Chapter Nineteen.

Chapter Nineteen.Martha Jinks’s Egsperiences.A short time since we were about to change our residence, and my wife, having need for a fresh lady to cook our chops and manufacture apple-dumplings, answered two or three of the advertisements which appeared in the “Thunderer,” under the heading, “Want Places. All letters to be post-paid.” When after the lapse of a couple of days, Mistress Martha Jinks called in Whole Jorum Street, and was shown into the room. Mrs Scribe thought it better that I should be present, to act as support in case of need, since she is rather nervous over such matters. Consequently, I sat busy scribbling at a side-table, ready if wanted—really and truly writing, and lamenting greatly the want of stenography, so that my report of Mrs Jinks’s visit might have beenverbatim. A tall, stout, elderly lady, in a snuff-hued front, with a perpetual smile upon her countenance, a warm colour, and a figure bearing a strong resemblance to one of those rolled mattresses in a furnishing warehouse—one of those tied round the middle with a cord, and labelled “all wool.” She was a lady who would undoubtedly have ruled the roast in her kitchen, and knowing my partner’s foibles I should most decidedly have contrived that Mrs Jinks did not take possession of our new suburban residence. But my fears were needless, for after a few exchanges touching wages, privileges, number of servants, and numerous other little matters, interesting only to those whom they may concern, my wife mentioned our proximate removal, when Mrs Martha Jinks, with the evident intention of keeping the ball rolling, gave her head a most vigorous shake, smiled patronisingly, and then, after bridling up, unto her did say—“No, mum, not if I knows it; thank you all the same. I likes the sound of the place, mum, and I ain’t a-finding fault with the wages, nor the tea and sugar, nor the perquisites, but I’ll never bemean myself, mum, to going to a new house agen. I’ve been cook in the respectablest of families, mum, for three-and-thirty years, and after my egsperience in new houses, I’ll never go to one no more.“Now, of course I ain’t a-saying but what old houses has their doorbacks, sech as crickets, as is allus a-going fuzz, and flying by night into the candle and into the sugar-basin; and then, agen, black beatles, as isn’t pleasant to walk over if you come down in the dark, and then a-going pop to that degree that the mess on the floor nex morning is enough to worry a tylin’ and mylin’ woman out of her seven senses.“You see, mum, I don’t dislike the looks of you; for you don’t look mean, and as if you’d allus be a-pottering about in my kidgin, which is a thing I can’t abear; for, as I says to Mary in my last place—Mary, you know, as married the green-grocer, and sells coals at the little shop a-corner of the mews,—‘Mary,’ I says, ‘a missus oughter be in her drorring-room—a-drorring, or a-receiving of wisitors, or a-making of herself agreeable at the winder, not a-poking and a-poll-prying about my kidgin, with her nose in the dresser-drors, a-smelling and a-peeping about. What is it to her, I should like to know, if there is a bottle in the corner of the cupboard next door to the cruets, and if it don’t smell of winegar but of g—, you know? Why, if a missus was troubled with spazzums to the degree as I’ve suffered ’em, she’d go and live in a distillery and never be happy out.’ The things as I’ve put up with in some places, mum, would give you the creeps, and make yer ’air stand on end. Me, you know, a cook as has lived in the best of families, to be told as the brandy-sauce had not got half the brandy in; and when the tipsy-cake come on the table, for the missus to come downstairs in a towering fury, and go on like Billinsgate. I’m sure she did for all her pretence about being a lady; and to say as she did with them brazen lips of her’s, and all the time trembling with passion—“‘Cook,’ she says, ‘Cook, it ain’t the cake as is tipsy-cake, it’s summit else;’ and me a-sitting in that blessed chair, aside of the fire, feeling as if all the use was took outer my legs, when I only just put my lips to the sherry, just to see if it was good enough for the sponge-cake, as I took so much pains to make, tho’ it did get burnt at the bakehouse to that degree that I was obleeged to cut quite a lunch off all round. But I wouldn’t bemean myself to speak; for ‘Martha,’ I says to myself, ‘Martha Jinks,’ I says, ‘if you are a cook, you are a sooperior woman, and with your egsperiens, you needn’t take sauce from any one.’ So I sat looking at her that disdainful that it quite brought on a sort of sterrical hiccups, and then, I couldn’t help it, she went on so cruelly, I melted into tears, and there they was a-dripping—dripping—dripping all over the kidgin, and the missus a-going on still at that rate that I couldn’t abear it, and fainted away so that they had to carry me upstairs to bed, and bumped my pore head agen the ballisters, so that it ached fearful next morning, and I was obliged to have the least sup of g—, you know, in a wine-glass, took medicinally, you know, for if there is any mortial thing in this life asisdisgusting it’s a woman as takes to sperrits.“But, there, I wouldn’t stay. I couldn’t, bless you; for, as I says to Mary, ‘Mary,’ I says, ‘you may lead me with a bit o’ darning-cotton, but clothes-line wouldn’t pull me.’ Oh, no, I couldn’t have put up with it if missus had gone down on her bended knees in the sand on my beautiful white kidgin floor, and begged of me to stay. Oh, no—I give warning there and then. ‘A month’s wages or a month’s warning,’ I says, and she give me the month’s wages, and said I was to get out of the cruel house.“And then I went to live with some common people, who had just built themselves a new house out by the Crischial Pallus, and there I stopped three months, till I was a’most worn to skin and bone, with the worry, and bother, and want of rest.“First night I goes there, and takes my trunk, and a bundle, and a bonnet-box, and a basket, I might have known as all would go wrong, for the cabman sauced me to that degree it was orful; but I got rid of him at last, with my boxes a-standing outside the willa gate, out in the rain; and then no lights in the house, and no gash laid on, and no one to help me in with my things, and me a-going mosh—posh, pudge—mudge up the the soft gravel, and losing my gloshes a-sticking in the wet muddy stuff, and the wind a-blowing to that degree as my umbrelly—a bran new alpakky—was bust right down one of its ribs, and caught in the iron railings; while all the while I knowed as the rain was a-getting in to my best bonnet, and a man a-tumbling over my big box, as stood out in the roadway-path, and me without strength in my lines to pull it in the gate.“‘Never mind your shins, my good man,’ I says, ‘help me in with my things, and I’ll find you a bit of cold meat,’ and then I recklets myself as there might be no cold meat in the house, and I turns it into a pint of beer, being a stranger to the place.“‘And what’s your name, young woman,’ I says to a fine doll of a housemaid, a-darning stockings in the noo kidgin, as smelt of paint to that degree that you might have been lodging in a ile-shop, while the man stood a-turning over his happince on the mat—I mean on his hands, and him on the door-mat, and not satisfied till I give him twopence more, which not having enough I give him a sixpence, to go and get it, and him never a-coming back, and keeping the whole sixpence and the two pence, too, as would have tried any woman’s temper, if even she hadn’t been a cook, which is the mildest and quietest beings as ever dished a jynt.“‘And what’s your name, young woman?’ I says to my fine madam, as she sat there and didn’t seem to know the proper respect to years, though she did prick her finger till the blood come, and serve her right, too, and if I did not expect from her looks as she’d be that vulgar to answer me disrespeckful and say, when I said ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Pudding and Tame,’ like the gals did when I went to school, which wasn’t yesterday, you know; but she didn’t, but says, quite huffy, ‘Jane,’ she says.“‘Ho!’ I says, werry distant, as I took off my bonnet and shawl, and laid ’em on the dresser. ‘Ho!’ I says, and then I sits me down afore the fire, and puts my feet on the fender; for as I had my gloshes on to come in I wouldn’t wear my best boots, but left ’em in my box, and there, through there being a crack in the side, if the water hadn’t soaked right through, and wetten’d my feet, so that they steamed again.“At last, seeing as my fine lady meant to be uppish, I says to her, I says, in a tone o’ wyce as showed I didn’t mean to be trifled with, and if she meant to sit in my kidgin she must know who was missus. ‘Jane,’ I says, ‘you’d best put some more coals on the fire.’“‘You’d best not,’ she says. ‘It smokes.’“I didn’t say nothing to her then, but I says to myself, ‘Martha,’ I says, ‘Martha Jinks, you’ve made a mistake; for if there is one mortial thing as I can’t abear, it’s smoke.’“At last I says, ‘Jane,’ I says, ‘I can’t abear this smell of the paint any longer.’“‘Oh!’ she says, ‘this is nothing; the place is noo, and it’s worse upstairs in our bedroom, which was done last.’“‘Worse?’ I says. ‘Young woman,’ I says, in a whisper, ‘it makes me feel faint. If you’ve the heart that can feel for another inside your stays,’ I says, ‘get me a wee drop of g—.’“And she wouldn’t!“Oh, mum, the sufferins as I went through in that noo willa was dreadful. The kidgin fire smoked to that degree that the blacks used to be a-flying about all over the kidgin, and a-settling on everything, though if there’s one place as a black will settle on it’s your nose, when fust time you give it a rub there you are not fit to be seen; while the water was that hard it was no use to rub or wash. Soap was nowhere; and I declare to you, mum, sollumly, as I’ve often washed the smuts off one side of my face on to the other, and took to black caps outer self-defence.“If it hadn’t ha’ been for the least drop o’ g— took inwardly now and then, I should ha’ been a blackened corpse over and over again, for that fire nearly drove me mad. Cinders will come out into your pan sometimes, and frizzle and make a smell of hot fat all over the house, and it’s no use for ladies to make a fuss about it, for where cooking’s going on you must smell it sometimes if you wants to taste it, and you’d be hard-up without your cook. But when the wind sets right down the chimbley and blows all the smoke wrong way into your face, and making you sneeze, filling your eyes up, and driving the blacks into custard or veal cutlets, or whatever you’re a-making of, who can help it? And then they says upstairs as the things tastes bitter.“‘You must have it stopped, mum,’ I says to the missus, but she says as the place has cost ’em five hundred pound now more than the contrack, and so I says to myself, ‘As it’s for your good, and you won’t be led, you must be drove.’ So only outer self-defence I kep a black fire, and left the kidgin door open, when the blacks all went up the stairs, and a man came down nex week to take my measure for a patent prize kidginer.“But then, mum, if you’ll believe me, it wasn’t only in the kidgin, it was all over the house, which was designed by the artchyteck to hold so much wind that it went wentilating about the place and banging the doors to that degree that if you didn’t make haste you were hit on the back and nearly sent flat. Jane had such a stiff neck—not as that was anything new, for the baker said she was the stuckuppist gal he ever did see; but this was a cold stiff neck, and had to be rubbed with ’deldoc, and slep in flannel every night, so as she was a good half-hour undressing, and then got into bed with such cold feet as would have made a saint swear.“‘Jane,’ says I, one night, ‘if you don’t sleep in your stockings I shall be obliged to have a bottle.’“‘Of g—,’ she says, in her nasty, aggravating, spiteful way.“‘No imperance;’ I says, ‘a bottle of hot water, wrapped up in a flannel—a-hem—or I shall be having spazzums to that degree as I must have a drop of g— took inward, to save me from sufferin’ as would make any one shudder.’“Then the cold, and damp, and draughts give me the face-ache so that I had to have a tooth out, and he took the wrong one out, and said I told him that one, when it hadn’t a speck in it, and the other was a regular shell; when what I suffered no one knows but Jane, with my face swelled upon one side like a bladder of lard squeezed, and Jane all the time going on because I would sit up in bed and rock myself to and fro, with a shawl over my shoulders, and the nasty stiff-necked thing grumbling and declaring it was like somebody playing with a pair of bellows in the bed, when it was only the nasty draughty house as she could feel, and me a-dying amost for a drop of g— took inwardly, on a bit of sugar.“There was hardly a door that would shut, and when they did they stuck to that degree that you couldn’t get ’em open again till you turned cross, when they’d fly open savagely and half knock you down, and I declare to goodness, for a whole month, mum, everything I put in my mouth tasted of paint.“‘Oh, you beauties!’ I says, when after banging and ringing at the gate for near an hour, I was obliged to go down and let in the workmen as came battering in the middle of the night amost, for it had only just gone six. And there they were, smiths, and bricklayers, and plasterers, a-trampling all over my beautiful clean kitchen till they’d took out the range and scattered the bricks and mortar all over the floor, as trampled about all upstairs and got into the carpets. And the time those men wasted a-poking and pottering about till they’d got in the patent kidginet, when one stuck-up-nosed fellow begins to light it, and show me how it would draw.“‘You must keep the boiler full,’ he says.“‘Young man,’ I says, ‘have I been in the best of families for thirty years, and do you think I don’t know as a boiler without any water would bust?’ And then I went out of the kidgin, and would not stop to be insulted by a jumped-up ironmonger’s boy.“And there the nex day, if the thing didn’t smoke wuss than ever, not a bit going up the chimbley, but regularly blinding you, till master and missus come down, choking and sneezing, and—“‘Oh, cook,’ says the missus, ‘what have you been doing?’“‘No, mum,’ I says, ‘it’s not me as has been a-doing anything; it’s your patent kidginer and your noo house, as I’d never have set a foot in if I’d knowed—no, mum, not for double wages and everything found.’“‘Well, but cook,’ says the master, ‘it’s the damper.’“‘Well, sir,’ I says, ‘I could have told you that; but it’s my impression,’ I says, ‘that, when it’s the dryer, it won’t go a bit better, and the sooner you soot yourself the better.’ And then, instead of taking the hint to go out of my kidgin, as he would have done if he’d had the sperret of a man, he actelly went patting and poking about the things, and opening this and shutting that, till I hadn’t patience; when, because the thing left off smoking, he wanted to make out as I hadn’t pulled out one of the little drawer things in the flue.“But there never was sich a thing as that kidginer, and nobody never knowed how to take it; sometimes it would go a-running away and making itself red-hot, and burning all the blacklead off, and sometimes it wouldn’t go at all, but stopped all black and sulky; when your bit of fowl, or whatever you were baking—roasting they called it, but if it ain’t baking a thing as is shut up inside a oven, what is it?—p’raps you’ll tell me—and, there now, it would be raw as raw, or else dry, burnt up to a cinder, while of a night there was no fire to sit by and make yourself comfortable—nothing at all but a nasty black patent thing as never looked sociable, and sent all the smell of the cooking upstairs, specially cabbage.“No, mum, I’m much obliged, mum; and if you had been going to stop here, mum, I should have been happy to give you a trial, when you’d no doubt have found out my wally, for you look a sweet-tempered creetur; but go to a noo house, mum, I won’t—not under no consideration; and so I wish you good day, mum.”And Mrs Martha Jinks went.

