Household words, No. 25, September 14, 1850
Author: Unknown
Date: 2026-03-11T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: English literature -- Periodicals

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Title: Household words, No. 25, September 14, 1850

A weekly journal

Editor: Charles Dickens

Release date: March 11, 2026 [eBook #78195]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78195

Credits: Richard Tonsing, Steven desJardins, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 25, SEPTEMBER 14, 1850 ***

Transcriber’s Note:

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“Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS.”—Shakespeare.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

No. 25.]      SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1850.      [Price 2d.

THREE “DETECTIVE” ANECDOTES.

I.—THE PAIR OF GLOVES.

“It’s a singler story, Sir,” said Inspector Wield, of the Detective Police, who, in company with Sergeants Dornton and Mith, paid us another twilight visit, one July evening; “and I’ve been thinking you might like to know it.

“It’s concerning the murder of the young woman, Eliza Grimwood, some years ago, over in the Waterloo Road. She was commonly called The Countess, because of her handsome appearance and her proud way of carrying of herself; and when I saw the poor Countess (I had known her well to speak to), lying dead, with her throat cut, on the floor of her bedroom, you’ll believe me that a variety of reflections calculated to make a man rather low in his spirits, came into my head.

“That’s neither here nor there. I went to the house the morning after the murder, and examined the body, and made a general observation of the bedroom where it was. Turning down the pillow of the bed with my hand, I found, underneath it, a pair of gloves. A pair of gentleman’s dress gloves, very dirty; and inside the lining, the letters TR, and a cross.

“Well, Sir, I took them gloves away, and I showed ’em to the magistrate, over at Union Hall, before whom the case was. He says, ‘Wield,’ he says, ‘there’s no doubt this is a discovery that may lead to something very important; and what you have got to do, Wield, is, to find out the owner of these gloves.’

“I was of the same opinion, of course, and I went at it immediately. I looked at the gloves pretty narrowly, and it was my opinion that they had been cleaned. There was a smell of sulphur and rosin about ’em, you know, which cleaned gloves usually have, more or less. I took ’em over to a friend of mine at Kennington, who was in that line, and I put it to him. ‘What do you say now? Have these gloves been cleaned?’ ‘These gloves have been cleaned,’ says he. ‘Have you any idea who cleaned them?’ says I. ‘Not at all,’ says he; ‘I’ve a very distinct idea who didn’t clean ’em, and that’s myself. But I’ll tell you what, Wield, there ain’t above eight or nine reg’lar glove cleaners in London,’—there were not, at that time, it seems—‘and I think I can give you their addresses, and you may find out, by that means, who did clean ’em.’ Accordingly, he gave me the directions, and I went here, and I went there, and I looked up this man, and I looked up that man; but, though they all agreed that the gloves had been cleaned, I couldn’t find the man, woman, or child, that had cleaned that aforesaid pair of gloves.

“What with this person not being at home, and that person being expected home in the afternoon, and so forth, the inquiry took me three days. On the evening of the third day, coming over Waterloo Bridge from the Surrey side of the river, quite beat, and very much vexed and disappointed, I thought I’d have a shilling’s worth of entertainment at the Lyceum Theatre to freshen myself up. So I went into the Pit, at half-price, and I sat myself down next to a very quiet, modest sort of young man. Seeing I was a stranger (which I thought it just as well to appear to be) he told me the names of the actors on the stage, and we got into conversation. When the play was over, we came out together, and I said, ‘We’ve been very companionable and agreeable, and perhaps you wouldn’t object to a drain?’ ‘Well, you’re very good,’ says he; ‘I shouldn’t object to a drain.’ Accordingly, we went to a public house, near the Theatre, sat ourselves down in a quiet room upstairs on the first floor, and called for a pint of half-and-half, a piece, and a pipe.

“Well, Sir, we put our pipes aboard, and we drank our half-and-half, and sat a talking, very sociably, when the young man says, ‘You must excuse me stopping very long,’ he says, ‘because I’m forced to go home in good time. I must be at work all night.’ ‘At work all night?’ says I. ‘You ain’t a Baker?’ ‘No,’ he says, laughing, ‘I ain’t a baker.’ ‘I thought not,’ says I, ‘you haven’t the looks of a baker.’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘I’m a glove-cleaner.’

“I never was more astonished in my life, than when I heard them words come out of his lips. ‘You’re a glove-cleaner, are you?’ says I. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I am.’ ‘Then, perhaps,’ says I, taking the gloves out of my pocket, ‘you can tell me who cleaned this pair of gloves? It’s a rum story,’ I says. ‘I was dining over at Lambeth, the other day, at a free-and-easy—quite promiscuous—with a public company—when some gentleman, he left these gloves behind him! Another gentleman and me, you see, we laid a wager of a sovereign, that I wouldn’t find out who they belonged to. I’ve spent as much as seven shillings already, in trying to discover; but, if you could help me, I’d stand another seven and welcome. You see there’s TR and a cross, inside.’ ‘I see,’ he says. ‘Bless you, I know these gloves very well! I’ve seen dozens of pairs belonging to the same party.’ ‘No?’ says I. ‘Yes,’ says he. ‘Then you know who cleaned ’em?’ says I. ‘Rather so,’ says he. ‘My father cleaned ’em.’

“‘Where does your father live?’ says I. ‘Just round the corner,’ says the young man, ‘near Exeter Street, here. He’ll tell you who they belong to, directly.’ ‘Would you come round with me now?’ says I. ‘Certainly,’ says he, ‘but you needn’t tell my father that you found me at the play, you know, because he mightn’t like it.’ ‘All right!’ We went round to the place, and there we found an old man in a white apron, with two or three daughters, all rubbing and cleaning away at lots of gloves, in a front parlour. ‘Oh, Father!’ says the young man, ‘here’s a person been and made a bet about the ownership of a pair of gloves, and I’ve told him you can settle it.’ ‘Good evening, Sir,’ says I to the old gentleman. ‘Here’s the gloves your son speaks of. Letters TR, you see, and a cross.’ ‘Oh yes,’ he says, ‘I know these gloves very well; I’ve cleaned dozens of pairs of ’em. They belong to Mr. Trinkle, the great upholsterer in Cheapside.’ ‘Did you get ’em from Mr. Trinkle, direct,’ says I, ‘if you’ll excuse my asking the question?’ ‘No,’ says he; ‘Mr. Trinkle always sends ’em to Mr. Phibbs’s, the haberdasher’s, opposite his shop, and the haberdasher sends ’em to me.’ ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t object to a drain?’ says I. ‘Not in the least!’ says he. So I took the old gentleman out, and had a little more talk with him and his son, over a glass, and we parted excellent friends.

“This was late on a Saturday night. First thing on the Monday morning, I went to the haberdasher’s shop, opposite Mr. Trinkle’s, the great upholsterer’s in Cheapside. ‘Mr. Phibbs in the way?’ ‘My name is Phibbs.’ ‘Oh! I believe you sent this pair of gloves to be cleaned?’ Yes, I did, for young Mr. Trinkle over the way. There he is, in the shop!’ ‘Oh! that’s him in the shop, is it? Him in the green coat?’ ‘The same individual.’ ‘Well, Mr. Phibbs, this is an unpleasant affair; but the fact is, I am Inspector Wield of the Detective Police, and I found these gloves under the pillow of the young woman that was murdered the other day, over in the Waterloo Road?’ ‘Good Heaven!’ says he. ‘He’s a most respectable young man, and if his father was to hear of it, it would be the ruin of him!’ ‘I’m very sorry for it,’ says I, ‘but I must take him into custody.’ ‘Good Heaven!’ says Mr. Phibbs, again; ‘can nothing be done?’ ‘Nothing,’ says I. ‘Will you allow me to call him over here,’ says he, ‘that his father may not see it done?’ ‘I don’t object to that,’ says I; ‘but unfortunately, Mr. Phibbs, I can’t allow of any communication between you. If any was attempted, I should have to interfere directly. Perhaps you’ll beckon him over here?’ Mr. Phibbs went to the door and beckoned, and the young fellow came across the street directly; a smart, brisk young fellow.

“‘Good morning, Sir,’ says I. ‘Good morning, Sir,’ says he. ‘Would you allow me to inquire, Sir,’ says I, ‘if you ever had any acquaintance with a party of the name of Grimwood?’ ‘Grimwood! Grimwood!’ says he, ‘No!’ ‘You know the Waterloo Road?’ ‘Oh! of course I know the Waterloo Road!’ ‘Happen to have heard of a young woman being murdered there?’ ‘Yes, I read it in the paper, and very sorry I was to read it.’ ‘Here’s a pair of gloves belonging to you, that I found under her pillow the morning afterwards!’

“He was in a dreadful state, Sir; a dreadful state! ‘Mr. Wield,’ he says, ‘upon my solemn oath I never was there. I never so much as saw her, to my knowledge, in my life!’ ‘I am very sorry,’ says I. ‘To tell you the truth; I don’t think you are the murderer, but I must take you to Union Hall in a cab. However, I think it’s a case of that sort, that, at present, at all events, the magistrate will hear it in private.’”

A private examination took place, and then it came out that this young man was acquainted with a cousin of the unfortunate Eliza Grimwoods, and that, calling to see this cousin a day or two before the murder, he left these gloves upon the table. Who should come in, shortly afterwards, but Eliza Grimwood! ‘Whose gloves are these?’ she says, taking ’em up. ‘Those are Mr. Trinkle’s gloves,’ says her cousin. ‘Oh!’ says she, ‘they are very dirty and of no use to him, I am sure. I shall take ’em away for my girl to clean the stoves with.’ And she put ’em in her pocket. The girl had used ’em to clean the stoves, and, I have no doubt, had left ’em lying on the bedroom mantel-piece, or on the drawers, or somewhere; and her mistress, looking round to see that the room was tidy, had caught ’em up and put ’em under the pillow where I found ’em.

“That’s the story, Sir.”

II. THE ARTFUL TOUCH.

“One of the most beautiful things that ever was done, perhaps,” said Inspector Wield, emphasising the adjective, as preparing us to expect dexterity or ingenuity rather than strong interest, “was a move of Serjeant Witchem’s. It was a lovely idea!

“Witchem and me were down at Epsom one Derby Day, waiting at the station for the Swell Mob. As I mentioned, when we were talking about these things before, we are ready at the station when there’s races, or an Agricultural Show, or a Chancellor sworn in for an university, or Jenny Lind, or any thing of that sort; and as the Swell Mob come down, we send ’em back again by the next train. But some of the Swell Mob, on the occasion of this Derby that I refer to, so far kiddied us as to hire a horse and shay; start away from London by Whitechapel, and miles round; come into Epsom from the opposite direction; and go to work, right and left, on the course, while we were waiting for ’em at the Rail. That, however, ain’t the point of what I’m going to tell you.

“While Witchem and me were waiting at the station, there comes up one Mr. Tatt; a gentleman formerly in the public line, quite an amateur Detective in his way, and very much respected. ‘Halloa, Charley Wield,’ he says. ‘What are you doing here? On the look out for some of your old friends?’ ‘Yes, the old move, Mr. Tatt.’ ‘Come along,’ he says, ‘you and Witchem, and have a glass of sherry.’ ‘We can’t stir from the place,’ says I, ‘till the next train comes in; but after that, we will with pleasure.’ Mr. Tatt waits, and the train comes in, and then Witchem and me go off with him to the Hotel. Mr. Tatt he’s got up quite regardless of expense, for the occasion; and in his shirt-front there’s a beautiful diamond prop, cost him fifteen or twenty pound—a very handsome pin indeed. We drink our sherry at the bar, and have had our three or four glasses, when Witchem cries, suddenly, ‘Look out, Mr. Wield! stand fast!’ and a dash is made into the place by the swell mob—four of ’em—that have come down as I tell you, and in a moment Mr. Tatt’s prop is gone! Witchem, he cuts ’em off at the door, I lay about me as hard as I can, Mr. Tatt shows fight like a good ‘un, and there we are, all down together, heads and heels, knocking about on the floor of the bar—perhaps you never see such a scene of confusion! However, we stick to our men (Mr. Tatt being as good as any officer), and we take ’em all, and carry ’em off to the station. The station’s full of people, who have been took on the course; and it’s a precious piece of work to get ’em secured. However, we do it at last, and we search ’em; but nothing’s found upon ’em, and they’re locked up; and a pretty state of heat we are in by that time, I assure you!

“I was very blank over it, myself, to think that the prop had been passed away; and I said to Witchem, when we had set ’em to rights, and were cooling ourselves along with Mr. Tatt, ‘we don’t take much by this move, anyway, for nothing’s found upon ’em, and it’s only the braggadocia[1] after all.’ ‘What do you mean, Mr. Wield?’ says Witchem. ‘Here’s the diamond pin!’ and in the palm of his hand there it was, safe and sound! ‘Why, in the name of wonder,’ says me and Mr. Tatt, in astonishment, ‘how did you come by that?’ ‘I’ll tell you how I come by it,’ says he. ‘I saw which of ’em took it; and when we were all down on the floor together, knocking about, I just gave him a little touch on the back of his hand, as I knew his pal would; and he thought it WAS his pal; and gave it me!’ It was beautiful, beau-ti-ful!

1. Three months’ imprisonment as reputed thieves.

“Even that was hardly the best of the case, for that chap was tried at the Quarter Sessions at Guildford. You know what Quarter Sessions are, Sir. Well, if you’ll believe me, while them slow justices were looking over the Acts of Parliament, to see what they could do to him, I’m blowed if he didn’t cut out of the dock before their faces! He cut out of the dock, Sir, then and there; swam across a river; and got up into a tree to dry himself. In the tree he was took—an old woman having seen him climb up—and Witchem’s artful touch transported him!”

III.—THE SOFA.

