearly in the same words. It was on one of my ascents from Vauxhall, and a gentleman of the name of Mavor had engaged himself as a companion in my aerial excursion. But when the time came his nerves failed him, and I looked vainly around for the person who was to oc- cupy the vacant seat in the car. Having waited for him till the last possible moment, and the crowd in the gardens becoming impatient, I prepared to ascend alone ; and the last cord that attached me to the earth was about to be cast off, when suddenly a strange gentleman pushed forward and volunteered to go up with me into the clouds. He pressed the request with so much earnestness, that having satisfied myself by a few questions of his respectability, and received his promise to submit in every point to my directions, I consented to receive him in lieu of the absentee ; whereupon he stepped with evident eagerness and alacrity into the machine. In another minute we were rising above the trees ; and in justice to my companion, I must say that in all my experience, no person at a first ascent had ever shown such perfect coolness and self-possession. The sudden rise of the machine, novelty of the situation, the real and exaggerated dangers of the voyage, and the cheering of the spectators, are apt to cause some trepidation, or at any rate excitement in the bold- est individuals ; whereas the stranger was as composed and com- fortable as if he had been sitting quite at home in his own library chair. A bird could not have seemed more at ease, or more in 172 WHIMSICALITIES lement, and yet he solemnly assured me upon his honour, that he had never been up before in his life. Instead of exhibit- ing any alarm ai our great height from the earth, he evince I liveliest pleasure whenever I emptied one of my bags of Band, ven once or twice urged me t<> part with n i > >r. • of the ballast. In the mean time, the wind, which was very light, carried oa gently along in a north-east direction, and the day being particu- larly bright aud clear, we enjoyed a delightful bii w of the greal metropolis, and the Burrounding country. My com- panion listened with greal interest, while 1 pointed oul to him the various objects over which we passed, till 1 happened casually to observe that the balloon must be directly over Hoxton. My fel- low-traveller then for the first time betrayed some uneasiness, and anxiously inquired whether I thought he could be recognised by one at our then d earth, ft was, I told him, quite impossible. rtheless he continued very uneasy, quently repeating " I hope they don't Bee me," and entreating me earnestly to discharge more ballast It then flashed upon me foT the first time that his offer to ascend with me had been a whim of the moment, and that he feared tin sen at that perilous elevation by any memb r of bis own family. I therefore asked him it' he resid d al Hoxton, to which he replied in the affirmative; urging again and with great vehemence, the empty- ing of the remaining sand This, however, was out of the question. :tude of the balloon, the course of the wind, and the proximity of the sea-coast. But my comrade was deaf to th os — he in- sisted on going higher; and on my refusal to discharge more ballast, dehberately pulled off and threw his hat, coat, and waist- coat overboard. A TALE OF TERROR. 173 " Hurrah, that lightened her ! " he shouted ; " but it's not enough yet," and he began unloosening his cravat. "Nonsense," said I, "my good fellow, nobody can recognise you at this distance, even with a telescope." " Don't be too sure of that," he retorted rather simply ; " they have sharp eyes at Miles's." " At where ? " "At Miles's Madhouse!" Gracious Heaven ! — the truth flashed upon me in an instant. I was sitting in the frail car of a balloon at least a mile above the earth, with a Lunatic. The horror of the situation, for a minute, seemed to deprive me of my own senses. A sudden freak of a distempered fancy — a transient fury — the slightest struggle, might send us both, at a moment's notice, into eternity ! In the mean time, the Maniac, still repeating his insane cry of "higher, higher, higher," divested himself successively, of every remaining article of clothing, throwing each portion^ as soon as taken off, to the winds. The inutility of remonstrance, or rather the probability of its producing fatal irritation, kept me silent during these opera- tions : but judge of my terror, when having thrown his stockings overboard, I heard him say, " We are not yet high enough by ten thousand miles — one of us must throw out the other." To describe my feelings at this speech is impossible. Not only the awfulness of my position, but its novelty, conspired to bewilder me — for certainly no flight of imagination — no, not the wildest nightmare dream had ever placed me in so desperate and forlorn a situation. It was horrible ! — horrible ! Words, plead- ings, remonstrances were useless, and resistance would be certain destruction. I had bettor have been unarmed, in an American wilderness, at the mercy of a savage Indian ! And now, without 171 WHIMSICALITIES. daring t<> stir a hand in opposition, 1 saw the Lunatic deliberately heave first one, ;m married, and had fourteen young ones who depei d< d on me for their bread. " I la ! ha I ha!" laughed th" Maniac, w itli a Bparkling of hi- that chilled my very marrow. " 1 have three hundred wives, and live thousand children; and if th" balloon had Dot !"■• d bo heavy by carrying double, 1 should have been home to them by this time.'' "And where do they 1 i v . - ; I asked, anxious to gain time by any question that first occurred to me. f In the moon," replied the Maniac; "and when 1 have light- ened the car 1 shall be there in no time." I \eard no more, fur suddenly approaching me, and throwing his arms around my body 175 AS PRACTISED BY VINCENT PRIESSNITZ, AT GRAFENBERG. BY R. T. CLARIDGE, ESQ. The element that never tires Basil Hall. The greatest danger to the health or lite in Foreign Travelling, at least in Germany, is notoriously from damp linen. A German- Ofen is not adapted for the process vulgarly called " airing," and the " Galloping Horse," alluded to by Wordsworth in his poem on a Hanoverian Stove, is any thing but a clothes-horse. If you send your linen to be washed, therefore, you must expect in return a shirt as damp as a Dampschiff — stockings as dripping as the hose of a fire-engine, and a handkerchief with which you cannot dry your eyes. As a matter of course, you must look, now and then, for a wet blanket, or a moist sheet ; and should that be the case, there is only one warming-pan to our knowledge in the Rhenish Provinces — and that one is at Coblence. Now this drawback would alone prova a damper to many an English Tourist, who would otherwise go up the Rhine : for of what avail are all his Patent Waterproof articles — his umbrella, his Mackintosh, his galoshes, India-rubber shoes, and Perring's beaver, whilst he is thus liable to wet next his skin ? In fact, we believe this danger, more than any sea risk or land peril, has 17G oa from r< . by the unwholi some pn . checking invisible perspiration by putting on humid garments ; than h Qothing can be more injurious to even the strongest stitution, — witn( al shirt that clung so to Hercules, which, all cal embellishment, Bimpl ■ him wrii I by that jade 1 lejanira. The catastro] he of . however, on the very doubtful testimony of Greek bistorians. It is true, th our Engli rj notions he oughl to have died — inflammation on the lungs — but ao • the Hydropal the S only the Btronger for a " C.I.I Wet Ba tick— or rather club — he ought merely to have broken out in salutary I which would have removed all hi- complaints, if he had anj example, one Mr. Rausse names all chronic di t the lungs, all organic defects, and all diseases in people whose muscles and sinews arc past all poir />, and from whom principle has passed beyond recovery — which said people, if we know any thing of plain English, most 1>" neither more nor leas than " Stiff-uns /" infirm this cadaverous %;■ w of them, p. 74 declares that these assertions of Mr. Rausse are supported by a Mr. Raven ! Professor Munde, however, who was cured of a painful • plaint during his residence at Grafenberg, stops short of the cure of Death by light or heavy wet, but enumerates Gout, Rheuma- tism, Tic Doloureux, Hernia, Hypochondria, Pil< 3, 1 '■ vers of all kinds, Inflammations, Cholera, &c., it- is happy :i^ a Merman, with his tail in a tub, and n Claridge on the - Cold Water Cm And should you experience, though you ought not, any aguish chills, or ill ura tic pains from this mode of conduct — push on at once to Grafenberg, where Vincenl Priessnitz will soak all com- plaints out of you, like salt from a ling. As the prefia is "only eight or ten days' journey from London," and you may go either by Ostend or Hamburg ; but the first route is the best, because you can >r, t your thirst by the way al the Bpring of Aix-la-ChajMjlle, and the Brunnen- of Nassau. For our own HYDROPATHY, OR THE COLD WATER CURE. 179 parts we prefer our washing done at home ; but never mind us. Push on for the great Fountain Tavern in Silesia, for depend upon it whatever you feel, whether flushes, shudderings, gnaw- ings, cravings, creepings, shootings, throbbings, dartings and prick- ings — it is only nature boring for water. Never stop, then, except perhaps for a minute or so to look at the votive fountain the Wallachian and Moldavian patients have erected, dedicated " Au Genie de l'Eau Froide," — never halt till you have reached the famous House of Call for Watermen, and pledged the great Aquarius himself in a goblet of his own Adam's ale. If you are faint it will revive you, if thirsty it will re- fresh you, and if you have broken a bone or two by the upsetting of a diligence, the very man for a fracture stands before you. In fact his first exploit in Hydropathy was with cold water and wet bandages, and some little assistance from a table, to set and mend two of his own broken ribs ! After that if you are so unreasonable as still to require any evidence of the peculiar virtues of the fluid, know that by drinking and dispensing it, ice cold though it be, Vincent Priessnitz has made himself so warm that he is worth 50,0007. The above advice, it must be remembered, is not ours, but drawn from tne book before us. We should be loth to be re- sponsible personally for any lady or gentleman going so far off as Silesia to drown themselves, and by the awfully premeditated process of taking " twenty glasses of water a day." Neither should we like to have to answer to a visitor to Grafenberg for the discomfort of a room like " a soldier's chamber in a barrack," so low that Mr. Gross could not stand upright in it — with no better furniture than a bedstead with a straw mattress — a chest of deal drawers, a table, two chairs, a decanter and glass (for water 180 WHIMSICALITIES. only) and an " enormous washhand basin." It would vex have commended any one to a table where it is generally i 1 that t'si' food " though | 1 atiful is coarse." He migh be pleased either with the remedy of drinking so much v that there was little room for the solids. And, above all, he would naturally cry out against the heart-burnings incurred by Mr. Cla- himself, and which were relieved by a cure certainly \ than li " The burnirjg liquid which rises from the stomach to the throat is often caused at Grafenberg by the abundance of the greasy food with which the table is supplied. At the period of the crisis it frequently makes its appearance at the termination "I humours, of which part is discharged by the first courses. 