A short time since we were about to change our residence, and my wife, having need for a fresh lady to cook our chops and manufacture apple-dumplings, answered two or three of the advertisements which appeared in the “Thunderer,” under the heading, “Want Places. All letters to be post-paid.” When after the lapse of a couple of days, Mistress Martha Jinks called in Whole Jorum Street, and was shown into the room. Mrs Scribe thought it better that I should be present, to act as support in case of need, since she is rather nervous over such matters. Consequently, I sat busy scribbling at a side-table, ready if wanted—really and truly writing, and lamenting greatly the want of stenography, so that my report of Mrs Jinks’s visit might have beenverbatim. A tall, stout, elderly lady, in a snuff-hued front, with a perpetual smile upon her countenance, a warm colour, and a figure bearing a strong resemblance to one of those rolled mattresses in a furnishing warehouse—one of those tied round the middle with a cord, and labelled “all wool.” She was a lady who would undoubtedly have ruled the roast in her kitchen, and knowing my partner’s foibles I should most decidedly have contrived that Mrs Jinks did not take possession of our new suburban residence. But my fears were needless, for after a few exchanges touching wages, privileges, number of servants, and numerous other little matters, interesting only to those whom they may concern, my wife mentioned our proximate removal, when Mrs Martha Jinks, with the evident intention of keeping the ball rolling, gave her head a most vigorous shake, smiled patronisingly, and then, after bridling up, unto her did say—

“No, mum, not if I knows it; thank you all the same. I likes the sound of the place, mum, and I ain’t a-finding fault with the wages, nor the tea and sugar, nor the perquisites, but I’ll never bemean myself, mum, to going to a new house agen. I’ve been cook in the respectablest of families, mum, for three-and-thirty years, and after my egsperience in new houses, I’ll never go to one no more.

“Now, of course I ain’t a-saying but what old houses has their doorbacks, sech as crickets, as is allus a-going fuzz, and flying by night into the candle and into the sugar-basin; and then, agen, black beatles, as isn’t pleasant to walk over if you come down in the dark, and then a-going pop to that degree that the mess on the floor nex morning is enough to worry a tylin’ and mylin’ woman out of her seven senses.

“You see, mum, I don’t dislike the looks of you; for you don’t look mean, and as if you’d allus be a-pottering about in my kidgin, which is a thing I can’t abear; for, as I says to Mary in my last place—Mary, you know, as married the green-grocer, and sells coals at the little shop a-corner of the mews,—‘Mary,’ I says, ‘a missus oughter be in her drorring-room—a-drorring, or a-receiving of wisitors, or a-making of herself agreeable at the winder, not a-poking and a-poll-prying about my kidgin, with her nose in the dresser-drors, a-smelling and a-peeping about. What is it to her, I should like to know, if there is a bottle in the corner of the cupboard next door to the cruets, and if it don’t smell of winegar but of g—, you know? Why, if a missus was troubled with spazzums to the degree as I’ve suffered ’em, she’d go and live in a distillery and never be happy out.’ The things as I’ve put up with in some places, mum, would give you the creeps, and make yer ’air stand on end. Me, you know, a cook as has lived in the best of families, to be told as the brandy-sauce had not got half the brandy in; and when the tipsy-cake come on the table, for the missus to come downstairs in a towering fury, and go on like Billinsgate. I’m sure she did for all her pretence about being a lady; and to say as she did with them brazen lips of her’s, and all the time trembling with passion—

“‘Cook,’ she says, ‘Cook, it ain’t the cake as is tipsy-cake, it’s summit else;’ and me a-sitting in that blessed chair, aside of the fire, feeling as if all the use was took outer my legs, when I only just put my lips to the sherry, just to see if it was good enough for the sponge-cake, as I took so much pains to make, tho’ it did get burnt at the bakehouse to that degree that I was obleeged to cut quite a lunch off all round. But I wouldn’t bemean myself to speak; for ‘Martha,’ I says to myself, ‘Martha Jinks,’ I says, ‘if you are a cook, you are a sooperior woman, and with your egsperiens, you needn’t take sauce from any one.’ So I sat looking at her that disdainful that it quite brought on a sort of sterrical hiccups, and then, I couldn’t help it, she went on so cruelly, I melted into tears, and there they was a-dripping—dripping—dripping all over the kidgin, and the missus a-going on still at that rate that I couldn’t abear it, and fainted away so that they had to carry me upstairs to bed, and bumped my pore head agen the ballisters, so that it ached fearful next morning, and I was obliged to have the least sup of g—, you know, in a wine-glass, took medicinally, you know, for if there is any mortial thing in this life asisdisgusting it’s a woman as takes to sperrits.

“But, there, I wouldn’t stay. I couldn’t, bless you; for, as I says to Mary, ‘Mary,’ I says, ‘you may lead me with a bit o’ darning-cotton, but clothes-line wouldn’t pull me.’ Oh, no, I couldn’t have put up with it if missus had gone down on her bended knees in the sand on my beautiful white kidgin floor, and begged of me to stay. Oh, no—I give warning there and then. ‘A month’s wages or a month’s warning,’ I says, and she give me the month’s wages, and said I was to get out of the cruel house.

“And then I went to live with some common people, who had just built themselves a new house out by the Crischial Pallus, and there I stopped three months, till I was a’most worn to skin and bone, with the worry, and bother, and want of rest.

“First night I goes there, and takes my trunk, and a bundle, and a bonnet-box, and a basket, I might have known as all would go wrong, for the cabman sauced me to that degree it was orful; but I got rid of him at last, with my boxes a-standing outside the willa gate, out in the rain; and then no lights in the house, and no gash laid on, and no one to help me in with my things, and me a-going mosh—posh, pudge—mudge up the the soft gravel, and losing my gloshes a-sticking in the wet muddy stuff, and the wind a-blowing to that degree as my umbrelly—a bran new alpakky—was bust right down one of its ribs, and caught in the iron railings; while all the while I knowed as the rain was a-getting in to my best bonnet, and a man a-tumbling over my big box, as stood out in the roadway-path, and me without strength in my lines to pull it in the gate.

“‘Never mind your shins, my good man,’ I says, ‘help me in with my things, and I’ll find you a bit of cold meat,’ and then I recklets myself as there might be no cold meat in the house, and I turns it into a pint of beer, being a stranger to the place.

“‘And what’s your name, young woman,’ I says to a fine doll of a housemaid, a-darning stockings in the noo kidgin, as smelt of paint to that degree that you might have been lodging in a ile-shop, while the man stood a-turning over his happince on the mat—I mean on his hands, and him on the door-mat, and not satisfied till I give him twopence more, which not having enough I give him a sixpence, to go and get it, and him never a-coming back, and keeping the whole sixpence and the two pence, too, as would have tried any woman’s temper, if even she hadn’t been a cook, which is the mildest and quietest beings as ever dished a jynt.

“‘And what’s your name, young woman?’ I says to my fine madam, as she sat there and didn’t seem to know the proper respect to years, though she did prick her finger till the blood come, and serve her right, too, and if I did not expect from her looks as she’d be that vulgar to answer me disrespeckful and say, when I said ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Pudding and Tame,’ like the gals did when I went to school, which wasn’t yesterday, you know; but she didn’t, but says, quite huffy, ‘Jane,’ she says.

“‘Ho!’ I says, werry distant, as I took off my bonnet and shawl, and laid ’em on the dresser. ‘Ho!’ I says, and then I sits me down afore the fire, and puts my feet on the fender; for as I had my gloshes on to come in I wouldn’t wear my best boots, but left ’em in my box, and there, through there being a crack in the side, if the water hadn’t soaked right through, and wetten’d my feet, so that they steamed again.

“At last, seeing as my fine lady meant to be uppish, I says to her, I says, in a tone o’ wyce as showed I didn’t mean to be trifled with, and if she meant to sit in my kidgin she must know who was missus. ‘Jane,’ I says, ‘you’d best put some more coals on the fire.’

“‘You’d best not,’ she says. ‘It smokes.’

“I didn’t say nothing to her then, but I says to myself, ‘Martha,’ I says, ‘Martha Jinks, you’ve made a mistake; for if there is one mortial thing as I can’t abear, it’s smoke.’

“At last I says, ‘Jane,’ I says, ‘I can’t abear this smell of the paint any longer.’

“‘Oh!’ she says, ‘this is nothing; the place is noo, and it’s worse upstairs in our bedroom, which was done last.’

“‘Worse?’ I says. ‘Young woman,’ I says, in a whisper, ‘it makes me feel faint. If you’ve the heart that can feel for another inside your stays,’ I says, ‘get me a wee drop of g—.’

“And she wouldn’t!

“Oh, mum, the sufferins as I went through in that noo willa was dreadful. The kidgin fire smoked to that degree that the blacks used to be a-flying about all over the kidgin, and a-settling on everything, though if there’s one place as a black will settle on it’s your nose, when fust time you give it a rub there you are not fit to be seen; while the water was that hard it was no use to rub or wash. Soap was nowhere; and I declare to you, mum, sollumly, as I’ve often washed the smuts off one side of my face on to the other, and took to black caps outer self-defence.

“If it hadn’t ha’ been for the least drop o’ g— took inwardly now and then, I should ha’ been a blackened corpse over and over again, for that fire nearly drove me mad. Cinders will come out into your pan sometimes, and frizzle and make a smell of hot fat all over the house, and it’s no use for ladies to make a fuss about it, for where cooking’s going on you must smell it sometimes if you wants to taste it, and you’d be hard-up without your cook. But when the wind sets right down the chimbley and blows all the smoke wrong way into your face, and making you sneeze, filling your eyes up, and driving the blacks into custard or veal cutlets, or whatever you’re a-making of, who can help it? And then they says upstairs as the things tastes bitter.

“‘You must have it stopped, mum,’ I says to the missus, but she says as the place has cost ’em five hundred pound now more than the contrack, and so I says to myself, ‘As it’s for your good, and you won’t be led, you must be drove.’ So only outer self-defence I kep a black fire, and left the kidgin door open, when the blacks all went up the stairs, and a man came down nex week to take my measure for a patent prize kidginer.

“But then, mum, if you’ll believe me, it wasn’t only in the kidgin, it was all over the house, which was designed by the artchyteck to hold so much wind that it went wentilating about the place and banging the doors to that degree that if you didn’t make haste you were hit on the back and nearly sent flat. Jane had such a stiff neck—not as that was anything new, for the baker said she was the stuckuppist gal he ever did see; but this was a cold stiff neck, and had to be rubbed with ’deldoc, and slep in flannel every night, so as she was a good half-hour undressing, and then got into bed with such cold feet as would have made a saint swear.

“‘Jane,’ says I, one night, ‘if you don’t sleep in your stockings I shall be obliged to have a bottle.’

“‘Of g—,’ she says, in her nasty, aggravating, spiteful way.

“‘No imperance;’ I says, ‘a bottle of hot water, wrapped up in a flannel—a-hem—or I shall be having spazzums to that degree as I must have a drop of g— took inward, to save me from sufferin’ as would make any one shudder.’