“What young men will do, sometimes, to ruin themselves and break their friends’ hearts,” said Serjeant Dornton, “it’s surprising! I had a case at Saint Blank’s Hospital which was of this sort. A bad case, indeed, with a bad end!

“The Secretary, and the House-Surgeon, and the Treasurer, of Saint Blank’s Hospital, came to Scotland Yard to give information of numerous robberies having been committed on the students. The students could leave nothing in the pockets of their great-coats, while the great-coats were hanging at the Hospital, but it was almost certain to be stolen. Property of various descriptions was constantly being lost; and the gentlemen were naturally uneasy about it, and anxious, for the credit of the Institution, that the thief or thieves should be discovered. The case was entrusted to me, and I went to the Hospital.

“‘Now, gentlemen,’ said I, after we had talked it over, ‘I understand this property is usually lost from one room.’

“Yes, they said. It was.

“‘I should wish, if you please,’ said I, ‘to see that room.’

“It was a good-sized bare room downstairs, with a few tables and forms in it, and a row of pegs, all round, for hats and coats.

“‘Next, gentlemen,’ said I, ‘do you suspect anybody?’

“Yes, they said. They did suspect somebody. They were sorry to say, they suspected one of the porters.

“‘I should like,’ said I, ‘to have that man pointed out to me, and to have a little time to look after him.’

“He was pointed out, and I looked after him, and then I went back to the Hospital, and said, ‘Now, gentlemen, it’s not the porter. He’s, unfortunately for himself, a little too fond of drink, but he’s nothing worse. My suspicion is, that these robberies are committed by one of the students; and if you’ll put me a sofa into that room where the pegs are—as there’s no closet—I think I shall be able to detect the thief. I wish the sofa, if you please, to be covered with chintz, or, something of that sort, so that I may lie on my chest, underneath it, without being seen.’

“The sofa was provided, and next day at eleven o’clock, before any of the students came, I went there, with those gentlemen, to get underneath it. It turned out to be one of those old-fashioned sofas with a great cross beam at the bottom, that would have broken my back in no time if I could ever have got below it. We had quite a job to break all this away in the time; however, I fell to work, and they fell to work, and we broke it out, and made a clear place for me. I got under the sofa, lay down on my chest, took out my knife, and made a convenient hole in the chintz to look through. It was then settled between me and the gentlemen that when the students were all up in the wards, one of the gentlemen should come in, and hang up a great-coat on one of the pegs. And that that great-coat should have, in one of the pockets, a pocket-book containing marked money.

“After I had been there some time, the students began to drop into the room, by ones, and twos, and threes, and to talk about all sorts of things, little thinking there was anybody under the sofa—and then to go upstairs. At last there came in one who remained until he was alone in the room by himself. A tallish, good-looking young man of one or two and twenty, with a light whisker. He went to a particular hat-peg, took off a good hat that was hanging there, tried it on, hung his own hat in its place, and hung that hat on another peg, nearly opposite to me. I then felt quite certain that he was the thief, and would come back by-and-bye.

“When they were all upstairs, the gentleman came in with the great-coat. I showed him where to hang it, so that I might have a good view of it; and he went away; and I lay under the sofa on my chest, for a couple of hours or so, waiting.

“At last, the same young man came down. He walked across the room, whistling—stopped and listened—took another walk and whistled—stopped again, and listened—then began to go regularly round the pegs, feeling in the pockets of all the coats. When he came to the great-coat, and felt the pocket-book, he was so eager and so hurried that he broke the strap in tearing it open. As he began to put the money in his pocket, I crawled out from under the sofa, and his eyes met mine.

“My face, as you may perceive, is brown now, but it was pale at that time, my health not being good; and looked as long as a horse’s. Besides which, there was a great draught of air from the door, underneath the sofa, and I had tied a handkerchief round my head; so what I looked like, altogether, I don’t know. He turned blue—literally blue—when he saw me crawling out, and I couldn’t feel surprised at it.

“‘I am an officer of the Detective Police,’ said I, ‘and have been lying here, since you first came in this morning. I regret, for the sake of yourself and your friends, that you should have done what you have; but this case is complete. You have the pocket-book in your hand and the money upon you; and I must take you into custody!’

“It was impossible to make out any case in his behalf, and on his trial he pleaded guilty. How or when he got the means I don’t know; but while he was awaiting his sentence, he poisoned himself in Newgate.”

“We inquired of this officer, on the conclusion of the foregoing anecdote, whether the time appeared long, or short, when he lay in that constrained position under the sofa?

“‘Why, you see, Sir,’ he replied, ‘if he hadn’t come in, the first time, and I had not been quite sure he was the thief, and would return, the time would have seemed long. But, as it was, I being dead-certain of my man, the time seemed pretty short.’”

“EVIL IS WROUGHT BY WANT OF THOUGHT.”[2]

2. Thomas Hood.

“It must come some day; and come when it will, it will be hard to do, so we had best go at once, Sally. I shall have more trouble with Miss Isabel than you will with Miss Laura; for I am twice the favourite you are.”

So said Fanny to her cousin, who had just turned to descend the staircase of Aldington Hall, where they had both lived since they were almost children, in attendance on the two daughters of the old baronet, who were near their own ages, and had always treated them with great kindness.

“I am not sure of that,” replied Sally, “for Miss Laura is so seldom put out, that when once she is vexed, she will be hard to comfort; and I am sure, Fanny, she loves me every bit as well as Miss Isabel does you, though it is her way to be so quiet. I dare say she will cry when I say I must go; but then John would be like to cry too, if I put him off longer.”

This consideration restored Sally’s courage, and she proceeded with Fanny to the gallery into which the rooms of their young mistresses opened; but here Fanny’s heart failed her; and, stopping short, she said,

“Suppose we tell them to wait awhile longer, as the young ladies are going to travel. We might as well see the world first, and marry in a year or two. But still” added she, after a pause, “I could not find it in my heart to say so to Thomas; and I promised him to speak to-day.”

Each cousin then knocked at the door of her mistress. Laura was not in her room, and Sally went to seek her below stairs; but Isabel called to Fanny to go in.

Fanny obeyed, and walking forward a few steps, faltered out, with many blushes, that as young Thomas had kept company with her for nearly a twelvemonth, and had taken and furnished a little cottage, and begged hard to take her home to it. She was sorry to say, that if Miss Isabel would give her leave, she wished to give warning and to go from her service in a month.

Fanny’s most sanguine wishes or fears, must have been surpassed by the burst of surprise and grief that followed her modest statement. Isabel reproached her; refused to take her warning; declared she would never see her again if she left the Hall, and that rather than be served by any but her dear Fanny, she would wait upon herself all her life. Fanny expostulated, and told her mistress that, foreseeing her unwillingness to lose her, she had already put Thomas off several months; and that at last, to gain further delay, she had run the risk of appearing selfish, by refusing to marry him till he had furnished a whole cottage for her. This, she said he had—by working late and early—accomplished in a surprisingly short time, and had the day before, claimed the reward of his industry. “And now, Miss,” added she, “he gets quite pale, and begins to believe I do not love him, and yet I do, better than all the world, and could not find it in my heart to vex him, and make him look sad again. Yesterday he seemed so happy, when I promised to be his wife in a month.” Here Fanny burst into tears. Her sobs softened Isabel, who consented to let her go; and after talking over her plans, became as enthusiastic in promoting, as she had at first been, in opposing them. Thomas was to take Fanny over to see the cottage, that evening, and Isabel, in the warmth of her heart, promised to accompany them. Fanny thanked her with a curtsey, and thought how pleased she ought to be at such condescension in her young mistress, but could not help fearing that her sweetheart would not half appreciate the favour.

After receiving many promises of friendship and assistance, Fanny hastened to report to Sally the success of her negotiation. Sally was sitting in their little bedroom, thoughtful, and almost sad. She listened to Fanny’s account; and replied in answer to her questions concerning Miss Laura’s way of taking her warning, “I am afraid, Fanny, you were right in thinking yourself the greatest favourite, for Miss Laura seemed almost pleased at my news; she shook me by the hand, and said, ‘I am very glad to hear you are to marry such a good young man as everyone acknowledges John Maythorn to be, and you may depend upon my being always ready to help you, if you want assistance.’ She then said a deal about my having lived with her six years, and not having once displeased her, and told me that master had promised my mother and yours too, that his young ladies should see after us all our lives. This was very kind, to be sure; but then Miss Isabel promised you presents whether you wanted assistance or not, and is to give you a silk gown and a white ribbon for the wedding, and is to go over to the cottage with you: now Miss Laura did not say a word of any such thing.”

Fanny tried to comfort her cousin by saying it was Miss Laura’s quiet way; but she could not help secretly rejoicing that her own mistress was so generous and affectionate.

In the evening the two sweethearts came to lead their future wives to the cottages, which were near each other, and at about a mile from the Hall. John had a happy walk. He learned from Sally that he was to “take her home” in a month, and was so pleased at the news, that he could scarcely be happier when she bustled about, exclaiming at every new sight in the pretty bright little cottage. The tea-caddy, the cupboard of china, and a large cat, each called forth a fresh burst of joy. Sally thought everything “the prettiest she had ever seen;” and when John made her sit in the arm-chair and put her foot on the fender, as if she were already mistress of the cottage, she burst into sobs of joy. We will not pause to tell how her sobs were stopped, nor what promises of unchanging kindness, were made in that bright little kitchen; but we may safely affirm that Sally and John were happier than they had ever been in their lives, and that old Mrs. Maythorn, who was keeping the cottage for Sally, felt all her fondest wishes were fulfilled as she saw the two lovers depart.

Fanny and Thomas, who had left them at the cottage door, walked on to their own future home, quite overwhelmed by the honour Miss Isabel was conferring on them by walking at their side.

“You see, Miss,” said Thomas, as he turned the key of his cottage door, “there is nothing to speak of here, only such things as are necessary, and all of the plainest; but it will do well enough for us poor folks:” and as he threw open the door, he found to his surprise that what had seemed to him yesterday so pretty and neat, now looked indeed “all of the plainest.” The very carpet, and metal teapot, which he had intended as surprises for Fanny, he was now ashamed of pointing out to her, and he apologised to Isabel for the coarse quality of the former, telling her it was only to serve till he could get a better.

“Yes,” answered she, “this is not half good enough for my little Fanny, she must have a real Brussels carpet. I will send her one. I will make your cottage so pretty, Fanny, you shall have a nice china tea set, not these common little things, and I will give you some curtains for the window.” Thomas blushed as this deficiency was pointed out. “Why, Miss,” said he, “I meant to have trained the rose tree over the window, I thought that would be shady, and sweet in the summer, and in the winter, why, we should want all the day-light; but then to be sure, curtains will be much better.”

“Yes, Thomas,” replied the young lady, “and warm in the winter; you could not be comfortable with a few bare rose stalks before your window, when the snow was on the ground.” This had not occurred to Thomas, who now said faintly, “Oh no, Miss,” and felt that curtains were indispensable to comfort.

Similar deficiencies or short-comings were discovered everywhere, so that even Fanny, who would at first be pleased with all she saw, in spite of the numerous defects that seemed to exist everywhere, gradually grew silent and ashamed of her cottage. She did her utmost to conceal from Thomas how entirely she agreed with her mistress, and as this generous young lady finished every remark, by saying “I will get you one,” or, “I will send you another,” she felt that all would be right before long.

As Thomas closed the door, he wondered how in his wish to please Fanny he could have deceived himself so completely as to the merits of his cottage and furniture; but he too comforted himself by remembering how his kind patroness was to remedy all the defects; “though,” thought he, “I should have liked better to have done it all well myself.”

The lady and the two lovers walked homewards, almost without speaking till they overtook John and Sally, who were whispering and laughing, talking of their cottage, Mrs. Maythorn’s joy at seeing them happy, their future plans for themselves and her, and all in so confused a way, that though twenty new subjects were started and discussed, none came to any conclusion, but that John and Sally loved each other and were very, very happy.

“What ails you, Thomas?” said John, “Has any one robbed your house? I told you it was not safe to leave it,” but seeing Miss Isabel, he touched his hat and fell back to where Fanny was talking to her cousin. Isabel, however, left them that she might take a short cut through the park, while they went round by the road.

At the end of the walk, Sally was half inclined to be dissatisfied with her furniture, so much had Fanny boasted of the improvements that were to be made in her own, but she could not get rid of the first impression it had made on her, and in a few days she quite forgot the want of curtains and carpet, and could only remember the happy time when she sat in the arm-chair with her foot on the fender.

As the month drew to a close, the two sisters made presents to their maids. Laura gave Sally a merino dress, a large piece of linen, a cellar full of coals, and a five pound note. Isabel gave Fanny a silk gown that cost three guineas, a beautiful white bonnet ribbon, a small chimney glass (for which she kindly went into debt), three left-off muslin dresses, a painting done by her own hand, in a handsome gilt frame, and a beautiful knitted purse. Besides all this, she told Fanny it was still her intention to get the other things she had promised for the cottage, as soon as she had paid for the chimney glass. “I am very sorry,” she said, “that just now I am so poor, for unfortunately, as you know, I have had to pay for those large music volumes I ordered when I was in London, and which after all I never used. It always happens that I am poor when I want to make presents.”

Fanny stopped her mistress with abundant thanks for the beautiful things she had already given her. “I am sure, Miss,” said she, “I shall scarcely dare wear these dresses, they look so lady-like and fine; Sally will seem quite strange by me. And this purse too, Miss; I never saw anything so smart.”

Isabel was quite satisfied that she had eclipsed her sister in the number and value of her gifts, but she still assured Fanny she had but made a beginning. Large and generous indeed, were this young lady’s intentions.

On the wedding morning Isabel rose early and dressed herself without assistance, then crossing to the room of the two cousins, she entered without knocking. Sally was gone, and Fanny lay sleeping alone.

