 SCETCHES BY BOSS, SE. 1. PREFIS AND OUR PARISH, CHAPTER I. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. WING BY BRAD PHILLIPPONE. SCETCHES BY BOSS, BY CHARLES DICKENS. PREFIS The hold of these sketches were written and published one by one when I was a very young man. They were collected and republished while I was still a very young man, and sent into the world with all their imperfections, a good many, on their heads. They comprise my first attempts at authorship, with the exception of certain tragedies achieved at the mature age of eight or ten, and represented with great applause to overflowing nurseries. I am conscious of their often being extremely crude and ill-considered, and bearing obvious marks of haste and inexperience, particularly in that section of the present volume which is comprised under the general head of tales. But as this collection is not originated now, and was very leniently and favorably received when it was first made, I have not felt it right either to remodel or expunge beyond a few words and phrases here and there. OUR PARISH CHAPTER I. THE BEEDLE, THE PARISH ENGINE, THE SCHOOLMASTER. How much is conveyed in those two short words, the parish, and with how many tales of distress and misery, of broken fortune and ruined hopes, too often of unreleaved wretchedness and successful navery are they associated? A poor man with small earnings and a large family just manages to live on from hand to mouth and to procure food from day to day. He is barely sufficient to satisfy the present cravings of nature, and can take no heed of the future. His taxes are in a rear. Quarter-day passes by. Another quarter-day arrives. He can procure no more quarter for himself, and is summoned by the parish. His goods are destrained. His children are crying with cold and hunger, and the very bed on which his sick wife is lying is dragged from beneath her. What can he do? To whom is he to apply for relief? To private charity? To benevolent individuals? Certainly not. There is his parish. There are the very parish vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish officers, the parish beetle, excellent institutions, and gentle kind-hearted men. The woman dies. She is buried by the parish. The children have no protector. They are taken care of by the parish. The man first neglects and afterwards cannot obtain work. He is relieved by the parish, and when distress and drunkenness have done their work upon him, he is maintained a harmless, babbling idiot in the parish asylum. The parish beetle is one of the most, perhaps the most, important member of the local administration. He is not so well off as the church wardens, certainly, nor as he so learned it as the vestry clerk, nor as he orders things quite so much his own way as either of them, but his power is very great notwithstanding, and the dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it. The beetle of our parish is a splendid fellow. It is quite delightful to hear him as he explains the state of the existing poor laws to the deaf old women in the boardroom passage on business nights, and to hear what he said to the senior church warden and what the senior church warden said to him, and what we, the beetle and the other gentleman, came to the determination of doing. A miserable looking woman is called into the boardroom and represents a case of extreme destitution, affecting herself, a widow with six small children. Where do you live, inquires one of the overseers. I rents a two-pair-back gentleman at Mrs. Brown's number three, Little King William's Alley, which has lived there this fifteen year and knows me to be very hardworking and industrious, and when my poor husband was a live gentleman, as died in the hospital, well-well interrupts the overseer, taking a note of the address. I'll send Simmons the beetle to moral mourning to ascertain whether your story is correct, and if so, I suppose you must have an order into the house. Simmons go to this woman's the first thing to moral mourning, will you? Simmons bows assent and ushers the woman out. Her previous admiration of the board, who all sit behind great books and with her hats on, fades into nothing before her respect for her lace-trimmed conductor, and her account of what has passed inside increases, if that be possible, the marks of respect shown by the assembled crowd to that solemn functionary. As to taking out a summons, it's quite a hopeless case if Simmons attends it on behalf of the parish. He knows all the titles of the Lord Mayor by heart, staged the case without a single stammer, and it is even reported that on one occasion he ventured to make a joke, which the Lord Mayor's head-footman, who happened to be present afterwards, told an intimate friend, confidentially, was almost equal to one of Mr. Hobbler's. See him again, on Sunday, in his state coat and cock-hat, with a large-headed staff for show in his left hand, and a small cane for use in his right. How poppously he marshals the children into their places, and how demerly the little urchins look at him as scant as he surveys them when they are all seated, with a glare of the eye peculiar to Beatles. The church wardens and overseers being duly installed in their curtain-pews, he seats himself on a mahogany-bracket, erected expressly for him at the top of the aisle, and divides his attention between his prayer-book and the boys. Suddenly, just at the commencement of the communion service, when the whole congregation is hushed into a profound silence, spoken only by the voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the stone floor of the aisle, with astounding clearness. Observe the generalship of the Beatle! His involuntary look of horror is instantly changed into one of perfect indifference, as if he were the only person present who has not heard the noise. The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the money ventures to make one or two distant dives after it, and the Beatle, gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when it again appears above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered with the cane before noticed, to the intense delight of three young men in an adjacent pew, who cough violently at intervals until the conclusion of the sermon. Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity of a perished Beatle, a gravity which has never been disturbed in any case that has come under our observation, except when the services of that particularly useful machine, a perished fire engine, are required. Then indeed all is bustle. Two little boys run to the Beatle as fast as their legs will carry them, and report from their own personal observation that some neighboring chimney is on fire, the engine is hastily gutted, and a plentiful supply of boys being obtained and harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle over the pavement, the Beatle running, we do not exaggerate, running at the side, until they arrive at some house, smelling strongly of soot, at the door of which the Beatle knocks with considerable gravity for half an hour. No attention being made to these manual applications, and the turncock having turned on the water, the engine turns off amidst the shouts of the boys, it pulls up once more at the workhouse, and the Beatle pulls up the unfortunate hostholder next day for the amount of his legal reward. We never saw a perished engine at a regular fire but once. It came up in gallant style three miles and a half an hour, at least. There was a capital supply of water, and it was first on the spot. Bang went the pumps, the people cheered, the Beatle perspired profusely. But it was unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to put the fire out, that nobody understood the process by which the engine was filled with water, in that eighteen boys and a man had exhausted themselves in pumping for twenty minutes without producing the slightest effect. The personage is next in importance to the Beatle, or the master of the workhouse and the perished schoolmaster. The vestry clerk, as everybody knows, is a short, pudgy little man in black with a thick gold watch-chain of considerable length, terminating in two large seals and a key. He is an attorney, and generally in a bustle, at no time more so than when he is hurrying to some parochial meeting, with his gloves crumpled up in one hand at a large red book under the other arm. As to the church wardens and overseers, we exclude them all together, because all we know of them is that they are usually respectable tradesmen who wear hats with brims inclined to flatness, and who occasionally testify in gilt letters on a blue-ground, in some conspicuous part of the church, to the important fact of a gallery having been enlarged and beautified or an organ rebuilt. The master of the workhouse is not in our parish, nor is he usually in any other, one of that class of men the better part of whose existence has passed away, and who drag out the remainder in some inferior situation with just enough thought of the past to feel degraded by and discontented with the present. We are unable to guess precisely to our own satisfaction what station the man can have occupied before. We should think he had been an inferior sort of attorney's clerk, or else the master of a national school. Whatever he was, it is clear his present position is a change for the better. His income is small, certainly, as the rusty black coat and threadbare velvet collar demonstrate. But then he lives free of house-rent, has a limited allowance of coals and candles, and an almost unlimited allowance of authority in his petty kingdom. He is a tall, thin bony man, always wears shoes and black cotton stockings with his certuit, and eyes you as you pass his parter window, as if he wished you were a pauper, just to give you a specimen of his power. He is an admirable specimen of a small tyrant, morose, brutish, and ill tempered, bullying to his inferiors, cringing to his superiors, and jealous of the influence and authority of the beetle. Our school master is just the very reverse of this amiable official. He has been one of those men one occasionally hears of, on whom misfortune seems to have set her mark. Nothing he ever did, or was concerned in, appears to have prospered. A rich old relation who had brought him up, and openly announced his intention of providing for him, left him ten thousand in his will, and revoked the bequest in a codicell. Thus unexpectedly reduced to the necessity of providing for himself, he procured a situation in a public office. The young clerks below him died off as there were a plague among them, but the old fellows over his head, for the reversion of whose places he was anxiously waiting, lived on and on as if they were immortal. He speculated and lost. He speculated again, and won, but never got his money. His talents were great, his disposition easy, generous, and liberal. His friends profited by the one and abused the other. Lost succeeded lost. Misfortune crowded on misfortune. Each successive day brought him nearer the verge of hopeless penury, and the quantum friends who had been warmest in their professions, grew strangely cold and indifferent. He had children whom he loved, and a wife on whom he doubted. The former turned their backs on him. The latter died, broken-hearted. He went with the stream. It had ever been his failing. And he had not courage sufficient to bear up against so many shocks. He had never cared for himself, and the only being who had cared for him at his poverty and distress was spared to him no longer. It was at this period that he applied for parochial relief, some kind-hearted man who had known him in happier times, chanced to be the Church Warden that year, and through his interest he was appointed to his present situation. He is an old man now, of the many who once crowded round him in all the hollow friendship of boon companionship. Some have died, some have fallen like himself, some have prospered, all have forgotten him. Time and misfortune have mercifully been permitted to impair his memory, and use has habituated him to his present condition. Meek, uncomplaining, and zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold his situation long beyond the usual period, and he will no doubt continue to hold it until infirmity renders him incapable, or death releases him. As the gray-headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny side of the little courtyard between school hours, it would be difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his former friends to recognize their once gay and happy associate in the person of the pauper schoolmaster. SKETCHES BY BOSS We commenced