“Then the cold, and damp, and draughts give me the face-ache so that I had to have a tooth out, and he took the wrong one out, and said I told him that one, when it hadn’t a speck in it, and the other was a regular shell; when what I suffered no one knows but Jane, with my face swelled upon one side like a bladder of lard squeezed, and Jane all the time going on because I would sit up in bed and rock myself to and fro, with a shawl over my shoulders, and the nasty stiff-necked thing grumbling and declaring it was like somebody playing with a pair of bellows in the bed, when it was only the nasty draughty house as she could feel, and me a-dying amost for a drop of g— took inwardly, on a bit of sugar.

“There was hardly a door that would shut, and when they did they stuck to that degree that you couldn’t get ’em open again till you turned cross, when they’d fly open savagely and half knock you down, and I declare to goodness, for a whole month, mum, everything I put in my mouth tasted of paint.

“‘Oh, you beauties!’ I says, when after banging and ringing at the gate for near an hour, I was obliged to go down and let in the workmen as came battering in the middle of the night amost, for it had only just gone six. And there they were, smiths, and bricklayers, and plasterers, a-trampling all over my beautiful clean kitchen till they’d took out the range and scattered the bricks and mortar all over the floor, as trampled about all upstairs and got into the carpets. And the time those men wasted a-poking and pottering about till they’d got in the patent kidginet, when one stuck-up-nosed fellow begins to light it, and show me how it would draw.

“‘You must keep the boiler full,’ he says.

“‘Young man,’ I says, ‘have I been in the best of families for thirty years, and do you think I don’t know as a boiler without any water would bust?’ And then I went out of the kidgin, and would not stop to be insulted by a jumped-up ironmonger’s boy.

“And there the nex day, if the thing didn’t smoke wuss than ever, not a bit going up the chimbley, but regularly blinding you, till master and missus come down, choking and sneezing, and—

“‘Oh, cook,’ says the missus, ‘what have you been doing?’

“‘No, mum,’ I says, ‘it’s not me as has been a-doing anything; it’s your patent kidginer and your noo house, as I’d never have set a foot in if I’d knowed—no, mum, not for double wages and everything found.’

“‘Well, but cook,’ says the master, ‘it’s the damper.’

“‘Well, sir,’ I says, ‘I could have told you that; but it’s my impression,’ I says, ‘that, when it’s the dryer, it won’t go a bit better, and the sooner you soot yourself the better.’ And then, instead of taking the hint to go out of my kidgin, as he would have done if he’d had the sperret of a man, he actelly went patting and poking about the things, and opening this and shutting that, till I hadn’t patience; when, because the thing left off smoking, he wanted to make out as I hadn’t pulled out one of the little drawer things in the flue.

“But there never was sich a thing as that kidginer, and nobody never knowed how to take it; sometimes it would go a-running away and making itself red-hot, and burning all the blacklead off, and sometimes it wouldn’t go at all, but stopped all black and sulky; when your bit of fowl, or whatever you were baking—roasting they called it, but if it ain’t baking a thing as is shut up inside a oven, what is it?—p’raps you’ll tell me—and, there now, it would be raw as raw, or else dry, burnt up to a cinder, while of a night there was no fire to sit by and make yourself comfortable—nothing at all but a nasty black patent thing as never looked sociable, and sent all the smell of the cooking upstairs, specially cabbage.

“No, mum, I’m much obliged, mum; and if you had been going to stop here, mum, I should have been happy to give you a trial, when you’d no doubt have found out my wally, for you look a sweet-tempered creetur; but go to a noo house, mum, I won’t—not under no consideration; and so I wish you good day, mum.”

And Mrs Martha Jinks went.

Chapter Twenty.A Struggle for Life.If there is any one thing in which I like to see a boy excel, it is in swimming. Now, we upright walking animals seem to be naturally the worst swimmers, and the higher and more nobly proportioned our forehead, the worse for us if in the disagreeable predicament of “a man overboard.” Horses, oxen, dogs, cats, pigs, all take to the water readily, or unreadily, and swim with ease, keeping those conveniently placed nostrils just out of water; while poor we, with all our sense and reason, unless we go through a pretty long course of preparation, paddle, splash, flounder, and most likely get drowned. Of course the principal reason for this is the large weight of head above the nostrils, this weight keeping our breathing-apertures beneath the water; while as for Sir Walter Scott, with that tremendously high forehead of his, in spite of all his knowledge he must have been one of the worst of watermen. People well acquainted with such matters tell us that to float, all we have to do is to put our hands behind us, throw back our head, and point our nose impudently at the sky; the mobile fluid will then be just round our face, and we shall float in smooth water.Now, that all sounds very pretty, and so easy; but though perhaps quite possible of accomplishment to some people, I, for one, must confess that it is out of my reach. Perhaps if I had persevered I might have succeeded, for perseverance is a fine thing; but a stifling snort, a choking cough, the sensation of fluid lead in my brain, thunder in my ears, and a great difficulty in getting upon my legs again in shallow water, proved quite sufficient for me, and I have not since tried the experiment.But after all there is something delightful in a good bathe; and I look back with brightened eye at the old bathing-place down the meadows where we used to take headers into the clear stream, and dive, and float, and go dogs’ paddle, and porpoise fashion, on many a sunny half-holiday. Those were pleasant days, and the light from them often shines into middle-aged life. I often call to mind the troop of paddling and splashing young rascals standing in the shallows, and more than once I have stood on the Serpentine bridge to look at similar groups.Now, of course, I do not mean in the depth of winter; though there is always a board up, telling the public that they may bathe there before eight o’clock am, very few respond to the gracious permission of the ranger; for only fancy, dressing on the gravelly shore when the keen north wind blows. I am more eagleish in my aspirations and shun such gooseskinism.But of all things I think that a boy should learn to be a tolerably proficient swimmer; though, while learning, let him have courage tempered with prudence. I remember having a very narrow escape myself through listening to the persuasion of my schoolfellows, and trying to swim across our river before I possessed either the strength, skill, or courage. Fortunately I was saved; but not before I was nearly insensible, and far out of my depth. But the incident I am about to relate occurred in that well-known piece of water in Hyde Park, and made such an impression upon, my mind, as will, I am sure, never be effaced; for even now, twenty-five years since, it is as fresh as if of yesterday.I was standing on the bridge watching the splashing youngsters on a fine evening in July, when my attention was suddenly attracted by a boy, apparently of fifteen or sixteen, who had left the shallow parts, and was boldly striking out as if to swim across. He could not have been above forty yards from the bridge, and just above him, as I was, I could gaze admiringly upon his bold young limbs in their rapid strokes, as he manfully clove his way through the clear water. It was a lovely evening, and the water looked beautifully transparent, so that every motion was perfectly plain.I kept up with him and took quite an interest in his proceedings, for it soon became apparent that he did not mean to turn back, but to go right across; and I remember thinking what a tremendous distance it seemed for so young a swimmer. However, on he went, striking boldly out, and sending the glittering water bubbling, beading, and sparkling away, right and left, as he struggled on “like a stout-hearted swimmer, the spray at his lip—”On he went, slowly and apparently surely; first a quarter, then a third, then half the distance; and, being so near the bridge, the balustrade soon formed a leaning-place for a good many interested spectators; for it is not every boy who can take so long a swim—the swim across generally entailing the necessity for return to the warm clothes waiting upon the bank, in company with that agreeable producer of glow and reaction called a towel.It soon, however, became evident that the lad beneath us would not take the return swim, and I felt the hot blood flush up into my face as the truth forced itself upon my mind that he was fast growing tired.Yes, it was soon unmistakable: he was getting tired, and, with his fatigue, losing nerve; for his strokes began to be taken more and more rapidly; he made less way; and now he was but little beyond half-way over, and there were many feet of water beneath him.I was but a youth then, but I remember well the horror of the moment: the feeling that a fellow-creature was about to lose his life just beneath me, and I powerless to save. There were the Royal Humane Society’s boats, but far enough off. Help from the shore was impossible; and now, above the murmured agitation of the crowd upon the bridge, came at intervals the poor boy’s faint cry—“Help—help—boat!”Those were awful moments; and more than one turned hurriedly away. I could not, though, for my eyes were fixed on the swimmer—nay, struggler now, as at last, rapidly beating the water and crying wildly for aid, he slowly went down with his white form visible beneath the clear water, now agitated and forming concentric rings where he sank.The cries from the bridge had attracted the notice of one of the Society’s men, and he was now rowing up fast; but it was plain to all that he must be too late, when from just by where I stood there was a slight movement and clambering; and then, like an arrow from a bow, with hands pointed above his head, down with a mighty rush right into the spray-splashing water, went a figure accompanied by a ringing cheer from those around.Up rose the water, and then closed like a boiling cauldron above the gallant swimmer’s head. Then followed moments of intense excitement, as nothing but agitated water was visible till the daring one’s head rose above the surface for an instant, when he shook the water from his face, dived again, and in a few seconds rose to the surface, with the drowning boy clinging to him.But now there was fresh help at hand, and in another instant the gallant young man and the boy were in the boat that came up; while with a sobbing sigh of relief I went home, thinking to myself that I would sooner have been that brave man than the greatest hero of yore.

If there is any one thing in which I like to see a boy excel, it is in swimming. Now, we upright walking animals seem to be naturally the worst swimmers, and the higher and more nobly proportioned our forehead, the worse for us if in the disagreeable predicament of “a man overboard.” Horses, oxen, dogs, cats, pigs, all take to the water readily, or unreadily, and swim with ease, keeping those conveniently placed nostrils just out of water; while poor we, with all our sense and reason, unless we go through a pretty long course of preparation, paddle, splash, flounder, and most likely get drowned. Of course the principal reason for this is the large weight of head above the nostrils, this weight keeping our breathing-apertures beneath the water; while as for Sir Walter Scott, with that tremendously high forehead of his, in spite of all his knowledge he must have been one of the worst of watermen. People well acquainted with such matters tell us that to float, all we have to do is to put our hands behind us, throw back our head, and point our nose impudently at the sky; the mobile fluid will then be just round our face, and we shall float in smooth water.

Now, that all sounds very pretty, and so easy; but though perhaps quite possible of accomplishment to some people, I, for one, must confess that it is out of my reach. Perhaps if I had persevered I might have succeeded, for perseverance is a fine thing; but a stifling snort, a choking cough, the sensation of fluid lead in my brain, thunder in my ears, and a great difficulty in getting upon my legs again in shallow water, proved quite sufficient for me, and I have not since tried the experiment.

But after all there is something delightful in a good bathe; and I look back with brightened eye at the old bathing-place down the meadows where we used to take headers into the clear stream, and dive, and float, and go dogs’ paddle, and porpoise fashion, on many a sunny half-holiday. Those were pleasant days, and the light from them often shines into middle-aged life. I often call to mind the troop of paddling and splashing young rascals standing in the shallows, and more than once I have stood on the Serpentine bridge to look at similar groups.

Now, of course, I do not mean in the depth of winter; though there is always a board up, telling the public that they may bathe there before eight o’clock am, very few respond to the gracious permission of the ranger; for only fancy, dressing on the gravelly shore when the keen north wind blows. I am more eagleish in my aspirations and shun such gooseskinism.

But of all things I think that a boy should learn to be a tolerably proficient swimmer; though, while learning, let him have courage tempered with prudence. I remember having a very narrow escape myself through listening to the persuasion of my schoolfellows, and trying to swim across our river before I possessed either the strength, skill, or courage. Fortunately I was saved; but not before I was nearly insensible, and far out of my depth. But the incident I am about to relate occurred in that well-known piece of water in Hyde Park, and made such an impression upon, my mind, as will, I am sure, never be effaced; for even now, twenty-five years since, it is as fresh as if of yesterday.

I was standing on the bridge watching the splashing youngsters on a fine evening in July, when my attention was suddenly attracted by a boy, apparently of fifteen or sixteen, who had left the shallow parts, and was boldly striking out as if to swim across. He could not have been above forty yards from the bridge, and just above him, as I was, I could gaze admiringly upon his bold young limbs in their rapid strokes, as he manfully clove his way through the clear water. It was a lovely evening, and the water looked beautifully transparent, so that every motion was perfectly plain.

I kept up with him and took quite an interest in his proceedings, for it soon became apparent that he did not mean to turn back, but to go right across; and I remember thinking what a tremendous distance it seemed for so young a swimmer. However, on he went, striking boldly out, and sending the glittering water bubbling, beading, and sparkling away, right and left, as he struggled on “like a stout-hearted swimmer, the spray at his lip—”

On he went, slowly and apparently surely; first a quarter, then a third, then half the distance; and, being so near the bridge, the balustrade soon formed a leaning-place for a good many interested spectators; for it is not every boy who can take so long a swim—the swim across generally entailing the necessity for return to the warm clothes waiting upon the bank, in company with that agreeable producer of glow and reaction called a towel.

It soon, however, became evident that the lad beneath us would not take the return swim, and I felt the hot blood flush up into my face as the truth forced itself upon my mind that he was fast growing tired.