1 was sharply attacked by it at this period of the treatment, and 'a diarrhoea which I brought on in gorging myself with cold water during two days completely cured roe.'" — P. 237. Now, it may be very well for Priessnitz, who boards and 1 dents, to ] rescribe water by the pailful to preveni gluttony ; or to give them such beds and rooms as must necessarily pro- mote early rising a td nc >urage exercise out of doors. It may be quite consistent with his theory to neither light nor pave his ihorhood, so that his clients are sure on a rainy day of a Mud-hath in addition to their other om-s. But. as we said before, bould not like to advise any one we love or like to put them- s Ives under his wet hands, unless inordinately fond of duck and cold pig. Moreover, many parts of his treatment are practised, if not openly at least secretly, in our own country ; and at a con- sequent saving of all the trouble and expense to the patients of a journey to Silesia. The damp sheet system is no secret to the chambermaids at our provincial inns, and the metropolitan publi- HYDROPATHY, OR THE COLD WATER CURE. 181 cans and milkmen are far from blind to the virtues of cold water as a beverage. A fact that probably accounts for trie peculiar healthiness of London compared with other capitals. To be candid, we have besides a private prejudice against any- thing like a Grand Catholicon — not the Pope, but a universal remedy for all diseases, from elephantiasis down to pip. And we become particularly skeptical when we meet with a specific backed by such a testimonial as that of the Rev. John Wesley in favor of Water versus Hydrophobia. "And this, I apprehend, accounts for its frequently curing the bite of a mad-dog, especially if it be repeated for twenty-five or thirty days successively." — P. 81. Of which we can only say, that on the production of certificates of three such cures, signed by a respectable turncock, we will let whoever likes it be worried by a mad pack of hounds, and then cure him by only showing him Aldgate-pump. Moreover, we are aware of the aptitude of our cousins the Ger- mans to go the whole way " and a bittock" in their theories. As Mr. Puff says of the theatrical people, " Give those fellows a good thing and they never know when to have done with it." Thus allowing the element to be wholesome, for ablution or as a bever- age, they order you not only to swig, sit, stand, lie, and soak in it, but actually to snuff it up your nose — what is a bridge without water ? — for a cold in the head ! — p. 228. It was our intention to have quoted a case of fever which was got under much as Mr. Eraidwood would have quenched an inflamma- tion in a house. But our limits forbid. In the mean time it ha been our good fortune, since reading Clari lge on Hydropathy, to see a sick drake avail himself of the " Cold Water Cure" at the dis- pensary in St. James's-park. First, in waddling in, he took a Fuss- 182 WHIMSICALITIES. Bad; then he took a Sitzbad, and then, turning his curly tail up into the air, he touk a Kopf-Bad. Lastly, he rose almost upright on his latter end, and made such a triumphant flapping with his wings that we really expected he was going to shout "Pries-nit/. for ever !" But no such thing. lie only cried, " Quack ! quack ! quack !" 183 fir. € ij ti b li . A PISCATORY ROMANCE. CHAPTER I. " Let me live harmlessly, and near the brink Of Irent or Avon have a dwelling place, Where I may see my quill or cork down sink With eager bite of Perch, or Bleak, or Dace." J. Davoks. " I care not, I, to fish in seas, Fresh rivers best my mind do please, Whose sweet calm course I contemplate, And seek in life to imitate." Piscator's Song. " The ladies, angling in the crystal lake, Feast on the waters with the prey they take, At once victorious with their lines and eyes, They make the fishes and the men their prize." Waller. Mr. Chubb was not, by habit and repute, a fisherman. An- gling had never been practically his hobby. He was none of those enthusiasts in the gentle craft, who as soon as close time comes to an end, are sure to be seen in a punt at Hampton Deeps, under the arches of Kew Bridge, or on the banks of the New River, or the Lea, trolling for jack, ledgering for barbel, spinning for trout, roving for perch, dapping for chub, angling for gudgeon, or whipping for bleak. He had never fished but once in his life, on a chance holiday, and then caught but one bream, but that once sufficed to attach him to the pastime ; it was so still, so quiet, so lonely ; the very thing for a shy, bashful, nervous man, 184 WHIMSICALITIES. as taciturn as ;i post, as formal as a yew hedge, and as sedate as a quaker. Nevertheless he did not fall in love with fishing, as some do, rashly and madly, but as became his character, dis- creetly and with deliberation. It was not a hasty passion, but :i sober preference founded on esteem, and accordingly instead of plunging at once into the connexion, he merely resolved, in hi> heart, that at some future time he would retire from the hosiery line, and take to one of gut, horsehair, or silk. In pursuanc i of this scheme, whilst he steadily amassed the necessary competence, he quietly accumulated the other requi- sites ; from time to time investing a few more hundreds in the funds, and occasionally adding a fresh article to his tackle, or a new guide, or treatise to his books on the art. Into these vo- lumes, at his leisure, he dipped, gradually storing his mind with the piscatory rules, " line upon line, and precept upon precept," till in theory he was a respectable proficient. And in his Sunday walks, he commonly sought the banks of one or other of our Middlesex rivers, where, glancing at sky and water, with a specu- lative eye, he would whisper to himself — " a fine day for the perch," or " a likely hole for a chubb;" but from all actual prac- tise he religiously abstained, carefully hoarding it up, like his money, at compound interest, for that delicious Otium-and-Water, which, sooner or later, Hope promised he sould enjoy. In the mean time, during one of these suburban rambles, he observed, near Enfield Chase, a certain row of snug little villas, each with its own garden, and its own share of the New River, which flowed between the said pleasure grounds on one side, and a series of private meadows on the other. The houses, indeed, were in pairs, two under one roof, but each garden was divided from the next one by an evergreen fence, tall and thick enough MR. CHUBB. 185 to screen the proprietor from neighbourly observation ; whilst the absi nee of any public footpath along the fields equally secured the residents from popular curiosity. A great consideration with an angler, who, near the metropolis, is too liable to be accosted by some confounded hulking fellow with " what sport, — how do they bite ? " — or annoyed by some pestilent little boy, who will intrude in his swim. " Yes, that's the place for me," thought Mr. Chubb, especially alluding to a green lawn which extended to the water's edge — not forgetting a tall lignum vitse tree, against which, seated in an ideal arm chair, he beheld his own Eidolon, in the very act of pulling out an imaginary fish, as big and bright as a fresh herring. "Yes, that is the place for me!" muttered Mr. Chubb: "so snug — so retired — so all to one's self ! Nobody to overlook, no- thing to interrupt one ! — No towing-path — no barges — no tho- roughfare — Bless my soul! it's a perfect little Paradise!" And it was the place for him indeed — for some ten years after- Avards the occupant died suddenly of apoplexy — whereupon Mr. Chubb bought the property, sold off his business, and retiring to the villa, which he christened "Walton Cottage," prepared to realize the long water- sou chyish dream of his middle age. " And did he catch any thing ? " My dear Miss Hastie — do, pray, allow the poor gentleman a few moments to remove, and settle himself in his new abode, and in the mean while, let me recommend you to the care of that allegorical Job in petticoats, who is popularly supposed to recreate herself, when she is not smiling on a monument, by fishing in a punt. 18tf WHIMSICALITIES CHAPTEK II. Eureka ! The day, the happj daj is come al last, and no bride, in her pearl silk and orang . after a protracted courtship, ever felt a more blissful flutter of spirits than Mr. Chubb, aa in a bran n. >w white ket, and diab legginj ads on the margin of the New Rirer, about to become an angler for better or worse. The morning is propitious. The skj is slightly clouded, and a gentle southerly zephyr just breathes, here and there, on the graj water, which is thickly studded with little dimples that dilate into rings, — signs, as sure as those in the zodiac, of Aquarius and A comfortable arm-chair is planted in the shadow of the tall lignum viti . lies a landing net, and on the left, a basket big enough to a Salmon. Mr. Chubb stands in front of the chair; and having satisfied his mind, by a panoramic glanee, of his complete solitude, begins pre- cipitately to pre] are his tackle, by drawing the strings of a long brown aolland case intoa hard double knot. But he is too happy i i swear, bo he only blesses his soul, patiently unravels the knot, and complacently allows the rod to glide out of the linen cover. With deliberate care he fits each joint in its socket, — from the butt glittering with bright brasaj to the tapering top — and then with supple wrist, proves the beautiful pliancy of the "complete thing." Next from the black leather pocket book b line of exquisite fineness, and attaches it by the loop to the small brazen wire ring at the point of the whalebone. The fine gut, still retaining its angles from the reel, like a long zigzag of gos- samer, vibrates to the elastic rod, which in turn quivers to the MR. CHUBB. 