our last chapter with the beetle of our parish, because we are deeply sensible of the importance and dignity of his office. We will begin the present with the clergyman. Our curate is a young gentleman of such prepossessing appearance and fascinating manners, that within one month after his first appearance in the parish, half the young lady inhabitants were melancholy with religion, and the other half desponding with love. Never were so many young ladies seeing in our parish church on Sunday before, and never had the little round angels' faces on Mr. Tompkins' monument in the side aisle beheld such devotion on earth as they all exhibited. He was about five and twenty when he first came to astonish the parishioners. He parted his hair on the centre of his forehead in the form of a Norman arch, wore a brilliant of the first water on the fourth finger of his left hand, which he always applied to his left cheek when he read prayers, and had a deep, separical voice of unusual salinity. Innumerable were the calls made by prudent mamas on our new curate, and innumerable were the invitations with which he was assailed, and which to do him justice he readily accepted. If his manner in the pulpit had created an impression in his favour, the sensation was increased tenfold by his appearance in private circles. Puse in the immediate vicinity of the pulpit or reading desk rose in value, settings in the centre aisle were at a premium, an inch of room in the front row of the gallery could not be procured for love or money, and some people even went so far as to assert that the three Miss Browns, who had an obscure family pew just beyond the church wardens, were detected one Sunday in the free seats by the communion table, actually lying in wait for the curate as he passed to the vestry. He began to preach extempore sermons, and even grave papas caught the infection. He got out of bed at half-past twelve o'clock one winter's night to half-paptise a washer woman's child in a slop basin, and the gratitude of the parishioners knew no bounds. The very church wardens grew generous and insisted on the parish to fraying the expense of the watchbox on wheels, which the new curate had ordered for himself to perform the funeral service in, in wet weather. He sent three pints of gruel and a quarter of a pound of tea to a poor woman, who had been brought to bed of four small children, all at once the parish were charmed. He got up a subscription for her. The woman's fortune was made. He spoke for one hour and twenty-five minutes at an anti-slavery meeting at the Goat and Boots. The enthusiasm was at its height. A proposal was set on foot for presenting the curate with a piece of plate as a mark of esteem for his valuable services rendered to the parish. The list of subscriptions was filled up in no time. The contest was, not who should escape the contribution, but who should be the foremost to subscribe. A splendid silver ink-stand was made and ingrained with an appropriate inscription. The curate was invited to a public breakfast at the before-mentioned Goat and Boots. The ink-stand was presented in a neat speech by Mr. Gubbins, the ex-church warden, and acknowledged by the curate in terms which drew tears into the eyes of all present, the very waiters were melted. One would have supposed that by this time the theme of universal aberration was lifted to the very pinnacle of popularity. No such thing. The curate began to cough, four fits of coughing one morning between the litany and the epistle, and five in the afternoon service. Here was a discovery. The curate was consumptive. How interestingly melancholy! If the young ladies were energetic before, their sympathy and solicitude now knew no bounds. Such a man as the curate, such a dear, such a perfect love, to be consumptive, it was too much. Anonymous presence of black current jam, and lozages, elastic waistcoats, bosom friends, and warm stockings poured in upon the curate until he was as completely fitted out with winter clothing as if he were on the verge of an expedition to the North Pole. Verbal bulletins of the state of his health were circulated throughout the parish half a dozen times a day, and the curate was in the very zenith of his popularity. About this period a change came over the spirit of the parish. A very quiet, respectable, dozing old gentleman, who had officiated in our chapel of ease for twelve years previously, died one fine morning, without having given any notice whatever of his intention. This circumstance gave rise to counter-sensation the first, and the arrival of his successor to occasion counter-sensation the second. He was a pale, thin, cadaverous man, with large black eyes, and long struggling black hair. His dress was slovenly in the extreme, his manner ungainly, his doctrine startling. In short, he was in every respect the antipodes of the curate. Crowds of our female parishioners flocked to hear him, at first because he was so odd-looking, then because his face was so expressive, then because he preached so well, and at last because they really thought that after all there was something about him which it was quite impossible to describe. As to the curate he was all very well, but certainly after all there was no denying that, in short, the curate wasn't a novelty and the other clergyman was. The inconstancy of public opinion is proverbial. The congregation migrated one by one. The curate coughed till he was black in the face. It was in vain. He respired with difficulty. It was equally ineffectual in a waking sympathy. Seats are once again to be head in any part of our parish church, and the chapel of ease is going to be enlarged as it is crowded to suffocation every Sunday. The best known and most respected among our parishioners is an old lady who resided in our parish long before our name was registered in the list of baptisms. Our parish is a suburban one, and the old lady lives in a neat row of houses in the most airy and pleasant part of it. The host is her own, and it and everything about it except the old lady herself, who looks a little older than she did ten years ago, is in just the same state as when the old gentleman was living. The little front parlor, which is the old lady's ordinary sitting-room, is a perfect picture of quiet neatness. The carpet is covered with brown Holland. The glass and picture frames are carefully enveloped in yellow muslin. The table covers are never taken off except when the leaves are turpentine and bees waxed, an operation which is regularly commenced every other morning at half-past nine o'clock, and the little knick-knacks are always arranged in precisely the same manner. The greater part of these are presents from little girls whose parents live in the same row, but some of them, such as the two old-fashioned watches, which never keep the same time, one being always a quarter of an hour too slow, and the other a quarter of an hour too fast. The little picture of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold as they appeared in the royal box in Drury Lane Theatre, and others of the same class, have been in the old lady's possession for many years. Here the old lady sits with her spectacles on, visibly engaged in needlework, near the window in summertime, and if she sees you coming up the steps and you happen to be a favorite, she trots out to open the street door for you before you knock, and as you must be fatigued after that hot walk, insists on your swallowing two glasses of sherry before you exert yourself by talking. If you call in the evening you will find her cheerful, but rather more serious than usual, with an open Bible on the table before her, of which Sarah, who is just as neat and methodical as her mistress, regularly reads two or three chapters in the parlor aloud. The old lady sees scarcely any company except the little girls before noticed, each of whom has always a regular fixed day for a periodical tea-drinking with her, to which the child looks forward as the greatest treat of its existence. She seldom visits at a greater distance than the next door but one on either side, and when she drinks tea here Sarah runs out first and knocks a double-knock to prevent the possibility of her missus' catching-call by having to wait at the door. She is very scrupulous in returning these little invitations, and when she asks Mr. and Mrs. so-and-so to meet Mr. and Mrs. somebody else, Sarah and she dust the urn, and the best china tea-service, and the Pope Joan board, and the visitors are received in the drawing-room in great state. She has but few relations, and they are scattered about in different parts of the country, and she seldom sees them. She has a son in India, whom she always describes to you as a fine, handsome fellow, so like the profile of his poor, dear father over the side-board, but the old lady adds, with a mournful shake of the head, that he has always been one of her greatest trials, and that indeed he once almost broke her heart, but it pleased God to enable her to get the better of it, and she would prefer your never mentioning the subject to her again. She has a great number of pensioners, and on Saturday after she comes back from market, there is a regular levy of old men and women in the passage waiting for their weekly gratuity. Her name always heads the list of any benevolent subscriptions, and hers are always the most liberal donations to the Wintercole and Soup Distribution Society. She subscribed twenty pounds towards the erection of an organ in our parish church, and was so overcome the first Sunday the children sang to it that she was obliged to be carried out by the pew-opener. Her entrance into church on Sunday is always the signal for a little bustle in the side aisle, occasioned by a general rise among the poor people who bow and curtsy until the pew-opener has ushered the old lady into her accustomed seat, dropped a respectful curtsy, and shut the door, and the same ceremony is repeated on her leading church, when she walks home with the family next door but one, and talks about the sermon all the way, invariably opening the conversation by asking the youngest boy where the text was. Thus with the annual variation of a trip to some quiet place on the Seacos passes the old lady's life. It has rolled on in the same unvarying and benevolent course for many years now, and must at no distant period be brought to its final close. She looks forward to its termination with calmness and without apprehension. She has everything to hope and nothing to fear. A very different personage, but one who has rendered himself very conspicuous in our parish, is one of the old lady's next-door neighbors. He is an old naval officer on half-pay, and his bluff and unceremonious behaviour disturbs the old lady's domestic economy not a little. In the first place he will smoke cigars in the front court, and when he wants something to drink with them, which is by no means an uncommon circumstance, he lifts up the old lady's knocker with his walking-stick and demands to have a glass of table-ale handed over the rails. In addition to this cool proceeding he is a bit of a jack of all trades, or to use his own words, a regular Robinson Crusoe, and nothing delights him better than to experimentalize on the old lady's property. One morning he got up early and planted three or four roots of full-grown marigolds in every bed of her front garden to the inconceivable astonishment of the old lady, who actually thought when she got up and looked out to the window that it was some strange eruption which had come out into the night. Another time he took to pieces the eight-day clock on the front landing under pretense of cleaning the works, which he put together again by some undiscovered process in so wonderful a manner that the large hand has done nothing but trip up the little one ever since. Then he took to breeding silkworms, which he would bring in two or three times a day in little paper boxes to show the old lady, generally dropping a worm or two at every visit. The consequence was that one morning a very stout silkworm was discovered in the act of walking upstairs, probably with the view of inquiring after his friends, for on further inspection it appeared that some of his companions had already found their way to every room in the house. The old lady went to the seaside in despair, and during her absence he completely effaced the name from her brass door plate in his attempts to polish it with aquafortis. But all this is nothing to his seditious conduct in public life. He attends every vestry meeting that is held, always opposes the constituted authorities of the parish, denounces the profligacy of the church