Yes, it was soon unmistakable: he was getting tired, and, with his fatigue, losing nerve; for his strokes began to be taken more and more rapidly; he made less way; and now he was but little beyond half-way over, and there were many feet of water beneath him.

I was but a youth then, but I remember well the horror of the moment: the feeling that a fellow-creature was about to lose his life just beneath me, and I powerless to save. There were the Royal Humane Society’s boats, but far enough off. Help from the shore was impossible; and now, above the murmured agitation of the crowd upon the bridge, came at intervals the poor boy’s faint cry—

“Help—help—boat!”

Those were awful moments; and more than one turned hurriedly away. I could not, though, for my eyes were fixed on the swimmer—nay, struggler now, as at last, rapidly beating the water and crying wildly for aid, he slowly went down with his white form visible beneath the clear water, now agitated and forming concentric rings where he sank.

The cries from the bridge had attracted the notice of one of the Society’s men, and he was now rowing up fast; but it was plain to all that he must be too late, when from just by where I stood there was a slight movement and clambering; and then, like an arrow from a bow, with hands pointed above his head, down with a mighty rush right into the spray-splashing water, went a figure accompanied by a ringing cheer from those around.

Up rose the water, and then closed like a boiling cauldron above the gallant swimmer’s head. Then followed moments of intense excitement, as nothing but agitated water was visible till the daring one’s head rose above the surface for an instant, when he shook the water from his face, dived again, and in a few seconds rose to the surface, with the drowning boy clinging to him.

But now there was fresh help at hand, and in another instant the gallant young man and the boy were in the boat that came up; while with a sobbing sigh of relief I went home, thinking to myself that I would sooner have been that brave man than the greatest hero of yore.

Chapter Twenty One.The Evils of a Wig.Now it’s all very well to say that truth is strange—stranger than fiction; but the saying won’t wash, it isn’t fast colours, but partakes of the nature of those carried by certain Austrian regiments—it runs; for there is no rule without an exception, and no person in the full enjoyment of his mental faculties will pretend to say that truth was stranger than fiction in the case of Mr Smith’s wig, for the fiction—the wig—was, to all intents and purposes, stranger than the truth—the genuine head of hair.Mr Smith—Mr Artaxerxes Smith—in his younger days had often visited the hairdresser’s, to sit in state with a flowing print robe tucked in all round his neck, but not so close but the tiny snips and chips from his Hyperion curls would get down within his shirt-collar, and tickle and tease for hours after; he had listened while the oily-tongued—scented oily-tongued—hairdresser had snipped away and told him that his hair was turning a little grey, or that it was growing thin at the crown, or very dry, or full of dandriff, or coming off, or suffering from one of those inevitable failings which are never discoverable save when having one’s hair cut. “Our Philo-homo-coma Brushitinibus would remove the symptoms in a few days, sir,” the hairdresser would say; “remove the dandriff, clarify the scalp, soften the hair, and bring up a fine soft down that would soon strengthen into flowing locks.” But though in the glass before him Mr Smith could see the noble hair and brilliant whiskers of his operator, he would not listen, he only growled out, “Make haste,” or “Never mind,” or something else very rude, and the consequence was that he suffered for his neglect of the good hairdressers advice, so that at last Mr Smith couldn’t have given any one a lock of his hair to save his life. He was bald—completely bald—his head looked like vegetable ivory, and in despair he consulted a Saville-row physician.“Nature, sir, nature,” said the great man; “a peculiarity of constitution, a failing in the absorbents and dessicating, wasting in the structural development of the cuticle and sub-cuticle—the hair being a small filament issuing from the surface of the scalp from a bulbous radix, and forming a capillary covering; which covering, in your case, has failed, sir, failed.”Mr Smith knew that before he made up his mind to invest a guinea, but he only said—“And what course should you pursue in my case?”“Well, yes—er—er—um, ah! I should—er—that is to say, I should wear a wig.”That was just what Mr Smith’s hairdresser had told him for nothing, though, certainly, with sundry ideasin pettothat it might fall to his task to make this wig; but Mr Smith had expected something else from a man who put MD at the end of his name.“Too big for his profession,” said Mr Smith, and he bought a pot of the Count de Caput Medusae’s Golden Balm, prepared from the original recipe given by that inventive Count to the aunt’s cousin’s uncle of the proprietor.“Try another pot, sir,” said the vendor, examining the bare head with a powerful magnifying glass. “Perfect down on the surface, sir, though not plain to the naked eye. I should advise the large twenty-two shilling pots, sir, and the vigorous rubbing in, to be continued night and morning.”But if there had been any down it knew better than to stop and suffer the scrubbing inflicted by Mr Smith upon his bare poll, and a month only found him with the scalp turned from waxy-white to pinky-red, while his head was sore to a degree.“Jackal’s formula produces hair, beard, or whiskers upon the smoothest skin.”But, perhaps, Mr Smith’s was not the smoothest skin, but not for want of rubbing and polishing, and the formula did not produce anything but a great many naughty words, while “Brimstone Degenerator,” “The Capillary Attraction,” and a score of other things, only made holes in several five-pound notes, while Mr Smith, unable to discover any more filaments issuing from the surface of his scalp from bulbous radices, came to the conclusion that he really must have a wig.He had it; and found it light and warm, and tried to make himself believe that it could not be told from the real thing. He would brush it before the glass, or run his hands through the curls when any one was looking, and pretend to scratch his head, but the brute of a thing would slip on one side, or get down over his forehead, or go back, or do something stupid, as if of impish tendencies and exclaiming to the world at large, “I’m a wig, I am!”Brushed up carefully was that wig every now and then by the maker, who would send it back glossed and pomatumed to a wonderful degree of perfection; when again Mr Smith would try and persuade himself that with such a skin parting no one could fail to be deceived, but the people found him out when he lost his hat from a puff of wind, which jumped it off and sent it rolling along the pavement.We have most of us chased our hats upon a windy day, now getting close up, now being left behind, and have tried, as is the correct thing, to smile; but who could smile if the pomatum had adhered to the lining of the hat, and he was scudding under a bare pole in chase of hat and wig.After that episode in his life, Mr Smith brushed up his wig himself, and always used oil; while he found his wig decidedly economical, for it never wanted cutting.Being a bachelor with plenty of time on his hands, Mr Smith used to spend it as seemed good in his own eyes, and a very favourite pursuit of his was visit-paying to the various cathedral towns, for the purpose of studying what he termed the “architectural points.” The consequence was, that after spending an afternoon examining nave and chancel; chapel, window, pillar, arch, and groin; frowning at corbels, and grinning at the grotesque gutter-bearers; Mr Smith found himself seated at dinner in that far-famed hostelry known as the “Golden Bull,” in the cathedral town of Surridge.The dinner was good, the wine might have been worse, the linen and plate were clean, and at length, seated in front of the comfortable fire, sipping his port, Mr Smith mused upon the visit he had paid to the cathedral. After a while, from habit, he scratched his head and drew the wig aside, which necessitated his rising to adjust the covering by the glass, after which Mr Smith sighed and filled his glass again.At length the bell brought the waiter, and the waiter brought the boots, and the boots brought the boot-jack and the slippers, and then the chambermaid brought the hand candlestick, and the maiden ushered the visitor up to Number 25 in the great balcony which surrounded the large yard, where even now a broken-winded old stagecoach drew up once a week, as if determined to go till it dropped, in spite of all the railways in the kingdom.But Mr Smith had not been five minutes in his bedroom, and divested himself of only one or two articles of his dress, when he remembered that he had given no orders for an early breakfast, so as to meet the first up-train.The bell soon brought the chambermaid, who looked rather open-mouthed as Mr Smith gave his orders. He then prepared himself for bed, wherein, with a comfortable cotton nightcap pulled over his head, he soon wandered into the land of dreams.About an hour had passed, and Mr Smith was mentally busy making a drawing of a grim old corbel—a most grotesque head in the cathedral close, when he was terribly bothered because the moss-covered, time-eaten old stony face would not keep still: now it winked, now it screwed up its face, now it thrust its tongue first into one cheek and then into the other, making wrinkles here, there, and everywhere, till he put down his pencil, and asked what it meant. But instead of answering, the face nodded and came down nearer and nearer, backing him further and further away, till he was shut up in one of the cloisters, and hammering at the door to get out.“Open the door!” he roared again and again; till he woke to find that it was somebody outside knocking at his door and thundering to get in.“Here, open the door now, or it’ll be the wuss for yer!” growled a hoarse voice, whereupon tearing off his cap, Mr Smith leaped out of bed, and into some garments, and then stood shivering and wondering whether the place was on fire.“What’s all the noise?” cried some one in the gallery.“Madman, sir, outer the ’sylum, and keepers want to ketch him.”“Poor fellow,” was the response; and then came the demand for admittance, and the thundering again.“Go away!” cried Mr Smith, in an agitated and very cracked voice. “Go away, there’s no one here!”“Ho! ain’t there,” said the gruff voice; and then there was a suppressed titter. “You’re sure it’s him?” said another voice.“Oh, yes,” said some one in a high treble; “he’s got his head shaved.”“Right you are,” said the same gruff voice, and then Mr Smith turned all of a cold perspiration.“But my good man,” he gasped out at last through the keyhole, as he shivered in the dark, “it’s all a mistake: I’m not the man.”“Now, are you a-going to stash that ere gammon, or am I to come through the door?—that’s what I wants to know,” growled the voice.“Good heavens! what a position,” gasped Mr Smith. “My good man,” he cried again, “I’m not mad at all.”“Oh, no, of course not; nobody never said you was,” said the voice. “It’s all right; open the door; it’s only me, Grouser, yer know.”But Mr Smithdidn’tknow Grouser; neither did he wish to; for he wanted a quiet night’s rest, and to go off by the first train; but he resolved to try another appeal.“M-m-m-m-my good man, will you go away, please?”Bump! came a heavy body against the door, making the lock chatter, and the inner partition vibrate.“Go away, please,” gasped Mr Smith; “or I’ll call the landlord.”Bump! came the noise, and then the gruff voice, “Now, you’d best open, my tulip.”“Landlord!” screamed Mr Smith.“Yes, sir, I’m here!” cried a fresh voice. “Now, why don’t you come quietly, sir; the gentleman only means it for your good, and if you have any money, I hope you’ll pay your bill.”“He ain’t got a blessed halfpenny, bless you,” growled the voice of the man Mr Smith took to be the keeper, but he was so confused by waking up from a heavy sleep, that he began to pass his hand over his head, and to wonder whether he really was sane.Bump! came the noise again, and then there was a whispering, and the gruff voice cried, “Don’t you go away!” And then, to his great horror, through the thin wood partition, Mr Smith heard people moving in the next room, and a clattering noise as if a washstand was being moved from before the door that he had tried that night and found fast, but piled the chairs up against for safety sake. Directly after came the rattling of a key, and the cracking of the paint-stuck door, as if it were years since it had been opened; but Mr Smith could stop to hear no more. Hurriedly turning his key, he dashed open his door, gave a yell of terror, and charging out, scattered half a score of the inn-tenants standing in the gallery, candle in hand. There was a wild shrieking, the overturning of candlesticks, and women fainting, and then, as two or three made very doubtful efforts to stop the bald-headed figure, it leaped over a prostrate chambermaid, and dashed along the balcony.“Hie! stop him, hie!” was the shout that rang behind; but Mr Smith ran on, then along the other side, closely followed by him of the gruff voice, while two more went the other way.“Look out,” roared the keeper, “or he’ll do you a mischief!” and so, as Mr Smith came along the fourth side of the yard balcony, the landlord and helper allowed themselves to be dashed aside, and this time with force; while with shrieking women in front of him, Mr Smith rushed on.Screams and yells, and cries, as the fugitive panted on reaching the second turn of the gallery, when hearing the gruff-voiced one close behind, he stole a look over his shoulder, and shuddered at the faint glimpse he obtained of a huge, burly figure, whose aspect made him tear on more frightened than ever, as the gruff voice roared to him to stop.But there was no stop in Mr Smith, for as the moonbeams shone through the glass at his side, he could just make out that some one was holding a door in front ajar and peeping out, when, without thinking of anything else but getting somewhere to parley with his pursuer, Mr Smith dashed at the door, sent some one staggering backwards, while he had the door banged to and locked in an instant.“For Heaven’s sake, save me,” gasped Mr Smith; “and excuse this intrusion, Sir.”“Oh, to be sure,” said a voice from the corner, where it was quite dark; “but you need not have knocked at the door so loud. You are from the moon, of course, and how did you leave Plutina and the Bluegobs?”“Wh, wh-wh-wh-what?” gasped Mr Smith.“Come to the window, Sir, and we’ll enlighten the present generation; I’m the grand Porkendillo, Sir, and—”“Now, then, open this here door,” growled a savage voice in the gallery.“Begone, slave,” cried the voice from out of the dark, and then to Mr Smith’s horror, a short figure crossed to the window, and he could see the outline of a smooth bald head upon the blind, which was directly afterwards dragged down and wrapped round the person into whose room the fugitive had run.A light now broke upon Mr Smith; here was the real Simon Pure; but what a position to be in, locked in the same room with a madman—a shaven-headed lunatic, escaped from some private asylum.“My Lord; Most Grand one, open the door and admit your slave,” came in a hoarse whisper through the keyhole.“Is the banquet prepared?” said the madman.“Yes, my lord,” croaked the keeper.“Is Bootes there? Have Arcturus, Aldebaran, Orion, and Beta Pi assembled?”“Yes, my lord, and it’s done to a touch,” growled the keeper.“Prostrate thyselves, then, slaves, and let the winds all blow and boom. I come. Ha! a spy,” cried the madman, rushing at Mr Smith, who in his great horror leaped upon the bed, and buried himself beneath the clothes in which he enveloped himself so closely, that his adversary could not drag him forth.“Come forth, thou traitor,” shrieked the madman, tearing at the clothes so fiercely, that a huge bundle rolled off the bed on to the floor, wherein, half-smothered, lay poor Mr Smith, in a most profuse state of perspiration.All at once there was a cessation of the kicks and thumps, but a threatening of an increased state of suffocation, for there seemed to the covered man to be a struggle going on, and two or three people fell upon him. Then there came the buzz of voices, and he found himself gently unrolled from the mass of clothing, to sit up, staring around with white head and flushed face at the room full of people, while in one corner closely guarded by his keeper stood the Grand Porkendillo, sucking his thumb, and leering at every one in turn. For this gentleman having made his escape from the neighbouring establishment of a famous doctor, had taken refuge in the Golden Bull, whose landlord was most profuse in his apologies to Mr Smith, for the mistake that had been made.But, as the chambermaid said when Mr Smith had taken his departure:—“Lor’, Sir, as soon as they said the poor man’s head was shaved, I made sure it was him.”

