"Did he come back to these parts to reside with any friend or relation?" "Not a bit of him, sir. He came back broken down, and totally altogether a stranger, as it were, without house or home, and as poor as Job in his afflictions. But the parish, you know, were bound to look to that; and he was taken into the poor-house, where he lived comfortable and well for these some months past. But he fell sick, and so died, as you see, sir." "So the parish has buried him." Ob, ay — and little grief has it to get rid of these kind of customers; though, after all, their living is not a great deal either among so many rich folks. An old aunt of mine, Aunt Janet, has had a lodging-snug lodgings— with them for these eight years past. A good billet she has of it, i'faith. I dare say they think her a real evergreen, and not so easily to quit the grip. So, you see, we are let in, so as we have a mind, on a Saturday, to see our folks for a while-blood is thicker than water-that we may ask them how it goes with them; and in that way I got a little acquainted with old Alick, whose last bed has just been made." "Did he use to walk about withoutdoors?" "As well, sir, as a wooden leg would let him. But, for all that, he was a hearty old cock; and, although on the worse side of eighty, he could tell a story and crack a joke with the best of them. Ah, it was a grand thing to hear him telling about his leaving bis friends, and a sweetheart, I dare say, to boot, when he first went abroad as a soldier, and of the bloody battles in the which they had fought the French and the Yankees. It would have made your blood run quicker to hear him tell how they scrambled up Mount Abraham, and how with his own eyes he had seen General Wolfe shot. He had been far and away abroad for many years in his youth, and had seen a great deal of the world." "But had he not a pension for the loss of his leg?" "Od bless you! no, sir-that could not be, if you only heard how the thing happened. When the wars were past, be left the service, and went into employment among the Jamaica negers. He had many a queer story about that too, and about new rum, molasses, and sugar-cane. But at last he had tired of wandering; and when he was about to come home, in stepping along the plank which lay between the quay and the vessel, he missed his footing and fell down into the harbour. A boat was floating below, else he might have never been seen again; but it luckily catched him, and his leg was broken against the side of it. On the way home it mortified, for they had no doctor on board, and they just managed it the best way they could. He was carried to Bristol hospital as soon as they reached England, and then he was told he must either lose his limb or his life. After he got out he fell into bad health, and was a long time in recovering. What little he had saved was soon spent; and, to cut the story short-for you, sir, may be tired, and I am in a hurry-he returned in the vagrant line to our parish, and ended his days as you have just seen." The sexton made his rude bow, and departed in a direct line for the village alehouse, where his presence was perhaps anxiously expected; and our paths separating, I sauntered homewards by the river-side. The sun had sunk in the clouded west, and cold twilight spread its mantle over the cheerless hills. My way lay by the margin of the brawling stream, which, discoloured by recent rains, burried downwards angry and swoln to the sea. At intervals the half leafless branches rustled in the wind, and the snipe raised his desolate cry from the neighbouring swamp. The small birds, sheltering themselves from the evening chill, were silent and unseen, save when flitting momentarily with a low chirp from one tree to another more screened; and the only specimen of the feathered tribe which met my view was a crow, that with heavy wing passed overhead on its journey to the distant woods. heart sank within me; and human life appeared in all the melancholy hues which enrobed the natural world around me. Like the summer leaves, methought, pass away our summer friends; like the turbid stream do our days rush on to join the mighty ocean of eternity. The faces that we loved have vanished like the flowers that decorated the garden of spring; and the hopes that buoyant youth revelled in have been overclouded, as the blue skies of autumn are by the dismal and dreary clouds of the waning year. Since earth, then, is in a constant state My of vicissitude, why do we bind ourselves to it by a thousand cords, as if we were never to pass away from it like a tale that is told? Betwixt the cradle and the grave short is the space, but many are the incidents. Gloom and sunshine, prosperity and adversity, happiness and sorrow, chequer our existence, as night and day divide our years. We look forward to be convinced