“How pretty she is!” said Isabel to herself. “She ought to be dressed like a lady to day. I will see to it;” then glancing proudly at the silk gown, which was laid out with all the other articles of dress, ready for the coming ceremony, her heart swelled with consciousness of her own generosity. “I have done nothing yet,” continued she; “she has been with me nearly six years, and always pleased me entirely, then papa promised her mother that he should befriend her as long as we both lived, and he has charged us both to do our utmost for our brides. Laura has bought Sally a shawl, I ought to give one too—what is this common thing? Fanny! Fanny! wake up. I am come to be your maid to day, for you shall be mistress on your wedding morning and have a lady to dress you. What is this shawl? It will not do with a silk dress, wait a minute,” and off she darted, leaving Fanny sitting up and rubbing her eyes trying to remember what her young mistress had said. Before she was quite conscious, Isabel returned with a Norfolk shawl of fine texture and design, but somewhat soiled. “There,” said she, throwing it across the silk gown, “those go much better together. I will give it you, Fanny.”

“Thank you, Miss,” said Fanny, in a tone of hesitation; “but—but suppose, Miss, I was to wear Thomas’ shawl just to-day, as he gave it me for the wedding, and John got Sally one like it—I think, Miss—don’t you think, Miss, it might seem unkind to wear another just to-day?”

“Why, it is just to-day I want to make you look like a lady, Fanny; no, no, you must not put on that white cotton-looking shawl with a silk dress, and this ribbon,” said Isabel, taking up the bonnet, proudly. Fanny looked sad, but the young mistress did not see this, for she was examining the white silk gloves, that lay beside the bonnet. “These,” thought she, “are not quite right, they look servantish, but my kid gloves would not fit her, besides, I have none clean, and it is well, perhaps, that she should have a few things to mark her rank. Yes, they will do.”

There was so much confusion between the lady’s offering help, and the maid’s modestly refusing it, that the toilette was long in completing. At last, however, Isabel was in ecstasies. “Look,” said she, “how the bonnet becomes you! and the Norfolk shawl, too, no one would think you were only a lady’s-maid, Fanny. Stop, I will get a ribbon for your throat.” Off she flew, and was back again in five minutes. “But what is that for, Fanny? Are you afraid it will rain, this bright morning?”

Fanny had, in Isabel’s absence, folded Thomas’ shawl, and hung it across her arm. “I thought, Miss,” answered she, blushing, “that I might just carry it, to show Thomas that I did not forget his present, or think it too homely to go to church with me.”

“Impossible,” said Isabel, who, to do her justice, we must state, was far too much excited to suspect that she was making Fanny uncomfortable; “you will spoil all. There, put the shawl away,—that’s right, you look perfect. Go down to your bridegroom, I hear his voice in the hall, I will not come too, though I should like above all things to see his surprise, but I should spoil your meeting, and I am the last person in the world to do anything so selfish. One thing more, Fanny: I shall give you two guineas, that you may spend three or four days at L——, by the seaside; no one goes home directly, you would find it very dull to settle down at once in your cottage; tell Thomas so.” Isabel then retired to her room, wishing heartily that she could part with half her prettiest things, that she might heap more favours on the interesting little bride.

Laura’s first thought that morning had also been of the little orphan, who had served her so long and faithfully, and whom her father had commended to her special care. She, too, had risen early, but without dressing herself, she went across to Sally. Sally was asleep, with the traces of tears on her cheeks; Laura looked at her for a few moments, and remembered how, when both were too young to understand the distinction of rank, they had been almost playmates; she wiped from her own eyes a little moisture that dimmed them, then putting her hand gently on Sally’s shoulder, she said, “Wake, Sally, I call you early that you may have plenty of time to dress me first and yourself afterwards. I know you would not like to miss waiting on me, or to do it hurriedly for the last time. You have been crying, Sally, do not colour about it, I should think ill of you if you were not sorry to leave us, you cannot feel the parting more than I do. I dare say I shall have hard work to keep dry eyes all day, but we must do our best, Sally, for it will not do for John to think I grudge you to him, or that you like me better than you do him.”

“Oh no, Miss!” replied Sally, who felt at that moment that she could scarcely love any one better than her kind mistress. “Still John will not be hard upon me for a few tears,” added she, putting the sheet to her eyes.

“Come, come, Sally, this will not do, jump up and dress yourself quickly, that you may be ready to brush my hair when I return from the dressing-room; you must do it well to day, for you know I am not yet suited with a maid, and must do it myself to-morrow.”

This roused Sally, who dressed in great haste and was soon at her post. Laura asked her many questions about her plans for the future, and found with pleasure that most things had been well considered and arranged. “There is only one thing, Miss,” said Sally in conclusion, “that we are sorry for, and it is that we cannot offer old Mrs. Maythorn a home. She has no child but John, and will sadly feel his leaving her.”

“But why cannot she live with you and work as she does now, so as to pay you for what she costs?”

“Why, Miss, where she is she works about the house for her board, and does a trifle outdoors besides, that gets her clothing. John says it makes him feel quite cowardly, as it were, to see his old mother working at scrubbing and scouring, making her poor back ache, when he is so young and strong; yet we scarcely know if we could undertake for her altogether. I wish we could.”

“How much would it cost you?”

“A matter of four shillings a week; besides, we must get a bed and bedding. That we could put up in the kitchen, if we bought it to shut up in the day-time, and, as John says, Mrs. Maythorn would help us nicely when we get some little ones. But it would cost a deal of money to begin and go on with.”

“I will think of this for you, Sally. It would be easy for me to give you four shillings a week now, but I may not always be able to do it. I may marry a poor man, or one who will not allow me to spend my money as I please, and were Mrs. Maythorn to give up her present employments, she would not be able to get them back again three or four years hence, nor would she, at her age, be able to meet with others; and if you would find it difficult to keep her now, you would much more when you have a little family; so we must do nothing hastily. I will consult Papa; he will tell me directly whether I shall be right in promising you the four shillings a week. If I do promise it, you may depend on always having it.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Miss, for the thought: I will tell John directly I see him; the very hope will fill him with joy.”

“No,” said Laura, “do not tell him yet, Sally, for you would be sorry to disappoint him afterwards, if I could not undertake it. Wait a day or two, and I will give you an answer; or, if possible, it shall be sooner. Now, thank you for the nice brushing: I will put up my hair while you go and dress; it is getting late. If you require assistance, and Fanny is not in your room, tap at my door, for I shall be pleased to help you to-day.”

Laura was not called in; but when she thought the toilette must be nearly completed, went to Sally with the shawl which she had bought for her the day before. As she entered, Sally was folding the white one John had given her. “I have brought you a shawl,” said Laura, “which I want you to wear to-day; it is much handsomer than that you are folding. See, do you like it?”

“Yes, Miss,” said Sally, “It is a very good one, I see,” and she began to re-fold the other; but Laura noticed the expression of disappointment with which she made the change, and taking up the plain shawl, said, “I do not know whether this does not suit your neat muslin dress better than mine. Did you buy it yourself, Sally?”

“No, Miss, it was John’s present; but I will put on yours this morning, if you please, Miss, and I can wear John’s any day.”

“No, no,” replied Laura, “you must put on John’s to-day. It matters but little to me when you wear mine, so long as it does you good service; but John will feel hurt if you cast his present aside on your wedding-day, because some one else has given you a shawl worth a few shillings more.” So Laura put the white shawl on the shoulders of Sally, who valued it more than the finest Cashmere in the world.

As Sally went down stairs, she saw Fanny in tears on the landing. “I cannot think how it is,” answered she, in reply to Sally’s questioning, “but just on this day, when I thought to feel so happy, I am quite low. Miss Isabel has been so kind, she has dressed me, and quite flustered me with her attentions. See what nice things she has given me—this shawl—though for that matter, I’d rather have worn Thomas’s. Oh, how nice you look. Dear, so neat and becoming your station, and with John’s shawl, too, but then Miss Laura has made you no present.”

“Yes, a good shawl, and a promise besides, but I will tell you about that another time. Let us go in now, they must be waiting for us.”

Fanny felt so awkward in her fine clothes, that she could scarcely be prevailed on to encounter the gaze of the servants; but her good-natured cousin promising to explain that all her dress was given and chosen by her mistress, she at last went into the hall. Sally’s explanation was only heard by a few of the party, and as Fanny, in trying to conceal herself from the gaze of the astonished villagers, slunk behind old Mrs. Maythorn, she had the mortification of hearing her say to John, in the loud whisper peculiar to deaf people, “I am so glad, John, the neat one is yours; I should be quite frightened to see you take such a fine lady as Fanny to the altar; it makes me sorry for Thomas to see her begin so smart.”

When the ceremony was over, the party returned to the Hall, where an hospitable meal had been provided for all the villagers of good character who chose to partake of it. It was a merry party, for even Fanny, when every one had seen her finery long enough to forget it, forgot it herself. Thomas was very good-natured about the shawl, and delighted at the prospect of spending a few days at L——. He and Fanny talked of the boat-excursions they would have, the shells they would gather for a grotto in their garden, and the long rambles they would take by the seaside, till they wondered how ever they could have been contented with the prospect of going to their cottage at once.

As the pony chaise which the good baronet had lent for the day, drove up to take the bridal party to L——, for John and Sally were also to spend one day there, the two young ladies came to take leave of their protégées. Laura said, “Good bye, Sally, I have consulted Papa and will undertake to allow you four shillings a week as long as Mrs. Maythorn lives. Here is a sovereign towards expenses; you will not, I am sure, mind changing your five pound note for the rest.”

Isabel said, “Good bye, Fanny. I am very, very sorry to disappoint you of your treat at L——, but I intended to have borrowed the two pounds of Miss Laura, and I find she cannot lend them to me. Never mind, I am sure you will be happy enough in your little cottage. I never saw such a sweet little place as it is.” So the bridal party drove away.

In less than a week the cousins were established in their new abode. Sally settled and happy; but Fanny, unsettled, always expected the new carpet, the china tea set, and the various other alterations that Isabel had suggested and promised to make. The young lady was, however, unfortunate with her money. At one time she lost a bank-note; at another, just as she was counting out money for the Brussels carpet, the new maid entered to tell her that sundry articles of dress were “past mending,” and must be immediately replaced. One thing after another nipped her generous intentions in the bud, and at last she was obliged to set out for her long-expected journey to France, without having done more towards the fulfilment of her promises than call frequently on Fanny, to remind her that all her present arrangements were temporary, and that she should shortly have almost everything new.

“Good bye, Fanny,” said she at parting; “I shall often write to you, and send you money. I will not make any distinct promise, for I daresay I shall be able to do more than I should like to say now.”

Laura had given Sally a great many useful things for her cottage, but made no promise at parting. She said, “Be sure you write to me, Sally, from time to time, to say how you are going on, and tell me if you want help.”

When Isabel was gone, Fanny saw that she must accustom herself to her cottage as it was, and banish from her mind the idea of the long-anticipated improvements. It was, however, no easy task. The window once regarded as bare and comfortless still seemed so, in spite of Fanny’s reasoning that it was no worse than Sally’s, which always looked cheerful and pretty. To be sure, John, who did not think of getting curtains, had trained a honeysuckle over it, still that made but little show at present. The carpet, too, so long regarded as a coarse temporary thing, never regained the beauty it first had to the eye of Thomas, as he laid it down the evening before he took Fanny to the cottage; and Fanny could never forget, as she arranged her tea-things, that Miss Isabel had called them “common little things;” so of all the other pieces of furniture that the young lady had remarked upon. Sally’s house was, in reality, more homely than her cousin’s, yet as she had never entertained a wish that it should be better, and as Laura had been pleased with all its arrangements, she bustled about it with perfect satisfaction; and even to Fanny it seemed replete with the comfort her own had always wanted.

At the end of three months Isabel enclosed an order for three pounds to Fanny, desiring her to get a Brussels carpet, and if there was a sufficient remainder, to replace the tea set.

“I would rather,” said Fanny to her cousin, “put up with the old carpet and china, and get a roll of fine flannel, some coals, an extra blanket or two, and a cradle for the little one that’s coming, for it will be cold weather when I am put to bed; but I suppose as Miss Isabel has set her mind on the carpet and china, I must get them.”

A week or two after John was invited, with his wife and mother, to drink tea from Fanny’s new china. It was very pretty, so was the carpet, and so was Fanny making tea, elated with showing her new wealth.

“Is not Miss Isabel generous?” asked she, as she held the milk-pot to be admired.

“I sometimes wish Miss Laura had as much money to spare,” replied Sally; “for she lets me lay it out as I please, and I could get a number of things for three guineas.”

“Fie, Sally,” said her husband; “are not three shillings to spend as one pleases, better than three guineas laid out to please some one else?”

“Nonsense, John,” said Fanny, pettishly; “how can a carpet for my kitchen be bought to please any one but me?”

“John isn’t far wrong either,” answered her husband; “but the carpet is very handsome, and does please you and me too, now it is here.”

Time passed on, and Fanny gave birth to a little girl. Isabel stood sponsor for her by proxy, sending her an embroidered cloak and lace cap, and desiring that she should be called by her own name. Little Bella was very sickly, and as her mother had not been able to procure her good warm clothing, or lay in a large stock of firing, she suffered greatly from cold during the severe winter that followed her birth. The spring and summer did not bring her better health; and as Fanny always attributed her delicacy to the want of proper warmth in her infancy, she took a great dislike to the Brussels carpet, which now lay in a roll behind a large chest, having been long ago taken up as a piece of inconvenient luxury in a kitchen. “I wish you could find a corner for it in your cottage, Sally,” said she, “for I never catch a sight of it without worrying myself to think how much flannels and coals I might have bought with the money it cost.”