Now it’s all very well to say that truth is strange—stranger than fiction; but the saying won’t wash, it isn’t fast colours, but partakes of the nature of those carried by certain Austrian regiments—it runs; for there is no rule without an exception, and no person in the full enjoyment of his mental faculties will pretend to say that truth was stranger than fiction in the case of Mr Smith’s wig, for the fiction—the wig—was, to all intents and purposes, stranger than the truth—the genuine head of hair.

Mr Smith—Mr Artaxerxes Smith—in his younger days had often visited the hairdresser’s, to sit in state with a flowing print robe tucked in all round his neck, but not so close but the tiny snips and chips from his Hyperion curls would get down within his shirt-collar, and tickle and tease for hours after; he had listened while the oily-tongued—scented oily-tongued—hairdresser had snipped away and told him that his hair was turning a little grey, or that it was growing thin at the crown, or very dry, or full of dandriff, or coming off, or suffering from one of those inevitable failings which are never discoverable save when having one’s hair cut. “Our Philo-homo-coma Brushitinibus would remove the symptoms in a few days, sir,” the hairdresser would say; “remove the dandriff, clarify the scalp, soften the hair, and bring up a fine soft down that would soon strengthen into flowing locks.” But though in the glass before him Mr Smith could see the noble hair and brilliant whiskers of his operator, he would not listen, he only growled out, “Make haste,” or “Never mind,” or something else very rude, and the consequence was that he suffered for his neglect of the good hairdressers advice, so that at last Mr Smith couldn’t have given any one a lock of his hair to save his life. He was bald—completely bald—his head looked like vegetable ivory, and in despair he consulted a Saville-row physician.

“Nature, sir, nature,” said the great man; “a peculiarity of constitution, a failing in the absorbents and dessicating, wasting in the structural development of the cuticle and sub-cuticle—the hair being a small filament issuing from the surface of the scalp from a bulbous radix, and forming a capillary covering; which covering, in your case, has failed, sir, failed.”

Mr Smith knew that before he made up his mind to invest a guinea, but he only said—

“And what course should you pursue in my case?”

“Well, yes—er—er—um, ah! I should—er—that is to say, I should wear a wig.”

That was just what Mr Smith’s hairdresser had told him for nothing, though, certainly, with sundry ideasin pettothat it might fall to his task to make this wig; but Mr Smith had expected something else from a man who put MD at the end of his name.

“Too big for his profession,” said Mr Smith, and he bought a pot of the Count de Caput Medusae’s Golden Balm, prepared from the original recipe given by that inventive Count to the aunt’s cousin’s uncle of the proprietor.

“Try another pot, sir,” said the vendor, examining the bare head with a powerful magnifying glass. “Perfect down on the surface, sir, though not plain to the naked eye. I should advise the large twenty-two shilling pots, sir, and the vigorous rubbing in, to be continued night and morning.”

But if there had been any down it knew better than to stop and suffer the scrubbing inflicted by Mr Smith upon his bare poll, and a month only found him with the scalp turned from waxy-white to pinky-red, while his head was sore to a degree.

“Jackal’s formula produces hair, beard, or whiskers upon the smoothest skin.”

But, perhaps, Mr Smith’s was not the smoothest skin, but not for want of rubbing and polishing, and the formula did not produce anything but a great many naughty words, while “Brimstone Degenerator,” “The Capillary Attraction,” and a score of other things, only made holes in several five-pound notes, while Mr Smith, unable to discover any more filaments issuing from the surface of his scalp from bulbous radices, came to the conclusion that he really must have a wig.

He had it; and found it light and warm, and tried to make himself believe that it could not be told from the real thing. He would brush it before the glass, or run his hands through the curls when any one was looking, and pretend to scratch his head, but the brute of a thing would slip on one side, or get down over his forehead, or go back, or do something stupid, as if of impish tendencies and exclaiming to the world at large, “I’m a wig, I am!”

Brushed up carefully was that wig every now and then by the maker, who would send it back glossed and pomatumed to a wonderful degree of perfection; when again Mr Smith would try and persuade himself that with such a skin parting no one could fail to be deceived, but the people found him out when he lost his hat from a puff of wind, which jumped it off and sent it rolling along the pavement.

We have most of us chased our hats upon a windy day, now getting close up, now being left behind, and have tried, as is the correct thing, to smile; but who could smile if the pomatum had adhered to the lining of the hat, and he was scudding under a bare pole in chase of hat and wig.

After that episode in his life, Mr Smith brushed up his wig himself, and always used oil; while he found his wig decidedly economical, for it never wanted cutting.

Being a bachelor with plenty of time on his hands, Mr Smith used to spend it as seemed good in his own eyes, and a very favourite pursuit of his was visit-paying to the various cathedral towns, for the purpose of studying what he termed the “architectural points.” The consequence was, that after spending an afternoon examining nave and chancel; chapel, window, pillar, arch, and groin; frowning at corbels, and grinning at the grotesque gutter-bearers; Mr Smith found himself seated at dinner in that far-famed hostelry known as the “Golden Bull,” in the cathedral town of Surridge.

The dinner was good, the wine might have been worse, the linen and plate were clean, and at length, seated in front of the comfortable fire, sipping his port, Mr Smith mused upon the visit he had paid to the cathedral. After a while, from habit, he scratched his head and drew the wig aside, which necessitated his rising to adjust the covering by the glass, after which Mr Smith sighed and filled his glass again.

At length the bell brought the waiter, and the waiter brought the boots, and the boots brought the boot-jack and the slippers, and then the chambermaid brought the hand candlestick, and the maiden ushered the visitor up to Number 25 in the great balcony which surrounded the large yard, where even now a broken-winded old stagecoach drew up once a week, as if determined to go till it dropped, in spite of all the railways in the kingdom.

But Mr Smith had not been five minutes in his bedroom, and divested himself of only one or two articles of his dress, when he remembered that he had given no orders for an early breakfast, so as to meet the first up-train.

The bell soon brought the chambermaid, who looked rather open-mouthed as Mr Smith gave his orders. He then prepared himself for bed, wherein, with a comfortable cotton nightcap pulled over his head, he soon wandered into the land of dreams.

About an hour had passed, and Mr Smith was mentally busy making a drawing of a grim old corbel—a most grotesque head in the cathedral close, when he was terribly bothered because the moss-covered, time-eaten old stony face would not keep still: now it winked, now it screwed up its face, now it thrust its tongue first into one cheek and then into the other, making wrinkles here, there, and everywhere, till he put down his pencil, and asked what it meant. But instead of answering, the face nodded and came down nearer and nearer, backing him further and further away, till he was shut up in one of the cloisters, and hammering at the door to get out.

“Open the door!” he roared again and again; till he woke to find that it was somebody outside knocking at his door and thundering to get in.

“Here, open the door now, or it’ll be the wuss for yer!” growled a hoarse voice, whereupon tearing off his cap, Mr Smith leaped out of bed, and into some garments, and then stood shivering and wondering whether the place was on fire.

“What’s all the noise?” cried some one in the gallery.

“Madman, sir, outer the ’sylum, and keepers want to ketch him.”

“Poor fellow,” was the response; and then came the demand for admittance, and the thundering again.

“Go away!” cried Mr Smith, in an agitated and very cracked voice. “Go away, there’s no one here!”

“Ho! ain’t there,” said the gruff voice; and then there was a suppressed titter. “You’re sure it’s him?” said another voice.

“Oh, yes,” said some one in a high treble; “he’s got his head shaved.”

“Right you are,” said the same gruff voice, and then Mr Smith turned all of a cold perspiration.

“But my good man,” he gasped out at last through the keyhole, as he shivered in the dark, “it’s all a mistake: I’m not the man.”

“Now, are you a-going to stash that ere gammon, or am I to come through the door?—that’s what I wants to know,” growled the voice.

“Good heavens! what a position,” gasped Mr Smith. “My good man,” he cried again, “I’m not mad at all.”

“Oh, no, of course not; nobody never said you was,” said the voice. “It’s all right; open the door; it’s only me, Grouser, yer know.”

But Mr Smithdidn’tknow Grouser; neither did he wish to; for he wanted a quiet night’s rest, and to go off by the first train; but he resolved to try another appeal.

“M-m-m-m-my good man, will you go away, please?”

Bump! came a heavy body against the door, making the lock chatter, and the inner partition vibrate.

“Go away, please,” gasped Mr Smith; “or I’ll call the landlord.”

Bump! came the noise, and then the gruff voice, “Now, you’d best open, my tulip.”

“Landlord!” screamed Mr Smith.

“Yes, sir, I’m here!” cried a fresh voice. “Now, why don’t you come quietly, sir; the gentleman only means it for your good, and if you have any money, I hope you’ll pay your bill.”

“He ain’t got a blessed halfpenny, bless you,” growled the voice of the man Mr Smith took to be the keeper, but he was so confused by waking up from a heavy sleep, that he began to pass his hand over his head, and to wonder whether he really was sane.

Bump! came the noise again, and then there was a whispering, and the gruff voice cried, “Don’t you go away!” And then, to his great horror, through the thin wood partition, Mr Smith heard people moving in the next room, and a clattering noise as if a washstand was being moved from before the door that he had tried that night and found fast, but piled the chairs up against for safety sake. Directly after came the rattling of a key, and the cracking of the paint-stuck door, as if it were years since it had been opened; but Mr Smith could stop to hear no more. Hurriedly turning his key, he dashed open his door, gave a yell of terror, and charging out, scattered half a score of the inn-tenants standing in the gallery, candle in hand. There was a wild shrieking, the overturning of candlesticks, and women fainting, and then, as two or three made very doubtful efforts to stop the bald-headed figure, it leaped over a prostrate chambermaid, and dashed along the balcony.

“Hie! stop him, hie!” was the shout that rang behind; but Mr Smith ran on, then along the other side, closely followed by him of the gruff voice, while two more went the other way.

“Look out,” roared the keeper, “or he’ll do you a mischief!” and so, as Mr Smith came along the fourth side of the yard balcony, the landlord and helper allowed themselves to be dashed aside, and this time with force; while with shrieking women in front of him, Mr Smith rushed on.

Screams and yells, and cries, as the fugitive panted on reaching the second turn of the gallery, when hearing the gruff-voiced one close behind, he stole a look over his shoulder, and shuddered at the faint glimpse he obtained of a huge, burly figure, whose aspect made him tear on more frightened than ever, as the gruff voice roared to him to stop.

But there was no stop in Mr Smith, for as the moonbeams shone through the glass at his side, he could just make out that some one was holding a door in front ajar and peeping out, when, without thinking of anything else but getting somewhere to parley with his pursuer, Mr Smith dashed at the door, sent some one staggering backwards, while he had the door banged to and locked in an instant.

“For Heaven’s sake, save me,” gasped Mr Smith; “and excuse this intrusion, Sir.”