at length only that we have looked in vain- that our sight has been fastened on illusions: and though change may be gradual, and decay so imperceptible as almost to defy observation, except by contrasting one portion of life with another, yet every year leaves at its conclusion to the reflecting mind a dreary gap, which the future cannot repair; and the few friends that may have been before left to us will be found still fewer in number. The funeral just witnessed had suggested to my mind these melancholy speculations, and was a practical exemplar of their solemn truth. What a picture of human life did it present! The youthful lover parting from his mistress to fight the battles of his country-the participator in deeds of danger and fields of renown-the adventurer bent on seeing the world and its ways-the home-sick man longing for the green fields of his childhood. And then the reverse of that picture: the wretch losing his limb at the moment his hopes were ripening into accomplishment-the outcast of fortune pining in poverty and solitudethe friendless man wandering about amid scenes that once delighted, but which have now no pleasure in them -the parish pauper lying upon a death-bed and the sorrowful phantasmagoria winded up by a funeralscene, in which the outcast is hurried to the place of interment, an unlamented shred of mortality, emblematised by the withered leaf whirling desolately above his grave. During my reading of this little story, which I did with emphasis and ore rotundo, we were more than once interrupted by customers coming in for sundry little articles; and their demands for pig-tail and rappee, to say nothing of farthing pipes, in language not at all sprinkled with Attic salt, tended in no small degree to im 2 binh yeng which my late ex. pouring forth of his feelings on the melancholy occasion which forms the ground-work of his narrative, and consequently of the reflections based upon it. But, to let nothing be lost, I always went a paragraph or so back, and dovetailed the old into the new, in a manner that cemented both together as accurately as I could, leaving as small trace in the fissure of the recitation as might well be. I remember being particularly annoyed, when doing my best to give pathos to the part about the old parish poor-house-men hobbling to the grave of their companion, by the abrupt and vociferous entrance of a brokendown dandy, half seas over, who, nilly-willy, would have a box of cheroots on tick, which Mr. Puff resolutely refused, and in which resolution I heartily seconded him. "How do you like that, Mr. Puff?” said I, as, having refolded the manuscript, I was about to return it into my side-pocket. "Oh, toll loll!" answered he; "sentimental and serious enough, in all conscience; but, I dare say, not a whit the less likely on that account to have been suggested by the actual occurrence. There are occasions, sir," At this moment, just as some grand reflection was about to escape him, an old deaf woman in a red shawl came in, and screeched across the counter, first for a string of candles, eighteen to the pound, and then for half-an-ounce of 'bacco. In the spirit of my old vocation, I could have come athwart her head with the taws; but better feelings resumed their place, remembering that she could not see to spin at night without some small glimmer, and that a whiff of her cutty-pipe might be the only luxury she ever enjoyed. So, saying inwardly, in the words of a lovely little poem inserted in my school Collection, "Be hushed, my dark spirit!" I looked on the old wrinkled creature with more Christian benignity, and philosophically waited the time when Mr. Puff might find breath to conclude his moral apothegm. But when I asked him to do this, lo and behold, the thread of it had snapped, and he remembered no more of what he had just been about going to add than of his dreams, if any, of the bypast night. He added, however, by way of corol stituted for society, it was dangerous to indulge in over-sentimentalism, which unfitted him for the bustling arena of life; and that there was, consequently, less wisdom in sitting on a stool and looking sour, than in laugh ing and growing fat. By way of contrast to the story of old Wooden-leg, you may glance over the following sketch of busy life, being the memoranda of a summer's day, in the days of the years gone by. CONVERSATIONAL SYLLABUBS. A SIX MILES' ride. "The emphatic speaker dearly loves to oppose, The races were just over for the day: matters which, with stoical propriety, he no doubt considered as less his look-out than mine. For a few seconds I was forced to remain in statu quo, unable to move a limb. On one side sat three male passengers, squeezed together till the eyesight was evidently a little affected. On the other were two females, upon whose ease I found myself obliged to intrude; for neither seemed inclined, suá sponte, to make any room for me. I was not like the ass between the two bundles of hay, but the mouse pursued by Grimalkin, who sees but one hole to escape into. Necessity has no law. Off went the coach with a jog; so, hurriedly dividing the tails of my surtout, I planted myself between them, apologising in the regular set terms for crowding them so much; felt extremely sorry, &c.