THE PILLORY.
“Thro’ the wood, laddie.”—SCOTTISHSONG.
INEVERwas in the pillory but once, which I must ever consider a misfortune. For looking at all things, as I do, with a philosophical and enquiring eye, and courting experience for the sake of my fellow-creatures, I cannot but lament the short and imperfect opportunity I enjoyed of filling that elevated situation, which so few men are destined to occupy. It is a sort of Egg-Premiership; a place above your fellows, but a place in which your hands are tied. You are not without the established political vice, for you are not absolved from turning.
Let me give a brief description of the short irregular glimpse I had of men and things, while I was in Pillory Power. I was raised to it, as many men are to high stations, by my errors. I merely made a mistake of some sort or other in an answer in Chancery, not injurious to my interests, and lo! the Recorder of London, with a suavity of manner peculiar to himself, announced to me my intended promotion, and in due time I was installed into office!
It was a fine day for the pillory; that is to say, it rained in torrents. Those only who have had boarding and lodging like mine, can estimate the comfort of having washing into the bargain.
It was about noon, when I was placed, like a statue, upon my wooden pedestal; an hour probably chosen out of consideration to the innocent little urchins then let out of school, for they are a race notoriously fond of shying, pitching, jerking, pelting, flinging, slinging—in short, professors of throwing in all itsbranches. The public officer presented me first with a north front, and there I was—“God save the mark!”—like a cock at Shrovetide, or a lay-figure in a Shooting Gallery!
The storm commenced. Stones began to spit—mud to mizzle—cabbage-stalks thickened into a shower. Now and then came a dead kitten—sometimes a living cur: anon an egg would hit me on the eye, an offence I was obliged to wink at. There is a strange appetite in human kind for pelting a fellow-creature. A travelling China-man actually threw away twopence to have a pitch at me with a pipkin; a Billinsgate huckster treated me with a few herrings, not by any means too stale to be purchased in St. Giles’s; while the weekly halfpence of the schoolboys went towards the support of a Costermonger and his Donkey, who supplied them with eggs fit for throwing, and for nothing else. I confess this last description of missiles, if missiles they might be called that never miss’d, annoyed me more than all the rest; however, there was no remedy. There I was forced to stand, taking up my livery, and a vile livery it was; or, as a wag expressed it, “being made free of the Peltmongers.”
WHAT MUST BE—MUST.
WHAT MUST BE—MUST.
It was time to appeal to my resources. I had read somewhere of an Italian, who, by dint of mental abstraction, had rendered himself unconscious of the rack, and while the executioners were tugging, wrenching, twisting, dislocating, andbreaking joints, sinews, and bones, was perchance in fancy only performing his diurnal Gymnastics, or undergoing an amicable Shampooing. The pillory was a milder instrument than the rack, and I had naturally a lively imagination; it seemed plausible, therefore, that I might make shift to be pelted in my absence. To attain a scene as remote as possible from pain, I selected one of absolute pleasure for the experiment; no other, in truth, than that Persian Paradise, the Garden of Gul, at the Feast of Roses. Flapping the wings of Fancy with all my might, I was speedily in those Bowers of Bliss, and at high romps with Houri and Peri,—
“Flinging roses at each other.”
But, alas, for mental abstraction! The very first bud hit me with stone-like vehemence; my next rose, of the cabbage kind, breathed only a rank cabbage fragrance; and in another moment the claws of a flying cat scratched me back into myself; and there I was again, in full pelt in the pillory!
My first fifteen minutes, the only quarter I met with, had now elapsed, and my face was turned towards the East. The first object my one eye fell upon was a heap of Macadamisation, and I confess I never thought of calculating the number of stones in such a hillock, till I saw the mob preparing to cast them up!
I expected to be lithographed on the spot! Instinct suggested to me that the only way to save my life was by dying; so dropping my head and hands, and closing my last eye with a terrific groan, I expired for the present. Therusetook effect. Supposing me to be defunct, the mob refused to kill me. Shouts of “Murder! Shame! Shame! No Pillory!” burst from all quarters. The Pipkin-monger abused the Fishwoman, who rated the Schoolboys; they in turn fell foul of the Costermonger, who was hissing and groaning at the whole assembly;and, finally, a philanthropic Constable took the whole group into custody. In the mean time I was taken down, laid with a sack over me in a cart, and driven off to a Hospital, my body seeming a very proper present to St. Bartholomew’s or St. Thomas’s, but my clothes fit for nothing butGuy’s.
A “CONSTABLE’S MISCELLANY.”
A “CONSTABLE’S MISCELLANY.”