“Oh, to be sure,” said a voice from the corner, where it was quite dark; “but you need not have knocked at the door so loud. You are from the moon, of course, and how did you leave Plutina and the Bluegobs?”

“Wh, wh-wh-wh-what?” gasped Mr Smith.

“Come to the window, Sir, and we’ll enlighten the present generation; I’m the grand Porkendillo, Sir, and—”

“Now, then, open this here door,” growled a savage voice in the gallery.

“Begone, slave,” cried the voice from out of the dark, and then to Mr Smith’s horror, a short figure crossed to the window, and he could see the outline of a smooth bald head upon the blind, which was directly afterwards dragged down and wrapped round the person into whose room the fugitive had run.

A light now broke upon Mr Smith; here was the real Simon Pure; but what a position to be in, locked in the same room with a madman—a shaven-headed lunatic, escaped from some private asylum.

“My Lord; Most Grand one, open the door and admit your slave,” came in a hoarse whisper through the keyhole.

“Is the banquet prepared?” said the madman.

“Yes, my lord,” croaked the keeper.

“Is Bootes there? Have Arcturus, Aldebaran, Orion, and Beta Pi assembled?”

“Yes, my lord, and it’s done to a touch,” growled the keeper.

“Prostrate thyselves, then, slaves, and let the winds all blow and boom. I come. Ha! a spy,” cried the madman, rushing at Mr Smith, who in his great horror leaped upon the bed, and buried himself beneath the clothes in which he enveloped himself so closely, that his adversary could not drag him forth.

“Come forth, thou traitor,” shrieked the madman, tearing at the clothes so fiercely, that a huge bundle rolled off the bed on to the floor, wherein, half-smothered, lay poor Mr Smith, in a most profuse state of perspiration.

All at once there was a cessation of the kicks and thumps, but a threatening of an increased state of suffocation, for there seemed to the covered man to be a struggle going on, and two or three people fell upon him. Then there came the buzz of voices, and he found himself gently unrolled from the mass of clothing, to sit up, staring around with white head and flushed face at the room full of people, while in one corner closely guarded by his keeper stood the Grand Porkendillo, sucking his thumb, and leering at every one in turn. For this gentleman having made his escape from the neighbouring establishment of a famous doctor, had taken refuge in the Golden Bull, whose landlord was most profuse in his apologies to Mr Smith, for the mistake that had been made.

But, as the chambermaid said when Mr Smith had taken his departure:—

“Lor’, Sir, as soon as they said the poor man’s head was shaved, I made sure it was him.”

Chapter Twenty Two.To be Sold by Auction.“Sale now on,” was stuck upon the door-posts of a good-sized house that I was passing the other day—a house that an agent would call “a genteel family mansion;” for the agent, taught by his trade, knows that it is not always expedient to call a spade a spade, so he tickles the taste of his customers by talking of “villas, cottages ornées, snug boxes, delightful residences,” etcetera; in short, anything but what a plain, matter-of-fact person would bring forth to dub the home wherein he passed his hours of rest. “Sale now on,” in black letters six inches high. There were bills in the windows bearing the name of a well-known auctioneer, which was in itself sufficient to guarantee that it was a genuine sale; a large hearthrug was swung, banner fashion, out of the first-floor window, bearing also a bill, enumerating the valuable household furniture, and about the door were several snuffy-looking men in carpet caps, some with very Israelitish aspects, but all looking very fleecy and fluffy, and wearing the appearance of buying a secondhand suit of clothes once in a year, putting it on, and keeping it on until it dropped off of its own accord.Being something of a saunterer, auction sales very frequently come under my notice, and possess something of an attraction for me; not that I go as a bargain hunter, for it is only on very, very rare occasions that I make a purchase; but I like to see how my fellow-man and woman buy their bargains, and also to moralise, in my own small way, upon the changes that may have taken place in the house before the “whole of the valuable and modern household furniture” was placed in the hands of the “going, going, gone” man, to dispose of without reserve. I have been in some strange places in my travels, and seen some strange auctions, especially those in the electro-plate line at a shop in a leading thoroughfare; but the touter at the door never asks me in now, and the gentleman in the rostrum never seeks to catch my eye for another bid. My impression is that they do not want me, but look upon me as a rogue towards them; and verily I believe that I am, if they occupy the standard position of honest men. I could fill some pages with the reflections I have made upon different auctions at which I have been present—of the struggling, failing tradesman, turned out of house and home, watching with bitterness his household gods sacrificed upon the altar of Mammon—of the recklessly furnished house of the bankrupt speculator—of the little four-roomed house in the suburbs—all have their own especial history; but upon this occasion I am writing of the buyers more especially, and of the especial house spoken of at the head of this paper.“Sale now on; fuss floor, sir,” said one of the grubby individuals before referred to; and as I ascended the stairs, which showed plainly where the rich velvet pile carpet, lot 94 in the catalogue, had lain, I was attacked on both flanks by a couple of gentlemen of very seedy, but decidedly not ripened appearance, who were very desirous of executing any little commissions for me. “Was there anything I had marked in the catalogue?” One of these gents soon gave me up, but the other seemed determined that if he failed in hooking a gudgeon, it should not be for want of perseverance; so he followed me up most pertinaciously, and on reaching the sale room—the three drawing-rooms thrown into one—began to expatiate upon everything which seemed to have attracted my eye. The pianoforte was the very one that would suit me, and he could tell me the figure to a T that I ought to give for it, which was not the strict letter of the truth.It was of no avail that I tried to get rid of him, so I sat down in a corner near the auctioneer, and watched the progress of the sale and the countenances of the buyers.“Goingat three ten; going at three ten;goingat threeten—”“Tap” went the hammer, and a Mr Cohen became the owner of a rosewood loo table.Several more lots were disposed of, when a large feather-bed was placed by the porters upon the table. It might have been stuffed with feathers of gold from the way in which it was immediately attacked and punched. I was almost knocked over in the rush; and for a moment it appeared as though the twelve tribes of Israel had resolved, to a man, upon thrusting their arms right up to the elbow in the soft and yielding bed.“Bargain at a fi-pun note, sir; let me bid for you. Be a sin to let such a chance go. Better let me bid, or them Jews ’ll run it up.”In spite of myself I could not refrain from turning round and gazing upon my tormentor’s profile, which was as thoroughly Israelitish as ever spoke of race or told of Eastern origin. But for a very peremptory negative I should undoubtedly have become the possessor of the capital feather-bed; which, however, became the property of a Mr Moss.In fact, the richly historical names that were given in after almost every purchase showed how very little there was of the Christian element in the sale: Lazarus, Abrahams, Marks, Levy, Solomon, and the refined Sloman—Moss, a capital name for a money grubber, and far preferable, no doubt, to the more familiar Moses—such names as these seemed of the most familiar, while Brown, Jones, Robinson, or Smith only occurred at long intervals.I stayed some two hours, and watched the greed and avarice displayed by the bidders; and came away with the full determination not to buy at sales, for I could see one thing very plainly, and that was, that there was no fear of an article being sold for less than its value, as there were plenty of experienced men waiting to close at once upon a bargain; and therefore these brokers would, amongst them, run every lot up to nearly its full worth; the consequence being, that if you did not give the real value for an article that you were almost buying in the dark as to its quality, you would give for it perhaps considerably more than it was worth—buying blindly—every lot being knocked down to the buyer with all its defects and failings.I am not going to say that bargains are not to be picked up at sales, for no doubt many are to be come at in this way; but it seems to me to be absolutely necessary that the purchaser should possess a shrewd business perception and keen business capabilities, or the chances are that he will be greatly disappointed when he pays his money and has his goods delivered to him. And this is what I thought as I watched the different little “dodges” employed by the initiated to give the auctioneer notice when they bid. One man scratched his head; another winked his right eye; another winked his left; one thrust his tongue into his cheek; another raised his eyebrows; others rubbed their noses, tapped their teeth, coughed, pulled their whiskers; while the most expert seemed to do it with a look.“Said I then to myself, here’s a lesson for me,” though I do not know with what favour Dr Watts would have looked upon such a misappropriation of his ode, and I then rose to leave the room, closely followed by my broker friend, who was strongly of opinion, when we reached the staircase, that he ought to drink my health. However, I did not agree with him, being so unimaginative as to consider that my health would not be in the slightest degree improved by being drunk, while that of my companion would decidedly suffer by potations such as are supplied in our London public-houses.

“Sale now on,” was stuck upon the door-posts of a good-sized house that I was passing the other day—a house that an agent would call “a genteel family mansion;” for the agent, taught by his trade, knows that it is not always expedient to call a spade a spade, so he tickles the taste of his customers by talking of “villas, cottages ornées, snug boxes, delightful residences,” etcetera; in short, anything but what a plain, matter-of-fact person would bring forth to dub the home wherein he passed his hours of rest. “Sale now on,” in black letters six inches high. There were bills in the windows bearing the name of a well-known auctioneer, which was in itself sufficient to guarantee that it was a genuine sale; a large hearthrug was swung, banner fashion, out of the first-floor window, bearing also a bill, enumerating the valuable household furniture, and about the door were several snuffy-looking men in carpet caps, some with very Israelitish aspects, but all looking very fleecy and fluffy, and wearing the appearance of buying a secondhand suit of clothes once in a year, putting it on, and keeping it on until it dropped off of its own accord.

Being something of a saunterer, auction sales very frequently come under my notice, and possess something of an attraction for me; not that I go as a bargain hunter, for it is only on very, very rare occasions that I make a purchase; but I like to see how my fellow-man and woman buy their bargains, and also to moralise, in my own small way, upon the changes that may have taken place in the house before the “whole of the valuable and modern household furniture” was placed in the hands of the “going, going, gone” man, to dispose of without reserve. I have been in some strange places in my travels, and seen some strange auctions, especially those in the electro-plate line at a shop in a leading thoroughfare; but the touter at the door never asks me in now, and the gentleman in the rostrum never seeks to catch my eye for another bid. My impression is that they do not want me, but look upon me as a rogue towards them; and verily I believe that I am, if they occupy the standard position of honest men. I could fill some pages with the reflections I have made upon different auctions at which I have been present—of the struggling, failing tradesman, turned out of house and home, watching with bitterness his household gods sacrificed upon the altar of Mammon—of the recklessly furnished house of the bankrupt speculator—of the little four-roomed house in the suburbs—all have their own especial history; but upon this occasion I am writing of the buyers more especially, and of the especial house spoken of at the head of this paper.

“Sale now on; fuss floor, sir,” said one of the grubby individuals before referred to; and as I ascended the stairs, which showed plainly where the rich velvet pile carpet, lot 94 in the catalogue, had lain, I was attacked on both flanks by a couple of gentlemen of very seedy, but decidedly not ripened appearance, who were very desirous of executing any little commissions for me. “Was there anything I had marked in the catalogue?” One of these gents soon gave me up, but the other seemed determined that if he failed in hooking a gudgeon, it should not be for want of perseverance; so he followed me up most pertinaciously, and on reaching the sale room—the three drawing-rooms thrown into one—began to expatiate upon everything which seemed to have attracted my eye. The pianoforte was the very one that would suit me, and he could tell me the figure to a T that I ought to give for it, which was not the strict letter of the truth.

It was of no avail that I tried to get rid of him, so I sat down in a corner near the auctioneer, and watched the progress of the sale and the countenances of the buyers.

“Goingat three ten; going at three ten;goingat threeten—”

“Tap” went the hammer, and a Mr Cohen became the owner of a rosewood loo table.

Several more lots were disposed of, when a large feather-bed was placed by the porters upon the table. It might have been stuffed with feathers of gold from the way in which it was immediately attacked and punched. I was almost knocked over in the rush; and for a moment it appeared as though the twelve tribes of Israel had resolved, to a man, upon thrusting their arms right up to the elbow in the soft and yielding bed.

“Bargain at a fi-pun note, sir; let me bid for you. Be a sin to let such a chance go. Better let me bid, or them Jews ’ll run it up.”

In spite of myself I could not refrain from turning round and gazing upon my tormentor’s profile, which was as thoroughly Israelitish as ever spoke of race or told of Eastern origin. But for a very peremptory negative I should undoubtedly have become the possessor of the capital feather-bed; which, however, became the property of a Mr Moss.

In fact, the richly historical names that were given in after almost every purchase showed how very little there was of the Christian element in the sale: Lazarus, Abrahams, Marks, Levy, Solomon, and the refined Sloman—Moss, a capital name for a money grubber, and far preferable, no doubt, to the more familiar Moses—such names as these seemed of the most familiar, while Brown, Jones, Robinson, or Smith only occurred at long intervals.

I stayed some two hours, and watched the greed and avarice displayed by the bidders; and came away with the full determination not to buy at sales, for I could see one thing very plainly, and that was, that there was no fear of an article being sold for less than its value, as there were plenty of experienced men waiting to close at once upon a bargain; and therefore these brokers would, amongst them, run every lot up to nearly its full worth; the consequence being, that if you did not give the real value for an article that you were almost buying in the dark as to its quality, you would give for it perhaps considerably more than it was worth—buying blindly—every lot being knocked down to the buyer with all its defects and failings.