wardens, contests legal points against the vestry clerk, will make the tax-gatherer call for his mercy till he won't call any longer, and then he sends it, finds faults with the sermon every Sunday, says that the organist ought to be ashamed of himself, ought to back himself for any amount to sing the psalms better than all the children put together, male and female, and in short conducts himself in the most turbulent and uproarious manner. The worst of it is that having a high regard for the old lady he wants to make her a convert to his views, and therefore walks into her little parlour with his newspaper in hand, and talks violent politics by the hour. He is a charitable, open-hearted old fellow at bottom after all, so although he puts the old lady a little out occasionally, they all agree very well in the main, and she laughs as much at each feat of his handiwork when it is all over as anybody else. CHAPTER III. THE FOUR SISTERS. The row of houses in which the old lady and her troublesome neighbor reside comprises beyond all doubt a greater number of characters within its circumscribed limits than all the rest of the parish put together. As we cannot consistently with our present plan, however, extend the number of our parochial sketches beyond six, it will be better perhaps to select the most peculiar and to introduce them at once without further preface. The Four Miss Willises, then, settled in our parish thirteen years ago. It is a melancholy reflection that the old adage, time and tide, wait for no man, applies with equal force to the fairer portion of the creation, and willingly would we conceal the fact that even thirteen years ago the Miss Willises were far from juvenile. Our duty as faithful parochial chroniclers, however, is paramount to every other consideration, and we are bound to state that thirteen years since the authorities in matrimonial cases considered the youngest Miss Willis in a very precarious state, while the eldest sister was positively given over, as being far beyond all human hope. While the Miss Willises took a lease of the house, it was fresh painted and papered from top to bottom, the paint inside was all wainscoted, the marble all cleaned, the old grates taken down, and register stoves you could see to dress by put up. Four trees were planted in the back garden, several small baskets of gravel sprinkled over the front one, vans of elegant furniture arrived, spring blinds were fitted to the windows, carpenters who had been employed in the various preparations, alterations, and repairs, made confidential statements to the different maid-servants in the row, relative to the magnificent scale on which the Miss Willises were commencing. The maid-servants told their missuses, the missuses told their friends, and vague rumours were circulated throughout the parish that number twenty-five in Gordon Place had been taken by four maiden-ladies of immense property. At last the Miss Willises moved in, and then the calling began. The host was the perfection of neatness, so were the four Miss Willises. Everything was formal, stiff and cold, so were the four Miss Willises. Not a single chair of the whole set was ever seen out of its place. Not a single Miss Willis of the whole four was ever seen out of hers. There they always sat in the same places, doing precisely the same things at the same hour. The eldest Miss Willis used to knit, a second to draw, the two others to play duets on the piano. They seemed to have no separate existence but to have made up their minds just to winter through life together. They were three long graces and drapery with the addition like a school dinner of another long grace afterwards. The three fates with another sister. The Siamese twins multiplied by two. The eldest Miss Willis grew bilious. The four Miss Willises grew bilious immediately. The eldest Miss Willis grew ill-tempered and religious. The four Miss Willises were ill-tempered and religious directly. Whatever the eldest did, the others did, and whatever anybody else did they all disapproved of, and thus they vegetated, living in polar harmony among themselves, and as they sometimes went out or saw company in a quiet way at home, occasionally icing the neighbours. Three years passed over in this way, when an unlooked-for and extraordinary phenomenon occurred. The Miss Willis' showed symptoms of summer. The frost gradually broke up. A complete thaw took place. Was it possible? One of the four Miss Willises was going to be married. Now where on earth the husband came from? By what feelings the poor man could have been actuated, or by what process of reasoning the four Miss Willises succeeded in persuading themselves that it was possible for a man to marry one of them, without marrying them all, are questions too profound for us to resolve. Certainly it is, however, that the visits of Mr. Robinson, a gentleman in a public office with a good salary and a little property of his own besides, were received, that the four Miss Willises were courted in due form by the said Mr. Robinson, that the neighbours were perfectly frantic in their anxiety to discover which of the four Miss Willises was the fortunate fair, and that the difficulty they experienced in solving the problem was not at all lessened by the announcement of the eldest Miss Willis, we are going to marry Mr. Robinson. It was very extraordinary. They were so completely identified, the one with the other, that the curiosity of the whole row, even of the old lady herself, was roused almost beyond endurance. The subject was discussed at every little card table and tea-drinking. The old gentleman of silkworm notoriety did not hesitate to express his decided opinion that Mr. Robinson was of Easter and descent, and contemplated marrying the whole family at once, and the row generally shook their heads with considerable gravity and declared the business to be very mysterious. They hoped it might all end well. It certainly had a very singular appearance, but still it would be unsheritable to express any opinion without good grounds to go upon, and certainly the Miss Willises were quite old enough to judge for themselves, and to be sure people ought to know their own business best and so forth. At last one fine morning, at a quarter before eight o'clock a.m., two glass couches drove up to the Miss Willis's door, at which Mr. Robinson had arrived in a cab ten minutes before, dressed in a light blue coat, and double-milked cursey pantaloons, white neckerchief pumps, and dress-gloves. His manner denoting, as appeared from the evidence of the housemaid at number twenty-three, who was sweeping the door-steps at the time a considerable degree of nervous excitement. It was also reported on the same testimony that the cook who opened the door were a large white bow of unusual dimensions in a much smarter headdress than the regulation cap to which the Miss Willis's invariably restricted the somewhat excursive tastes of female servants in general. The intelligence spread rapidly from house to house. It was quite clear that the eventful morning had at length arrived the whole row stationed themselves behind their first and second floor blinds, and waited the result in breathless expectation. At last the Miss Willis's door opened. The door of the first glass coach did the same. Two gentlemen and a pair of ladies to correspond, friends of the family, no doubt. Up went the steps, bang went the door, off went the first-class coach, and up came the second. The street door opened again. The excitement of the whole row increased. Mr. Robinson and the eldest Miss Willis. I thought so, said the lady at number nineteen. I always said it was Miss Willis. Well, I never ejaculated the young lady at number eighteen to the young lady at number seventeen. Did you ever, dear, respond at the young lady at number seventeen to the young lady at number eighteen? It's too ridiculous, except for the spinster of an uncertain age, at number sixteen, joining in the conversation. But who shall portray the astonishment of Gordon Place when Mr. Robinson handed in all the Miss Willis's, one after the other, and then squeezed himself into an acute angle of the glass coach, which forthwith proceeded at a brisk pace after the other glass coach, which other glass coach had itself proceeded at a brisk pace in the direction of the parish church? Who shall depict the perplexity of the clergymen when all the Miss Willis's knelt down at the communion table, and repeated the responses incidental to the married service in an audible voice? Or who shall describe the confusion which prevailed when, even after the difficulties that occasioned had been adjusted, all the Miss Willis's went to hysterics at the conclusion of the ceremony until the sacred edifice resounding with their united wailings? As the four sisters and Mr. Robinson continued to occupy the same house after this memorable occasion, and as the married sister whoever she was never appeared in public without the other three, we are not quite clear that the neighbors ever would have discovered the real Mrs. Robinson, but for a circumstance of the most gratifying description which will happen occasionally in the best regulated families. Three-quarter days elapsed, and the row on whom a new light appeared to have been bursting for some time, began to speak with a sort of implied confidence on the subject and to wonder how Mrs. Robinson, the youngest Miss Willis that was got on, and servants might be seen running up the steps about nine or ten o'clock every morning with Mrs. Compliments and wishes to know how Mrs. Robinson finds herself this morning. And the answer was, Mrs. Robinson's Compliments, and she's in very good spirits and doesn't find herself any worse. The piano was heard no longer, the knitting-neels were laid aside, drawing was neglected, and Mantua making in millinery, on the smallest scale imaginable, appeared to have become the favourite amusement of the whole family. The powder wasn't quite as tidy as it used to be, and if you called in the morning you would see lying on a table with an old newspaper carelessly thrown over them, two or three particularly small caps, rather larger than if they had been made for a moderate-sized doll, with a small piece of lace in the shape of a horseshoe let in behind, or perhaps a white robe, not very large in circumference, but very much out of proportion and point of length, with a little tucker round the top and a frill round the bottom. And once when we called we saw a long white roller, with a kind of blue margin down each side, the probable use of which we were at a loss to conjecture. Then we fancied that Dr. Dawson, the surgeon, etc., who displays a large lamp with a different colour in every pane of glass at the corner of the row, began to be knocked up at night oftener than he used to be, and once we were very much alarmed by hearing a hackney-coach stop at Mrs. Robinson's door at half-past two in the morning, out of which there emerged a fat old woman in a cloak and night-cap, with a bundle in one hand and a pair of patterns in the other, who looked as if she had been suddenly knocked up out of bed for some very special purpose. When we got up in the morning, we saw that the knocker was tied up in an old white kid-glove, and we, in our innocence, we were in a state of bachelorship then, wondered what on earth it all meant, until we heard the eldest Miss Willis in propria persona say, with great dignity, an answer to the next inquiry, my compliments and Mrs. Robinson's doing as well as can be expected, and the little girl thrives wonderfully. And then, in common with the rest of the row, our curiosity was satisfied, and we began to wonder if it had never occurred to us what the matter was before. CHAPTER IV THE ELECTION FOR BEETLE A great event has recently occurred in our parish. A contest of paramount interest has just terminated. A parochial convulsion has taken place. It has been succeeded by a glorious triumph, which the country, or at least the parish, it is all the same, will long remember. We have had an election, an election for beetle. The supporters of the old beetle system have been defeated in their stronghold, and the advocates of the great new beetle-principles have achieved a proud victory. Our parish, which like all other parishes, is a little world of its own, has long been divided into two parties whose contentious slumbering for a while have never failed to burst forth with unabated vigor on any occasion on which they could by possibility be renewed. Watching rates, lighting rates, paving rates, sewers rates, church rates, pores rates, all sorts of rates, have been in their turns the subject