Laura frequently sent Sally small presents of money, but Isabel, though not so regular as her sister, surprised every one by the splendour of her presents, when they did come. As Bella entered her second year, she received from her godmother a beautiful little carriage, which Thomas said must have “spoilt a five pound note.” This was Isabel’s last gift, for it was at about this time that she accepted an offer from a French count, and became so absorbed in her own affairs, that she forgot Fanny and Bella too. Poor Bella grew more and more sickly every month; the apothecary ordered her beef tea, arrowroot, and other strengthening diet, but work was slack with Thomas, and it was with difficulty that he could procure her the commonest food. “I am sure,” said Fanny to her cousin, as little Bella was whining on her knee, “that if only Miss Isabel were here, she would set us all right. She never could bear to see even a stranger in distress.”

“I wish,” said Thomas, “that great folks would think a little of what they don’t see. I’ll lay anything Miss Isabel gives away a deal of money, more than enough to save our little one, to a set of French impostors that cry after her in the street, and yet, when she knows our child is ill, she never cares, because she can’t see it grow thin, or hear it cry.”

“For shame, Thomas,” said his wife, “do not speak so rudely of the young lady. Have you forgotten the pretty carriage she sent Bella, and how pleased we were when it came?”

“I don’t mean any harm,” answered her husband; “only it strikes me that Miss was pleased to buy the carriage because it was pretty, and seemed a great thing to send us, and that she would ’nt have cared a straw to give us a little each, that would have served us every bit as well.”

“I never heard you so ungrateful, Thomas. Of course she would ’nt, because she wished to please us.”

“Or herself, as John said; but may be I am wrong; only it goes to my heart to see the child want food while there is a filagree carriage in the yard that cost more than would keep her for six months.”

“Well, cheer up,” said Sally; “Miss Laura will be coming home soon, and I’ll lay anything she won’t let Bella die of want.”

“I’m afraid she won’t think of giving to me, Sally,” said Fanny despondingly; “I was never her maid, you know.”

“You would ’nt fear, if you knew Miss Laura as I do, Fanny; she never cares who she helps so long as the person is deserving, and in want. She has no pride of that sort.”

Isabel’s marriage was put off, and Laura’s return, consequently, postponed. As Bella grew worse every day, and yet no help came, the unselfish Sally wrote to her patroness, telling her of poor Fanny’s distress, and begging her either to send her help, or speak on her behalf to her sister.

Isabel was dressing for a party when Laura showed her Sally’s letter. “Poor Fanny,” said she, “I wish I had known it before I bought this wreath. I have, absolutely, not a half-franc in the world. Will you buy the wreath of me at half-price, it has not even been taken from its box.”

“I do not want it,” said Laura, “but I will lend you some money.”

“No, I cannot borrow more,” said her sister despondingly. “I owe you already for the flowers, the brooch, the bill you paid yesterday, and I know not what else besides; but I will tell Eugène there is a poor Englishwoman in distress, I am sure he will send her something.”

Eugène gave a five-franc piece.

It was late one frosty evening when Sally ran across to her cousin’s cottage, delighted to be the bearer of the long hoped-for letter. Fanny was sitting on the fender before a small fire, hugging her darling to her breast, and breathing on its little face to make the air warmer. “I’m afraid,” said she, in answer to Sally’s inquiries, “that the child won’t be here long;” and she wiped away a few hot tears that had forced their way as she sat listening to the low moans of the little sufferer.

“But I have good news for you,” said her cousin, cheerfully. “Here is a letter from Miss Isabel at last. I would not tell you before, but I wrote to Miss Laura, saying how you were expecting every week to be put to bed again, and how Bella was wasting away, and see, I was right about her, she has sent you a sovereign, and her sister’s letter, no doubt, contains a pretty sum.”

Fanny started up, and could scarcely breathe as she broke the seal. What was her disappointment on seeing an order for five shillings!

“I am very sorry, my good Fanny,” said Isabel, “that just now I have no money. A charitable gentleman sends you five shillings, and as soon as I possibly can, I will let you have a large sum. I have not yet paid for the carriage I sent you, and as the bill has been given me several times, I must discharge it before I send away more money. I hope that by this time, little Bella is better.”

Fanny laid her child upon the bed, and putting her face by its side, shed bitter tears. Sally did not speak, and so both remained till Thomas came in from his work. Fanny would have hidden the letter from him, but he saw and seized it in a moment.

“Five guineas for a carriage, and five shillings for a child’s life,” said he with a sneer, as he laid it down. “Do not look for the large sum, Fanny, you won’t get it; but I will work hard, and bury the child decently.”

Fanny felt no inclination to defend her mistress. For the first time, it occurred to her that Thomas and John might be right in their judgment of her. She raised Bella, as Thomas, who had been twisting up the money order, was about to throw it in the fire. He caught a sight of the child’s wan face, and, advancing to the bed, said, in a softened tone, “Do you know father, pretty one?” and as Bella smiled, faintly, he added, “I will do anything for your sake. Here, Fanny, take the money, and get the child something nourishing.”

Bella seemed to revive from getting better food; and the apothecary held out great hope of her ultimate recovery, if the improved diet could be continued; but expenses fell heavily on Thomas, Fanny was put to bed with a fine strong little boy, and, though Sally and Mrs. Maythorn devoted themselves to her and Bella, the anxiety she suffered from being separated from her invalid child, added to her former constant uneasiness, and want of proper food, brought on a fever that threatened her life. In a few days she became quite delirious. During this time Isabel was married, and Laura returned to England.

When Fanny regained her consciousness she was in the dark, but she could see someone standing by the window. On her speaking the person advanced to her side. “Do not be startled to find me here,” said a sweet soft voice. “Sally has watched by your side for three nights, and when I came this evening she looked so ill that I insisted on her going to bed; then, as we could find no one on whose care and watchfulness we could depend, I took her place. You have been in a sound sleep Dr. Hart said you would wake up much better. Are you better?”

“Yes, ma’am, a deal better; but where am I, and who is it with me?”

“You are in your own pretty cottage, and Miss Laura is with you. You expected me home, did you not?”

“Oh thank God; who sent you, dear Miss Laura? How is—but may be I had best not ask just while I am so weak. Is the dear boy well?”

“Yes, quite well; and Bella is much better. I have sent her for a few days to L——, with Mrs. Maythorn; the sea air will do her good.”

“Oh, thank you—thank you—dear young lady for the thought. I seem so bound up in that dear child, that nothing could comfort me for her loss. How good and kind you are, Miss—you do all so well and so quietly!”

“Yes, Fanny, dear,” said Thomas, coming from behind the curtain and stooping to kiss his wife. “Miss Laura has saved you and Bella, and me too, for I could’nt have lived if you had died; and has found me work; and all without making one great present, or doing anything one could speak about. I’ll tell you what it is, wife, dear, Miss Isabel does all for the best, but it is just as she feels at the moment. Now Miss Laura—if I may be so bold to speak, Miss—Miss Laura does not give to please her own feelings, but to do good. I can’t say it well, but do you say it for me, Miss; I want Fanny to know the right words, to teach the little ones by-and-bye. You know what I wish to say, Miss Laura.”

“Yes Thomas,” said Laura, blushing, “but I do not say you are right. You mean, I think, that my sister acts from impulse, and I from principle. Is that it?”

“I suppose that’s it, Miss,” said Thomas, considering, and apparently not quite satisfied.

“You have no harder meaning, I am sure,” said Laura, quietly, “because I love my sister very much.”

“Certainly not, Miss,” returned Thomas. “But, myself, if I may take the liberty of gratefully saying so, I prefer to be acted to on principle, and think it a good deal better than impulse.”

CHIPS.

TORTURE IN THE WAY OF BUSINESS.

The mention in a recent number of the extreme cruelty practised on calves, has drawn forth the following statement from a correspondent,—a clergyman in Bedfordshire:—

“A member of my family was witness to the following act of barbarity, viz., that of plucking the feathers from a duck while yet alive. Upon being expostulated with, the man replied that it was a common practice,—‘we half break their necks, then pluck them while they are warm, and then finish them off.’ This act of cruelty was witnessed in Brighton Market. If the above will at all assist you in exposing the atrocities which are practised on the brute creation, I shall be thankful. The public generally (save a few gross sensualists) have only, it is to be hoped, to be told what is practised on many articles of consumption, to make them protest against such wanton insults on God’s workmanship.”

The only means of accounting for such irrational cruelty, is the supposition that the offending poulterers imagine ducks to be endowed by nature with no more feeling than feather-beds.

The savage indifference with which unappreciable agonies are systematically inflicted upon sentient creatures, strikes us occasionally with wonder. The police reports have lately revealed a case which nothing but the best testimony could render credible. A correspondent of the Times Newspaper was some weeks since walking in the Walworth Road, when he saw several persons assembled round the shop of a butcher; half a dozen men were endeavouring to force two bullocks into a slaughter-house. The butcher’s journeyman struck one of the animals on the legs with a broom handle, which had a sharp pointed spike. The door of the slaughter-house was very narrow; the man got a rope and fixed it tightly round the horns of the bullock, and some of them then pulled this from the inside of the slaughter-house; the others were beating the brute behind and pushing it on. He saw one of the butchers twisting the animal’s tail till he doubled it up, and the bones were dislocated—at least, he was led to think so by the right angle formed by the two portions of the tail. The man’s hands were covered with blood which flowed from the tail; and he rubbed the dislocated parts together, which caused the poor animal to moan most piteously. Several of the bystanders expressed their disgust.

The fellows were brought before the Lambeth magistrate by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; but unfortunately the principal witness mistook one of the offenders for another person—his brother. The complaint, therefore, from that legal informality, broke down.

The defendants appeared to treat the mere pulling a bullock through a passage too small for its comfortable admission, with ropes tied to its horns; the pushing it with goads from behind; the agonising twisting of its tail; as matters of the most perfect indifference. In his exultation at getting off, one of them facetiously promised the magistrate, in answer to an expostulation as to the narrowness of the passage, “that, to oblige his Worship, he would make the place big enough to admit a full-grown elephant, or a hippopotamus.”

We have in former articles shown that this sort of brutality is of everyday occurrence, and perpetrated in the regular way of business. Use begets insensibility. We have no doubt that the poulterer and butchers concerned in the atrocities we have detailed, are worthy men enough in their families. They would not tear the hair out of the head of a child, or goad a wife with a broomstick, for the world. They are most likely tender fathers and affectionate husbands; but in the way of business, as poulterers, and butchers, what can exceed, or what censure can be too sharp for, their cruelty? Exposure is the only cure; and this we will always do our part in administering.

A COTTAGE MEMORY.

In that far foreign country, the dream of old days

And old haunts often bears me to Anthony Wray’s;

The white little cottage with nest-crowded eaves,

Peeping out half the year from an ambush of leaves.

And now once again have my footsteps been there,

And have found it—deserted, dismantled, and bare;

Except where the wall-flow’rs still cluster and wave

On the gable: they now are like flow’rs on a grave.

At that window, I thought as I passed through the door,

Where the late sunbeam strikes down the weed-covered floor,

How often the sunlight and moonlight have shone

Upon bright, living faces, that now are all gone.

In the choice ingle-nook stood no Martha’s arm-chair,

But a heap of dead leaves which the wind had swept there;

The low-talking wind that breathed thoughts of the time

When young voices rang round like a holiday chime.

And the hearth had become like a cold churchyard stone,

Encrusted with mould and with moss overgrown,

That had glowed through so many a long winter night,

The heart of the cottage, a core of warm light.

What talk and what mirth there! what tales told or read

To the children that listened in joy tinged with dread!

A storm shakes the window; they solemnly gaze

On each other, and draw their stools nearer the blaze.

Their father is drowsy with labour gone through,

And the deep satisfaction of nothing to do;

The woof of light sleep in its network has bound him,

And home mildly shines through the mist that’s around him.

The mother sits knitting and smiling fond praise;

The cheek of the youngest shines warm in the blaze

As he rests his white head on his grandmother’s knee;

Alas! that these pictures mere phantoms should be.

As ghosts of burnt roses cloud up from their ashes,

Rise scenes from the past in these transient flashes;

Thin visions, soon melted, which leave the heart sore,

By half-showing that which they will not restore.

Could it be that this Household was gone, and for ever?

The wood looked unchanged, and the fields, and the river;

Co-tenants of time, even part did these seem

Of beings who now are but shapes of a dream.

The broad-leaved horse-chesnut my thoughts used to wed

With those for whose shelter its boughs seemed to spread,

Dipped slowly in sunlight its fans as of old,

But beneath, all had passed “like a tale that is told.”

Long I stood, and had no word of comfort to say

Yet not unconsoled did I turn me away:

Thank God for the faith that is stronger than grief,

The fountain that springs to the parched soul’s relief.

The whispered assurance which raises and soothes,

That these are the phantoms, and those still the truths;

And their trials and virtues, their tears and their mirth

Not faded like yesterday’s light from the earth!

“CAPE” SKETCHES.

There is a peculiarity evinced by such of the advocates of colonisation as have acquainted themselves personally with colonial life, which puts in a strong light the adaptability of most of our territories beyond sea for bettering the condition of enterprising emigrants. It is this:—each man vaunts loudly the superiority of the colony he has visited over all the others. “How is it possible,” writes a settler in New Zealand to us, “that people will be so blind as to risk their capital in Australia while there is New Zealand, the finest country, with the finest climate in the world!” The friend, who occasionally amuses and instructs us with his vivid sketches of Australian life, exclaims—“New Zealand!—Where are its markets?—What is a farmer to do with his produce when he has got it?—No, no; my advice is Sydney.” “By no means,” ejaculates a third, just home from Port Philip, “South Australia is the country for an energetic man to gain independence and wealth.” A successful emigrant, hot from Hobart Town, vaunts the advantages of Van Dieman’s Land. Our friend from Canada over-rides all these opinions. “Why,” he argues, “go to uncivilised, uncultivated, and far-off countries, when you can, at once, join established communities, and enjoy regular British institutions, only a three weeks’ sail distant; where markets are regular, food cheap, and where (on account of the intense cold) there is nothing to do for one-third of the year?” Lastly, we are favoured with the opinion of a five years’ resident in South Africa:—“Truly,” he says, “people who brave the regions of a northern climate, who expose their lives in dangerous proximity to savages, who heed not agues in swamps, nor thirst in deserts, forget there is such a place as the Cape of Good Hope.”