187 agitated hand tremulous with excitement. But what ails Mr. Chubb ? All at once he starts off into the strangest and wildest vagaries, — now clutching like Macbeth at the air drawn dagger, and then suddenly wheeling round like a dog trying to catch his own tail — now snatching at some invisible blue bottle buzzing about his nose, — next fle^-hunting about his clothes, and then staring skywards with goggle eyes, and round open mouth, as if he would take a minnow ! A few bars rest — and off he goes again, — jumping, — spinning, — skipping right and left — no urchin striving to apprehend Jack O'Lantern ever cut more capers. He is endeavouring to catch his line that he may bait the hook ; but the breeze carries it far a-field, and the spring of the rod jerks it to and fro, here and there and every where but into his eager hand. Sometimes the shot swing into his eye, some- times the float bounces into his mouth or bobs against his nose, and then, half caught, they spring up perpendicularly, and fall down again, with the clatter of hail, on the crown of his white beaver. At last he succeeds — at least the hook anchors in the skirts of his jacket. But he is in too good humour to curse. Propping the rod upright against the tall lignum vitae, he applies both hands to the rescue, and has just released the hook from the fustian, when down drops the rod, with a terrible lash of its top- joint in the startled stream, — whilst the barbed steel, escaping from his right finger and thumb, flies off like a living insect, and fastens its sting in the cuff of his left sleeve with such good will, that it must be cut out with a penknife. Still he does not blas- pheme. At some damage to the cloth, the Kirby is set free — and the line is safe in hand. A little more cautiously he picks up the drioping rod, and proceeds to bait the hook — not without 188 WHIMSICALITIES. difficulty and delay, for a worm is a wriggling slippery thing, with :i natural aversion to being lined with win-, and when the fingers are tremulous besides — the job is ;i Btiff one. Neverthe- e contrives ill or well, to impale a small brandling; bul re- membering that he oughl first to have plumbed the d< pth of the water, removes the worm and Bubsikutes a roll of thin lead. A-fterwards he adjusts the float to the proper soundings, and then there is all the wriggling Blippery nervous process to be gone through over agan. But Patience, the angler's virtue, still sup- him. The hook is baited once more, — he draws a long ,1 ■ ji Bigh of satisfaction, and warily poising his rod, lets the virgin line drop gently into the rippling Btream ! N,>w then all is righl ! Alas, nol The float instead of swim- ming erect, sinks down on it- side for want of sufficient ballast ; a trying dilemma, for the cure requires a rather delicate operation. lu fact, six split shot successiv( h from his trembling lingers — a seventh he succeeds in adjusting to the line, on which he rashly att smpts to close the gaping lead with his teeth; but un- luckily hi- incisors slip beside the leaden pellet, and with a horrid cranch go clean through the crisp gat ! Still he does not blaspheme ; but blessing his body, this time, as well as his soul, carefully fits a new bottom on the Ene, and the cleft shot with the proper instrument, a pair of pliers. Then he baits again, and tries the float, which swims with the correct cock — and all is right at last! The dream-, the sch the hopes, the wishes of a dozen long years are realized ; and if there be a little pain at one end of the line, what enormous plea- sure at the other ! Merrily the float trips, again and again, from end to end of the swim, and is once more gliding down with the current, when MR. CHUBB. 189 suddenly the quill stops — slowly revolves — bobs — bobs again — and dives under the water. The Angler strikes convulsively — extravagantly — insanely ; and something swift and silvery as a shooting star, flies over his head. It should, by rigbts, be a fish — yet there is none on his hook ; but searehing farther and farther, all up the lawn, there certainly lies something bright and quivering on the stone step — something living, scaly, and about an inch long — in short, Mr. Chubb's first bleak ! CHAPTER III. Happy Mr. Chubb ! Happy on Thursday, happier on Friday, and happier on Saturday ! For three delightful days he had angled, each time with better success, and increasing love for the art, when Sunday intervened — the longest dry Sunday he had ever spent in his life. This short fast, however, only served to whet his appetite for the sport, and to send him the earlier on Monday to the river's edge, not without some dim superstitious notion of catching the fine hog- backed perch he had hooked in a dream over night. By this time practice had made him perfect in his manipula- tions. His rod was put together in a crack — the line attached to it in a jiffy, the hook baited in a twinkling, and all ready to begin. But first he took his customary survey, to assure him that his solitude was inviolate — that there was no eye to startle his mauvaise konte, for he was as sensitive to observation, as some skins to new flannel : but all was safe. There was not a horse or cow even to stare at him from the opposite meadow — no hu- man creature within ken, to censure his performance or criticise 190 WHIMSIC iLITJES. bis appearance. He mighl have fished, it' he had pleated, in his night-cap, dressing gown, and slip] • The ineffable value of such a privacy is only appreciable by Bhy, sensitive men,who ride hobbies. But Toby Shandy knew it when he gave a peep over the hom-beam hedge before be took a first whiff of the ivory pipe attached to his smoking artillery. And so did Mr. Chubb, as after a preliminary pinch of snuff, and an extatic rob of his hand-, he gently Bwung the varnished float, shotted line, and baited hook, from his own freehold lawn, into the exclusive water. The weather was lovely, the Bky of an unclouded blue, and the whole landscape flooded with Bunshine, which would have been too bright but that a westerly breeze Bwept the gloss off the river, and allowed the Angler to watch, undazzled, his neat tip- capped float. Thrice the buoyant quill had travelled from end to end of the property, and was midway on its fourth \- when — without the least hint of bite or nibble — it was violently twitched up, and left to dangle in the air, whilst Mr. Chubb dis- tractedly stared on a new object in the stream. A strange float had come into his swim ! And such a float ! — A great green and white pear-shaped thing — of an extra size, expressly manufactured for the most turbulent waters ; but magnified by the enormity of the tresspass into a ship's buoy ! Yes — there it was in his own private fishing-place, down which it drifted five or six good yards before it brought up, on its side, when the force of the current driving the lower part of the line towards the surface, disclosed a perfect necklace of large swan- shot, and the shank of a No. 1 hook, baited as it seemed, with a small hard dumpling ! MR. CHUBB. 191 Mr. Chubb was petrified — Gorgonized — basilisked ! His heart and his legs gave way together, and he sank into the elbow- chair ; his jaw locked, his eyes protruding in a fixed stave, and altogether in physiognomy extremely like the fish called a Pope or Ruff, which, on being hooked, is said to go into a sort of spas- modic fit, through surprise and alarm. However, disappointment and vexation gradually gave way to indignation, and planting the chair against the evergreen hedge, he mounted on the seat, with a brace of objurgations on his lips — the one adapted to a great hulking fellow, the other for an infer- nal little boy ; but before either found vent, down he scrambled again, with breakneck precipitation, and dropped into the seat. To swear was impossible — to threaten or vituperate quite out of the question, or even to remonstrate. He who had not the cour- age to be polite to a lady, to be rude or harsh to one ? — never. What then could he do ? Nothing, but sit staring at the great green and white float, as it lay on its side, making a fussy ripple in the water, till she chose to withdraw it. At last, after a very tedious interval, the obnoxious object sud- denly began to scud up the stream, and then rising, with almost as much splutter as a wild duck, flew into the neighbouring gar- den. The swanshot and the hook flew after it, but the little dumpling, parting asunder, had escaped from the steel, and the halves separately drifted down the current, each nibbled at by its own circle of New River bleak. Mr. Chubb waited a minute, and then fell to angling again ; but as silently, stealthily, and sneakingly, as if instead of fishing in his own waters he had been poaching in those of Cashiobury — " Because Lord Essex wouldn't give him leave." But even this faint enjoyment was short-lived. All at once L92 WHIMSICALITIES. be heard, to the left, a plash as it' a bull-frog or water-rat had plumped into the river, and down came the great green and white nuisance, again dancing past the private he waltz- ing with <\v\ little eddy that came in its way. Of course it would Btop at jpot — but no, its tether had b en indefi- nitely prolonged, and on it came, bobbing and becking, till within a fool of the little slim tipcapped quill of our Fisherman. Ho instantly pulled up, but too late — the bottoms of the two lines had already grappled. There was a hitch and then a jerk— the Bwanshot with a centrifugal impulse wont spinning round and round the oilier tackle, till silk and gut were complicated in an inveterate tangle. The Unknown, feeling the resistance, imme- diately struck, an. I began to haul in. The perplexed Baohelor, incapable of a " Hallo!" only blessed his own bouI in a whisper, and opposed a faint resistance. The strain increased ; and ho held