- but really did not know, &c.-hoped I might be excused, &c. &c. &c. "I would thank you, sir, to let me get my gown away, sir; you have sat down upon it, sir; bless me! the whole starch will be out of it, sir," said a prim, precise damsel on the left, with a frown upon her long picked face that would have alarmed the eleven thousand virgins, and put them out of love for their vocation: "I regret, bitterly regret, that I did not take my relation, Lady Dapple's offer, and go home with the family in her carriage. My feelings would not allow me to think of crowding them, but my nerves are by far too delicate for this rough world. Some people never mind if they get themselves served," added she, with an incipient sneer and half curl-up of her nose. Finding with whom I had to deal, I felt a slight glow suffuse my face: but I said nothing. "A wise man," saith Solomon, "bridleth his tongue;" and, though I have but a forlorn-hope claim to the title, I found it wise to affect one of its attributes on this occasion. I observed one of the gentlemen opposite, of a portly shape and rubicund visage, give his elbow a nodge on his neighbour's side, as he kindly interposed to relieve me from my embarrassment. I thought him a true Christian. "Why the devil don't they make the carriages larger? They are licensed to carry six, and we have no more here, let me see, than our complement; so complaining is of no avail, lawyer. But the stamp-office should consider that men are not all made in one mould, like pottery toys; and that Pharaoh had a vision of fat as well as lean kine." "True," said the lady on my right, who was evidently his better half; 66 you and I, friend, would not relish four ithers like oursells in this bit shell o' a thing. I'm frightened to draw my breath, in case the side of it gie way. This is sair wark, gudeman.” "Oh, don't talk so!" said the irritable spinster, 66 or you will make me die with fright. I hope, in the name of goodness, that we shall all get safe home; but we are driving on at a terrible rate. Oh, la! I'm sure we'll be overturned. Oh, la! I'm sure we'll be all killed. Galloping, in the name of all that is gracious! We are going, we are going-there we go!" she continued, as the wheel, passing over a large stone, half took away her breath for a second, and silenced her, like another Jeremiah, in the midst of her lamentations. "Be composed, mem-be composed, my dear mem," soothingly said a corpulent, but bilious-looking gentleman, opposite, who held a gold-headed cane between his legs, on which he had been occasionally drumming with the fingers of his ungloved hand: "be composed, mem; I know there is no danger--at least I hope so; and allowing that there was, I trust we live in a country that balances matters justly. We could scarcely be losers, mem-let us comfort ourselves with that; the law is open to all, and nothing prevents us bringing an action COXX XXX XXXXance. I have more awarded in similar instances; and, paradoxical as it may seem, it is sometimes for a man's interest to have the skin peeled from his nose or shins, as in the case of Barber versus Breakneck. But human pleasure is never unalloyed, ladies and gentlemen. There is always a little dubiety in a tumble, and the bones cannot be insured-there is no office in town, neither Phoenix nor Sun Fire, for that, you know," said he, laughing immoderately at his own amazingly shabby attempt at wit, and following round the circle with his eyes in the hopes of a ready chorus, which, notwithstanding his jogging on his neighbours on either side, was but partially successful. It was but “ a sunburst 'mid renewing storms," a deceitful smile, followed instantaneously by shadow, rigidity, and coldness. There was an exception, and a notable one, in the corpulent man, the husband of the fat lady, who clapped his hands together, and crowed for joy like chanticleer on the top of his dunghill, on a sunny summer morning. This was a first-rate piece of acting, and, but to a narrow observer, must have passed current for the natural itself; yet, under this cloudless exterior, I could discern a shadow of consternation passing, in a substratified way, over his features, as calculations about the rapid descent of seventeen stone, and the fear of broken bones, passed through his pericranium. "Oh, barbarous !" cried the antiquated virgin in the corner; "how can men be so barbarous, so