Although all this one-sided enthusiasm does not prove either of the respective cases argued by the different advocates; yet it shows in a broad light the certain advantages of emigration in general. To whatever quarter of the globe the observer turns, he sees, amidst occasional instances of disappointment and loss, that emigration has, in general, answered the expectations of the emigrants. But this general success he does not attribute to the soundness of the principle in the abstract, but to the advantages of the particular country in which he has witnessed the most prosperity.

In, therefore, sifting and comparing with other evidence the numerous papers which we receive from, and relative to, the various colonies, it is our aim to give such true pictures of colonial life as enable the reader to judge fairly of the pains, pleasures, losses and gains of all the new homes which have been established by and for Englishmen in various parts of the globe.

We have been led into these remarks by a communication now before us from the gentleman already mentioned who has passed five active years in the colony of the Cape of Good Hope. His characteristic preface to the amusing and instructive sketches of Cape Life is as follows:—

“I cannot but think, that, in the present rage for promoting emigration, too much attention is paid to new and untried countries whose resources are as yet doubtful and undeveloped, to the detriment of the old established colonies, whose constant cry is for ‘labour, labour, labour.’ Amongst the least popular of our old colonies is the Cape of Good Hope. Yet I think, that most, if not all, the objections usually raised against it are erroneous; while many of its undoubted advantages are overlooked. It is my desire, if possible, to remove some of the prejudices entertained against a land where I spent five happy years of my life. My intention is simply to give a few travelling sketches, and to portray some of the characteristic features of the country and its inhabitants.”

Cape Wine enjoys a very unenviable notoriety in England. Order a glass of sherry at a fourth-rate tavern: taste it—it is very bad—you turn up your nose and cry “Cape!” Mr. Lazarus, a Hebrew dealer in wine and money, “does a little bill” for you, and sends you home as part payment a few dozen of “excellent Madeira.” Are you rash enough to taste it? If so, as soon as you have recovered from the sputtering caused by its fearful acidity, you mutter a phrase never mentioned to ears polite, and say again—“Cape!” In fact, whenever you drink any vile compound, under the name of wine, to which you are at a loss to ascribe a native land, you cry—“Cape!”

The old adage of “give a dog a bad name and hang him,” is fully exemplified here. Still it must be admitted that the dog must first have earned his bad name. So it is with Cape Wine. It was very bad, and a great part of it is so still; while decidedly the worst of it is sent to England. I have often endeavoured to persuade the wine farmers that this is bad policy on their part; but they will not be convinced. They say that Cape Wine has a bad name in the market; that it is bought only as “Cape Wine,” without any distinction of vintage or class; and that the worst of it brings them as good a price as the best. And yet there is a vast difference in the various qualities; and even the best of them are still susceptible of wonderful improvement.

There is a similarity between the Cape and the Madeira grape. Both are cultivated very much in the same manner, but the grand point of difference between the two is the time of gathering the grapes. In Madeira they are not gathered till so ripe that many begin to fall, and many are withered from over ripeness; these are of course rejected. By this means a smaller amount of wine is obtained from a vineyard than would have been produced had the grapes been gathered earlier: but the quality of the wine is improved beyond conception. Every grape is full, ripe, and luscious, and the wine partakes of its quality. Nothing can prove more clearly the necessity of the grape being fully, and rather over ripe, than the difference of the wine produced on the north side of the Island of Madeira, where this perfection of the grape can scarcely be attained, and that grown on the south side: the latter is Nectar; the former Cape; or little better.

Now at the Cape the object of the farmer is always to get the greatest quantity of wine from his vineyard; and consequently he gathers his grapes when they are barely ripe, and none have fallen or withered; whereby he fills his storehouses with wine full of acidity and of that vile twang which all who have tasted shudder to recal.

Some of the wine-growers in the colony have lately pursued a different plan, and with vast success. This has been chiefly among the English colonists; for a Dutch boor at the Cape is a very intractable animal, and not easily induced to swerve from old systems, be they ever so bad. Probably, the principal reason why the colony produced from the very first such bad wines, was its having been colonised by Dutchmen, who could have had no experience at home in wine-growing.

Who knows what might have been the case had a colony from the plains of Champagne or Bordeaux first settled there? Apropos of this, I may mention that a fellow passenger of mine was a Frenchman from Champagne. At the Cape he entered into partnership with a young Englishman (also a fellow passenger), and agreed to take a wine farm. The Englishman was to supply capital—the Frenchman knowledge. Monsieur had determined to make “Cape Champagne;” and remarkably well he succeeded. Often at public and even at private dinners, when swallowing something dignified with the name of that right-royal wine, have I sighed to think how far more palatable would be a bottle of Monsieur L——’s vintage.

It perhaps requires a greater outlay of capital to be a successful wine-grower than almost anything else in the colony. There are, in addition to the purchase of land and vines, the expenses of storehouses, casks, and, above all, that most difficult commodity to attain—labour. So great is the want of the latter, and so uncertain the supply of even that which is attainable, that he is a bold man who ventures on wine-farming at the Cape.

The wine-growers are generally wealthy men, for, in spite of all obstacles, their profits are very large. Few people who even touch at the Cape fail to visit the Constantia wine farms, producing the delicious sweet wine of that name. It is grown on a mountain named after the wife of one of the former Governors of the Cape—whether in compliment to the lady’s sweetness of disposition, or her love for the wine then produced, I know not. Three farms monopolise this mountain. Even half a mile from them, the wine produced is of a very inferior flavour. They live in excellent style, these Constantia wine-growers. When first I visited one of them, a carriage-and-four and two buggies, conveying a party of Indian visitors, had just drawn up at the door. A déjeûner was spread in a long, handsome, and elegantly-furnished apartment, for the entertainment of any one who might chance to come and visit the farm. Two or three superintendents were ready to show the “lions” of the place to visitors, and to give them samples of the wine to taste. There are many varieties of it. And, oh, how seductive that same Constantia is! Who can resist it in all its delicious varieties?

I recollect that as I rode towards the farm I passed a toll-gate, and looking, I suppose, extremely like a “griffin” (for I had only been a week in the colony), the “pikeman” observed, as he took my twopence, and handed me the ticket, “Hopes you’ll be able to read it as you comes back, Sir!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“No offence, Sir,” said the man with a grin; “only I’ve seed a many as couldn’t—that’s all.”

The three Constantia wine-growers are Dutchmen; and so, in fact, are nearly all the wine farmers throughout the colony. Englishmen who go out there generally take to trade or sheep-farming; and they are right,—for it requires far less experience, less capital, and less labour, to follow almost any calling at the Cape than that of a wine-grower. I think, however, that a Company might be profitably established here or in the colony, for cultivating the vine there and importing its produce to Europe. For this purpose, they should send out labourers and superintendents, carefully selected from the wine districts of France and Germany; and take care that the Madeira plan of gathering the grapes be adopted. They should agitate, too, for a reduction of the duty on the wine: at present it is far too high. Perhaps the profits would not at first be great, for there is a serious obstacle to be overcome,—a bad name in the market; but eventually I believe that the speculation would be a lucrative one, and that it would in time remove the unfortunate stigma now affixed to Cape wine.

In these days of railroad travelling, when twenty miles an hour would be considered slow enough to justify a letter of complaint from “Viator” to the editor of the Times, it may rather astonish my readers to learn that twenty miles is considered a fair day’s journey at the Cape. Yet so it is.

Unless you amble on horseback, which only men and young men can undertake, the sole and universal method of travelling is by an ox-wagon. Just go and see the wagon exhibited by Cumming in his South-African Exhibition, at Hyde Park corner! Imagine such a machine, with twelve or fourteen oxen attached to it by a long rope of plaited hide (called a treck-tow) attached to the pole, and to which are fastened the yokes of the oxen. Then fancy a little Hottentot lad, very much like one of the Bushmen lately exhibited in London (but, perhaps, hardly so handsome,) leading the two front oxen by a strip of hide fastened to their horns (called a reim), and a full-grown Hottentot seated on the driving-seat, in the front of the wagon, with an enormous whip in his hands formed of a long bamboo handle and a lash of plaited thongs, with which he can, from his seat, reach the leaders of his team; and you have the “travelling carriage” of South Africa complete before your eyes.

The same team (or “span” in South-African phraseology) of oxen take you the whole journey, whether it be twenty or two hundred miles; and as they have no other food on the way, nor indeed at any other time, than the grass and water on the roadside, you may imagine that twenty or twenty-five miles a day is quite work enough for them. The journey is, however, by no means so tedious or uninteresting an affair as might be supposed. It is like so many days of pic-nic-ing, with new scenery each day, and in a glorious climate. The wagon is of course well furnished with tea, sugar, coffee, wine, flour, eggs, fresh and preserved meat, vegetables, and in fact all that refreshes and cheers the inward man: for, be it recollected, that there are no inns, or at least the very few there are are scattered at such great distances apart over the country that no wagon traveller thinks of visiting them. The wagon in fact becomes your home and your store-house as well as your travelling carriage. A long stretcher is slung in it, on which is placed your bed, which serves for a lounging couch by day. Some people travel with a tent, but this is unnecessary when the party does not exceed two or three, besides the Hottentots, who sleep under the wagon, or under a bush or anywhere else on the ground, as soundly as their masters in their beds.

Travellers generally take their guns with them, as they may chance to get a little sport on the road. At six in the morning we will suppose the carriage to start; at about ten you will “outspan”—that is, take out the oxen and let them feed, and prepare for breakfast. Your Hottentots soon collect fuel, the wagon is drawn up close by a mimosa or some other bush, a fire is lighted, the kettle set to boil, the coffee prepared, the steaks cooked in a frying-pan, and perhaps some hot cakes made of meal baked for you; and with a beautiful country round you, and a magnificent sky above you, if you cannot make a good breakfast, and feel a light heart, I fear that you must be terribly “used up.”

Then comes a stroll through the bush with your double-barrel on your shoulder, in search of a partridge or a Guinea fowl, or a stray antelope; and back to the wagon, now ready for another start.

Forward, again, till dinner-time, when the same process is gone through. After dinner, perhaps you will go forward another four or five miles, and then “outspan” for the night.

The nights of the Cape climate are glorious! I can scarcely imagine anything more beautiful. The sky of that deep, dark blue, which we never see in northern climates; the moon shining as she only can in such a sky, the stars so bright and distinct, with the beautiful southern cross in all its brilliancy, among them; the perfect stillness of everything around; the lofty and rugged mountains where the foot of man has never trodden; the thick dark bush, penetrable only by the wild beast or the savage; the broad plain covered with Aloes, Cape Heaths, Wild Stocks, and the ten thousand variegated shrubs which make a carpet beneath your feet as beautiful as the canopy of heaven above your head; and that little spot worthy the pencil of Salvator Rosa—the dark foliage of the bush lighted up by your fire, and around it the dusky forms of your Hottentots stretched at their ease, and enjoying, as none but a half savage knows how thoroughly to enjoy, the requisite delight of the “Dolce far niente.”

No doubt railroads are glorious inventions. All honour, too, to Macadam, and to stagecoaches and post-chaises; all praise to the comforts and convenience of a good English Inn. But if you have a spark of native poetry in your composition, in spite of bad roads, slow travelling, rough fare, and a bed “al fresco,” you will enjoy one of these South African journeys more than any trip you ever took in Europe. You have no other travelling companions than the beauties of Nature’s works around you, fresh as from the hands of their Creator, and the thoughts and reflections high and holy, as such scenes and such companionship will not fail to call forth.

CHEMICAL CONTRADICTIONS.

Science, whose aim and end is to prove the harmony and “eternal fitness of things,” also proves that we live in a world of paradoxes; and that existence itself, is a whirl of contradictions. Light and darkness, truth and falsehood, virtue and vice, the negative and positive poles of galvanic or magnetic mysteries, are evidences of all-pervading antitheses, which acting like the good and evil genii of Persian Mythology, neutralise each other’s powers when they come into collision. It is the office of science to solve these mysteries. The appropriate symbol of the lecture-room is a Sphinx; for a scientific lecturer is but a better sort of unraveller of riddles.

Who would suppose, for instance, that water—which everybody knows, extinguishes fire—may, under certain circumstances, add fuel to flame, so that the “coming man” who is to “set the Thames on fire,” may not be far off. If we take some mystical grey-looking globules of potassium (which is the metallic basis of common pearl-ash) and lay them upon water, the water will instantly appear to ignite. The globules will swim about in flames, reminding us of the “death-fires” described by the Ancient Mariner, burning “like witches’ oil” on the surface of the stagnant sea. Sometimes even, without any chemical ingredient being added, Fire will appear to spring spontaneously from water; which is not a simple element, as Thales imagined, when he speculated upon the origin of the Creation, but two invisible gases—oxygen and hydrogen, chemically combined. During the electrical changes of the atmosphere in a thunder-storm, these gases frequently combine with explosive violence, and it is this combination which takes place when “the big rain comes dancing to the earth.” These fire-and-water phenomena are thus accounted for; certain substances have peculiar affinities or attractions for one another; the potassium has so inordinate a desire for oxygen, that the moment it touches, it decomposes the water, abstracts all the oxygen, and sets free the hydrogen or inflammable gas. The potassium, when combined with the oxygen, forms that corrosive substance known as caustic potash, and the heat disengaged during this process, ignites the hydrogen. Here the mystery ends; and the contradictions are solved;—Oxygen and hydrogen when combined, become water; when separated the hydrogen gas burns with a pale lambent flame. Many of Nature’s most delicate deceptions are accounted for by a knowledge of these laws.