more firmly, desperately hoping that his own line would give way : but, instead of any such breakage, as if instinct with the very spirit of mischief, the top joint of his rod suddenly sprang out of its socket, and went living as .he other lithe-top seemed to beckon it into her garden ! It was gone, of course, for ever. As to applying for it, little Smith would as soon have asked for the ball that he had pitched through a pane of plate glass into Mrs. Jones's drawing-room. All fishing was over for the day ; and the discomfitted Angler was about to unscrew his rod and pack up, when a loud " hem ! " made him start and look towards the sound — and lo ! the un- known Lady, having mounted a chair of her own, was looking over the evergreen hedge and holding out the truant top joint to its owner. The little shy bashful Bachelor, still in a nervous agony, would fain have been blind to this civility ; but the cough MR. CHUBB 193 became too importunate to be shirked, and blushing till his very- hair and whiskers seemed to redden into carotty, he contrived to stumble up to the fence and stammer out a jumble of thanks and apologies. " Reallv ma'am — I'm extremely sorry — you're too good — so very awkward — quite distressing — I'm exceedingly obliged, I'm sure — very warm indeed," — and seizing the top-joint he attempted to retreat with it, but he was not to escape so easily. " Stop, sir ! " cried one of the sweetest voices in the world, " the lines are entangled." " Pray don't mention it," said the agitated Mr. Chubb, vainly fumbling in the wrong waistcoat pocket for his penknife. " I'll cut it, ma'am — I'll bite it off." " Oh, pray, don't ! "exclaimed the lady ; " it would be a sin and a shame to spoil such a beautiful line. Pray what do you call it?" What an unlucky question. For the whole world Mr. Chubb would not have named the material — which he at last contrived to describe as " a very fine sort of fiddlestring." " Oh, I understand," said the Lady. " How flue it is — and yet how strong. What a pity it is in such a tangle ! But I think with a little time and patience I can unravel it !" " Really, ma'am, I'm quite ashamed — so much trouble — allow me, ma'am." And the little Bachelor climbed up into his elbow- chair, where he stood tottering with agitation, and as red in the face, and as hot all over, as a boiling lobster. " I think, sir," suggested the Lady, " if you would just havo the goodness to hold these loops open while I pass the other line through them — " " Yes, ma'am, yes — exactly — by all means — " and he endear- 9 194: WHIMSICALITIES. cured to follow her instructions, by plunging the short thick fin gers of each hand into the hank; the Lady mean while poking- her float, like a shuttle, up and down, to and fro, through the in- tricaci a of the tangled lii "Bless my soul!" thought Mr. Chubb, "what a singular situa- tion ! A lady I never saw before — a perfect stranger ! — and here lam face to face with her — across a hedge — with our fingers twisting in and outof the same line, as it* we were playing at cat'a- cradle !" CHAPTER IV. "Heyday! It is a long job!" exclaimed the Lady, with a gentle sigh. "It is indeed, ma'am," said Mr. Chubb, with a puff of breath as if he had been holding it the whole time of the operation. " My fingers quite ache," said the Lady. "I'm sure — I'm very sorry — I beg them a thousand pardons," said Mr. Chubb, with a bow to the hand before him. And what a hand it was ! So white and so plump, with little dimples on the knuckles, — and then such long taper fingers, and filbert-like nails ! "Are you fond of fishing, sir ?" asked the Lady, with a full look in his face for the answer. " O, very, ma'am — very partial indeed !" " So am I, sir. It's a taste derived, I believe, from my read- ing." " Then mayhap, ma'am," said Mr. Chubb, his voice quavering at his own boldness, " if it isn't too great a liberty — you have read the ' Complete Angler ?' " MR. CHUBB. 195 " What, Izaak Walton's ? O, I dote on it ! The nice, dear old man ! So pious, and so sentimental !" " Certainly, ma'am — as you observe — and so uncommonly skilful." " ! and so natural ! and so rural*! Such sweet green mead- ows, with honeysuckle hedges; and the birds, and the inno- cent lambs, and the cows, and that pretty song of the milk- maid's !" " Yes, ma'am, yes," said Mr. Chubb, rather hastily, as if afraid she would quote it ; and blushing up to his crown, as though she had actually invited him to " live with her and be her love." " There was an answer written to it, I believe, by Sir Walter Raleigh ?" "There was, ma'am — or Sir Walter Scott — I really forget which," stammered the bewildered Bachelor, with whom the present tense had completely obliterated the past. As to the fu- ture, nothing it might produce would surprise him. " Now, then, sir, we will try again !" And the Lady resumed her task, in which Mr. Chubb assisted her so effectually, that at length one line obtained its liberty, and by a spring so sudden, as to excite a faint scream. " Gracious powers !" exclaimed the horrified little man, almost falling from his chair, and clasping his hands. " I thought the hook was in my eye," said the Lady ; " but it is only in my hair." From which she forthwith endeavoured to disentangle it, but with so little success, that in common polite- ness Mr. Chubb felt bound to tender his assistance. It was gratefully accepted; and in a moment the most bashful of bachelors found himself in a more singular position than ever — namely, with his short thick fingers entwined with a braid of 196 WHIMSICALITIES. the gl inest, softest auburn hair thai ever grew on a female b sad. " Bless my soul and bodyl" Baid Mr. Chubb to himself; "tba job with the gut aud silk lines was nothing to this!" CHAPTER \. That wearisome hpok 1 Itclungtothe tress in which it had fastened itself with lover-like pertinacity! In the mean time the . to favour the operation, necessarily inclined her head a little downwards and Bid • that when she looked at Mr. b, she was obligi d to glance at him from the corners of her eyes — as coquettish a ]«'>it;< >n as female artifice, in-trad of acci- dent, could have produced. Nothing, indeed, could he more bewitching! Nothing so disconcerting! It was a wonder the short thick fingers ever brought their task to an end, they rumbled so abominably — the poor man forgot what he was about so fre- quently! At last the soft glossy braid, sadly disarranged, dropped again on the fair smooth cheek. "Is the hook out?" asked tin' Lady. "It is, ma'am — thank God!" replied the little Bachelor, with extraordinary emphasis and fervour; hut the next moment making a grimace widely at variance with the implied pleasure. "Why it's in your own thumb'." screamed the Lady, forget- ting in her fright that it was a Strang- gentleman's hand she caught hold of so unceremoniously. " It's nothing, ma'am — don't be alarmed ; nothing at all — only — bless my soul, — how very ridiculous ! " " But it must hurt you, sir." " Not at all, ma'am — quite the reverse. I don't feel it — I don't, MR. CHUBB. 197 indeed ! — Merely through, the skin, ma'am, — and if I could only- get at my penknife " "Where is it, sir?" "Stop, ma'am — here — I've got it," said Mr. Chubb, his heart beating violently at the mere idea of the long taper fingers in his left waistcoat-pocket — " But unluckily it's my right hand ! " "How veiy disfressing ! " exclaimed the lady; "and all through extricating me ! " " Don't mention it, ma'am, pray don't — you're perfectly wel- come." " If I thought," said the lady, " that it was only through the skin — I had once to cut one out for poor dear Mr. Hooker," and she averted her head as if to hide a tear. " She's a widow, then ! " thought Mr. Chubb to himself. " But what does that signify to me — and as to her cutting out the hook, it's a mere act of common charity." And so, no doubt, it was ; for no sooner was the operation per- formed, than dropping his hand as if it had been a stone, or a brick, or a lump of clay, she restored the penknife, and cutting short his acknowledgments with a grave " Good morning, sir," skipped down from her chair, and walked off, rod in hand, to her house. Mr. Chubb watched her till she disappeared, and then getting down from his own chair, took a seat in it, and fell into a reverie, from which he was only roused by putting his thumb and finger into the wrong box, and feeling a pinch of gentles, instead of snuff. CHAPTER VI. The next day Mr. Chubb angled as usual ; but with abated 198 WHIMSICALITIES. pleasure. His fishery bad 1 □ disturbed; his Bolitude invaded — ■ he was d i longer Walton and Zimmerman rolled into one. From certain prophetic misgivings h had even abandoned the costume of the craft, — and appeared in ;i drees more Buited to a public dinner than his private recreation — a bin.' coat and black k< mere trowsers — instead of the fustian jacket, shorts, and leathern gaiters. The weather was still propitious, but he could neither confine his eye to his quill nor bis thoughts to die pastime. Every moment he expected to hear the splash of the gnat green and white float, — and to see it come sailing into bis swim. But he watched and listened in vain. Nothing drifted down with the currenl but small sticks and straus or a stray weed, — nothing disturbed the calm surface of the river, except the bleak, occasion- ally rising at a fly. A furtive glance assured him that uobody was looking at him over the a fenoi — for that day, at . he bad the fishery all to himself, and he was beginning, heart and soul to enjoy the sport, — when, from up the stream, b • beard a startling plunge, enough to frighten all the fish up to London or down to the Ware ! The flop of the great green and white float was a whisper to it — but before he could frame a guess at the cause, a ball of something, as big as his own head, plumped into his swim, with a splash that sent up the water into his very face! The next moment a sweet low voice called to him by his name. It was the Widow! He knew it without turning his head By a sort of mental clairvoyance be saw ber distinctly looking at him, with her soft liquid hazel eyes, over the privet hedge. He immediately fixed his gaze more resolutely on his float, and de- termined to be stone deaf. But the manoeuvre was of no avail. MR. CHUBB. 