of a grand struggle, and, as to questions of patronage, the asperity and determination with which they have been contested is scarcely credible. The leader of the official party, the steady advocate of the church wardens, and the unflinching supporter of the overseers, is an old gentleman who lives in our row. He owns some half a dozen houses in it, and always walks on the opposite side of the way, so that he may be able to take in a view of the whole of his property at once. He is a tall, thin, bony man with an interlocutive nose, and little restless, perking eyes, which appear to have been given him for the sole purpose of peeping into other people's affairs with. He is deeply impressed with the importance of our parish business, and prides himself not a little on his style of addressing the parishioners in vestry assembled. His views are rather confined than extensive. His principles more narrow than liberal. He has been heard to declaim very loudly in favour of the liberty of the press, and advocates the repeal of the stamp duty on newspapers, because the daily journals who now have a monopoly of the public never give verbatim reports of vestry meetings. He would not appear egotistical for the world, but at the same time he must say that there are speeches that celebrated speech of his own on the emoluments of the sexton, or the duties of the office, for instance, which might be communicated to the public greatly to their improvement and advantage. His great opponent in public life is Captain Purday, the old naval officer on half-pay to whom we have already introduced our readers. The captain being a determined opponent of the constituted authorities, whoever they chance to be, and our other friend being their steady supporter with an equal district guard of their individual merits, it will readily be supposed that occasions for their coming into direct collusion on neither few nor far between. They divided the vestry fourteen times on a motion for heating the church with warm water instead of coals, and made speeches about liberty and expenditure and prodigality and hot water which threw the whole parish into a state of excitement. Then the captain, when he was on the visiting committee and his opponent overseer brought forward certain distinct and specific charges relative to the management of the workhouse, boldly expressed the total want of confidence in the existing authorities and moved for a copy of the recipe by which the popper soup was prepared, together with any documents relating there too. This the overseer steadily resisted. He fortified himself by precedent, appealed to the established usage, and declined to produce the papers on the ground of the injury that would be done to the public service if documents of a strictly private nature passing between the master of the workhouse and the cook were to be thus dragged to light on the motion of any individual member of the vestry. The motion was lost by a majority of two, and then the captain, who never allows himself to be defeated, moved for a committee of inquiry into the whole subject. The affair grew serious, the question was discussed at meeting after meeting and vestry after vestry, speeches were made, attacks repudiated, personal defiances exchanged, explanations received, and the greatest excitement prevailed until at last, just as the question was going to be finally decided, the vestry found that somehow or other they had become entangled in a point of form, from which it was impossible to escape with propriety. So the motion was dropped, and everybody looked extremely important and seemed quite satisfied with the meritorious nature of the whole proceeding. This was the state of affairs in our parish a week or two since, when Simmons, the beetle, suddenly died. The lamented deceased had overexerted himself a day or two previously in conveying an aged female, highly intoxicated, to the strong room of the workhouse. The excitement thus occasioned added to a severe cold which this indefatigable officer had caught in his capacity of director of the parish engine, by inadvertently playing over himself instead of a fire, proved too much for a constitution already enfeebled by age, and the intelligence was conveyed to the board one evening that Simmons had died and left his respects. The breath was scarcely out to the body of the deceased functionary, when the field was filled with competitors for the vacant office, each of whom resisted his claims to public support entirely on the number and extent of his family, as if the office of beetle were originally instituted as an encouragement for the propagation of the human species. Bung for beetle, five small children, Hopkins for beetle, seven small children, Timkins for beetle, nine small children, such were the placards and large black letters on a white ground which were plentifully pasted on the walls and posted in the windows of the principal shops. Timkins' success was considered certain. Several mothers of families half-promised their votes, and the nine small children would have run over the course, but for the production of another placard, announcing the appearance of a still more meritorious candidate. Spruggans for beetle, ten small children, two of them twins, and a wife. There was no resisting this. Ten small children would have been almost irresistible in themselves without the twins, but the touching parenthesis about that interesting production of nature and the still more touching allusion to Mrs. Spruggans must ensure a success. Spruggans was the favourite at once, and the appearance of his lady as she went about to solicit votes, which encouraged confident hopes of a still further addition of the House of Spruggans at no remote period, increased the general prepossession in his favour. The other candidates, Bung alone accepted, resigned in despair. The day of election was fixed, and the canvas proceeded with briskness and perseverance on both sides. The members of the vestry could not be supposed to escape the contagious excitement inseparable from the occasion. The majority of the lady inhabitants of the parish declared at once for Spruggans, and the quantum overseer took the same side on the ground that men with large families always had been elected to the office, and that although he must admit that in other respects Spruggans was the least qualified candidate of the two, still it was an odd practice, and he saw no reason why an old practice should be departed from. This was enough for the captain. He immediately sided with Bung, canvassed for him personally in all directions, wrote squibs on Spruggans, and got his butcher to skewer them up on conspicuous joints in his shop front, frightened his neighbour, the old lady, into a palpitation of the heart by his awful denunciation of Spruggans' party, and bounced in and out and up and down and backwards and forwards until all the sober inhabitants of the parish thought it inevitable that he must die of a brain fever long before the election began. The day of the election arrived. It was no longer an individual struggle, but a party contest between the ins and outs. The question was whether the withering influence of the overseers, the domination of the churchwardens, and the blighting despotism of the vestry-clark should be allowed to render the election of beetle of form, annulity, whether they should impose a vestry-elected beetle on the parish to do their bidding and forward their views, or whether their parishioners, fearlessly asserting their undoubted rights, should elect an independent beetle of their own. The nomination was fixed to take place in the vestry, but so great was the throng of anxious spectators that it was found necessary to adjourn to the church, where the ceremony commenced with due solemnity. The appearance of the churchwardens and overseers, and the ex-churchwardens and ex-overseers, with Spruggans in the rear, excited general attention. Spruggans was a little thin man, in rusty black with a long pale face, and a countenance expressive of care and fatigue, which might either be attributed to the extent of his family or the anxiety of his feelings. His opponent appeared in a cast-off coat of the captains, a blue coat with bright buttons, white trousers, and that description of shoes formerly known by the appellation of high-lows. There was a serenity in the open countenance of bung, a kind of moral dignity in his confident air, an I wish you may get it, sort of expression in his eye, which infused animation into his supporters and evidently dispirited his opponents. The ex-churchwarden rose to propose Thomas Spruggans for beetle. He had known him long. He had had his eye upon him closely for years. He had watched him with two-fold vigilance for months. A parishioner here suggested that this might be termed taking a double sight, but the observation was drowned in loud cries of order. He would repeat that he had had his eyes upon him for years, and this he would say, that a more well conducted, a more well-behaved, a more sober, a more quiet man, with a more well-regulated mind he had never met with. A man with a larger family that he had ever known, cheers! The parish required a man who could be depended on here from the Sprugganside answered by ironical cheers from the Bung Party. Such a man he now proposed? No, yes. He would not allude to individuals, the ex-churchwarden continued, in the celebrated taked-of style adopted from great speakers. He would not advert to a gentleman who had once held a high rank in the service of his Majesty. He would not say that that gentleman was no gentleman. He would not assert that the man was no man. He would not say that he was a turbulent parishioner. He would not say that he had grossly misbehaved himself not only on this, but on all former occasions. He would not say that he was one of those discontented and treasonable spirits who carried confusion and disorder wherever they went. He would not say that he harbored in his heart envy and hatred and malice and all uncharitableness. No. He wished to have everything comfortable and pleasant, and therefore he would say nothing about him. Cheers! The Captain replied in a similar parliamentary style. He would not say he was astonished at the speech they had just heard. He would not say he was astonished at the speech they had just heard. He would not say he was disgusted. Cheers! He would not retort the epithets which had been hurled against him, renewed cheering. He would not allude to men once in office but now happily out of it who had mismanaged the workhouse, ground the poppers, diluted the beer, slack baked the bread, boned the meat, heightened the work, and lowered the soup. Tremendous cheers! He would not ask what such men deserved, a voice, nothing a day, and find themselves. He would not say that one burst of general indignation should drive them from the parish they polluted with their presence. Give it him! He would not allude to the unfortunate man who had been proposed. He would not say as the vestry's tool but as beetle. He would not advert to that individual's family. He would not say that nine children, twins, and a wife were very bad examples for popper imitation. Loud cheers! He would not advert in detail to the qualifications of Bung. The man stood before him, and he would not say in his presence what he might be disposed to say of him if he were absent. Here Mr. Bung telegraphed to a friend near him under cover of his hat by contracting his left eye and applying his right thumb to the tip of his nose. It had been objected to Bung that he had only five children. Here, here, from the opposition. Well, he had yet to learn that the legislation had affixed any precise amount of infant time qualification to the office of beetle. But taking it for granted that an extensive family were a great requisite, he entreated them to look to facts and compare data about which there could be no mistake. Bung was thirty-five years of age. Spruggans, of whom he wished to speak with all possible respect, was fifty. Was it not more than possible, was it not very probable, that by the time Bung attained the latter age he might see around him a family even exceeding in number and extent that to which Spruggans at present laid claim, deafening cheers and waving of handkerchiefs, the captain concluded amidst loud applause by calling upon the parishioners to sound the toxin, rush to the pole, free themselves from dictation, or be slaves for ever. On the following day the polling began, and we never have had such a bustle in our parish since we got up our famous anti-slavery petition, which was such an important one, that the House of Commons