Your analytical chemist sadly annihilates, with his scientific machinations, all poetry. He bottles up at pleasure the Nine Muses, and proves them—as the fisherman in the Arabian Nights did the Afrite—to be all smoke. Even the Will o’ the Wisp cannot flit across its own morass without being pursued, overtaken, and burnt out by this scientific detective policeman. He claps an extinguisher upon Jack o’ Lanthorn thus:—He says that a certain combination of phosphorus and hydrogen, which rises from watery marshes, produces a gas called phosphuretted hydrogen, which ignites spontaneously the moment it bubbles up to the surface of the water and meets with atmospheric air. Here again, the Ithuriel wand of science dispels all delusion, pointing out to us, that in such places animal and vegetable substances are undergoing constant decomposition; and as phosphorus exists under a variety of forms in these bodies, as phosphate of lime, phosphate of soda, phosphate of magnesia, &c., and as furthermore the decomposition of water itself is the initiatory process in these changes, so we find that phosphorus and hydrogen are supplied from these sources; and we may therefore easily conceive the consequent formation of phosphuretted hydrogen. This gas rises in a thin stream from its watery bed, and the moment it comes in contact with the oxygen of the atmosphere, it bursts into a flame so buoyant, that it flickers with every breath of air, and realises the description of Goëthe’s Mephistopheles, that the course of Jack-o’-lantern is generally “zig-zag.”

Who would suppose that absolute darkness may be derived from two rays of light! Yet such is the fact. If two rays proceed from two luminous points very close to each other, and are so directed as to cross at a given point on a sheet of white paper in a dark room, their united light will be twice as bright as either ray singly would produce. But if the difference in the distance of the two points be diminished only one half, the one light will extinguish the other, and produce absolute darkness. The same curious result may be produced by viewing the flame of a candle through two very fine slits near to each other in a card. So, likewise, strange as it may appear, if two musical strings be so made to vibrate, in a certain succession of degrees, as for the one to gain half a vibration on the other, the two resulting sounds will antagonise each other and produce an interval of perfect silence. How are these mysteries to be explained? The Delphic Oracle of science must again be consulted, and among the high priests who officiate at the shrine, no one possesses more recondite knowledge, or can recal it more instructively, than Sir David Brewster. “The explanation which philosophers have given,” he observes, “of these remarkable phenomena, is very satisfactory, and may easily be understood. When a wave is made on the surface of a still pool of water by plunging a stone into it, the wave advances along the surface, while the water itself is never carried forward, but merely rises into a height and falls into a hollow, each portion of the surface experiencing an elevation and a depression in its turn. If we suppose two waves equal and similar, to be produced by two separate stones, and if they reach the same spot at the same time, that is, if the two elevations should exactly coincide, they would unite their effects, and produce a wave twice the size of either; but if the one wave should be put so far before the other, that the hollow of the one coincided with the elevation of the other, and the elevation of the one with the hollow of the other, the two waves would obliterate or destroy one another; the elevation as it were of the one filling up half the hollow of the other, and the hollow of the one taking away half the elevation of the other, so as to reduce the surface to a level. These effects may be exhibited by throwing two equal stones into a pool of water; and also may be observed in the Port of Batsha, where the two waves arriving by channels of different lengths actually obliterate each other. Now, as light is supposed to be produced by waves or undulations of an ethereal medium filling all nature, and occupying the pores of the transparent bodies; and as sound is produced by undulations or waves in the air: so the successive production of light and darkness by two bright lights, and the production of sound and silence by two loud sounds, may be explained in the very same manner as we have explained the increase and obliteration of waves formed on the surface of water.”

The apparent contradictions in chemistry are, indeed, best exhibited in the lecture-room, where they may be rendered visible and tangible, and brought home to the general comprehension. The Professor of Analytical Chemistry, J. H. Pepper, who demonstrates these things in the Royal Polytechnic Institution, is an expert manipulator in such mysteries; and, taking a leaf out of his own magic-book, we shall conjure him up before us, standing behind his own laboratory, surrounded with all the implements of his art. At our recent visit to this exhibition we witnessed him perform, with much address, the following experiments:—He placed before us a pair of tall glass vessels, each filled, apparently, with water;—he then took two hen’s eggs, one of these he dropped into one of the glass vessels, and, as might have been expected, it immediately sank to the bottom. He then took the other egg, and dropped it into the other vessel of water, but, instead of sinking as the other had done, it descended only half way, and there remained suspended in the midst of the transparent fluid. This, indeed, looked like magic—one of Houdin’s sleight-of-hand performances—for what could interrupt its progress? The water surrounding it appeared as pure below as around and above the egg, yet there it still hung like Mahomet’s coffin, between heaven and earth, contrary to all the well established laws of gravity. The problem, however, was easily solved. Our modern Cagliostro had dissolved in one half of the water in this vessel as much common salt as it would take up, whereby the density of the fluid was so much augmented that it opposed a resistance to the descent of the egg after it had passed through the unadulterated water, which he had carefully poured upon the briny solution, the transparency of which, remaining unimpaired, did not for a moment suggest the suspicion of any such impregnation. The good housewife, upon the same principle, uses an egg to test the strength of her brine for pickling.

Every one has heard of the power which bleaching gas (chlorine) possesses in taking away colour, so that a red rose held over its fumes will become white. The lecturer, referring to this fact, exhibited two pieces of paper; upon one was inscribed, in large letters, the word “Proteus;” upon the other no writing was visible; although he assured us the same word was there inscribed. He now dipped both pieces of paper in a solution of bleaching-powder, when the word “Proteus” disappeared from the paper upon which it was before visible; whilst the same word instantly came out, sharp and distinct, upon the paper which was previously a blank. Here there appeared another contradiction: the chlorine in the one case obliterating, and in the other reviving the written word; and how was this mystery explained? Easily enough! Our ingenious philosopher, it seems, had used indigo in penning the one word which had disappeared; and had inscribed the other with a solution of a chemical substance, iodide of potassium and starch; and the action which took place was simply this: the chlorine of the bleaching solution set free the iodine from the potassium, which immediately combined with the starch, and gave colour to the letters which were before invisible. Again—a sheet of white paper was exhibited, which displayed a broad and brilliant stripe of scarlet—(produced by a compound called the bin-iodide of mercury)—when exposed to a slight heat the colour changed immediately to a bright yellow, and, when this yellow stripe was crushed by smartly rubbing the paper, the scarlet colour was restored, with all its former brilliancy. This change of colour was effected entirely by the alteration which the heat, in the one case, and the friction, in the other, produced in the particles which reflected these different colours;—and, upon the same principle, we may understand the change of the colour in the lobster-shell, which burns from black to red in boiling; because the action of the heat produces a new arrangement in the particles which compose the shell.

With the assistance of water and fire, which have befriended the magicians of every age, contradictions of a more marvellous character may be exhibited, and even the secret art revealed of handling red hot metals, and passing through the fiery ordeal. If we take a platinum ladle, and hold it over a furnace until it becomes of a bright red heat, and then project cold water into its bowl, we shall find that the water will remain quiescent and give no sign of ebullition—not so much as a single “fizz;” but, the moment the ladle begins to cool, it will boil up and quickly evaporate. So also, if a mass of metal, heated to whiteness, be plunged in a vessel of cold water, the surrounding fluid will remain tranquil so long as the glowing white heat continues; but, the moment the temperature falls, the water will boil briskly. Again—if water be poured upon an iron sieve, the wires of which are made red hot, it will not run through; but, on the sieve cooling, it will run through rapidly. These contradictory effects are easily accounted for. The repelling power of intense heat keeps the water from immediate contact with the heated metal, and the particles of the water, collectively, retain their globular form; but, when the vessel cools, the repulsive power diminishes, and the water coming into closer contact with the heated surface its particles can no longer retain their globular form, and eventually expand into a state of vapour. This globular condition of the particles of water will account for many very important phenomena; perhaps it is best exhibited in the dew-drop, and so long as these globules retain their form, water will retain its fluid properties. An agglomeration of these globules will carry with them, under certain circumstances, so much force that it is hardly a contradiction to call water itself a solid. The water-hammer, as it is termed, illustrates this apparent contradiction. If we introduce a certain quantity of water into a long glass tube, when it is shaken, we shall hear the ordinary splashing noise as in a bottle; but, if we exhaust the air, and again shake the tube, we shall hear a loud ringing sound, as if the bottom of the tube were struck by some hard substance—like metal or wood—which may fearfully remind us of the blows which a ship’s side will receive from the waves during a storm at sea, which will often carry away her bulwarks.

It is now time to turn to something stronger than water for more instances of chemical contradictions. The chemical action of certain poisons (the most powerful of all agents,) upon the human frame, has plunged the faculty into a maze of paradoxes; indeed there is actually a system of medicine, advancing in reputation, which is founded on the principle of contraries. The famous Doctor Hahnemann, who was born at Massieu in Saxony, was the founder of it, and, strange to say, medical men, who are notorious for entertaining contrary opinions, have not yet agreed among themselves whether he was a very great quack or a very great philosopher. Be this as it may, the founder of this system, which is called Homœopathy, when translating an article upon bark in Dr. Cullen’s Materia Medica, took some of this medicine, which had for many years been justly celebrated for the cure of ague. He had not long taken it, when he found himself attacked with agueish symptoms, and a light now dawned upon his mind, and led him to the inference that medicines which give rise to the symptoms of a disease, are those which will specifically cure it, and however curious it may appear, several illustrations in confirmation of this principle were speedily found. If a limb be frost-bitten, we are directed to rub it with snow; if the constitution of a man be impaired by the abuse of spirituous liquors, and he be reduced to that miserable state of enervation when the limbs tremble and totter, and the mind itself sinks into a state of low muttering delirium, the physician to cure him must go again to the bottle and administer stimulants and opiates.

It was an old Hippocratic aphorism that two diseases cannot co-exist in the same body; wherefore, gout has actually been cured by the afflicted person going into a fenny country and catching the ague. The fatality of consumption is also said to be retarded by a common catarrh; and upon this very principle depends the truth of the old saying, that ricketty doors hang long on rusty hinges. In other words, the strength of the constitution being impaired by one disease has less power to support the morbid action of another.

We thus live in a world of apparent contradictions; they abound in every department of science, and beset us even in the sanctuary of domestic life. The progress of discovery has reconciled and explained the nature of some of them; but many baffle our ingenuity, and still remain involved in mystery. This much, however, is certain, that the most opposed and conflicting elements so combine together as to produce results, which are strictly in unison with the order and harmony of the universe.

AN IRISH PECULIARITY.

The characteristics attributed by one nation to another are never patented without some foundation in truth; but, in time, by means of successive overlays of jest, constant repetition, and the heaping up of one exaggeration upon another, national portraiture flashes forth into glaring caricature. If we were to believe old plays and old novels, we should suppose that, only a half century since, every Englishman fed exclusively on roast beef and plum-pudding—rattled his guineas in ample pockets, tightened by the portly protuberance of his figure, and rapped out oaths against “frog-eating Mounseers” with the same energy with which, after dinner, he imbibed crusted port to the health and prosperity of Church and State. On Sunday morning we view him, through the same medium, standing upright in his red-cushioned pew, pronouncing the responses with the ore rotundo of Sir Roger de Coverley, and, like that worthy baronet, looking daggers at little boys whom he catches napping.

The Scotchman of the same authorities was invariably a long, lean, raw-boned, hungry, grey-eyed Sawney, with high cheek-bones, reddish hair, and a diffused aroma of brimstone pervading his threadbare garments. Pertaining to him also, by inalienable birth-right, was an insatiable appetite for oaten-cakes, haggis, and singed sheep’s head; of which viands the supply usually fell very far short of the demand. No matter what his rank in life might be, he was forced, as a necessary condition of his existence, to talk “braid scots,” and to look sharply after the “siller.” Somehow, he regularly found his way to London, where a lucrative place, and a rich wife, to whom he continually proclaimed the glories of the “Land o’ Cakes,” gratified and rewarded his cautious persevering endeavours to replenish his “pouch and sporran;” for all Scotchmen were Highlanders, and were supposed only to have abandoned their kilts in deference to decency and English prejudice while in the act of crossing the border.

The Irishman of novel, tale, or comedy, was a Phelim or a Patrick, always either immersed in love or drink and often the victim of both these exciting predicaments:—telling humorous lies, making unheard-of blunders, winning money by his tricking cleverness, and losing it by his unaccountable folly; leading a good-humoured, reckless, rollicking life, breaking the hearts and emptying the purses of maid, wife, and widow; and carrying off every shade of embarrassment with the cut-and-dry exclamation, “By the powers!”—“Arrah, honey!”—or, “Och, my jewel!”

All this served very well to amuse the juvenile minds of our grand parents, but in these days when the wandering jewish propensity to travel over the face of the earth, has attained its full development, we find it to be a well-ascertained fact that there are Englishmen who affect fricassees more than roast beef, drink French wines, and dress in the French fashion; that Scotchmen may be found, even in Scotland, who have neither caution in their heads, avarice in their hearts, nor kilts round their bodies. Facility of intercourse has done this. The ancient prophecy is being daily fulfilled:—“Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Railways have rounded off the sharp angles of national dislikes, by promoting social attrition. The locomotive engine is the steam-plough which tears up local prejudices by the roots.

Thus the Rose and the Thistle are vindicated, but the tiny shamrock still droops its green leaf in the atmosphere of public estimation. In judging of Irish character, a very useful distinction drawn in the days of good Queen Bess is overlooked. It divided the nation into “the Irish, the wild Irish, and the extreme wild Irish.” In justice, these distinctions ought to be preserved; for the “Irish” of the present day are, upon the whole, pretty much like other well-bred, well-educated members of the civilised world; eating, drinking, sleeping, dressing, and living much as their neighbours do. But it must be owned that the lower orders,—the “wild Irish” of the towns, and the “extreme wild Irish” of the bogs and mountains,—present some striking and picturesque peculiarities to justify the conventional Irishman of the old novel: the most prominent being that mingled love of fun and fighting, which would make one believe that the atmosphere of the four fair provinces is compounded in equal portions of inflammable and laughing gas.