199 Another ball flew bomb-like through the air, and narrowly miss- ing- his rod, dashed — saluting him with a fresh sprinkle — into the river ! " Bless my soul," thought Mr. Chubb, carefully laying his rod across the arms of his elbow-chair, " when shall I get any fishing !" " A fine morning, Mr. Chubb." "Very, ma'am — very, indeed — quite remarkable," stammered Mr. Chubb, bowing as he spoke, plucking off his hat, and taking two or three unsteady steps towards the fence. " -^y gardener has made me some ground bait, Mr. Chubb, and I told him to throw the surplus towards your part of the river." " You 're very good, ma'am, — I'm vastly obliged I'm sure," said the little Bachelor, quite overwhelmed by the kindness, and wiping his face with his silk handkerchief, as if it had just re- ceived the favour of another sprinkle. " Charming weather, ma'am !" " Oh, delightful ! — It's quite a pleasure to be out of doors. By-the-bye, Mr. Chubb, I'm thinking of strolling — do' you ever stroll, sir?" " Ever what ?" asked the astounded Mr. Chubb, his blood sud- denly boiling up to Fever Heat. " For jack and pike, sir — I've just been reading about it in the Complete Angler." " 0, she means trolling" thought Mr. Chubb, his blood as rapidly cooling down to temperate. "-Why, no, ma'am — no. The truth is, — asking your pardon, — there are no jack or pike, I believe, in this water." " Indeed ! That's a pity. And yet, after all, I don't think I 200 WHIMSICALITIES. could put the poor frog on the hoot — and then sew up his mouth, — I'm sure I couldn't !" "Of course not, ma'am — of con Bache- lor, with unusual warmth of manner, — "You have too much sensibility." " Do you think, then, sir, that angling is en " Why really, ma'am" — but the poor man had entangled him- self in a dilemma, and could gel no farther. "Some persons say it is, : ' continued the Lady, — "and really to think of the agonies of the poor worm on the hook — hut for my part I always fish with paste." "Yes— I know it," thought Mr. Chubb,— « with a little hard dumpling." " And then it is so much cleaner," said the lady. "Certainly, ma'am, certainly," replied Mr. Chubb, with a par- ticular reference to a certain very white- hand with long taper fingers! " Nothing like paste, ma'am — or a fly — if it was u t a liberty, ma'am, I should think you would prefer an artificial fly." "An artificial one ! — 0, of all things in the world !" exclaimed the Lady with great animation. " That cannot feel ! — Bui then" — and she shook her beautiful bead despondingly — " they are so bard to make. I have read the rules for artificial flies in the book, — and what with badger's hair, and cock's cackles (she meant hackles,) and whipping your shanks (she meant the books,) and then dubbing your fur (she meant drubbing with fur,) 0, I never could do it !" Mr. Chubb was silent. He bad artificial flies in his pocket-book, and yearned to offer one — but, deterred by cer- tain recollections, be shrank from the task of affixing it to her line. And yet to oblige a lady — and such a fine woman too — MR. CHUBB. 201 and besides the light fall of a fly on the water would be so much better than the flopping of that abominable great green and white float ! — Yes, he would make the offer of it, and he did. It was graciously accepted, — the rod was handed over the hedge, and the little Bachelor, — at a safe distance, — took off, with secret satisfaction, the silk line, its great green and white float, its swanshot, the jSTo. 1 hook and its little hard dumpling. He then substi- tuted a fine fly-line, with a small black ant-fly, and when all was ready, presented the apparatus to the lovely Widow, who was profuse in her acknowledgments. " There never was such a beautiful fly," she said, " but the difficulty was how to throw it. She was only a Tryo (she meant a Tyro,) and as such must throw herself on his neighbourly kindness, for a little instruction." This information, as well as he could by precept and example, with a hedge between, the little Bachelor contrived to give ; and then dismissed his fair pupil to whip for bleak ; whilst with an mternal " Thank Heaven !" he resumed his own apparatus, and began to angle for perch, roach, dace, gudgeons, — or any thing else. But his gratitude was premature — his float had barely com- pleted two turns, when he heard himself hailed again from the privet hedge. "Mr. Chubb! Mr. Chubb!" "At your service, ma'am." " Mi\ Chubb, you will think me shockingly awkward, but I've switched off the fly, — your beautiful fly, — somewhere among the evergreens." Slowly the Angler pulled up his line — at the sacrifice of what seemed a very promising nibble — and carefully deposited his rod again across the arms of the elbow chair. 9* 202 WHIMSICALITIES. "Bless my soul and body!" muttered Mr. Chubb, as bo se- lected anuther fly from bis pocket-book, — " when shall I ever get any fishing !" CHAPTER VII. Poor Mr. Chubb ! How little he dreamt — in all his twelve years dreaming, of i retiringfrom trade into such a j in -tty business as that in which he found himself involved ! How little be thought, whilst studying the instructive dialogues of Venator and Viator with Piscator, that he should ever have a pupil in petticoats hanging on his own lips foi lessons in the gentle art! Nor was it seldom that she re- quired his counsel or assistance. Scarcely had his own line 1 in the water, when he was summoned by an irresistible voice to the evergreen fence, and requested to perform some trivial office for a fair Neophyte, with the prettiest white hand, the soft- est hazel eyes, and the silkiest auburn hair he had ever seen. Sometimes it was to put a bait on her hook — sometimes to take off a fish — now to rectify her float — and now to screw or unscrew her rod. Not a day passed but the little Bachelor found himself tete a t'ete with the lovely 'Widow, across the privet hedge. Little he thought, the while, that she was fishing for him, and that he was pouching the bait ! But so it was : — for exactly six ■weeks from the day when Mr. Chubb caught his first Bleak — Mrs. Hooker beheld at her feet her first Chubb ! "What she did with him needs not to be told. Of course she did not give him away, like Venator's chub, to some poor body ; or baste him, as Piscator recommends, with vinegar or verjuice. The probability is that she blushed, smiled, and gave him her A VERY SO-SO CHARACTER. 203 hand ; for if you walk, Gentle Reader, to Enfield, and inquire concerning a certain row of snug little villas, with, pleasure-grounds bounded by the New River, you will learn that two of the houses, and two of the gardens, and two of the proprietors have been " thrown into one." "And did they fish together, sir, after their marriage ?" Never ! Mr. Chubb, indeed, often angled from morning till night, but Mrs. C. never wetted a line from one year's end to another. " I take it for granted," said Mrs. Wiggins, inquiring as to the character of a certain humble companion, " that she is temperate, conversible, and willing to make herself agreeable ? '' " Quite," replied Mrs. Figgins, " Indeed, I never knew a young person so sober, so sociable, and so solicitous to please." 204 &f i g x fl « . THE SUl'EKIOKIIY OF MACHINERY. A Mechanic his labour will ofteD discard If the rate of his pay he dislikes; But a clock — and its case is uncommonly hard — Will continue to work though it strikes. % (Cnstnm-iBintsr Smjt. One day — no matter for the month or year, A Calais packet, just come over, And safely moor'd within the pier. Began to land her passengers at Dover ; All glad to end a voyage long and rough, And during which, Through roll and pitch, The Ocean-King had stefcophants enough ! Away, as fast as they could walk or run, Eager for steady rooms and quiet meals, With bundles, bags, and boxes at their heels, Away the passengers all went, but one, A female, who from some mysterious check, Still linger'd on the steamer's deck, As if she did not care for land a tittle, For horizontal rooms, and cleanly victual — Or nervously afraid to put Her foot Into an Isle described as " tight and little." A CUSTOM-HOUSE BREEZE. 205 In vain commissioner and touter, Porter and waiter throng'd about her ; Boring - , as such officials only bore — In spite of rope and barrow, knot, and truck, Of plank and ladder, there she stuck, She couldn't, no she wouldn't go on shore. " But, ma'am," the steward interfered, " The wessel must be cleared. You musn't stay aboard, ma'am, no one don't! It's quite agin the orders so to do — And all the passengers is gone but you." Says she, " I cannot go ashore and won't ! " " You ought to ! " " But I can't ! " " You must ! " "I shan't!" At last, attracted by the racket 'Twixt gown and jacket, The captain came himself, and cap in hand, Begg'd very civilly to understand Wherefore the lady could not leave the packet. " Why then," the lady whispered with a shiver, That made the accents quiver, " I've got some foreign silks about me pinn'd, In short so many things, all contraband, To tell the truth I am afraid to land, In such a searching wind ! " 206 gnha mi Il;nlt5{irnrf. It is singular thai none of the commentators on "The Merry Wives of Windsor" have hitherto attributed to Sir John FaUtaff a tampering with the Black An of Magic. There are a1 least as plausible grounds for such a supposition, as for some of the most elaborate of their conjectures, for not only does the Fat Knight undertake to personat<- thai Witch the Wise Woman of Brentford, but he expressly hints to ns that he himself was a Wizard, and popularly known as -.lack with his familiars." A proof of the antiquity of the practice of letting lodgings, or offices for merchants and lawyers, has been equally overlooked by the Annotators. It occurs, indeed, more than once, and in words that might serve for a hill in a modern window — namely, " Cham- bers let of:' NOTE ON " KING JOHN."' Prince Arthur. — Must you with hut irons burn out both my < Hubert. — Young boy, I must. In the barbarous cruelty proposed to be practised on Prince Arthur there appears to be some coincidence with a theory brought forward of late years, in reference to the Hanoverian Heir- Apparent; namely that by the ancient laws of Germany the sovereignty could not be exercised by a person deprived of the sense of sight. Although "death" was indicated by the royal uncle in his conference with Hubert, it would seem as if John, shrinking from the guilt of actual murder, had subsequently con- NOTES ON SHAKSPEARE- 207 tented himself with ordering that the young " serpent on his path" should be rendered incapable of reigning by the loss of his eyes. It was a particular act, intended for an especial purpose, expressly commanded by warrant, and Hubert was " sworn to do it." Supposing, therefore, that the intention was simply to blind the victim, to disable him from the throne, not to inflict unnecessary torture, or endanger life, it is humbly suggested to future painters and stage-managers, that the inhuman deed would not have been performed with great clumsy instruments like plumber's irons, but more probably with heated metal skewers or bodkins, as the eyes of singing birds have been destroyed by fanciers — though for a different reason — with red-hot knitting-needles. 