ordered it to be printed on the motion of the member for the district. The captain engaged two hack-me couches and a cab for Bung's people, the cab for the drunk and voters, and the two coaches for the old ladies, the greater portion of whom, owing to the captain's impetuosity, were driven up to the pole and home again, before they recovered from their flurry sufficiently to know, with any degree of clearness, what they had been doing. The opposite party wholly neglected these precautions, and the consequence was that a great many ladies who were walking leisurely up to the church, for it was a very hot day, to vote for Spruggans were artfully decoyed into the coaches and voted for Bung. The captain's arguments too had produced considerable effect. The attempted influence of the vestry produced a greater. A threat of exclusive dealing was clearly established against the vestry clerk, a case of heartless and profligate atrocity. It appeared that the delinquent had been in the habit of purchasing six penneth of muffins weekly from an old woman who rents a small house in the parish and resides among the original settlers. On her last weekly visit a message was conveyed to her through the medium of the cook, couched in mysterious terms, but indicating with sufficient clearness that the vestry clerk's appetite for muffins in future depended entirely on her vote on the Beatleship. This was sufficient. The stream had been turning previously, and the impulse thus administered directed its final course. The Bung party ordered one shillings worth of muffins weekly for the remainder of the old woman's natural life, the parishioners were loud in their exclamations, and the fate of Spruggins was sealed. It was in vain that the twins were exhibited in dresses of the same pattern and night-caps to match at the church door, the boy in Mrs. Spruggins' right arm, and the girl in her left. Even Mrs. Spruggins herself failed to be an object of sympathy any longer. The majority attained by Bung on the gross poll was four hundred and twenty-eight, and the cause of the parishioners triumphed. The excitement of the late election had subsided, and our parish being once again restored to a state of comparative tranquility, we are enabled to devote our attention to those parishioners who take little share in our party contests or in the turmoil and bustle of public life. And we feel sincere pleasure in acknowledging here that in collecting materials for this task we have been greatly assisted by Mr. Bung himself, who has imposed on us a debt of obligation which we fear we can never repay. The life of this gentleman has been one of a very checkered description. He has undergone transitions, not from grave to gay, for he was never grave, not from lively to severe, for severity forms no part of his disposition. His fluctuations have been between poverty in the extreme and poverty modified, or to use his own emphatic language, between nothing to eat and just half enough. He is not, as he forcibly remarks, one of those fortunate men who, if they were to dive under one side of a barred stark naked, would come up on the other with a new suit of clothes on, and a ticket for soup in the waistcoat pocket. Neither is he one of those whose spirit has been broken beyond redemption by misfortune and want. He is just one of the careless, good-for-nothing happy fellows who float cork-like on the surface for the world to play at hockey with, knocked here and there and everywhere, now to the right, then to the left, again up in the air, and a non to the bottom, but always reappearing and bounding with the stream, buoyantly and merely along. Some few months before he was prevailed upon to stand a contested election for the office of Beedle, necessity attached him to the service of a broker, and on the opportunities he here acquired of ascertaining the condition of most of the poorer inhabitants of the parish, his patron, the captain, first rounded his claims to public support. Chance threw the man in our way a short time since. We were in the first instance attracted by his prepossessing impudence at the election. We were not surprised on further acquaintance to find him a shrewd knowing-fellow, with no inconsiderable power of observation, and after conversing with him a little, was somewhat struck, as we dare say our readers have frequently been in other cases, with the power some men seem to have, not only of sympathizing with, but to all appearance of understanding feelings to which they themselves are entire strangers. We had been expressing to the new functionary our surprise that he should ever have served in the capacity to which we have just adverted, when we gradually led him into one or two professional anecdotes, as we are induced to think on reflection that they will tell better in nearly his own words than with any attempted embellishments of ours, we will at once entitle them Mr. Bung's narrative. It's very true, as you say, sir, Mr. Bung commenced, that a broker's man is not a life to be envied, and in course you know as well as I do, though you don't say it, that people hate and scout him, because they're the ministers of wretchedness like to poor people. But what could I do, sir? The thing was no worse because I did it instead of somebody else, and if putting me in possession of a house would put me in possession of three and six pence a day, and levying a distress on another man's goods would relieve my distress and that of my family, it can't be expected but what I'd take the job and go through with it. I never liked it, God knows, I always looked out for something else, and the moment I got other work to do I left it. If there is anything wrong in being the agent in such matters, not the principal, mind you, I am sure the business to a beginner like I was at all events carries its own punishment along with it. I wished again and again that the people would only blow me up or pitch into me. That I wouldn't have minded, it's all in my way. But it's the being shut up by yourself in one room for five days without so much as an old newspaper to look at, or anything to see out of the window, at the roofs and chimneys, at the back of the house, or anything to listen to but the ticking perhaps of an old Dutch clock, the sobbing of the missus now and then, the low talking of friends in the next room who speak in whispers lest the man should overhear them, or perhaps the occasional opening of the door as a child peeps in to look at you and then runs half frightened away. It's all this that makes you feel sneaking somehow, and ashamed of yourself, and then if it's winter time they just give you fire enough to make you think you'd like more and bring in your grub as if they'd wished it'd choke you. As I dare say they do, for the matter of that most heartily. If they're very civil they make you up a bed in the room at night, and if they don't your master sends one in for you, but there you are without being washed or shaved all the time, shunned by everybody and spoken to by no one, unless someone comes in at dinnertime and asks you whether you want any more, it atone as much to say I hope you don't, or in the evening to inquire whether you wouldn't rather have a candle after you've been sitting in the dark half the night. When I was left in this way I used to sit think, think, thinking till I felt as lonesome as a kitten in a wash-house copper with the lid on, but I believe the old brookers men who are regularly trained to it never think at all. I have heard some on them say indeed that they don't know how. I put in a good many distresses in my time, continued Mr. Bang, and in course I wasn't long in finding that some people are not as much to be pitied as others are, and that people with good incomes who get into difficulties which they keep patching up day after day and week after week get so used to these sort of things in time that at last they come scarcely to feel them at all. I remember the very first place I was put in possession of was a gentleman's house in this parish here that everybody would suppose couldn't help having money if he tried. I went with old Fixham, my old master, about half-after-eight in the morning, rang the area bells, servant and livery opened the door, governor at home, yes he is, says the man, but he's breakfasting just now, never mind, says Fixham, just you tell him there's a gentleman here as wants to speak to him particular. So the servant he opens his eyes and stares about him always, looking for the gentleman as it struck me, for I don't think anybody but a man was as stone-blind would mistake Fixham for one, and as for me I was as serious as a cheap cow-cumber. Howsoever, he turns round and goes to the breakfast parlour, which was a little snug sort of room at the end of the passage, and Fixham, as we always did in that profession, without waiting to be announced, walks in after him, and before the servant could get out, please, sir, here's a man as wants to speak to you, looks in at the door as familiar and pleasant as may be. Who the devil are you, and how dare you walk into a gentleman's house without leave, says the master, as fierce as a bullet fits. My name, says Fixham, winking to the master, to send the servant away, and putting the warrant into his hands, folded up like a note, my name's Smith, says he, and I called from Johnson's about that business of Thompson's. Oh, says the other, quite down on him directly, how is Thompson, says he, pray sit down, Mr. Smith, John, leave the room. Out went the servant, and the gentleman, and Fixham looked at one another till they couldn't look any longer, and then they varied the amusements by looking at me, who had been standing on the mat all this time. Hundred and fifty pounds, I see, said the gentleman at last. Hundred and fifty pounds, said Fixham, besides cost of levy, sheriff's poundage, and all other incidental expenses. Oh, says the gentleman, I shan't be able to settle this before tomorrow afternoon. Very sorry, but I shall be obliged to leave my man here till then, replies Fixham, pretending to look very miserable over it. That's very unfortunate, says the gentleman, for I have got a large party here to-night, and I am roomed if those fellows of mine get an inkling of the matter. Just up here, Mr. Smith, says he, after a short pause. So Fixham walks with him up to the window, and after a good deal of whispering and a little chinking of sovereigns, and looking at me, he comes back and says, Bung, you're a handy fellow, and very honest I know. This gentleman wants an assistant to clean the plate and wait at table to-day, and if you're not particularly engaged, says old Fixham, grinning like mad, and shoving a couple of sovereigns into my hand, he'll be very glad to avail himself of your services. Well, I laughed, and the gentleman laughed, and we all laughed, and I went home and cleaned myself, leaving Fixham there, and when I went back, Fixham went away, and I polished up the plate and waited at table, and gambled the servants, and nobody had the least idea I was in possession, though it fairly nearly came out, after all, for one of the last gentlemen who remained came downstairs into the hall where I was sitting pretty late at night, and putting half a crown into my hand, says, Here, my man, says he, run and get me a couch, will you? I thought it was a dude to get me out of the house, and was just going to say so, sulkily enough, when the gentleman, who was up to everything, came running downstairs as if he was in great anxiety, bung, says he, pretending to be in a consuming passion. Sir, says I, why the devil ain't you looking after that plate? I was just going to send him for a couch for me, says the other gentleman, and I was just going to say, says I, anybody else, my dear fellow, interrupts the master of the house, pushing me down the passage to get out of the way, anybody else, but I have put this man in possession of all the plate and valuables, and I cannot allow him on any consideration were ever to leave the house. Bung, you scoundrel, go and count those forks in the breakfast parlour instantly. You may be sure I went laughing pretty heartily when I found out it was all right. The money was paid next day, with the addition of something else for myself, and that was the best job that I, and I suspect old Fixham, too, ever got in that line. But this is the bright side of the picture, after all, resumed Mr. Bung, laying aside the knowing look and flash air with which he had repeated his previous anecdote, and I'm sorry to say. On the side one sees very, very seldom, in comparison with the dark one. The civility which money will purchase is rarely extended to those