I am not going to say that bargains are not to be picked up at sales, for no doubt many are to be come at in this way; but it seems to me to be absolutely necessary that the purchaser should possess a shrewd business perception and keen business capabilities, or the chances are that he will be greatly disappointed when he pays his money and has his goods delivered to him. And this is what I thought as I watched the different little “dodges” employed by the initiated to give the auctioneer notice when they bid. One man scratched his head; another winked his right eye; another winked his left; one thrust his tongue into his cheek; another raised his eyebrows; others rubbed their noses, tapped their teeth, coughed, pulled their whiskers; while the most expert seemed to do it with a look.

“Said I then to myself, here’s a lesson for me,” though I do not know with what favour Dr Watts would have looked upon such a misappropriation of his ode, and I then rose to leave the room, closely followed by my broker friend, who was strongly of opinion, when we reached the staircase, that he ought to drink my health. However, I did not agree with him, being so unimaginative as to consider that my health would not be in the slightest degree improved by being drunk, while that of my companion would decidedly suffer by potations such as are supplied in our London public-houses.

Chapter Twenty Three.A Placard.Now, you know, it wouldn’t matter a bit if it was only the publicans who gave short measure. Most of us know what their gin-glasses are—regular little humbugs of things—werry broad at the top, and werry solid at the bottom, and holding precious little in ’em; bad as the old-fashioned wine bottles, that have had such a kick as has sent the bottom right up inside ever so far, like a glass mountain, so that when you think the bottle’s half full, it’s three-parts empty. But it isn’t the publican so much as the street-sellers, who one way and the other do drop most terribly on to the poor man in what he buys; and yet that ain’t the worst of it, for there’s someone else as drops on to the poor man worse than anybody; cheats him; gives him short measure; and one way and another knocks twenty-five per cent, off his wages and the good they would do him; and I’m going to show you how; while “Who is it?” says you; “Why, himself!” says I. And now I’m going to prove it.Now, I don’t know what you are as is reading this; but we’ll say you’re a working man, for once in a way, and say you and I settled down in London. You makes your three-and-thirty shillings a week at your trade! and I, being a bill-sticker, makes what I can—sometimes more, sometimes less—finds my own paste—makes it myself, you know; and though I says it as shouldn’t say it, you never see my bills a-going flip-flap in the wind, like some people’s as I knows, which ain’t neither here nor there, in a manner of speaking; though as regards a wall or hoarding, they are here and there. I allus make good paste, and though sometimes when I has one of them big posters to stick up a letter at a time, I do get a bit bothered with the spelling, it ain’t often. I ain’t ashamed of my faults, and having made myself a scholard off bills on walls, why, ’tain’t surprising as I blunders a bit sometimes, even if one’s reading has been a bit diversified. As I said before, it ain’t surprising, and I ain’t ashamed if, when I stuck themStarbills, I did putt the cart afore the horse, and instead of saying “War Correspondence” put it up as “Raw Correspondence,” which, seeing as it related to cutting up and butchering, warn’t so werry much out of place. But it warn’t me as stuck the Prince o’ Wales’s feathers upside down, and if I do have to put a letter up at a time I always makes them meet at the edges, and don’t put ’em over other folkses.But this ain’t proving how pore men cheats and measures themselves out short; so, as I said before, we’ll suppose you and me to be working men settled in London. Well, rent we can’t say nothing about; but if we goes on as some people do, living from hand to mouth and back again, why, where are we? Now, this is what I always noticed—the poorer a man is, the dearer he buys his things.“Get out,” says you; “how can that be?”“Why, so,” says I, and in imagination, you know, I holds the bill up against the wall with one hand, stirs the brush round in my paste with the other, and then well lathers or lubricates the back of the paper, then turns him, claps him in his place, and touches him over with the brush so as he fits into all the crevices tight. “And now,” says I, “read,” and you read, or is s’posed to read, as follers, though of course it’s me speaking:—“The poor man allus goes to the cheap shop.”“Right enough too,” says you.“Gammon,” says I, for that cheap’s a word as ain’t to be found in reality; it’s a word as my philosophic friend Josef Sprouts would call “a beautiful illoosion.” It’s a ignis something—I don’t quite know what—as cheats men on to follow it, and then bogs them as tight as my brush is bogged in dry weather in the crusty paste. Don’t you never buy nothing cheap. Now, this is the way. You goes and buys cheap butter at fourteen-pence when you might have had it as honest dripping, afore the tater flour and yaller colour was put in, for ninepence. You buys penny candles one at a time, and so gives eight pence a pound when you might have had ’em for seven-pence. You buys: cheap tea at two shillings, when one spoonful of three-shilling goes twice as fur. Working men’s stout bluchers, all brown paper and bosh. Cheap clothes, as falls all to pieces, and shrinks anyhow, till the bottoms of the trousers seem to have made up their minds to be tight knickerbockers. Cheap calico, as is all facing till it’s washed, when it turns out canvas or fine net. Coffee, as is—well, perhaps what I heard about burnt liver ain’t true, after all; but you may depend upon one thing, and that is, that the man as buys the best of everything in a plain way lives the cheapest. Look at flour. Well, say the best is a penny a quartern more—and the wife seems so satisfied because she thinks she is saving. Why, it’s a mistake altogether, and if you feed yourself with so much husk amongst your corn, mustn’t you have more corn to supply the nutriment? Don’t tell me! I haven’t made paste so many years without being a good judge of flour.Cheap things is nasty. At least that’s wrong, for cheap things is good, and the real cheap things is the best of everything; and what you’ve got to do is this—have a little, but have it good. I’ve watched the dodges long enough to know; I’ve stuck up the cheap advertising bills, and then looked into it, and blowed the missus up for being so took in: cheap soap as is kept wet and runs all to a mosh in the water; cheap rice full of grit; cheap bacon as shrinks in the pot; cheap currants with plenty of stones; cheap meat—there, if there is a cruel thing perpetrated on the poor people of London streets, it’s that sending up diseased beasts, sheep, and pigs, to be sold cheap; and if I were the Lord Mayor of London, or either of the other magistrates (which ain’t likely to be the case this year, because the election’s over, and there ain’t a bench at liberty) I’d just tar the gentlemen as sells the stuff with their own brush, I’d—I would, and no mistake—I’d feed ’em with their own meat—now then!I’ve stuck so much poetry about cheap clothes for the tailors, and strong tea for the groshers, that I’m sick of it; but I know one piece right off by heart, and at the end of a verse it says:—“Oh, God, that bread should be so dear,And flesh and blood so cheap!”You know! “Song of the shirt.” Cheap shirts for cheap people, who make fortunes out of the poor.“Oh,” you’ll say, “that was only a made-up thing.”What! here, save up your pence and go down Bethnal Green, or amongst the tottering old houses in Spitalfields, places where I can find heaps of spots for sticking bills, and you can hunt ’em out for yourself; women sewing their shrouds, hard at work at ’em, doing a little bit every day till they get ’em done, and then the parish sends a cheap coffin, supplied by the lowest bidder, the undertaker as does these things by contract on the cheap fetches the rough black case; and then “rattle his bones over the stones,” and off to the cemetery; and you and I will buy the cheap shirt, and find as the calico’s thin, and the buttons come off, and the stitches fall out almost from our bargain.“Just come here, will you?” says a p’leeceman to me one day as I was a-sticking an “Alarming Sacrifice” against the wall, and a thinking to myself it was like the way we used to gammon the old hens at home, shamming to throw down barley, so that they’d come running and clucking like fun to find nought; while here was these rogues a-using me to scatter their barley about to bring all the old London hens a-clucking over their bargains in calicoes and dresses, bought at unheard-of prices, “in bankruptcy.” “Just come in here a minute,” says the policeman, and I leaves off at “Alarming Sac—;” and I daresay there was an alarming sack made out of the noodles, for that bill never got finished, but stopped there till another sticker went and stuck the “Christy’s” over it. I follows my chap in, carrying my bills and crutches and paste, on account of the boys, and follows him right upstairs—up stairs as wern’t safe—to a miserable attic, where there was a poor thing lying on a bed—at least on a few rags, and she dressed in rags herself. There was the rain pelting against the broken windows and making a puddle on the floor; the wind whistling down the chimney, where there was no grate, only a few bits or iron hoop resting on some bricks, but no fire; whilst the rest of the furniture, after the ricketty bedstead, was a little table, and a chair with the bottom sticking down like part of a fish basket.“Stop with her while I goes for help,” says the p’leeceman, and I nodded, staring all the while at the poor thing on the bed; and as soon as he had gone, I goes a tiptoe to the winder, pulls a little bill out of my bag, lays on the paste, and pops it over one of the broken panes; and then does the same by two more, which was some improvement, you know, only when I looks on the first, if it wasn’t in big letters, “Coffin!” for the “Dr” was tucked round outer sight one side, and the “s” and the “Pills” the other.“That won’t do,” I says, and I fetches out another bill from another parcel. Nice thing that for a sick woman to see as a transparency—“Coffin!” so I pastes the other bill and sets up, but snatches it down again directly, for it was “The Dead Letter,” and there was only “The Dead” to be seen. But the next one did service, for it was “Good Words.”“Ah!” I says, she wants some bad enough, and then I spoke and said something or another, but there was no answer; so thinking it best, I waited quietly till the p’leeceman came back, when he whispered to me as they were going to take her in a cab to the House.“House? What house?” somebody cries all at once in a horrid cracked, hoarse voice, “No—no—no—no!” And there, sitting up in the bed, with her blue bony fingers stretched out, and her dull eyes straining, the poor thing kept motioning the p’leeceman away, and no one tried to touch her.“Little bread—little water—that’s all;” she says again so pitifully; “Let me stay here till I’m gone, and I shan’t be long now;” and then sinking back on the bed, she closed her eyes and lay muttering, with her poor thin, bony arms stretched across her breast.I looked at the p’leecemen, and they looked at me, and not being men much given to softness, they were about to lift the poor thing up and carry her down, only I stopped ’em, for there was something about the poor soul then as made me hold up my hand; and when they saw what I did, one of them went down to send away the cab and fetch a doctor, while me and t’other stood looking on to see the look of horror and fear go off her face, while the hands kept their place across her poor breast—to see her eyes stopping shut, then open widely for a minute, and then close again, as she lay quiet and still—gone to sleep to wake elsewhere.P’leeceman went out werry quietly and stopped at the door, beckoning me to come, but I couldn’t see him, for I was seeing that poor woman sitting on that broken chair, close to the broken window, in the early morning, and through the long day, and right into the night, by the light of a cheap candle, stitching away at tailor’s slopwork hour after hour, to make at first 7 shillings 6 pence a week, then, as her eyes grew feebler, and the stitches less regular, six shillings—five shillings—four shillings—two shillings—nothing! for flesh and blood is cheap in London, and when one bone and gristle machine wears out, there are plenty more to take its place. Sitting there in the bitter cold wet autumn of this year, sick at heart, sick in body, weak, old, and helpless—too feeble to work, too proud to tell of her sufferings; and with the horror of the poor against the tender mercies of the parish, where the feeble sink amidst the horrors of the infirmary. Working on till she could work no more, and then, with bloodless limbs and pallid face, when work and food were given, and she took both, the strength failed, and the stomach unused to sustenance could not bear it—the lamp was going out, the flame trembling, and the oil for which it was sinking drowned out the last flickering ray.No fiction—no tale of imagination—but true! true! true! Not in the past times, before there were visitations, and poor-law boards, and plenty of missionary enterprise, but now—now, within the past few days—in Christian England, whose wealth makes the fabled greatness of the East turn pale and shine with diminished lustre. Here—at home—in our great city—lying down to die, listening to the hurrying tramp of thousands; with help ready to come when it was too late; with coroner and jury ready to sit, and wag their sapient heads, and the twelve to smoke it in their pipes in the evening, saying, “How dreadful!” The coroner saying, too, that such things came before him weekly. And what is done to amend the misery? Where is the plaister for this hideous boil? There was no canting whine here for aid, but the act of the stricken one who knew full well that she would be told to go to the House,—than enter which she would sooner die.“I’d have taken her a drop of brandy if I’d known how bad she was; but, poor soul, she always kep herself to herself.” God bless you for it, woman! You told me with an earnestness and truthful air that none could doubt: it was the fruition of that loving sympathy that prompts the poor to give of their little to aid distress. Where does the beggar make his harvest? Where do the canting hypocrites who trade upon sympathy fatten? Amidst the thronging streets of East and South London, finding the heart that has felt the pinchings of poverty ever ready to open in their favour. But such sad tales need veiling, ’neath the medium of fiction, and one seeks again to soften the tale.I see it all, as I said, and at last, seeing it less and less plain for something as came in my eyes, I picked up my paste-tin and my brush, and then made towards the door; but I was obliged to go back and have another look, for the thought come as it might have been a sister, or a mother, or—or—or—I broke down there; for I said to myself as it might have been a widder, and that widder might have been mine. But the thoughts of that made me start again and hurry out of the place, with a will and a spirit in me to have posted up all London, if I could have got the job; and short work I made of what else I had to do. But there in my pipe that night was that worn-out seamstress, whose calm, sleeping face cried out so appealingly—crying in a way that should make all London shudder:“Brother, I was starved to death!”