'my eyes! there's a mouse!' 20S ,i> i iu 1 n rum u r\ . " I'll have- live hundred voices of that sound." CORIOLANUB. A few days since while passing along the Strand, near Exeter Hall, my tar was suddenly startled by a burst of sound from the interior of that building: — a noise which, according to a by- stander, proceeded from the " calling out of the vocal Militia." ni'tLAii-cun . NEW HARMONY. 209 This explanation rather exciting than allaying my curiosity, induced me to make further inquiries into the matter ; when it appeared that the Educational Committee had built a plan, on a German foundation, for the instruction of the middle and lowet orders in Music, and that a Mr. Hullah was then encased in drill ing one of the classes in singing. As an advocate for the innocent amusement of the lower classes, and the people in general, the news gave me no small pleasure ; and even the distant chorus gratified my v ear more than a critical organ ought to have been pleased by the imperfect blending of a number of unpractised voices of very various qualities, and as yet not quite so tuneable as the hounds of Theseus in giving tongue. Indeed, one or two voices seemed also to be " out of their time " in the very beginning of their apprenticeship. But to a patriotic mind, there Avas a moral sweetness in the music that fully atoned for any vocal irregularities, and would have reconciled me even to an orchestra of Dutch Nightingales. To explain this feeling, it must be remembered that no Administration but one which in- tended to be popular and paternal, would ever think of thus en- couraging the exercise of the Vox Populi ; and especially of teach- ing the million to lift up their voices in concert, for want of Avhich, and through discordances amongst themselves, their political cho- ruses have hitherto been so ineffective. It was evident therefore, that our Rulers seriously intended, not merely to imbue the people with musical knowledge, but also to give them good cause to sing, — and of course hoped to lend their own ministerial ears to songs and ballads very different from the satirical chansons that are chanted on the other side of the English Channel. In short, we are all to be as merry and as tuneful as Larks, and to enjoy a Political and Musical Millenium ! 210 WHIMSICALITIES. This idea so transported me, that like a grateful canary I in- continently burst into a full-throated song, and with such thrills and flourishes as recurred to me, commenced a Bravura, which in a few minutes might have attracted an audience more numerous than select, if my performance had not been checked in its very preludium by an occurrence peculiarly characteristic of a London street. It was, in fact, the abrupt putting to me of a question, which some pert cockney of the Poultry first addressed to the unfledijvd. "does your mother know you're out?' 211 €)ft 33nffitst 3Situ in <0ugUiti A SKETCH ON THE ROAD. " It is the Soul that sees ; the outward eyes Present the object ; but the Mind descrys, And thence delight, disgust, and cool indifference rise." Craebe. " A charming morning, sir," remarked my only fellow-pas- senger in the Comet, as soon as I had settled myself in the op- posite corner of the coach. As a matter cf course and courtesy I assented ; though I had certainly seen better days. It did not rain ; but the weather was gloomy, and the air felt raw, as it well might with a pale dim sun overhead, that seemed to have lost all power of roasting. " Quite an Italian Sky," added the Stranger, looking up at a sort of French gray coverlet that would have given a Neapolitan fancy the ague. However, I acquiesced again, but was obliged to protest against the letting down of both windows in order to admit what was called the " fresh invigorating breeze from the Surrey Hills." To atone for this objection, however, I agreed that the coach was the best, easiest, safest, and fastest in England, and the road the most picturesque out of London. Complaisance apart, we were passing between two vegetable screens, of a colour con- verted by dust to a really " invisible green," and so high, that they excluded any prospect as effectually as if they had been 212 whims ic ILITIES .'an blinds. Tl uat< h, ,1 die • ■ n. I '• I Thej are ; eculiar to the r/hly cultivated bland. You may t Constantinople a a Bimilar I bave undersl ict, air : they are unique. And yonder is another picture unparalleled, I may Bay, in continental Europe a mea- dow of rich pasture, enamelled with the ind and a multiplicity of buttercups '." The ' the phraseology ma. I- me look curiously at the Bpeaker. A pastoral poet, thought I — but no — be was too plump . • . belong to thai famishi ad in his dress, as well as his person, had every appearance of a man well to do in the world. He was more probably a gentleman farmer, an ad- mirer of tin" grazing-land, and perl in a well dn bb- ed paddock and genteel haystack of his own. But I did him injustice, or rath — which i - exclusive — fur the next Bcene to which he invited my attention, was of a totally different charact r — a vast, bleak, Bcurvy-looking common, too barren to afford even a picking to any living creatures, except a few crows. The view, however, elicited a note of admiration from my companion : '•What an extensive pi Genuine, uncultivated nature — and studded with rook- '." The stranger had now furnished me with a clew to his charac- ter ; which he afterwards more amusingly unravelled. He was THE HAPPIEST MAN IN ENGLAND. 213 an Optimist ; — one of those blessed beings (for they are blessed) who think that whatever is, is beautiful as well as right : — prac- tical philosophers who make the best of everything ; imaginative painters, who draw each object en beau, and deal plentifully in couleur de rose. And they are right. To be good — in spite of all the old story-books, and all their old morals, — is not to be happy. Still less does it result from Rank, Power, Learning, or Riches ; from the single state or a double one, or even from good health or a clean conscience. The source of felicity, as the poet truly declares, is in the Mind — for like my fellow-traveller, the man who has a mind to be happy will be so, on the plainest com- mons that nature can set before him — with or without the rooks. The reader of Crabbe will remember how graphically he has described, in his " Lover's Journey," the different aspects of the same landscape to the same individual, under different moods — on Lis outward road, an Optimist, like my fellow-traveller, but on his return a malcontent like myself. In the mean time, the coach stopped — and opposite to what many a person, if seated in one of its right-hand corners, would have considered a very bad look out, — a muddy square space, bounded on three sides by plain brick stabling and wooden barns, with a dwarf wall and a gate, for a foreground to the picture. In fact, a strawyard, but untenanted by any live stock, as if an Owenite plan amongst the brute creation, for living in a social parallelogram, had been abandoned. There seemed no peg here on which to hang any eulogium ; but the eye of the Optimist detected one in a moment : " What a desirable pond for Ducks !" He then shifted his position to the opposite window, and with equal celerity discovered " a capital Pump ! with oceans of excel- 2H WHIMSICALITI1 lent Spring Wati r, and n us handle within reach of the small, LL'hil.i:" I wondered to myself how he would have d Fountains, whi r.' the Bparkling i' Sculpture into raarbl rod without the trouble of pumping at all, minis! srs to the thirst and cleanliness of half a city. Ami or Travel! nch a Bup 1 b work with scarcely a glance, and certainly without ■ syllable of ! It is Mich Headless Tourists, by the way, who throng t<» the German Baths and consider themselves BubbL d because, with- out any mind's ej e al all, which were so graphically described by the <>M Man of the Brun- For my own part, I could not help thinking thai 1 must have ' ire in my own | h lif bj ; difficult 1. 1 For example, even during the present journey whilst 1 had been inwardly grumbling at the weather, and yawning al the road, my fellow-traveller bad b in revelling in Italian skies, salubrious breezes, verdant enclosures, pastoral pictures, sympathizing with wet habits and dry, and enjoying desirable duck-ponds, and paro- chial Pumps] What a conb rful contented spirit of my present companion, and the dissatisfied temper and tone of Sir W. W., with whom I one^ had the uncomfortable honour of travelling tete-a-Ute from Leipzig to Berlin. The road, it is true, was none of the most en the tarn flat scenery of the Lincolnshire Fens may 1"' rendered still more wearisome by sulkily throwing back in your carriage and talking of Switzerland ! But > s ir W. W. was far too nice to be wise — too fastidious to be happy — too critical to be contented. THE HAPPIEST MAN IN ENGLAND. 