who have none, and there is a consolation, even in being able to patch up one difficulty, to make way for another, to which very poor people are strangers. I was once put into a house down George's yard, that little dirty court at the back of the gas-works, and I never forgot the misery of them people dare me. It was a distress for half a year's rent, two-pound ten, I think. There was only two rooms in the house, and as there was no passage the lodgers upstairs always went through the room of the people of the house, as they passed in and out, and every time they did so, which, on the average, was about four times every quarter of an hour, they blowed up quite frightful, for their things had been seized, too, when included in the inventory. There was a little piece of enclosed dust in front of the house, with a cinder-path leading up to the door, and an open rain-water butt on one side, a dirty striped curtain on a very slack string hung in the window, and a little triangle and a bit of broken-looking glass resting all the sill inside. I suppose it was meant for the people's use, but their appearance was so wretched and so miserable that I am certain they never could have plucked up courage to look themselves in the face a second time if they survived the fright of doing so once. There were two or three chairs that might have been worth in their best days, from eight pints to a shilling apiece, a small deal table, an old corner cupboard with nothing on it, and one of those bed-steads which turned up halfway and leave the bottom leg sticking out for you to knock your head against, or hang your hat upon. No bed, no bedding. There was an old sack by way of rug before the fireplace, and four or five children were groveling about among the sand on the floor. The execution was only put in to get them out of the house, for there was nothing to take to pay the expense, and here I stopped for three days, though that was a mere form, too, for in course I knew, and we all knew, they could never pay the money. In one of the chairs, by the side of the place where the fire ought to have been, was an old woman, the ugliest and dirtiest I ever see, who sat rocking herself backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards without one stopping, except for an instant now and then to clasp together the withered hands, which, with these exceptions, she kept constantly rubbing upon her knees, just raising and depressing her fingers convulsively in time to the rocking of the chair. On the other side sat the mother, with an infant in her arms, which cried to the cry itself to sleep, and when it woke cried to the cry itself off again. The old woman's voice I never heard. She seemed completely stupefied, and to the mother's it would have been better if she had been so, too, for misery had changed her to a devil. If you had heard how she cursed the little naked children as was rolling on the floor, and seen how savagely she struck the infant with a cry with hunger, you'd have shuddered as much as I did. There they remained all the time, the children ate a morsel of bread once or twice, and I gave them best part of the dinner as my Mrs. brought me, but the woman ate nothing, they never even laid on the bedstead, nor was the room swept or cleaned all the time. The neighbors were all too poor themselves to take any notice of them, from what I could make out from the abuse of the woman upstairs it seemed the husband had been transported a few weeks before. When the time was out the landlord, an old fixum, too, got rather frightened about the family, and so they made a stir about it and had them taken to the work-house. They sent the sick coach for the old woman, and Simmons took the children away at night. The old woman went to the infirmary, and very soon died. The children are all in the house to this day, and very comfortable they are in comparison. As to the mother, there was no taming her at all. She had been quite a hard-working woman, I believe, but her misery had actually drove her wild. So after she had been sent to the house of correction half a dozen times for throwing ink-stands at the overseers, blaspheming the church wardens, and smashing everybody as come near her, she burst a blood-vessel one morning, and died too, and a happy release it was, both for herself and the old popper's male and female, which she used to tip over in all directions as if there were so many skittles, and she the ball. Now this was bad enough, resumed Mr. Bung, taking half a step towards the door, as if to intimate that he had nearly concluded. This was bad enough, but there was a sort of quiet misery, if you understand what I mean by that, sir, about a lady at one house I was put into as touched me a good deal more. It doesn't matter where it was exactly, indeed I'd rather not say, but it was the same sort of job. I went with Fixham in the usual way. There was a year's rent in a rear, a very small servant-girl opened the door, and three or four fine-looking little children was in the front part that we were shown into, which was very clean but very scantily furnished, much like the children themselves. Bung said Fixham to me, in a low voice, when we were left alone for a minute. I know something about this here, family, and my opinion is it's no go. Do you think they can't settle, says I, quite anxiously, for I like the looks of them children. Fixham shook his head, and was just about to reply when the door opened, and in come a lady as white as ever I see any one in my days, except about the eyes, which were red and crying. She walked in as firm as I could have done, shut the door carefully after her, and set herself down with a face as composed as if it was made of stone. What is the matter, gentlemen, says she, in a surprise and steady voice? Is this an execution? It is, Mom, said Fixham. The lady looked at him, says steady as ever. She didn't seem to have understood him. It is, Mom, says Fixham again. This is my warrant of distress, Mom, says he, handing it over as polite as if it was a newspaper, which had been bespoke after the other gentleman. The lady's lip trembled as she took the printed paper. She cast her eye over it, and old Fixham began to explain the form, but saw she wasn't reading it plain enough, poor thing. Oh, my God, says she, suddenly a bursting out crying, letting the warrant fall and hiding her face in her hands. Oh, my God, what will become of us? The noise she made brought in a young lady of about nineteen or twenty, who, I suppose, had been a listening at the door, and who had got a little boy in her arm. She sat him down in the lady's lap without speaking, and she hugged the poor little fellow to her bosom and cried over him, till even old Fixham put on his blue spectacles to hide the two tears that was a trickling down, one on each side of his dirty face. Now, dear Ma, says the young lady, you know how much you have borne for all our sakes, for Pa's sakes, says she. Don't give way to this. No, no, I won't, says the lady, gathering herself up hastily and drying her eyes. I am very foolish, but I am better now, much better. And then she roused herself up, went with us into every room while we took the inventory, opened all the drawers of her own accord, sorted the children's little clothes to make the work easier, and except doing everything in a strange sort of hurry seemed as calm and composed as if nothing had happened. When we came downstairs again she hesitated a minute or two, and at last says, gentlemen, says she, I am afraid I have done wrong and perhaps it may bring you into trouble. I secreted just now, she says, the only trick that I have left in the world. Here it is. So she lays down on the table a little miniature mounted in gold. It's a miniature, she says, of my poor dear father. I little thought once that I should ever thank God for depriving me of the original, but I do, and have done for years back most fervently. Make it away, sir," she says, it's a face that never turned from me in sickness and distress, and I can hardly bear to turn from it now when God knows I suffer both in no ordinary degree. I couldn't say nothing, but I raced my head from the inventory which I was a-filling up, and looked at Fixham. The old fellow nodded to me significantly, and so I ran my pen through the midi I had just written, and left the miniature on the table. Well, sir, to make short of a long story, I was left in possession, and in possession I remained, and though I was an ignorant man, and the master of the house a clever one, I saw what he never did, but what he would give worlds now if he had him to have seen in time. I saw, sir, that his wife was wasting away, beneath cares of which she never complained and griefs she never told. I saw that she was dying before his eyes. I knew that what exertion from him might have saved her, but he never made it. I don't blame him. I don't think he could rouse himself. She had so long anticipated all his wishes, and acted for him that he was a lost man when left to himself. I used to think when I caught sight of her in the clothes she used to wear, which looked shabby even upon her, and would have been scarcely decent on any one else, that if I was a gentleman it would ring my very heart to see the woman that was a smart and merry girl when I courted her, so altered through her love for me. Bitter cold and damp whether it was, yet though her dress was thin, and her shoes none of the best, during the whole three days from morning to night she was out to doors running about to try and raise the money. The money was raised, and the execution was paid out. The whole family crowded into the room where I was when the money arrived. The father was quite happy, as the inconvenience was removed. I dare say he didn't know how. The children looked merry and cheerful again, the eldest girl was busting about, making preparations for the first comfortable meal they had had since the distress was put in, and the mother looked pleased to see them all. But if I ever saw death in a woman's face I saw it in hers that night. I was right, sir," continued Mr. Bung, hurriedly pressing his coats leave over his face. The family grew more prosperous, and good fortune arrived. But it was too late. Those children are motherless now, and their father would give up all he had since gained. House-home, good money, all that he has, or ever can have, to restore the wife he has lost. THE LADY'S SOCIETIES Our parish is very prolific in ladies' charitable institutions. In winter, when wet feet are common and colds not scarce, we have the ladies' soup distribution society, the ladies' coal distribution society, and the ladies' blanket distribution society. In summer, when stone fruits flourish and stomach aches prevail, we have the ladies' dispensary, and the ladies' sick visitation committee, and all the year round we have the ladies' child's examination society, the ladies' Bible and prayer-book circulation society, and the ladies' child-bed linen monthly loan society. The two latter are decidedly the most important, whether they are productive of more benefit than the rest, it is not for us to say, but we can take it upon ourselves to affirm with the utmost solemnity that they create a greater stir and more bustle than all the others put together. We should be disposed to affirm, on the first blush of the matter, that the Bible and prayer-book society is not so popular as the child-bed linen society. The Bible and prayer-book society has, however, considerably increased in importance within the last year or two, having derived some adventurous aid from the factious opposition of the child's examination society, which factious opposition originated in matter following. When the young curate was popular, and all the unmarried ladies in the parish took a serious turn, the charity children all at once became objects of peculiar and special interest. The three Miss Browns, enthusiastic admirers of the curate, taught and exercised and examined and re-examined the unfortunate children until the boys grew pale and the girls consumptive with study and fatigue. The three Miss Browns stood it out very well because they relieved each other, but the children, having no relief at all, exhibited decided symptoms of weariness and care. The unthinking part of the parishioners laughed at all this, but the more reflective portion of the inhabitants abstained from expressing any opinion on the subject until that of the curate had been clearly ascertained. The opportunity was not long wanting. The curate preached a charity sermon on behalf of the charity school, and in the charity sermon aforesaid, expatiated in glowing terms on the praiseworthy