unfeeling, as talk of such frightful subjects in the presence of the fair sex? I would trouble you, sir," she added, turning her head half round to me, 66 to edge off a little, that I may get my smellingbottle from my pocket, for I begin to grow faint at the very thought of-la! I am squeamish. Be so good, sir, as put down both windows, and all sit as far back as possible, that a stream of the fresh, salubrious air may fan away my faintness." "I may do so to please you, madam," said a stiff, precise-looking figure directly opposite to her-one of those who speak, act, and think, by extracting the cube root of their own self-important thoughts, and magnify every molehill of their own to a mountain of importance" I may do so, madam, though in so doing ! execute violence on my of the alveolar processes of my upper maxillary bone; or, in other words, to the toothach, from a side wind; but I will oblige you, madam," added he, slightly bowing forward, and clapping a red spotted handkerchief, certainly not that day from the folds, to his cheek, “and thus use a preventative cause, or safeguard." "I feel your condescension as I ought," returned the old young lady, with a simper, "fold within fold inveterately convolved;" "a gentleman is always known by his behaviour." This was butter laid on like a plaster: the stiff figure bowed itself again, with a downcast twinkle of his eyes, which he meant to be mistaken for a blush of bashful modesty. "A snuff would perhaps do you good," said the fat gentleman in the striped waistcoat, presenting his mull of appropriate dimensions ready opened to the fingers of the lady; "I'm told its a good thing for squeamishness and hyricksticks, or what they call them. Take a pinch, mem; its genuine rappee, off the bean." "No, thank you, sir-never snuffed Oh," chimed in the fat gentleman, who had been looking at a gig passing the opposite window, and caught hold of the fag-end of her words-"spirits! if a little spirits would be agreeable, I will call to the driver to stop, as we this moment passed a house with 'Entertainment for men and horses' on the sign-we could get a little real Geneva in an instant, mem. Will I halloo to him?" said he, half rising up between law and physic. The antiquated miss was too much overcome to answer. 66 No, no," said the precise automaton; "you misapprehend the intended signification of the lady's words. She was speaking of refection, revivification, and restoration of the evaporated animal spiritsthe making up of the defection of the exhausted sensorial power, and not of effervesced vegetable effluvia, or malt liquor." "Ten thousand pardons, mem," said the good-natured fat gentleman; “I'm a thought dull of hearing. Lizzy," added he, looking over to his wife, "have ye bought ony carvies for the bairns ?" "Yes, yes, gudeman," answered she; "ne'er fash your thumb about that: Í can manage a' housewifery matters." "Ye dinna insinivate," said he, with a nodge on the precise gentleman's arm, who started as if awakened from an unpleasant dream —“ ye dinna insinivate that ye wear the pantaloons, I fancy I must say in genteel company?" "I wish to Heaven and the powers of grace," muttered the puritanical virgin, "that we were at our journey's end! Some people's nerves are too sensitive for this rough world. I protest, sir," added she, screwing her features to the ne plus ultra of contortion, "that you have squeezed, actually squeezed off my toe." "I was just stretching out my leg a little. I protest, madam, that I am extremely sorry for what I have inadvertently done; and if ten thousand humble pardons, eagerly besought, can purchase forgiveness, they are extremely at your service. I hope sincerely and fervently," laying his hand upon his heart," that matters are not so bad." "Oh, no, sir," she added, cooling as rapidly as heated iron in the forge; "I did not know it was your doing. Quite a trifle, I assure you. Oh, la! quite a trifle. Sorry I mentioned it." "I hope so, madam; but fear you are doing violence to your fine feelings from dread of giving me pain. Be sure to make your maid look to it when you get home. A poultice made up of Goulard's solution, with crumb of bread, forms one of the best applications for cuticular irritation, provided it be unattended with abrasion; in which case some mild unguent is proper." "He is surely a doctor this beside us," said the fat man, in a distinctly audible whisper to his neighbour on the other side: "lang-nebbit words are the property of the learned professions, ye ken?" "In some respects they are," was the answer, in something of the tone of huff; “I can speak to that from experience, sir. It takes a learned man either to execute the functions of a minister or doctor, let alone speaking of a lawyer, which I know from long practice." "So ye're a limb of the law, are ye?” |