215 Whereas my present coach-fellow was not afraid to admire a com- monplace inn — I forget its exact locality — but he described it as " superior to any oriental Caravansery — and with a Sign that, in the Infancy of The Art, might have passed for a Chef (Tceuvre." Happy Man ! How he must have enjoyed the Exhibitions of the Royal Academy, whereas to judge by our periodical critics on such Works of Modern Art, there are scarcely a score out of the thousand annual Pictures that ought to give pleasure to a Con- noiseur. Nay, even the Louvre has failed to satisfy some of its visitants, on the same principle that a matcbless collection of Titians has been condemned for the want of a good Teniers. But my fellow traveller was none of that breed : he had no- thing in common Avith a certain Lady, who with half London, or at least its Londoners, had inspected Wanstead House, prior to its demolition, and on being asked for her opinion of that princely mansion, replied that it was " short of cupboards." In fact he soon had an opportunity of pronouncing on a Coun- try Seat — far, very, very far inferior to the House just mentioned, and declared it to be one which "Adam himself would have chosen for a family Residence, if Domestic Architecture had flou- rished in the primeval Ages." Happy man, again ! fur with what joy, and comfort, and cheer- fulness, for his co-tenants, would he have inhabfted the enviable dwelling ; and yet, to my private knowledge, the Proprietor was one of the most miserable of his species, simply because he chose to go through life like a pug-dog — with his nose turned up at every thing in the world. And truly, flesh is grass, and beauty is dust, and gold is dross, nay, life itself but a vapour ; but instead of dwelling on such disparagements, it is far wiser and happier, like the florid gentleman in one corner of the Comet, to remem- 216 WHIMSICALITIES. ber that one is not a Sworn Appraiser, nor bound by oath like an Ale-Conner to think small beer of small beer. From these reflections I was suddenly roused by the Optimist, who earnestly begged me to look out of the Win. low at a pros- pect which, though pleasing, was far from a fine one, for either variety or extent "There, sir, — there'- a Panorama ! A perfect circle of enchant- ment! realising the Arabia Felix of Fairy Land in the County of Kent ! " •• Very pretty, indeed." " It's a gem, sir, even in our Land of Oaks — and may chal- a comparison with the most luxuriant Specimens of what the great Gilpin calls Forest Scenery !" " I think it may." " By the bye, 'I'M you -'ver see Scrublands, sir, in Sussex I" « ffever, Sir." "Then, sir, you have yet to enjoy a romantic scene of the Sylvan Character, not to be paralleled within the limits of Geo- graphy! To describe it would require one to soar into the re- gions of Poetry, but I do not hesitate tosay, that if the celebrated Robinson Crusoe were placed within sight of it, he would exclaim in a transport, 'Juan Fernandez! 1 " " I do not doifbt, sir." " Perhaps, sir, you have been in Derbyshire ? " " No, sir." " Then, sir, you have another splendid treat in futuro — Brag- gins — a delicious amalgamation of Art and Nature, — a perfect Eden, sir, — and the very spot, if there be one on the Terrestrial Globe, for the famous Milton to have realised his own ' Paradise Regained ! ' " THE HAPPIEST MAN IN ENGLAND. 217 In this glowing style, waxing warmer and warmer with his own descriptions, the florid gentleman painted for me a series of high- ly-coloured sketches of the places he had visited ; each a retreat that would wonderfully have broken the fall of our first Parents, and so thickly scattered throughout the counties, that by a mo- derate computation our Fortunate Island contained at least a thousand " Perfect Paradises," copyhold or freehold. A pleasant contrast to the gloomy pictures which are drawn by certain des- ponding and agriculturally-depressed Spirits who cannot find a single Elysian Field, pasture or arable, in the same country! In the meantime, such is the force of sympathy, the Optimist had gradually inspired me with something of his own spirit, and I began to look out for and detect unrivalled forest scenery, and perfect panoramas, and little Edens, and might in time have picked out a romantic pump, or a picturesque post, — but, alas ! in the very middle of my course of Beau Idealism, the coach stopped, the door- opened, and with a hurried good morning, the florid gentleman stepped out of the stage and into a gig which had been waiting for him at the end of a cross-road, and in another minute was driving down the lane between two of those hedges that are only to be seen in England. "Well, go where thou wilt," thought I, as he disappeared behind the fence, " thou art certainly the Happiest Man in England !" Yes — he was gone ; and a light and a glory had departed with him. The air again felt raw, the sky seemed duller, the sun mort dim and pale, and the road more heavy. The scenery appeared to become tamer and tamer, the inns more undesirable, and their signs were mere daubs. At the first opportunity I obtained a glas-; of sherrv, but its taste was vapid ; every thing in short ap- 10 218 WHIMSICALITIES. peared " flat, stale, and unprofitable." Like a Bull in the Alley, whose flattering rumours hoist up the public funds, the high san- guine tone of the Optimist had raised my spirits considerably above par ; but now his operations had ceased, and by the usual reaction my mind sank again even below its natural level. My short-lived enthusiasm was gone, and instead of the cheerful fer- tile country through which I had been journeying, I seemed to be travelling that memorable long stage between Dan and Beer- sheba where " all was barren." Some months afterwards I was tempted to go into Essex to inspect a small Freehold Property which was advertised for sale in that county. It was described in large and small print, as " a delightful Swiss Villa, the prettiest thing in Europe, and enjoying a boundless prospect over a country proverbial for Fertility, and resembling that Traditional Land of Promise described metaphorically in Holy Writ as overflowing with Milk and Honey." Making all due allowance, however, for such professional flourishes, this very Desirable Investment deviated in its features even more than usual from its portrait in the prospectus. The Villa turned out to be little better than an ornamented Barn, and the Promised land was some of the worst land in England, and overflowed occasionally by the neighboring river. An Optimist could hardly have discovered a single merit on the estate ; but he did ; for whilst I was gazing in blank disappoint- ment at the uncultivated nature before me, not even studded witb rooks, I heard his familiar voice at my elbow — " Rather a small property, sir — but amply secured by ten solid miles of Terra Firma from the encroachments of the German Ocean" THE HAPPIEST MAN IN ENGLAND. 219 * And if the sea could," I retorted, " it seems to me very doubtful whether it would care to enter on the premises." " Perhaps not as a matter of Marine taste," said the Optimist. " Perhaps not, sir. And yet, in my pensive moments, I have fancied that a place like this with a sombre interest about ii, would be a desirable sort of Wilderness, and more in unison with an II Penseroso cast of feeling, than the laughing beauties of a Villa in the Regent's Park, the Cynosure of Fashion and Gfaity, enlivened by an infinity of equipages. But excuse me, sir, I per- ceive that I am wanted elsewhere," and the florid gentleman went off at a trot towards a little man in black, who was beckon- ing to him from the door of the Swiss Villa. " Yes," was my reflection as he turned away from me, if he can find in such a swamp as this a Fancy Wilderness, a sort of Shenstonian Solitude for a sentimental fit to evaporate in, he must certainly be the Happiest Man in England. As to his pensive moments, the mere idea of them sufficed to set my risible muscles in a quiver. But as if to prove how he would have comported himself in the Slough of Despond, during a subsequent ramble of exploration round the estate, he actually plumped up to his middle in a bog; — an accident which only drew from him the remark that the place afforded " a capital opportunity for a spirited proprietor to establish a Splendid Mud Bath, like the ones so much in vogue at the German Spaws !" • If that gentleman takes a fancy to the place," I remarked to the person who was showing me round the property, " he will be a determined bidder." " Him bid !" exclaimed the man, with an accent of the utmost astonishment — " Him bid ! — why he's the Auctioneer that's to sell us! 1 thought you would have remarked that in his speech, 220 WHIMSICALITIES. for he imitates in bis talk the advertisements of the famous Mr. Robin-. He's called the Old Gentleman." "Old I why he appears to 1"- in the prime of life." " Yes, sir, but it's the other Old Gentleman — " "What! the Devil I" '• Yes, sir, — because you Bee, he's always a knocking down of somebody s little Paradi ." 221 23 n r b itttfr /nnt. Fain would I climbe But that I fear to fall. Sir Walter Raleigh. It requires some degree of moral courage to make sueli a confession, for a horse-laugh will assuredly take place at my expense, but I never could sit on any thing with four legs, except a chair, a table, or a sofa. Possibly my birthplace was adverse, not being raised in Yorkshire, with its three Ridings — perhaps my education was in fault, for of course I was put to my feet like other children, but I do not remember being ever properly taken off them in the riding-school. It is not unlikely that my passion for sailing has been inimical to the accomplishment ; there is a roll about a vessel so different from the pitch of a horse, that a person accustomed to a fore and aft sea-saw, or side lurch, is utterly disconcerted by a regular up-and-down motion — at any rate, seamen are notorious for riding at anchor better than at any thing else. Finally, the Turk's principle, Predestination, may be accountable for my inaptitude. One man is evidently born under what Milton calls a " mounted sign," whilst another comes into the world under the influence of Aries, predoomed to perform on no saddle but one of mutton. Thus we see one gentleman who can hardly keep his seat upon a pony, or a donkey ; wdaen another shall turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, or back a Bucepha- lus ; to say nothing of those professional equestrians, who tumble on a horse instead of off. It has always seemed to me, there- i fore, tbat our Astleys and Ducrows, whether they realized fortunes 10* 222 WHIMSICALITIES. or oot, deserved to do ao, besides obtaining more honorary rewards. It would not, perhaps, have been out of character, if they had 1 n made Knights of, '>r Cavaliers; especially con- sidering that many Mayors, Aldermen, and Sheriffs have l>ecn so dubbed, whose pretensions never stood on more than two Legs, and sometimes scarcely oi The truth is, 1 have always regarded horsemen with something of the veneration with which the savages beheld, for the firsl the Spanish chivalry — namely, as superior beings. With all respect then to our gallant Infantry, I have always looked on our Cavalry