and indefatigable exertions of certain estimable individuals. Sobs were heard to issue from the three Miss Browns' pew. The pew-opener of the division was seen to hurry down the center aisle to the vestry-door, and to return immediately bearing a glass of water in her hand. A low moaning ensued. Two more pew-openers rushed to the spot, and the three Miss Browns, each supported by a pew-opener, were led out of the church and led in again after the lapse of five minutes with white pocket-hackages to their eyes as if they had been attending a funeral in the churchyard adjoining. If any doubt had for a moment existed as to whom the allusion was intended to apply, it was at once removed. The wish to enlighten the charity children became universal, and the three Miss Browns were unanimously besought to divide the school into classes and to assign each class to the superintendents of two young ladies. Little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little patronage is more so. The three Miss Browns appointed all the old maids and carefully excluded the young ones. Maid and aunt's triumphed, mamas were reduced to the lowest depths of despair, and there is no telling in what act of violence the general indignation amongst the three Miss Browns might have vented itself had not a perfectly providential occurrence changed the tide of public feeling. Mrs. Johnson Parker, the mother of seven extremely fine girls, all unmarried, hastily reported to several other mamas of several other unmarried families that five old men, six old women, and children innumerable in the free seats near her pew were in the habit of coming to church every Sunday without either Bible or prayer-book. Was this to be born in a civilized country? Could such things be tolerated in a Christian land? Never. Lady's Bible and prayer-book distribution society was instantly formed. President Mrs. Johnson Parker, treasurers, auditors, and secretary, the Mrs. Johnson Parker, subscriptions were entered into, books were bought, all the free-seat people provided therewith, and when the first lesson was given out on the first Sunday succeeding these events, there was such a dropping of books and rustling of leaves that it was morally impossible to hear one word of the service for five minutes afterwards. The three Miss Browns and their party saw the approaching danger and endeavored to avert it by ridicule and sarcasm. Neither the old men nor the old women could read their books now they had got them, said the three Miss Browns. Never mind, they could learn, replied Mrs. Johnson Parker. The children couldn't read either, suggested the three Miss Browns. No matter, they could be taught, retorted Mrs. Johnson Parker. A balance of parties took place. The Miss Browns publicly examined popular feeling inclined to the child's examination society. The Miss Johnson Parker's publicly distributed a reaction took place in favour of the prayer-book distribution. A feather would have turned the scale, and a feather did turn it. A missionary returned from the West Indies. He was to be presented to the dissenters' missionary society on his marriage with a wealthy widow. Overtures were made to the dissenters by the Johnson Parker's. Their object was the same, and why not have a joint meeting of the two societies. The proposition was accepted. The meeting was duly heralded by public announcement, and the room was crowded to suffocation. The missionary appeared on the platform. He was hailed with enthusiasm. He repeated a dialogue he had heard between two Negroes behind a hedge on the subject of distribution societies. The approbation was tumultuous. He gave an imitation of the two Negroes in broken English. The roof was rent with applause. From that period we date with one trifling exception, a daily increase in the popularity of the distribution society, and an increase of popularity which the feeble and impotent opposition of the examination party had only tended to augment. Now, the great points about the child-bed linen monthly loan society are that it is less dependent on the fluctuations of public opinion than either the distribution or the child's examination. And that, come what may, there is never any lack of objects on which to exercise its benevolence. Our parish is a very populous one, and if anything contributes, we should be disposed to say rather more than its due share to the aggregate amounts of births in the metropolis and its environs. The consequence is that the monthly loan society flourishes and invests its members with a most enviable amount of bustling patronage. The society, whose only notion of dividing time would appear to be its allotment into months, holds monthly tea-drinkings at which the monthly report is received, a secretary elected for the month in suing, and such of the monthly boxes as may not happen to be out on loan for the month carefully examined. We were never present at one of these meetings, from all of which it is scarcely necessary to say, gentlemen are carefully excluded. But Mr. Bung has been called before the board once or twice, and we have his authority for stating that its proceedings are conducted with great order and regularity, not more than four members being allowed to speak at one time at any pretense whatsoever. The regular committee is composed exclusively of married ladies, but a vast number of young unmarried ladies, of from eighteen to twenty-four years of age, respectively, are admitted as honorary members, partly because they are very useful in replenishing the boxes and visiting the confined, partly because it is highly desirable that they should be initiated at an early period into the more serious and matronly duties of afterlife, and partly because prudent mamas have not unfrequently been known to turn this circumstance to wonderfully good account in matrimonial speculations. In addition to the loan of the monthly boxes, which are always painted blue with the name of the society and large white letters on the lid, the society dispends occasional grants of beef tea, and a composition of warm beer, spice, eggs, and sugar, commonly known by the name of Candle, to its patients. And here again the services of the honorary members are called into requisition and most cheerfully conceded. Deputations of twos or threes are sent out to visit the patients, and on these occasions there is such a tasting of Candle and beef tea, such a stirring about of little messes in tiny saucepans on the hob, such a dressing and undressing of infants, such a tying and folding and pinning such a nursing and warming of little legs and feet before the fire, such a delightful confusion of talking and cooking, bustle, importance and officiousness as never can be enjoyed in its full extent but on similar occasions. In rivalry of these two institutions, and as a last expiring effort to acquire parochial popularity, the child's examination people determined the other day on having a grand public examination of the pupils, and the large schoolroom of the national seminary was, by and with the consent of the parish authorities, devoted to the purpose. Invitation circulars were forwarded to all the principal parishioners, including of course the heads of the two societies, for whose a special behoof and edification the display was intended, and a large audience was confidently anticipated on the occasion. The floor was carefully scrubbed the day before, under the immediate superintendents of the three Miss Browns, forms were placed across the room for the accommodation of the visitors. Specimens and writing were carefully selected, and as carefully patched and touched up, until they astonished the children who had written them, rather more than the company who read them. Sums and compound addition were rehearsed and re-rehearsed until all the children had the totals by heart, and the preparations altogether were on the most laborious and most comprehensive scale. The morning arrived, the children were yellow-soaked and flanneled and touted to their faces shone again. Every pupil's hair was carefully combed into his or her eyes as the case might be. The girls were adored with snow-white tippets and caps bound round the head by a single purple ribbon, the necks of the elder boys were fixed into collars of startling dimensions. The doors were thrown open, and the Mrs. Brown and company were discovered in plain white muslin dresses and caps of the same, the child's examination uniform. The room filled, the greetings of the company were loud and cordial. The distributionist trembled for their popularity was at stake. The eldest boy fell forward and delivered a propitiatory address from behind his collar. It was from the pen of Mr. Henry Brown. The applause was universal and the Johnson Parkers were aghast. The examination proceeded with success and terminated in triumph. The child's examination society gained a momentary victory and the Johnson Parkers retreated in despair. A secret council of the distributionist was held that night, with Mrs. Johnson Parker in the chair, to consider of the best means of recovering the ground they had lost in the favour of the parish. What could be done? Another meeting. Alas, who was to attend it? The missionary would not do twice and the slaves were emancipated. A bold step must be taken. The parish must be astonished in some way or other, but no one was able to suggest what the step should be. At length a very old lady was heard to mumble in indistinct tones Exeter Hall, a sudden light broke in upon the meeting. It was unanimously resolved that a deputation of old ladies should wait upon a celebrated orator imploring his assistance and the favour of a speech, and the deputation should also wait on two or three other imbecile old women not resident in the parish and entreat their attendants. The application was successful, the meeting was held, the orator, an Irishman came. He talked of green aisles, other shores, vast Atlantic, bosom of the deep Christian charity, blood and extermination, mercy and hearts, arms and hands, altars and homes, household gods. He wiped his eyes, he blew his nose, and he quoted Latin. The effect was tremendous. The Latin was a decided hit. Nobody knew exactly what it was about, but everybody knew it must be effective because even the orator was overcome. The popularity of the distribution society among the ladies of our parish is unprecedented, and the child's examination is going fast to decay. CHAPTER VII. We are very fond of speculating as we walk through a street on the character and pursuits of the people who inhabit it, and nothing so materially assists us in these speculations as the appearance of the house-doors. The various expressions of the human countenance offer a beautiful and interesting study, but there is something in the physiognomy of street-door knockers almost as characteristic and nearly as infallible. Whenever we visit a man for the first time, we contemplate the features of his knocker with the greatest curiosity, for we well know that between the man and his knocker there will inevitably be a greater or less degree of resemblance and sympathy. For instance, there is one description of knocker that used to be common enough, but which is fast passing away, a large round one with the jolly face of a convivial lion smiling blandly at you as you twist the sides of your hair into a curl or pull up your shirt collar while you are waiting for the door to be opened. We never saw that knocker on the door of a cheerly shman, so far as our experience is concerned. It invariably bespoke hospitality and another bottle. No man ever saw this knocker on the door of a small attorney or billbroker. They always patronized the other lion, a heavy ferocious-looking fellow with a countenance expressive of savage stupidity, a sort of grand master among the knockers, and a great favourite with the selfish and brutal. Then there is a little pert Egyptian knocker with a long thin face, a pinched up nose, and a very sharp chin. He is most invoked with your government office people, in light drabs and stretched cravats, little spare priggish men who are perfectly satisfied with their own opinions and consider themselves of paramount importance. We were greatly troubled a few years ago by the innovation of a new kind of knocker without any face at all, composed of a wreath depending from a hand or small truncheon. A little trouble and attention, however, enabled us to overcome this difficulty and to reconcile the new system to our favourite theory. You will invariably find this knocker on the doors of cold and formal people who always ask you why you don't come and never say do. Everybody knows the