Now, you know, it wouldn’t matter a bit if it was only the publicans who gave short measure. Most of us know what their gin-glasses are—regular little humbugs of things—werry broad at the top, and werry solid at the bottom, and holding precious little in ’em; bad as the old-fashioned wine bottles, that have had such a kick as has sent the bottom right up inside ever so far, like a glass mountain, so that when you think the bottle’s half full, it’s three-parts empty. But it isn’t the publican so much as the street-sellers, who one way and the other do drop most terribly on to the poor man in what he buys; and yet that ain’t the worst of it, for there’s someone else as drops on to the poor man worse than anybody; cheats him; gives him short measure; and one way and another knocks twenty-five per cent, off his wages and the good they would do him; and I’m going to show you how; while “Who is it?” says you; “Why, himself!” says I. And now I’m going to prove it.

Now, I don’t know what you are as is reading this; but we’ll say you’re a working man, for once in a way, and say you and I settled down in London. You makes your three-and-thirty shillings a week at your trade! and I, being a bill-sticker, makes what I can—sometimes more, sometimes less—finds my own paste—makes it myself, you know; and though I says it as shouldn’t say it, you never see my bills a-going flip-flap in the wind, like some people’s as I knows, which ain’t neither here nor there, in a manner of speaking; though as regards a wall or hoarding, they are here and there. I allus make good paste, and though sometimes when I has one of them big posters to stick up a letter at a time, I do get a bit bothered with the spelling, it ain’t often. I ain’t ashamed of my faults, and having made myself a scholard off bills on walls, why, ’tain’t surprising as I blunders a bit sometimes, even if one’s reading has been a bit diversified. As I said before, it ain’t surprising, and I ain’t ashamed if, when I stuck themStarbills, I did putt the cart afore the horse, and instead of saying “War Correspondence” put it up as “Raw Correspondence,” which, seeing as it related to cutting up and butchering, warn’t so werry much out of place. But it warn’t me as stuck the Prince o’ Wales’s feathers upside down, and if I do have to put a letter up at a time I always makes them meet at the edges, and don’t put ’em over other folkses.

But this ain’t proving how pore men cheats and measures themselves out short; so, as I said before, we’ll suppose you and me to be working men settled in London. Well, rent we can’t say nothing about; but if we goes on as some people do, living from hand to mouth and back again, why, where are we? Now, this is what I always noticed—the poorer a man is, the dearer he buys his things.

“Get out,” says you; “how can that be?”

“Why, so,” says I, and in imagination, you know, I holds the bill up against the wall with one hand, stirs the brush round in my paste with the other, and then well lathers or lubricates the back of the paper, then turns him, claps him in his place, and touches him over with the brush so as he fits into all the crevices tight. “And now,” says I, “read,” and you read, or is s’posed to read, as follers, though of course it’s me speaking:—

“The poor man allus goes to the cheap shop.”

“Right enough too,” says you.

“Gammon,” says I, for that cheap’s a word as ain’t to be found in reality; it’s a word as my philosophic friend Josef Sprouts would call “a beautiful illoosion.” It’s a ignis something—I don’t quite know what—as cheats men on to follow it, and then bogs them as tight as my brush is bogged in dry weather in the crusty paste. Don’t you never buy nothing cheap. Now, this is the way. You goes and buys cheap butter at fourteen-pence when you might have had it as honest dripping, afore the tater flour and yaller colour was put in, for ninepence. You buys penny candles one at a time, and so gives eight pence a pound when you might have had ’em for seven-pence. You buys: cheap tea at two shillings, when one spoonful of three-shilling goes twice as fur. Working men’s stout bluchers, all brown paper and bosh. Cheap clothes, as falls all to pieces, and shrinks anyhow, till the bottoms of the trousers seem to have made up their minds to be tight knickerbockers. Cheap calico, as is all facing till it’s washed, when it turns out canvas or fine net. Coffee, as is—well, perhaps what I heard about burnt liver ain’t true, after all; but you may depend upon one thing, and that is, that the man as buys the best of everything in a plain way lives the cheapest. Look at flour. Well, say the best is a penny a quartern more—and the wife seems so satisfied because she thinks she is saving. Why, it’s a mistake altogether, and if you feed yourself with so much husk amongst your corn, mustn’t you have more corn to supply the nutriment? Don’t tell me! I haven’t made paste so many years without being a good judge of flour.

Cheap things is nasty. At least that’s wrong, for cheap things is good, and the real cheap things is the best of everything; and what you’ve got to do is this—have a little, but have it good. I’ve watched the dodges long enough to know; I’ve stuck up the cheap advertising bills, and then looked into it, and blowed the missus up for being so took in: cheap soap as is kept wet and runs all to a mosh in the water; cheap rice full of grit; cheap bacon as shrinks in the pot; cheap currants with plenty of stones; cheap meat—there, if there is a cruel thing perpetrated on the poor people of London streets, it’s that sending up diseased beasts, sheep, and pigs, to be sold cheap; and if I were the Lord Mayor of London, or either of the other magistrates (which ain’t likely to be the case this year, because the election’s over, and there ain’t a bench at liberty) I’d just tar the gentlemen as sells the stuff with their own brush, I’d—I would, and no mistake—I’d feed ’em with their own meat—now then!

I’ve stuck so much poetry about cheap clothes for the tailors, and strong tea for the groshers, that I’m sick of it; but I know one piece right off by heart, and at the end of a verse it says:—

“Oh, God, that bread should be so dear,And flesh and blood so cheap!”

“Oh, God, that bread should be so dear,And flesh and blood so cheap!”

You know! “Song of the shirt.” Cheap shirts for cheap people, who make fortunes out of the poor.

“Oh,” you’ll say, “that was only a made-up thing.”

What! here, save up your pence and go down Bethnal Green, or amongst the tottering old houses in Spitalfields, places where I can find heaps of spots for sticking bills, and you can hunt ’em out for yourself; women sewing their shrouds, hard at work at ’em, doing a little bit every day till they get ’em done, and then the parish sends a cheap coffin, supplied by the lowest bidder, the undertaker as does these things by contract on the cheap fetches the rough black case; and then “rattle his bones over the stones,” and off to the cemetery; and you and I will buy the cheap shirt, and find as the calico’s thin, and the buttons come off, and the stitches fall out almost from our bargain.

“Just come here, will you?” says a p’leeceman to me one day as I was a-sticking an “Alarming Sacrifice” against the wall, and a thinking to myself it was like the way we used to gammon the old hens at home, shamming to throw down barley, so that they’d come running and clucking like fun to find nought; while here was these rogues a-using me to scatter their barley about to bring all the old London hens a-clucking over their bargains in calicoes and dresses, bought at unheard-of prices, “in bankruptcy.” “Just come in here a minute,” says the policeman, and I leaves off at “Alarming Sac—;” and I daresay there was an alarming sack made out of the noodles, for that bill never got finished, but stopped there till another sticker went and stuck the “Christy’s” over it. I follows my chap in, carrying my bills and crutches and paste, on account of the boys, and follows him right upstairs—up stairs as wern’t safe—to a miserable attic, where there was a poor thing lying on a bed—at least on a few rags, and she dressed in rags herself. There was the rain pelting against the broken windows and making a puddle on the floor; the wind whistling down the chimney, where there was no grate, only a few bits or iron hoop resting on some bricks, but no fire; whilst the rest of the furniture, after the ricketty bedstead, was a little table, and a chair with the bottom sticking down like part of a fish basket.

“Stop with her while I goes for help,” says the p’leeceman, and I nodded, staring all the while at the poor thing on the bed; and as soon as he had gone, I goes a tiptoe to the winder, pulls a little bill out of my bag, lays on the paste, and pops it over one of the broken panes; and then does the same by two more, which was some improvement, you know, only when I looks on the first, if it wasn’t in big letters, “Coffin!” for the “Dr” was tucked round outer sight one side, and the “s” and the “Pills” the other.

“That won’t do,” I says, and I fetches out another bill from another parcel. Nice thing that for a sick woman to see as a transparency—“Coffin!” so I pastes the other bill and sets up, but snatches it down again directly, for it was “The Dead Letter,” and there was only “The Dead” to be seen. But the next one did service, for it was “Good Words.”

“Ah!” I says, she wants some bad enough, and then I spoke and said something or another, but there was no answer; so thinking it best, I waited quietly till the p’leeceman came back, when he whispered to me as they were going to take her in a cab to the House.

“House? What house?” somebody cries all at once in a horrid cracked, hoarse voice, “No—no—no—no!” And there, sitting up in the bed, with her blue bony fingers stretched out, and her dull eyes straining, the poor thing kept motioning the p’leeceman away, and no one tried to touch her.

“Little bread—little water—that’s all;” she says again so pitifully; “Let me stay here till I’m gone, and I shan’t be long now;” and then sinking back on the bed, she closed her eyes and lay muttering, with her poor thin, bony arms stretched across her breast.

I looked at the p’leecemen, and they looked at me, and not being men much given to softness, they were about to lift the poor thing up and carry her down, only I stopped ’em, for there was something about the poor soul then as made me hold up my hand; and when they saw what I did, one of them went down to send away the cab and fetch a doctor, while me and t’other stood looking on to see the look of horror and fear go off her face, while the hands kept their place across her poor breast—to see her eyes stopping shut, then open widely for a minute, and then close again, as she lay quiet and still—gone to sleep to wake elsewhere.

P’leeceman went out werry quietly and stopped at the door, beckoning me to come, but I couldn’t see him, for I was seeing that poor woman sitting on that broken chair, close to the broken window, in the early morning, and through the long day, and right into the night, by the light of a cheap candle, stitching away at tailor’s slopwork hour after hour, to make at first 7 shillings 6 pence a week, then, as her eyes grew feebler, and the stitches less regular, six shillings—five shillings—four shillings—two shillings—nothing! for flesh and blood is cheap in London, and when one bone and gristle machine wears out, there are plenty more to take its place. Sitting there in the bitter cold wet autumn of this year, sick at heart, sick in body, weak, old, and helpless—too feeble to work, too proud to tell of her sufferings; and with the horror of the poor against the tender mercies of the parish, where the feeble sink amidst the horrors of the infirmary. Working on till she could work no more, and then, with bloodless limbs and pallid face, when work and food were given, and she took both, the strength failed, and the stomach unused to sustenance could not bear it—the lamp was going out, the flame trembling, and the oil for which it was sinking drowned out the last flickering ray.

No fiction—no tale of imagination—but true! true! true! Not in the past times, before there were visitations, and poor-law boards, and plenty of missionary enterprise, but now—now, within the past few days—in Christian England, whose wealth makes the fabled greatness of the East turn pale and shine with diminished lustre. Here—at home—in our great city—lying down to die, listening to the hurrying tramp of thousands; with help ready to come when it was too late; with coroner and jury ready to sit, and wag their sapient heads, and the twelve to smoke it in their pipes in the evening, saying, “How dreadful!” The coroner saying, too, that such things came before him weekly. And what is done to amend the misery? Where is the plaister for this hideous boil? There was no canting whine here for aid, but the act of the stricken one who knew full well that she would be told to go to the House,—than enter which she would sooner die.

“I’d have taken her a drop of brandy if I’d known how bad she was; but, poor soul, she always kep herself to herself.” God bless you for it, woman! You told me with an earnestness and truthful air that none could doubt: it was the fruition of that loving sympathy that prompts the poor to give of their little to aid distress. Where does the beggar make his harvest? Where do the canting hypocrites who trade upon sympathy fatten? Amidst the thronging streets of East and South London, finding the heart that has felt the pinchings of poverty ever ready to open in their favour. But such sad tales need veiling, ’neath the medium of fiction, and one seeks again to soften the tale.

I see it all, as I said, and at last, seeing it less and less plain for something as came in my eyes, I picked up my paste-tin and my brush, and then made towards the door; but I was obliged to go back and have another look, for the thought come as it might have been a sister, or a mother, or—or—or—I broke down there; for I said to myself as it might have been a widder, and that widder might have been mine. But the thoughts of that made me start again and hurry out of the place, with a will and a spirit in me to have posted up all London, if I could have got the job; and short work I made of what else I had to do. But there in my pipe that night was that worn-out seamstress, whose calm, sleeping face cried out so appealingly—crying in a way that should make all London shudder:

“Brother, I was starved to death!”

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