as a grade above them — indeed, the feal of Widdrington, who "fought upon his Bturnps," and bo far, on his own logs, has always ap- d to me comparatively easy, whereas for a charge of cavalry, < !harge, Chester, charge, Off, Stanley off, has always seemed to me the mosl natural reading. The chase of course excites my admiration and wonder, and like Lord Chesterfield I unfeignedly marvel — but for a different reason — thai anj gentleman ever goes to it a second time. A chapter of Nimrod's invariably gives me a crick in the neck. I can well believe that "it is the pace that kills," but why rational beings with that conviction should ride to be killed exceeds my comprehension. For my own part could such a pace ever come into fashion, it would be suicidal in me to attempt to hunt at a trot or even in a walk. Ride and tie, perhaps, if, as I suppose, it means one's being tied on — but no, my evil genius would evade even that security. Above all, but for certain visits to Epsom and Ascot I should have set down horse racing as a pleasant fiction. That Buckle, without being buckled on, should have reached the age he HORSE AND FOOT. 223 attained to — or that Day should have had so long a day — are to my mind " remarkable instances of longevity" far more wonderful than any recorded in the newspapers. How a jockey can be- stride, and what is more, start with one of those thorough-bred steeds, is to me a standing, or rather running, or rather flying miracle. Were I a Robinson or a Rogers, I should certainly think of the plate as a coffin-plate, and that the stakes were such as those that were formerly driven through self-murderers' bodies. It would appear, then, that a rider, like a poet, must be born and not made — that thej-e are two races of men as differently fated as the silver-spooned and the wooden-ladled — some coming into the world, so to speak, at Hyde, others, like myself, at Foolscray, and thus by necessity, equestrians or pedestrians. In fact, to corrobo- rate this theory, there is the Championship, which being heredi- tary, is at least one instance of a gentleman being ordained to horseback from his birth. As to me, instead of retrograding through Westminster Hall on Cato, I must have backed out of the office. It is probable, however, that beside the causes already enume- rated, something of my inaptitude may be due to my profession. It has been remarked elsewhere as to riding, that " sedentary persons seldom have a good seat," and literary men generally appear to have been on a par, as to Horsemanship, with the sailors. The Author of " Paul Pry," in an extremely amusing paper,* has recorded his own quadrupedal mischances. Cole- ridge, for a similar or a still greater incapacity, was discharged from a dragoon regiment. Lamb avowedly never went " horse- pickaback " in his life. Byron, for all his ambition to be thought a bold cavalier, and in spite of his own hints on the subject, ap- * A Cockney's Rural Sports. -2-4 WHIMSICALITIES. pears to Lave been but an indifferenl performer — and Sir Walter Scott, as we read in bis lit".', tumbled from his galloway, and Sir Humphrey Davy jumped over him. Even Shakspeare, as far as we bare any account of liis knowledge of horses, never got beyond holding them. Lord Chesterfield has described Doctor Johnson's appearance in the saddle; but the catalogue would be too tedious. Suffice it, if riding 1"' the "poetry of motion," authors excel rather in its prose. To affirm, however, thai I never ventured on the quadruped in question would !»• beside 1 1 » « - truth, having ;inlim notion of once getting astride a Shetland pony in my boyhood, but how or where it carried me, or bow I Bat, it' I did -it on it for an\ dis- tance, ia in blank, having been picked up insensible within twentv yards of the door. I have a distinct recollection however of mounting a full-grown mahogany-coloured animal of the same genus, after coming to man's estate, which I may be pardoned for relating, as it was mj only performance of the kind. It was during my first unfortunate courtship, when I bad the brief happiness of three weeks' visit at the residence of the lady's father in the county of Suffolk. I had made considerable pro- gress, I flattered myself, in the affections of his "eldest daughter," when alas! a letter arrived from L >ndon, which summoned me on urgent business to the metropolis. There was no neat post- chaise to be procured in the neighbourhood, nor indeed any other vehicle on account of the election ; and my host kindly pressed upon me the use of one of his saddle-horses to carry me to the next market-town where I should meet the mail. The urgency of the case induced me to accede to the proposal, and with feelings thai all lovers will duly estimate, I took leave of my adored Honoria. She evidently felt the parting — we might not meet again for HORSE AND FOOT. 225 an age, or even two or three ages, alias weeks, and to be candid, I fully participated in her feelings of anxiety, and something more, considering the perilous nature of the expedition. But the Horse came, and the last adieus — no, not the last, for the animal having merely taken me an airing across a country of his own choosing, at last brought me back of his own head, for I was un able to direct it, safe to the house, or rather to the door of his own stable. At the time, despite some over-severe raillery, I rather enjoyed the untoward event ; but on mature reflection, I have since found reason to believe that the change which after- wards took place in the young lady's sentiments towards me, was greatly attributable to my equestrian failure. The popular novel of " Rob Roy " made its appearance soon afterwards, and along with a certainly over-fervent admiration of its heroine, Di Vernon, a notable horsewoman, it is not improbable that Honoria imbibed something of an opposite feeling towards her humble servant who was only a Foot-Man. Since then, I have contrived to get married, to a lady of a more pedestrian taste; an escape from celibacy that might have been more difficult had my bachelorship endured till a reign when the example of the Sovereign has made riding so fashionable an exercise with the fair sex. Indeed, I have invariably found that every female but one, whom I might have liked or loved, was a capital horsewoman. How other timid or inapt gentlemen are to procure matrimonial partners, is a problem that remains to be solved. They must seek companions, as W. says, in the humbler ivalks of life. Poor W.! He was deeply devotedly attached to a young lady of family and fortune, to whom he was not altogether indifferent, but he could not ride out with her on horseback, and the captain could, which determined her choice. The rejected 22G WHIMSICALITIES. lover baa had ;i twist in his brain and a warp in l»i> temper ever sine.' : but his bitternef s, instead of falling on the Bei as usual, lias settled on the whole equine race. He hates them all, from the steed of Bixteen bands high down to the Shetland pony, and insists, against Mr. Thomas, and liia Brutally-Humane-Society, that borsea are n \< r ill-us id. There is a " bit of raw " in hi> on n bosom that has made him regard their galled withers with indif- ference: a sore at bis heart which has made him callous to their Bufferings. They deserve all they get The Dog is man's best friend, he say-, and the horse his worst. ****** Sine- writing the above, -word has been brought to me that poor W. is no more. He deceased suddenly, and the report says, of apoplexy; but I know better. His death was caused, indeed, by a full habit — but it was a blue one. 227 SI Irui* (CaBt. " Who shall decide when doctors disagree ? '' 'Tis with their judgments as their watches, none Go just alike, but each believes his own. Pope. That Doctors differ, has become a common proverb; find truly, considering the peculiar disadvantages under which they labour, their variances are less wonders than matters of course. If any man works in the dark, like a mole, it is the Physician. He has continually, as it wore, to divine the colour of a pig in a poke — or a cat in the bag. He is called in to a suspected trunk without the policeman's privilege of a search. He is expected to pass judgment on a physical tragedy going on in the house of life, without the critic's free admission to the performance. He is tasked to set to rights a disordered economy, without, as the Scotch say, going " ben" and must guess at riddles hard as Samp- son's as to an animal with a honey-combed inside. In fact, every malady is an Enigma, and when the doctor gives you over, he "gives it up." A few weeks ago one of these puzzles, and a very intricate one, was proposed to the faculty at a metropolitan hospital. The dis- order was desperate : the patient writhed and groaned in agony — but his lights as usual threw none on the subject. In the meantime the case made a noise, and medical men of all degrees and descriptions, magnetizers, homceopathists, hydropathists, mad WHIMSIC I/.//7/.S lOd -'V.'!! 1. | t.i the ward, inspected the symptoms, and then debated and dis- puted i>n tin 1 ii.it nr<- of the disease. It was in the brain, the heart, the li\<-r, the nerves, the muscl n, the blood, the kidneys, the "globes of the lungs," M the momentum," " the pancraii," "the capilaire v< iture : - chronic, :n i . 1 i intermittent, and not) and "ketching," and "inflammable," and "hereditary," and 1 knows what 1- aid -. 1 1 »wev< r, th d ended in :i complete wrangle, and ever) do mounted on his own theory, never was there Buch a ibat of Hobbj II •!-• - al the • nd of Mr. B rXehea " It's in kit btomaob '." finally shout •{ the H use Surgeon, — aft r the departing disputants, — " iC$ i ••■ A t " The] r patient, who in the interval had I n listening be- tween his groans, n i Booner heard thu head ed twitched by a spasm, that also produced :i violent wink of the left eye. At the same time he beckoned to the Burgeon ■■ ! ou're all right, doctor — ;i> right :i> ;i tii " I know 1 am," said the Burgeon; — " it's in your stomach." •• It is in my Btomach, Bure enough." ■• 5T< — tl\ ing gout" — - Plying what !" exclaimed the patient " No, no Bich lurk, Doctor," and he made a Bign for the Burgeon t i put hi> oar near his li; s, ' it's au Hoga and a /Jul/, -.^ I've BwallerM." THE END. THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbai a THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILI A A 001 410 704