Very deplorable, indeed, must be the state of an Irishman—he must “be gone to the bad entirely,” when he can neither smile nor quarrel; and often even “under the ribs of death” is “an appetite created” for these excitements. He loves fun; but fighting is his pride and his glory. For fighting he forswears name and wealth. You may call him by all the uncomplimentary names in the vocabulary of censure, and he hears you meekly; but cast an imputation on his courage or his prowess, and—“Hah! Whoo!”—you will feel his shillelagh whizzing around your ears like a fire-work in a state of explosion.

An illustration of this peculiarity, of the ease with which a “wild Irishman” will forego every prudent consideration in preference to the disgrace of having been beaten in battle occurred, but a short while since. In a Union workhouse in the south, some of the able-bodied paupers came into rather forcible collision with the officials. The cause of dispute was the supply of “stirabout,” which being deemed insufficient by a few stout fellows, they marched into the kitchen, seized ladles and bowls, and proceeded to help themselves. An alarm of this lawless incursion being given, in rushed to the rescue the master and his myrmidons. Fast and furious were the blows dealt by both parties, but the strong hand of the law at length prevailed, the well-fed officers triumphed over their famine-weakened foes, and the stalwart master counted his victory by the number of broken heads prostrated by the huge ladle which he wielded. The proprietors of the damaged craniums were subsequently conveyed to the surgeon’s room, and severally bandaged and plastered as their cases required. Most of the hurts were found to be trifling, but one poor fellow had received a severe contusion. With the dislike which many of his countrymen feel, to submit to the prescription of qualified practitioners, Tim Murphy, in a day or two, asked for his discharge, threw off the well-fixed bandages, and betook himself to the squalid shelter of a cabin belonging to an “uncle’s son,” nearly as poor as himself, an unqualified “docther,” whose unprofessional practice it was to prescribe charms and philtres in place of physic. This reckless proceeding was followed by its natural result. The hurt which, with common care, would have readily healed, became inflamed, fever ensued, and the man died. This melancholy finale to the workhouse row caused much excitement, and an investigation of the whole business was instituted by the magistrates. On the day when it took place, the hall of the workhouse was crowded, and although it was shown that the master was justified in using force to protect the kitchen stores from the paupers, and it was also proved that under proper surgical treatment the patient would, in all human probability, have recovered, yet the point to be decided was, whether John Minahan, the master, had used unnecessary violence in the discharge of his duty. The principal witness against him, was a man who appeared with evident “tokens of a foughten field” on his forehead, and who indeed had been the only recipient, besides Tim Murphy, of any serious injury. The examination proceeded nearly as follows:—

After having deposed readily and clearly to the fact of the combat, and of John Minahan having rushed to the rescue of the porridge-pots, he was asked:

“Did you see the master strike any one in particular?”

“Not he, indeed; he was no ways particular; but he murdhered and killed every one that came in his way.”

“Did he strike you?”

“Did he strike me, is it? Why, then, if he did, I paid it back to him handsomely.”

“Answer distinctly. Whom did you see him strike?”

“Ah, then, little matter ’twould be who he’d strike, if the boys had his feeding, and he had theirs to depend on for one month. It’s little good the son of ould Thady Minahan, the tinker, would do, if he was living on Ingy male and water.”

“Come, come,” said the magistrate, impatiently, “give me a plain answer to a plain question. Did Minahan knock you down?”

“Is it the likes of him to knock me down? I’d like to see him try it. He didn’t, nor couldn’t, your Honour’s glory.”

Up started the accused, and cried; “I did knock you down, and bate you well, too. Your Honours,” he continued, turning to the bench, “if I’m to swing for it the next minute, I won’t let that go with the vagabone. I wouldn’t lave it to him to say that I didn’t knock him down, and murder him handsomely to his heart’s content.”

The witness had been summoned to prove that the master had used unnecessary violence; the defendant was there to prove he had not employed more force than the occasion demanded. But would they establish such proofs at the expense of their respective reputations? Should it be said that Tim Murphy’s friend, or John Minahan, were not able to “murther ach other intirely,” at any given minute’s notice? Never! Tim Murphy’s friend would starve on “Ingy male,” and John Minahan would lose his place first.

What became of the witness has not been stated; but the defendant did lose his situation; the guardians of the Union thought that his national ideas of honour were undoubtedly more suited to military than to civil avocations.

Although it is doubtful whether the Irish peculiarity will ever be totally eradicated from the national character, yet the savage custom of faction-fighting is becoming each year more rare. Sometimes, indeed, at the close of a fair a “bit of a fight” does spring up; but the casualties thence resulting, are seldom of a grave or fatal character; and the contending parties may frequently be seen proceeding homewards, with arms lovingly linked together, and tongues vowing eternal friendship; although this, it must be confessed, is an indication of a renewal rather than of the end of an Irish fight.

No doubt the process of fusing the national peculiarities of the three kingdoms is advancing rapidly. It is no wild speculation to anticipate the probability, that fifty years hence there may be little apparent difference between an average native of England, Ireland, (always excepting the “extreme wild Irishman”) or Scotland.

WHERE DWELL THE DEAD?

Where do they dwell? ‘Neath grassy mounts, by daisies,

Lilies, and yellow-cups of fairest gold;

Near grey-grown walls, where in wild, tortuous mazes,

Old clustering ivy wreathes in many a fold:
Where in red summer noons
Fresh leaves are rustling,
Where ’neath large autumn moons
Young birds are nestling—
Do they dwell there?

Where do they dwell? In sullen waters, lying

On beds of purple sea-flowers newly sprung;

Where the mad whirlpool’s wild and ceaseless sighing,

Frets sloping banks, by dark green reeds o’erhung:

Where, by the torrent’s swell,
Crystal stones glitter,
While sounds the heavy bell
Over the river—
Do they dwell there?

No: for in these they slumber to decay,

And their remembrance with their life departs;

They have a home,—nor dark, nor far away—

Their proper home.—within our faithful hearts;

There happy spirits wed,
Loving for ever;
There dwell with us, the dead,
Parting—ah, never—
There do they dwell!

FATE DAYS.

It is a difficult puzzle to reconcile the existence of certain superstitions that continue to have wide influence with the enlightenment of the nineteenth century. When we have read glowing paragraphs about the wonderful progress accomplished by the present generation; when we have regarded the giant machinery in operation for the culture of the people—moved, in great part, by the collective power of individual charity; when we have examined the stupendous results of human genius and ingenuity which are now laid bare to the lowliest in the realm; we turn back, it must be confessed, with a mournful despondency, to mark the debasing influence of the old superstitions which have survived to the present time.

The superstitions of the ancients formed part of their religion. They consulted oracles as now men pray. The stars were the arbiters of their fortunes. Natural phenomena, as lightning and hurricanes, were, to them, awful expressions of the anger of their particular deities. They had their dies atri and their dies albi; the former were marked down in their calendars with a black character, to denote ill-luck, and the latter were painted in white characters to signify bright and propitious days. They followed the finger-posts of their teachers. Faith gave dignity to the tenets of the star-gazer and fire-worshipper.

The priests of old taught their disciples to regard six particular days in the year as days fraught with unusual danger to mankind. Men were enjoined not to let blood on these black days, nor to imbibe any liquid. It was devoutly believed that he who ate goose on one of these black days would surely die within forty more; and that any little stranger who made his appearance on one of the dies atri would surely die a sinful and violent death. Men were further enjoined to let blood from the right arm on the seventh or fourteenth of March; from the left arm on the eleventh of April; and from either arm on the third or sixth of May, that they might avoid pestilential diseases. These barbaric observances, when brought before people in illustrations of the mental darkness of the ancients, are considered at once to be proof positive of their abject condition. We thereupon congratulated ourselves upon living in the nineteenth century; when such foolish superstitions are laughed at; and perhaps our vanity is not a little flattered by the contrast which presents itself, between our own highly cultivated condition, and the wretched state of our ancestors.

Yet Mrs. Flimmins will not undertake a sea-voyage on a Friday; nor would she on any account allow her daughter Mary to be married on that day of the week. She has great pity for the poor Red Indians who will not do certain things while the moon presents a certain appearance, and who attach all kinds of powers to poor dumb brutes: yet if her cat purrs more than usual, she accepts the warning, and abandons the trip she had promised herself on the morrow.

Miss Nippers subscribes largely to the fund for eradicating superstitions from the minds of the wretched inhabitants of Kamschatka; and while she is calculating the advantages to be derived from a mission to the South Sea Islands, to do away with the fearful superstitious reverence in which those poor dear islanders hold the native flea: a coal pops from her fire, and she at once augurs from its shape, an abundance of money that will enable her to set her pious undertaking in operation; but on no account will she commence collecting subscriptions for the anti-drinking-slave-grown-sugar-in-tea society, because she has always remarked that Monday is her unlucky day. On a Monday her poodle died, and on a Monday she caught that severe cold at Brighton, from the effects of which she is afraid she will never recover.

Mrs. Carmine is a very strong-minded woman. Her unlucky day is Wednesday. On a Wednesday she first caught that flush which she has never been able to chase from her cheeks, and on one of these fatal days her Maria took the scarlet fever. Therefore, she will not go to a pic-nic on a Wednesday, because she feels convinced that the day will turn out wet, or that the wheel will come off the carriage. Yet the other morning, when a gipsy was caught telling her eldest daughter her fortune, Mrs. Carmine very properly reproached the first-born for her weakness, in giving any heed to the silly mumblings of the old woman. Mrs. Carmine is considered to be a woman of uncommon acuteness. She attaches no importance whatever to the star under which a child is born,—does not think there is a pin to choose between Jupiter and Neptune; and she has a positive contempt for ghosts; but she believes in nothing that is begun, continued, or ended on a Wednesday.

Miss Crumple, on the contrary, has seen many ghosts,—in fact, is by this time quite intimate with one or two of the mysterious brotherhood; but at the same time she is at a loss to understand how any woman in her senses, can believe Thursday to be a more fortunate day than Wednesday, or why Monday is to be black-balled from the Mrs. Jones’s calendar. She can state, on her oath, that the ghost of her old schoolfellow, Eliza Artichoke, appeared at her bedside on a certain night and she distinctly saw the mole on its left cheek, which poor Eliza, during her brief career, had vainly endeavoured to eradicate, with all sorts of poisonous things. The ghost, moreover, lisped,—so did Eliza! This was all clear enough to Miss Crumple, and she considered it a personal insult for anybody to suggest that her vivid apparitions existed only in her own over-wrought imagination. She had an affection for her ghostly visitors, and would not hear a word to their disparagement.

The unearthly warnings which Mrs. Piptoss had received had well-nigh spoilt all her furniture. When a relative dies, the fact is not announced to her in the commonplace form of a letter,—no, an invisible sledgehammer falls upon her Broadwood, an invisible power upsets her loo-table, all the doors of her house unanimously blow open, or a coffin flies out of the fire into her lap.

Mrs. Grumple, who is a very economical housewife, looks forward to the day when the moon re-appears,—on which occasion she turns her money, taking care not to look at the pale lady through glass. This observance, she devoutly believes, will bring her good fortune. When Miss Caroline has a knot in her lace, she looks for a present; and when Miss Amelia snuffs the candle out, it is her faith that the act defers her marriage for a twelvemonth. Any young lady who dreams the same dream two consecutive Fridays, will tell you that her visions will “come true.”

Yet these are exactly the ladies, who most deplore the “gross state of superstition” in which many “benighted savages” live, and willingly subscribe their money for its eradication. The superstition so generally connected with Friday, may easily be traced to its source. It undoubtedly and confessedly has its origin in scriptural history: it is the day on which the Saviour suffered. The superstition is the more revolting from this circumstance; and it is painful to find that it exists among persons of education. There is no branch of the public service, for instance, in which so much sound mathematical knowledge is to be found, as in the Navy. Yet who are more superstitious than sailors, from the admiral down to the cabin boy? Friday fatality is still strong among them. Some years ago, in order to lessen this folly, it was determined that a ship should be laid down on a Friday, and launched on a Friday; that she should be called “Friday,” and that she should commence her first voyage on a Friday. After much difficulty a captain was found who owned to the name of Friday; and after a great deal more difficulty men were obtained, so little superstitious, as to form a crew. Unhappily, this experiment had the effect of confirming the superstition it was meant to abolish. The “Friday” was lost—was never, in fact, heard of from the day she set sail.

Day-fatality, as Miss Nippers interprets it is simply the expression of an undisciplined and extremely weak mind; for, if any person will stoop to reason with her on her aversion to Mondays, he may ask her whether the death of the poodle, or the catching of her cold, are the two greatest calamities of her life; and, if so, whether it is her opinion that Monday is set apart, in the scheme of Nature, so far as it concerns her, in a black character. Whether for her insignificant self there is a special day accursed! Mrs. Carmine is such a strong-minded woman, that we approach her with no small degree; of trepidation. Wednesday is her dies ater, because, in the first place, on a Wednesday she imprudently exposed herself, and is suffering from the consequences; and, in the second place, on a Wednesday her Maria took the scarlet fever. So she has marked Wednesday down in her calendar with a black character; yet her contempt for stars and ghosts is prodigious. Now there is a consideration to be extended to the friends of ghosts, which Day-fatalists cannot claim. Whether or not deceased friends take a more airy and flimsy form, and adopt the invariable costume of a sheet to visit the objects of their earthly affections, is a question which the shrewdest thinkers and the profoundest logicians have debated very keenly, but without ever arriving at any satisfactory conclusion.