brass knocker is common to suburban villas and extensive boarding schools, and having noticed this genus we have recapitulated all the most prominent and strongly defined species. Some phrenologists affirm that the agitation of a man's brain by different passions produces corresponding developments in the form of his skull. Do not let us be understood as pushing our theory to the full length of asserting that any alteration in a man's disposition would produce a visible effect on the feature of his knocker. Our position merely is that in such a case the magnetism which must exist between a man and his knocker would induce the man to remove and seek some knocker more congenial to his altered feelings. If you ever find a man changing his habitation without any reasonable pretext, depend upon it that although he may not be aware of the fact himself, it is because he and his knocker are at variance. This is a new theory, but we venture to launch it nevertheless as being quite as ingenious and infallible as many thousands of the learned speculations which are daily broached for public good and private fortune-making. Entertaining these feelings on the subject of knockers, it will be readily imagined with what consternation we viewed the entire removal of the knocker from the door of the next house to the one we lived in some time ago and the substitution of a bell. This was a calamity we had never anticipated. The bare idea of anybody being able to exist without a knocker appeared so wild and visionary that it had never for one instant entered our imagination. We sauntered moodily from the spot and bent our steps towards Eaton Square, then just building. What was our astonishment and ignition to find that bells were fast becoming the rule and knockers the exception? Our theory trembled beneath the shock. We hastened home and fancying we foresaw in the swift progress of events its entire abolition resolved from that day forward to vent our speculations on our next-door neighbors in person. The house adjoining ours on the left hand was uninhabited, and we had therefore plenty of leisure to observe our next-door neighbors on the other side. The house without the knocker was in the occupation of a city clerk, and there was a neatly written bill in the parlor window intimating that lodgings for a single gentleman were to be let within. It was a neat dull little house on the shady side of the way with new narrow floor cloth in the passage and new narrow stair carpets up to the first floor. The paper was new, and the paint was new, and the furniture was new, and all three, paper, paint, and furniture bespoke the limited means of the tenant. There was a little red and black carpet in the drawing-room, with a border of flooring all the way round, a few stained chairs and a Pembroke table. A pink shell was displayed on each of the little sideboards, each with the addition of a tea tray and caddy, a few more shells on the mantelpiece, and three peacock feathers tastefully arranged above them, completed the decorative furniture of the apartment. This was the room destined for the reception of the single gentleman during the day, and a little back room on the same floor was assigned as his sleeping apartment by night. The bill had not been long in the window when a stout good-humored looking neighbor of about five and thirty appeared as a candidate for the tenancy. Terms were soon arranged, for the bill was taken down immediately after his first visit. In a day or two the single gentleman came in, and shortly afterward his real character came out. First of all, he displayed a most extraordinary partiality for city-gap drill three or four o'clock in the morning, drinking whiskey and water and smoking cigars. Then he invited friends home, who used to come at ten o'clock, to begin to get happy about the small hours when they evinced their perfect contentment by singing songs with half a dozen verses of two lines each, and a chorus of ten, which chorus used to be shouted forth by the whole strength of the company in the most enthusiastic and vociferous manner to the great annoyance of the neighbors, and the special discomfort of another single gentleman overhead. Now this was bad enough, occurring as it did three times a week on the average, but this was not all, for when the company did go away, instead of walking quietly down the street as anybody else's company would have done, they amused themselves by making alarming and frightful noises, and counterfeiting the streaks of females in distress, and one night a red-faced gentleman in a white hat knocked in the most urgent matter at the door of the powdered-headed old gentleman at number three, and when the powdered-headed old gentleman, who thought one of his married daughters must have been taken ill prematurely, had groped downstairs, and after a great deal of unbolting and key-turning, opened the street-door, the red-faced man in the white hat said he hoped he'd excuse his giving him so much trouble, but he'd feel obliged if he'd favour him with a glass of cold spring water, and the loan of a shilling for a cab to take him home, on which the old gentleman slammed the door and went upstairs and threw the contents of his water jug out of window, very straight, only it went over the wrong man, and the whole street was involved in confusion. A joke's a joke, and even practical jests are very capital in their way, if you can only get to the other party to see the fun of them, but the population of our street was so dull of apprehension as to be quite lost to a sense of the drullery of this proceeding, and the consequence was that our next-door neighbour was obliged to tell the single gentleman that unless he gave up entertaining his friends at home he really must be compelled to part with him. The single gentleman received the remonstrance with great good humour, and promised from that time forward to spend his evenings at a coffee-house, a determination which afforded general and unmixed satisfaction. The next night passed off very well, everybody being delighted with the change, but on the next the noises were renewed with greater spirit than ever. The single gentleman's friends being unable to see him in his own house every alternate night had come to the determination of seeing him home every night, and what with the discordant greetings of the friends at parting, and the noise created by the single gentleman in his passage upstairs, and his subsequent struggles to get his boots off the evil was not to be born. So our next-door neighbour gave the single gentleman who was a very good lodger in other respects notice to quit, and the single gentleman went away and entertained his friends in other lodgings. The next applicant, for the vacant first floor, was of a very different character from the troublesome single gentleman who had just quitted. He was a tall, thin young gentleman with a profusion of brown hair, reddish whiskers, and very slightly developed moustaches. He wore a braided sirtuit, with frogs beneath, light grey trousers, and wash leather gloves, and altogether rather a military appearance, so unlike the roistering single gentleman, such insinuating manners and such a delightful address, so seriously disposed too. When he first came to look at the lodgings, he inquired most particularly whether he was sure to be able to get a seat in the parish church, and when he had agreed to take them, he requested to have a list of the different local charities as he intended to subscribe his might to the most deserving among them. Our next-door neighbour was now perfectly happy. He had got a lodger at last of just his own way of thinking, a serious well-disposed man who abhorred deity and loved retirement. He took down the bill with a light heart and pictured in imagination a long series of quiet Sundays on which he and his lodger would exchange mutual civilities and Sunday papers. The serious man arrived, and his luggage was to arrive from the country next morning. He borrowed a clean shirt and a prayer-book from our next-door neighbour, and retired to rest at an early hour, requesting that he might be called punctually at ten o'clock next morning, not before, as he was much fatigued. He was called and did not answer. He was called again, but there was no reply. Our next-door neighbour became alarmed and burst the door open. The serious man had left the house mysteriously, carrying with him the shirt, the prayer-book, a teaspoon, and the bed-clothes. After this occurrence, coupled with the irregularities of his former lodger, gave our next-door neighbour an aversion to single gentlemen we know not. We only know that the next bill which made its appearance in the parlor window intimated generally that there were furnished apartments to let on the first floor. The bill was soon removed. The new lodgers at first attracted our curiosity, and afterwards excited our interest. They were a young lad of eighteen or nineteen, and his mother, a lady of about fifty, or it might be less. The mother wore a widow's weeds, and the boy was also clothed in deep mourning. They were poor, very poor, for their only means of support arose from the pittance the boy earned, by copying writings and translating for booksellers. They had removed from some country place and settled in London, partly because it afforded better chances of employment for the boy, and partly perhaps with the natural desire to leave a place where they had been in better circumstances and where their poverty was known. They were proud under their reverses, and above revealing their wants and privations to strangers. How bitter those privations were, and how hard the boy worked to remove them! No one ever knew but themselves. Night after night, two, three, four hours after midnight, could we hear the occasional raking up of the scanty fire, or the hollow and half-stifled cough which indicated his being still at work, and day after day could we see more plainly that nature had set that unearthly light in his plaintive face, which is the beacon of her worst disease. Actuated, we hope, by a higher feeling than mere curiosity, we can strive to establish first an acquaintance and then a close intimacy with the poor strangers. Our worst fears were realized. The boy was sinking fast. Through a part of the winter and the whole of the following spring and summer his labors were unceasingly prolonged, and the mother attempted to procure needle-work, embroidery, anything for bread. A few shillings now and then were all she could earn. The boy worked steadily on, dying by minutes, but never once giving utterance to complaint or murmur. One beautiful autumn evening we went to pay our customary visit to the invalid. His little remaining strength had been decreasing rapidly for two or three days preceding, and he was lying on the sofa at the open window gazing at the setting sun. His mother had been reading the Bible to him, for she closed the book as we entered and advanced to meet us. "'I was telling William,' she said, that we must manage to take him into the country somewhere so that he may get well. He is not ill, you know, but he is not very strong, and has exerted himself too much lately. Poor thing! The tears that streamed through her fingers as she turned aside as if to adjust her close widow's cap too plainly showed how fruitless was the attempt to deceive herself. We sat down by the head of the sofa but said nothing, for we saw the breath of life was passing gently but rapidly from the young form before us. At every respiration his heart beat more slowly. The boy placed one hand in ours, grasped his mother's arm with the other, drew her hastily towards him and fervently kissed her cheek. There was a pause. He sunk back upon his pillow and looked long and earnestly in his mother's face. "'William, William,' murmured the mother after a long interval, "'don't look at me so. Speak to me, dear.' The boy smiled languidly, but an instant afterwards his features resolved into the same cold solemn gaze. "'William, dear, William, rouse yourself. Don't look at me so. Love. Pray, don't. Oh, my God! What shall I do?' cried the widow, clasping her hands in agony. My dear boy, he is dying!' The boy raised himself by a violent effort and folded his hands together. "'Dear, dear mother, bury me in the open field. Anywhere but in these dreadful streets. I should like to be where you can see my grave, but not in these close, crowded streets. They have killed me. Kiss me again, mother. Put your arm round my neck.' He fell back, and a strange expression stole upon his features, not of pain or suffering, but an indescribable fixing of every line and muscle. The boy was dead.