Watch--Work--Wait by Sarah A. Myers (my reading book TXT) đ
- Author: Sarah A. Myers
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âCan you lend me a ten-pound note till Christmas?â inquired the hairdresser of the stomach.
âWhereâs your security, Mr. Clip?â
âMy stock in trade,âthereâs enough of it, Iâm thinking, Mr. Thicknesse. Some fifty wigs, two poles, half-a-dozen head blocks, and a dead Bruin.â
âNo, I wonât, then,â growled out Thicknesse. âI lends nothing on the security of the whigs or the Poles either. As for whigs, theyâre cheats; as for the Poles, theyâve got no cash. I never have nothing to do with blockheads, unless I canât awoid it (ironically), and a dead bearâs about as much use to me as I could be to a dead bear.â
âWell, then,â urged the other, âthereâs a book as belonged to Pope, Byronâs Poems, valued at forty pounds, because itâs got Popeâs identical scratch on the back; what do you think of that for security?â
âWell, to be sure!â cried the baker. âBut how dâye mean, Mr. Clip?â
âMean! why, that itâs got the hottergruff of Pope.
âSteal not this book, for fear of hangmanâs rope;
For it belongs to Alexander Pope.â
All thatâs written on the inside of the binding of the book; so, as my son says, weâre bound to believe it.â
âWell, sir,â observed the undertaker, deferentially, and in a half-whisper, leaning over the table, and knocking over the hairdresserâs grog as he spoke, âthat argumentâs very easy upset.â
âPerhaps, sir,â said Clip, a little flurried, âyouâll pay for the first upset afore you thinks of another.â
âNow,â said the undertaker, bowing amicably to the hairdresser, âI think, I says I thinkâyouâll excuse me, Mr. Clip, I think, you see, that wonât go down with the present companyâunfortunately, my master had the honour of making the coffin of that ere Lordâs housemaid, not no more nor twenty year ago. Donât think Iâm proud on it, gentlemen; others might be; but I hate rank of any sort. Iâve no more respect for a Lordâs footman than I have for any respectable tradesman in this room. I may say no more nor I have for Mr. Clip! (bowing). Therefore, that ere Lord must have been born long after Pope died. And itâs a logical interference to defer, that they neither of them lived at the same time. So what I mean is this here, that Pope never had no book, never seed, felt, never smelt no book (triumphantly) as belonged to that ere Lord. And, gentlemen, when I consider how patiently you have âeared the ideas what I have expressed, I feel bound, as the best way to reward you for the kindness you have exhibited, to sit down without saying anything moreâpartickler as I perceive a worthier visitor nor myself is just entered. I am not in the habit of paying compliments, gentlemen; when I do, therefore, I hope I strikes with double force.â
âAh, Mr. Murgatroyd! whatâs all this about striking with double force?â said the object of the above remark, as he entered. âI never excuse a manâs getting into a rage during winter, even when heâs seated so close to the fire as you are. It is very injudicious to put yourself into such a perspiration. What is the cause of this extreme physical and mental excitement, sir?â
Such was the very philosophical address of Mr. Robert Bolton, a shorthand-writer, as he termed himselfâa bit of equivoque passing current among his fraternity, which must give the uninitiated a vast idea of the establishment of the ministerial organ, while to the initiated it signifies that no one paper can lay claim to the enjoyment of their services. Mr. Bolton was a young man, with a somewhat sickly and very dissipated expression of countenance. His habiliments were composed of an exquisite union of gentility, slovenliness, assumption, simplicity, newness, and old age. Half of him was dressed for the winter, the other half for the summer. His hat was of the newest cut, the DâOrsay; his trousers had been white, but the inroads of mud and ink, etc., had given them a pie-bald appearance; round his throat he wore a very high black cravat, of the most tyrannical stiffness; while his tout ensemble was hidden beneath the enormous folds of an old brown poodle-collared great-coat, which was closely buttoned up to the aforesaid cravat. His fingers peeped through the ends of his black kid gloves, and two of the toes of each foot took a similar view of society through the extremities of his high-lows. Sacred to the bare walls of his garret be the mysteries of his interior dress! He was a short, spare man, of a somewhat inferior deportment. Everybody seemed influenced by his entry into the room, and his salutation of each member partook of the patronizing. The hairdresser made way for him between himself and the stomach. A minute afterwards he had taken possession of his pint and pipe. A pause in the conversation took place. Everybody was waiting, anxious for his first observation.
âHorrid murder in Westminster this morning,â observed Mr. Bolton.
Everybody changed their positions. All eyes were fixed upon the man of paragraphs.
âA baker murdered his son by boiling him in a copper,â said Mr. Bolton.
âGood heavens!â exclaimed everybody, in simultaneous horror.
âBoiled him, gentlemen!â added Mr. Bolton, with the most effective emphasis; âboiled him!â
âAnd the particulars, Mr. B.,â inquired the hairdresser, âthe particulars?â
Mr. Bolton took a very long draught of porter, and some two or three dozen whiffs of tobacco, doubtless to instil into the commercial capacities of the company the superiority of a gentlemen connected with the press, and then saidâ
âThe man was a baker, gentlemen.â (Every one looked at the baker present, who stared at Bolton.) âHis victim, being his son, also was necessarily the son of a baker. The wretched murderer had a wife, whom he was frequently in the habit, while in an intoxicated state, of kicking, pummelling, flinging mugs at, knocking down, and half-killing while in bed, by inserting in her mouth a considerable portion of a sheet or blanket.â
The speaker took another draught, everybody looked at everybody else, and exclaimed, âHorrid!â
âIt appears in evidence, gentlemen,â continued Mr. Bolton, âthat, on the evening of yesterday, Sawyer the baker came home in a reprehensible state of beer. Mrs. S., connubially considerate, carried him in that condition up-stairs into his chamber, and consigned him to their mutual couch. In a minute or two she lay sleeping beside the man whom the morrowâs dawn beheld a murderer!â (Entire silence informed the reporter that his picture had attained the awful effect he desired.) âThe son came home about an hour afterwards, opened the door, and went up to bed. Scarcely (gentlemen, conceive his feelings of alarm), scarcely had he taken off his indescribables, when shrieks (to his experienced ear maternal shrieks) scared the silence of surrounding night. He put his indescribables on again, and ran down-stairs. He opened the door of the parental bed-chamber. His father was dancing upon his mother. What must have been his feelings! In the agony of the minute he rushed at his male parent as he was about to plunge a knife into the side of his female. The mother shrieked. The father caught the son (who had wrested the knife from the paternal grasp) up in his arms, carried him down-stairs, shoved him into a copper of boiling water among some linen, closed the lid, and jumped upon the top of it, in which position he was found with a ferocious countenance by the mother, who arrived in the melancholy wash-house just as he had so settled himself.
ââWhereâs my boy?â shrieked the mother.
ââIn that copper, boiling,â coolly replied the benign father.
âStruck by the awful intelligence, the mother rushed from the house, and alarmed the neighbourhood. The police entered a minute afterwards. The father, having bolted the wash-house door, had bolted himself. They dragged the lifeless body of the boiled baker from the cauldron, and, with a promptitude commendable in men of their station, they immediately carried it to the station-house. Subsequently, the baker was apprehended while seated on the top of a lamp-post in Parliament Street, lighting his pipe.â
The whole horrible ideality of the Mysteries of Udolpho, condensed into the pithy effect of a ten-line paragraph, could not possibly have so affected the narratorâs auditory. Silence, the purest and most noble of all kinds of applause, bore ample testimony to the barbarity of the baker, as well as to Boltonâs knack of narration; and it was only broken after some minutes had elapsed by interjectional expressions of the intense indignation of every man present. The baker wondered how a British baker could so disgrace himself and the highly honourable calling to which he belonged; and the others indulged in a variety of wonderments connected with the subject; among which not the least wonderment was that which was awakened by the genius and information of Mr. Robert Bolton, who, after a glowing eulogium on himself, and his unspeakable influence with the daily press, was proceeding, with a most solemn countenance, to hear the pros and cons of the Pope autograph question, when I took up my hat, and left.
FAMILIAR EPISTLE FROM A PARENT TO A CHILDAGED TWO YEARS AND TWO MONTHS
My Child,
To recount with what trouble I have brought you upâwith what an anxious eye I have regarded your progress,âhow late and how often I have sat up at night working for you,âand how many thousand letters I have received from, and written to your various relations and friends, many of whom have been of a querulous and irritable turn,âto dwell on the anxiety and tenderness with which I have (as far as I possessed the power) inspected and chosen your food; rejecting the indigestible and heavy matter which some injudicious but well-meaning old ladies would have had you swallow, and retaining only those light and pleasant articles which I deemed calculated to keep you free from all gross humours, and to render you an agreeable child, and one who might be popular with society in general,âto dilate on the steadiness with which I have prevented your annoying any company by talking politicsâalways assuring you that you would thank me for it yourself some day when you grew older,âto expatiate, in short, upon my own assiduity as a parent, is beside my present purpose, though I cannot but contemplate your fair appearanceâyour robust health, and unimpeded circulation (which I take to be the great secret of your good looks) without the liveliest satisfaction and delight.
It is a trite observation, and one which, young as you are, I have no doubt you have often heard repeated, that we have fallen upon strange times, and live in days of constant shiftings and changes. I had a melancholy instance of this only a week or two since. I was returning from Manchester to London by the Mail Train, when I suddenly fell into another trainâa mixed trainâof reflection, occasioned by the dejected and disconsolate demeanour of the Post-Office Guard. We were stopping at some station where they take in
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