The strongest argument against the positive existence of ghosts, is, that they appear only to people of a certain temperament, and under certain exciting circumstances. The obtuse, matter-of-fact man, never sees a ghost; and we may take it as a natural law, that none of these airy visitants ever appeared to an attorney. But the attorney, Mr. Fee Simple, we are assured, holds Saturday to be an unlucky day. It was on a Saturday that his extortionate bill in poor Mr. G.’s case, was cut down by the taxing master; and it was on a Saturday that a certain heavy bill was duly honoured, upon which he had hoped to reap a large sum in the shape of costs. Therefore Mr. Fee Simple believes that the destinies have put a black mark against Saturday, so far as he is concerned.

The Jew who thought that the thunder-storm was the consequence of his having eaten a slice of bacon, did not present a more ludicrous picture, than Mr. Fee Simple presents with his condemned Saturday.

We have an esteem for ghost-inspectors, which it is utterly impossible to extend to Day-fatalists. Mrs. Piptoss, too, may be pitied; but Mog, turning her money when the moon makes her re-appearance, is an object of ridicule. We shall neither be astonished, nor express condolence, if the present, which Miss Caroline anticipates from the knot in her lace, be not forthcoming; and as for Miss Amelia, who has extinguished the candle, and to the best of her belief lost her husband for a twelvemonth, we can only wish for her, that when she is married, her lord and master will shake her faith in the prophetic power of snuffers. But of all the superstitions that have survived to the present time, and are to be found in force among people of education and a thoughtful habit, Day-fatalism is the most general, as it is the most unfounded and preposterous. It is a superstition, however, in which many great and powerful thinkers have shared, and by which they have been guided; it owes much of its present influence to this fact; but reason, Christianity, and all we have comprehended of the great scheme of which we form part, alike tend to demonstrate its absurdity, and utter want of all foundation.

A LETTER ABOUT SMALL BEGINNINGS.

Sir,—Fortunate mistakes are by no means uncommon. In your number seventeen you fall into an error in reference to the Westminster Ragged Dormitory; in the correction of which I have the good fortune to be able to give you some interesting information. You stated that the particular institution there alluded to was founded by Mr. Walker, the city missionary—that was the error. The credit is due, and should have been given to Mr. C. Nash, who was formerly a schoolmaster, employed by Mr. Walker to teach a ragged school which that gentleman had established before “Ragged Schools” had received their appropriate designation and wide popularity.

The tact, management, and energy displayed by Mr. Nash in forming and establishing the St. Ann Street dormitory deserve every praise; but the ground was in some measure prepared for him by his former principal. The manner in which this was done shows “the power of small beginnings,” even in a stronger light than was exhibited in your article with that title.[3]

3. At page 407.

In the year 1840 it became my duty to enquire into the condition of what are but too literally the outcasts of society; and for that purpose obtained introductions to several city missionaries—adequate description of the scenes of harrowing want, disease, and crime into which those gentlemen introduced me, it would be impossible to pen. They alone seemed able to penetrate the dark moral atmosphere. They were always welcomed even by the poorest and the worst.

As one specimen of the efforts made by the Westminster missionaries, I was introduced to a dilapidated shed in New Pye Street. Here I found several young children of both sexes, in rags, and some nearly naked. The scene was most grotesque; the clotted hair, the mud-covered hands and faces, and the haggard countenances, at once told a tale which would have pierced the coldest heart. They were being taught reading and needlework. They were not particularly orderly and some showed a quaint, pantomimic, half-witted disposition to be funny, which pained rather than amused the spectator. Most of them were the sons and daughters of thieves. The small beginning which gave rise to the general idea of Ragged Dormitories took rise in an event for which I can vouch.

The missionary who had formed this school was standing one day, in 1846, at its door, when two adult thieves appealed to him in behalf of a wretched boy who had, they said, been cruelly maltreated and kicked out of doors by his mother, because his day’s prowl for the purpose of thieving had been unsuccessful. “Why do you not take pity on him yourselves?”—asked the missionary. “Why!”—one of them answered,—“why, if you knew what a thief’s life is as well as we do; you would not train a dog to thieving.” It must have been, thought the missionary, a desperate case which could have so forcibly excited the sympathies of two hardened depredators; and he determined to see into it. He soon found the boy; and his condition was too debased for any description which would not excite loathing. Having made the lad decent, he took him to the model lodging-house in Great Peter Street, benevolently commenced and mainly supported by Lord Kinnaird. The boy was kept there for four months; supported three out of the four solely out of the missionary’s slender private funds.

This circumstance forced on his attention the necessity of providing shelter for such juvenile outcasts, and he drew up an appeal to certain benevolent persons to that effect. The secretary of the Ragged School Union immediately promised that if the missionary would find house room, he would find funds. A house was taken in Old Pye Street, which was soon afterwards opened as the Westminster Juvenile Refuge and School of Industry. This establishment was afterwards removed to Duck Lane, where it now flourishes, under a roof which formerly covered a Thieves’ public-house. The transformation is thus described by the gentleman who made it, in a pamphlet now before me:—

“Indulge me for a moment,” he says, “with a glance at the old public-house, (now The Refuge!) Let us look in at the upper room—(now the girls’ school). Here were fifty youths met around their master (as able a one in his calling as England could produce), listening with undivided attention to his instructions on the ‘map,’—(a pair of trowsers suspended from the ceiling)—on the subject of ‘fob-ology,’ or pocket-picking. After this course of tuition, the next was the mock trial—an imitation of the Old Bailey Court, with a fac-simile of its functionaries and ordeal, done with very great taste, and calculated to make the young rascal not only expert in extracting from the fob or pocket, but clever in defence. To train the young novice in his first essay, he was supplied with a glass, below in the tap—(now the dining-room of the children). If successful, then he returned for the purpose of reporting his success, and having a game at skittles in the skittle ground—(now the boys’ school-room.)”

A concise calculation of the respective expenses entailed on the country, in the same house, under its former and present destiny, may here be made. When it was a finishing-school for thieves, each, on conviction and transportation, cost the community not less than one hundred and fifty pounds. Comparing fifty thieves in the upper room with the fifty pupils now in the lower room, we find that, for the first fifty the cost was five thousand five hundred pounds; for the present fifty, two hundred and fifty pounds. Had the five thousand five hundred pounds been used for the preventing instead of the punishing of crime, what would not have been accomplished for these neglected mortals? It would have educated eleven hundred youths, many of whom would not only have been rescued from vice and crime, but have become a blessing instead of a curse to society.

What I have described, then, is the true origin of the class of institutions to which that founded by Mr. Nash belongs.

The Duck Lane Ragged School and Dormitory averages at present a daily attendance of two hundred and twenty children of both sexes, forty have no fathers, twenty eight have no mothers, eighteen are orphans, six of the fathers have been transported. Provision is made for ten who are totally destitute; they are fed and lodged on the premises; twenty-four thieves and vagrants have been admitted during the year, and many more refused for want of support; eleven have emigrated, three have been provided with situations in this country; some of those have spent three, five, seven, and ten years in a course of crime; who have gone forth from this Institution after a moral and an industrial training, and are now doing well.

Three of the emigrants have given an account of themselves in the following joint epistle to Mr. Walker, their benefactor. It is so characteristic that we print it almost literally:—

“B——, July 18th 1850.

“Mr. Walker,

“Dear Sir,—You may wonder how it is that you have not heard from us before, but as they that came from Mr. Nash, was going to write, they promised Mr. Cain that they would acquaint you of our safe arrival. We left Gravesend on the Sunday morning, and sailed out for the great depths of the Atlantic, which gave us some great shakes before we got to our journey’s end. The vessel proved to be in but a sorry condition for passengers, there being hardly any dry berths on board, and ours the worst of the whole lot, Mr. Cain and Churn got another berth aft, and Fred and me had to take to the sails room aft where we stopt during the remainder of the voyage. We had four deaths on board, two babies, one old lady, and one of the poor sailors who fell from the fore top across the windlass, which killed him instantly. We made the passage in about five weeks and five days, as we arrived at New York on the 17th of May. We found it to be a place quite different to our likeing, and so we left it and proceeded up the country without anything in our pockets, for we were determined not to be discouraged, though in a strange land, for we knew that we had the same eye watching over us here as we had in England so we pushed on, on board of a canal boat that was going to Buffalo, but stopping about 2½ Miles from the Town of B—— on account of a breakage in the canal, we took the opportunity to look round the Town for work and was fortunate enough to fall into work, the three of us. Fred is learning the harness making, as he did not much care about learning the shoemaking over again, as me and Churn has to do, for the work here is as different to what we had been accustomed to as light from darkness. I do scarcely anything but upper leathers, with now and then a pair or two of Boy’s Boots which I make here in about three hours, being all pegged work, as for closing you must not take a day to close one pair, but must do 16 or 18 pair a day, and 6 or 8 pair of what you call Wellingtons. So you will see by this that it is no use coming over unless you mean to work in downright ernest, for they think of nothing but of making money, up at ½ past 4 four in the morning, begin work at five and keep on till seven in the evening, and no time allowed for your meals but eat away as fast as you like and then back again to work, our breakfast here beats all the dinners in England, for theres roast and boil meats, pies, puddings, cakes, salids, tea, coffee, bread and butter which latter article comes on at all meals. We had grand doings here on the fourth of July, in anniversary of their Independence fireworks, Bonfires, Circus, shows, firemen going round all the City with the engines decorated out with flowers which look very pretty. The President of the united States died at Washington on the tenth of this month of Billious Diarrhoæ, he is to be buried on Friday the 12th. Twenty years ago this Town was nothing but a low swampy mass of Land, with but one house on it, now it is a flourishing place with twenty thousand inhabitants, its rise is owing to a salt spring about 2 miles off where they make vast quantities of salt, indeed it is one of the chief trades here it employs about three thousand hands all the summer, but they do not work at it in the winter, their weekly earnings are from 4 to 5 Dollars that is 1 pound English. It is very hard work I can tell you, in this country were the thermometer is never much less than 100 during the summer, where they have got to stand over large Furnaces, attending to the boiling of the salt. I do not think that I shall rest contended over here longer than a few years, for a man earns not a fraction more here than he does in England, the only difference is, that he works more hours here than he does there and consequently he is glad to get home to rest himself, instead of fooling his money away at the pothouse, and then some of the things are rather cheaper here, and as I told you before they only think of getting money. I shall write and let you know more about it when I have been over some time longer, I shall then I guess know more about the place. You can tell the others if they come over that I should advise them to push up a little higher in the country than stop in New York as it is far better, and tell them that they need not mind having any money for they will not starve over here for we found the people very kind to us here not like they are in England. You must excuse this funny letter, as it is the work of several evenings, and therefore it may read curious, for I have felt rather unsettled as yet being among strangers, but I will write you another shortly, when I feel more at home, and will give you a further description of the place, so you must excuse all faults. Timothy Case left his place in New York, for what reason I do not know further than that he said he only was going there till we came that he might go with us, as he felt sure when I saw New York that I should not stop in it, and that if we would not go with him, he should then have gone by himself. I felt very vexed with him at leaving, and tried to persuade to stop but it was no use, so Fred and me took him under our care and got our boss to take him where he is now learning the harness making. I guess he will get about 20 Dollars a year he being hardly an inch taller than he was at home. When you return an answer direct to me at Mr. Apples Boot and Shoe Store 8 Empire Block B—— Onoydaga County State of New York. They don’t say streets, but call them Blocks, and they guess they don’t think here so I suppose that I shall get a regular Yankee in time. It is tremendous hot here now, and I feel it so when at work very much. Tell Mr. Slade that I will write him a letter soon. I get 2s. 6d. english money a week or 30 Dollars a year of this, board lodging and washing which is pretty fair wages here for boys, learning pegged work, the general pay being 15 or 18 dollars a year, but as we had learned the other work our boss gave us thirty, (boss here is what they call the Master in England) Fred and Churn gets the same wages, as me, you must give all our best loves and wishes to all the School children, and we hope that they will all value their learning, which they will find will be a blessing and comfort to them hereafter. You can tell them that I often think of them when I sit at work and that I almost fancy that I am in the old shop once more hearing their voices as they say their lessons showing how strong fancy leads us back again to old familiar scenes, I hope that God will bless and prosper them all in this life, and that he will take them to his everlasting home is the fervent prayer of John Jones. Give our love to all kind friends at home, for so I am bound to call it, and receive the same yourself with Mrs. W—— and Harriet.

“From yours ever affectionate pupils,

“J. J., J. H. C., and F. J.”

Before reception into the Duck Lane School, all these boys had been thieves. J. J. had lived by plunder for seven years; J. H. C. had been a thief from early childhood; and F. J. from the age of five years.

On the 20th inst. will be published, price 5s. 6d., neatly bound in Cloth,

THE FIRST VOLUME
OF
“HOUSEHOLD WORDS,”
Containing Numbers 1 to 26.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page | Changed from | Changed to
581 | her with a curtesy, and thought how pleased | her with a curtsey, and thought how pleased

- Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

- Renumbered footnotes.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 25, SEPTEMBER 14, 1850 ***

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Table of Contents

- HOUSEHOLD WORDS. A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

- THREE “DETECTIVE” ANECDOTES.

- I.—THE PAIR OF GLOVES.

- II. THE ARTFUL TOUCH.

- III.—THE SOFA.

- “EVIL IS WROUGHT BY WANT OF THOUGHT.”[2]

- CHIPS.

- TORTURE IN THE WAY OF BUSINESS.

- A COTTAGE MEMORY.

- “CAPE” SKETCHES.

- CHEMICAL CONTRADICTIONS.

- AN IRISH PECULIARITY.

- WHERE DWELL THE DEAD?

- FATE DAYS.

- A LETTER ABOUT SMALL BEGINNINGS.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE