he wos mum. He was a MUTE; and he died a Mute, universally respected." "Two years and a arf in the service of Messrs. Ploomer and Atchment," continued Mr. Mogford. "Wos allers selected for the most respectable parties' funerals. 'Ow he came for to take up blackwork none of us never could find out. But he wos the best and most melancolly Mute I ever see agin a door, a bustin his 'art with woe to see the knocker tied up; but he never would tell us where he lived, for if he had, Messrs. Ploomer and Atchment would have berried him for nothin." The hum ceased also, but not the heat. There was a profound silence, in the midst of which I again found myself the centre of optical attraction. Phew! how hot it was! The ensign was at my elbow again, confound him! I turned fiercely; but a recollection of my childhood, or something, crossed my mind at the moment, affecting me so acutely that I felt as if I were going to weep. I seized his hand, wrung it with fervour, and, mastering my emotion by a tremendous effort, I inquired of him how he felt by this time. I forget his answer. It is not material to my state I've finished. Please observe the address-ment. The Times can be supplied quarterly. Now commenced an entirely new action of the gas. It was a rotatory action, and it lasted, SOMETHING THE MATTER WITH end of which time somebody fell over a chair. as I judge, from six to eight minutes, at the THE GAS. BY GODFREY TURNER. I WILL endeavour to describe the appearances in the precise order in which they occurred. And first, I should observe that, immediately on our going upstairs to join the ladies, a very strange condition of the atmosphere in the drawing-room was perceptible. A mist I might almost call it a fog-filled the apartment. It not only obscured, but distorted the forms of the guests, the sumptuous furniture (Dowbiggen's), and all the objects that were there. It was accompanied by a heat and a hum. I heard the hum distinctly-at least not distinctly, for it was indistinct. But I distinctly heard it. And I felt the heat. It was overpowering. The time by my watch (Jones's) I could not exactly make out, because of the mist. It seemed to be either half-past four, or twenty minutes past six, neither of which could have been right, because it was certainly a good deal after ten. I like precision in these matters, especially on the question of time, which may have a most important bearing on what I am about to relate. The derangement of the gas began to show itself by jumping. The jumps were short little jumps, not upward but downward, like the toothache. They followed each other at pretty regular periods, of about ten seconds each. I counted these jumps or spasms up to twentynine. Then I saw that the eyes of the whole company were fixed on me. The ensign touched my elbow softly, and said, in a subdued voice: "Come along." "Hush!" said I, rather impatiently. "Don't you see you've put me out ?"" He muttered something to the effect, as well as I could understand him, that he wished he had done that half-an-hour ago. Then he placed his hand once more upon my arm, and repeated the words, "Come along." I shook off his feeble grasp. The jumping of the gas continued, but there was no use now in my counting the perturbations. I watched them, however, and soon found that they were greatly increasing in force and rapidity. The motion became quite violent at last, and actually seemed to communicate itself to the entire room. Suddenly it ceased. From the fact of my having to get up again, I concluded that this must have been myself. I was quite right: it was. People really should not have gas in their houses. Are there not the cheap, durable, and elegant French moderator lamps, kept in endless variety by the celebrated firm at Charing Cross, and giving each the light of six candles? And will not Price's Candle Company (limited) supply the whitest and hardest of tapers, in every respect equal to wax, if you prefer halfa-dozen twinkling lights to a single one of intense brilliancy? But indeed, out of doors as well as in-doors, there is always something the matter with the gas. Are they not continually pulling up Chancery Lane, just after the completion of an expensive paving contract, to get at the main and see where the leakage is? What an odd thing it is that the gas should be so determined to escape in and about that legal thoroughfare! It seems to have a mischievous fancy for disporting itself there, of all places in the world, and to mock every process with an eccentric plea of freedom from arrest. In spite of all the statutory wisdom of the neighbourhood, it will not be taken, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any otherwise destroyed. Let me see,-where was I? The ensign, having assisted me to rise, held me firmly now, and would not be shaken off. He was not a bad fellow, and, though we had only met once or twice before, I think I would have shed my blood to serve him; but I felt at the moment as if I should like to knock him down. beast! What right had he to suppose that I— The Stop. The jumping motion of the gas began again. I would try this time and count the phenomena. One, two, three, four-no; they were so rapid that it was quite impossible to keep up with them. "Come along, old chap," said the ensign, "The heat's too much for a man to stand. Let's get outside a bit." That woman with the emerald ornamentsthe Honourable Mrs. Tufton, I think they call her-flounced herself down on the music-stool, rattled the keys of the piano from its lowest note to the top of its compass, and began to scream like forty peacocks. I turned to accompany the ensign. But before we could reach the door of the room the gas went out and left us all in total darkness. I am faithfully recounting my experiences of a memorable night; and if I am not believed, all I can say is that I did not expect to be when I began this story. The gas went out, but the Honourable Mrs. Tufton never stopped her diabolical screeching. Strange to say, nobody took the least notice of the occurrence. I was beginning to call the ensign's attention to it, but he interrupted me by saying, "All right; come along." And along we went accordingly. "You can't make that noise here." The words were uttered by a policeman. He turned the light of his bull's-eye, as he spoke, on the Honourable Mrs. Tufton, who paused in the middle of "Dublin Bay." contracting to a little ragged patch of brightness that seemed on the point of being blown out for ever. South Audley Street, in which we stood, had been cut open like the carcase of some huge beast. Its granite flesh was rolled back on either flank; and its iron viscera, deep down in the hideous cavity, were laid bare to the four winds. In point of fact, the roadway in South Audley Street had been pulled up; and, by consequent necessity, as well as by order of the commissioners, carriages were prohibited passing up or down the street until further notice. Meanwhile a great gulf yawned, as if tired of waiting for a board of Curtiuses to leap in and close it. The foot-path had become a rocky pass; and those pilgrims who did not prefer to risk uneasy steps over the mountainridges of loose granite, were minded to proceed through a narrow valley or ravine of the famous London clay, which, by long and close subjection to the same influence that destroys our books and furniture, corrodes our lungs, and tarnishes our plate, had suffered a land change into something like small-coal in a profuse perspiration. Come, are you going to move on ?" said the policeman to the lady, who had settled herself "She's a nice article," said a lean sallow-in a comfortable posture on the shadowed side faced man, whom from the rigidity of the of the recess. muscles round his mouth, and a certain fixed glare of the eyes, I instantly set down as a shoemaker. Perhaps his fingers being covered with shoemaker's wax, and having a powerful smell, may have further aided me in forming this judgment; I cannot say. "Can't I?" was the brief retort; and she instantly resumed the song, which, by the bye, she had began as "Di tale amor che dirsi." "If you don't want to get locked up you'll come out of that, and take yourself off quietly," said the policeman with admirable good temper. The Honourable Mrs. Tufton only yelled louder than before. "Who are you?" scornfully asked a young man with a blackened face and a banjo. Wasn't you ever the worse for a drain?" Then turning with a propitiatory air to the policeman, he said, "She'll go along all right, mister, if you give her time. Won't you, Bella, girl?" Touched by the kindness of the minstrel, Tufton began to moan and laugh hysterically; but she very soon relapsed by a series of hiccups into "Dublin Bay." "Why don't you go home, then ?" the shoemaker asked, with a gravity almost magisterial. "Poison home!" said the Honourable Mrs. Tufton; "what sort of home do you think I've got to go to ?" and pulling off her boots, she composed herself, with her head against a door-post, for the night. Now, I know you are going to say--if you have not said so already-that this could not have all happened in a drawing-room. As suredly the thing would have been impossible, and I do not offer such an insult to your understanding as to ask you to suppose it. Somehow I was standing with the ensign in the open street. Darkness was all around us, but not We were in the midst of a strong light, and for some few dozen yards on either hand objects were plainly visible. Beyond, all was midnight, and pitch-black. near. From an upright iron pipe, which projected about four feet above the ground, spouted a great flame, waving and tossing itself hither and thither, sometimes expanding into a fiery mass that drove back the vagrants who had congregated there for warmth, and sometimes 'No," she answered, with ready decision. "Then you'll have to be moved, that's all about it." "Move us along, as fast as you like," said she. 'His heart was gay, his spirits light; He dashed the tear away, And watched the shore recede from sight, As they sa-ailed from Dub-er-lin Bay.' "Here, Bel, I say," remonstrated the banjoist; "what's the good? You'll only get into trouble again. Put on your boots, and go along in a orderly manner. If you don't, you know, you'll jolly soon find yourself at the station, and 'no flies." "Who cares?" cried the Honourable Mrs. Tufton. "They sailed three days, when a storm arose; 333 "There, I ain't going to stand any more of this, I can tell you," said the policeman. "You'd better flash, and not lose no time about it either." "This is a very sad sight," observed a gentleman who had come up with the group. "What's a sad sight, old Arthur Penley ?" the woman asked, with a bold, steady look at the last speaker. "I knew" he began. "My father, were you going to say? Pray don't mention it. Oh! on no account, I beg. Such an excessively shocking disgrace to the family, you know. Why just look here," she continued, quickly changing her tone of irony for that of indignant appeal; "what's the difference between me and her? Difference enough-I know that; but why? "Till her mother found out he'd another child, I was delicately nurtured, and taught all that a rich man's daughter might know. But when that virtuous lady-his wife, that he was so uncommonly fond of, and who loved him, too, just as much-when she discovered the shameful connection, as she called it; why, from that very hour, I say, my doom was sealed. Bit by bit my father, God forgive him, was drawn from me. I'm only a year or two older than his true-born daughter, your fine friend's wife. You've seen her lately, perhaps. How does she look? They say we're very much alike in face. Is that true? that the gas indoors had been "all right enough," I could hardly admit the possibility of my having been mistaken with regard to the appearances which are detailed in the early part of this paper. South Audley Street was but a short distance from the street in which stood the house we had left. There was something the matter with the gas, plainly, in South Audley Street; and what can be more probable than that the whole neighbourhood was affected by the irregularity? It was so true, that the other woman might have been speaking there instead, and an indifferent person would not have noticed the Poor Bella, supplied that night with a decent change. The other-not this one-was the and comfortable lodging, has since figured once Honourable Mrs. Tufton. I had strangely or twice at the Marylebone Police Court, and, I made the acquaintance of the half-sisters on am afraid, is incorrigible. I have looked for her the same evening, though under somewhat dis- in vain when I have been passing late of nights similar circumstances. The state of the gas-down South Audley Street, where the roadboth within and without-will account for my way has now been set in good order, and where having confounded the two separate identi- the gas beams tranquilly from the glazed lamps, shedding its even rays alike upon the just Though my friend, the ensign, was positive and the unjust. ties. SOME one brought in a sick'ning tale No matter what! a man was killed, One we had known, a bridegroom glad, Hastening home-with what hopes thrilled! The news had sent his young wife mad. We sat in angry sullen gloom, Like plotters fearing to commence Their treason talk; each in the room Doubting of Good and Providence. Woe without moral, hope or plan! We lacked a scapegoat to abuse; Then found one in the luckless man Who had not broken well the news. "The groom was dead: no help for him! "You London gentlefolks, at ease, "You marry gently-nurtured wives, Ending, with yours, in marble tombs. "Our fishers' wives on Durham's coast, A different contract make when wed; They bargain for a husband lost In ev'ry fight for next day's bread. "So for announcing when he died, (Which means in fishing circles drowned,') A standing method, cut and dried, Our thoughtful sea-birds long have found. "They tell the parson-who straightway Proceeds, in form to break the news, His task to soothe, console, and pray, "I doubt though that much good is earned, The waves still creaming 'neath the blast "Through the gray dawn along the shore, The widow, at her casement's frame, The parson sees approach her door, She knows the worst! 'Tis much the same!" PEEPS AT THE PAPER. BY AN INCONSTANT READER. [A CORRESPONDENT, confessing himself as yet unknown to Fame-a circumstance he appears to consider unaccountable, and which we ourselves are unable to explain, at all events on the score of constitutional modesty-writes to us, adopting the above signature, with a somewhat authoritative request that we shall engage him for the weekly supply of certain articles of newsmongery, which he declares indispensable to the permanent success of our publication, (a necessity we had not previously contemplated), and, for the superior production of which, he recommends himself above all living writers, on the singular plea that he seldom looks into a newspaper, and labours under a DoctorJohnsonian inaptitude to "read books through." These peculiarities, he argues, render him exceptionally qualified for the improving discussion of Life and Letters. It stands to reason, he says (and the idea of anybody standing to reason with him, even for a moment, would seem preposterous), that the man who never troubles his head with reading must have the greatest amount of intellectual strength to spare for the exercise of writing. People who are continually overcharging their brains with the expressed opinions of others, must naturally be incapacitated from forming unbiassed ones of their own. Again, your constant readers are apt to attach undue importance to all manner of trivial subjects. Our friend's peculiar temperament, on the contrary (we think he means laziness), preventing him from taking the slightest notice of any topic whatever, until it has been fairly dinned into his ears by sheer force of public discussion, can only be moved to expression by matters of vital interest to the community at large. A political event must be very striking for him to take notice of it. A book that he will be at the pains to open must be either notoriously good, or (what may be preferable for his purpose) conspicuously bad. He so seldom looks into a picture gallery that his criticisms on art must always be marked by a peculiar freshness and impartiality. He has only visited a concertroom three times in his life, so that, when he does begin to take cognizance of musical matters, something startling may be expected. He has not sat in a theatre for the last five years, has written but one play (the manuscript of which, owing to some mistake, was returned on his hands in the year 1850), and has no recollection of ever having seen a popular actor off the stage. So that, if sound Dramatic criticism be required, he is clearly the "coming man " for the purpose. There is an ingenious reversal of the ordinary rules of logic in the above propositions, which we admit to be by no means without a strong element of fascination. We have decided on giving our "Inconstant Reader" probationary eminence for a week or so. We can easily get rid of him if he should become tiresome or too impertinent. He is requested to bear the latter hint especially in mind. EDITOR W. G.] Mole's Nest, Zimmerman Green, DEAR MR. EDITOR,-(Though I have not the slightest personal acquaintance with you; but that is of no consequence)-The contents of my private communication, explaining my plans, and terms for a permanent engagement on your (as I hope to make it) unprecedently successful journal, will, of course, remain secret. You understand me I am sure, for I have no reason to believe that you are altogether a fool. On the present sheet I commence my contribution intended for the public eye. I must be allowed to begin in my own way, or we shall quarrel; a state of things you will naturally object to. I shall divide my discourse into very short chapters. The arrangement may be irregular. I trust it will prove so. For I have no wish to be classed with the common herd of scribblers, and it can not answer your purpose to reduce me to that ignoble position. At all events, oblige me by not attempting the experi ment. First, of the New Chinese War. I see by the Times (which I never by any chance look into till the boy has knocked twice to fetch it away from my breakfast table) that the pig-tailed people have been letting off guns at a squadron, detachment, or expedition of Europeans, thereby causing great loss of life, breach of treaty, hunger and thirst after vengeance, new conquest, and all the rest of it. Many valuable panacea will doubtless be suggested for the suppression of this newly-discovered evil. Suppose, without reference to Ministerial considerations (for of course that man Palmerston, or whatever they call him, will have his say in the matter), that they adopt mine, and get the business over at once. Abolish pig-tails and head-shaving. The human hair and the human brain are indissolubly allied. Distort the former, and you vitiate the latter. No generation in the history of our race can be pronounced respectable wherein the natural growth of the hair and beard has been interfered with. Our real national troubles, as Englishmen, began with the reign of Charles the * Our correspondent is requested not to be in a hurry.-Ed. Second, when wigs were first imported, and shav ing the face tolerated. Our bleakest, barrenest century, was the eighteenth, during the greater part of which it was a shame to grow one's whiskers, or to appear without an unnatural headcovering of false hair, backed by the semblance of a swine's caudal appendage. A few great mer appeared in the land despite the bare-faced, pigtailed imposition. But fancy the number of heads that might have expanded into greatness in the absence of such paralysing restrictions. What the Romans were when they had got to shaving their faces and pumice-stoning their arms, is patent to the world. The North American Indians, who, by the aid of mussel shells, and such like appliances, have plucked out every atom of manliness from their natures with every hair from their beards,-what they have become, let their scarcely better-bearded conquerors, the Yankees, explain to us. I have not the slightest objection to shooting, flaying, or otherwise immolating the Chinese. Cut off their heads and welcome, in the largest possible numbers. But first try what good may be effected by cutting off their tails. I will now discourse upon the Great Eastern. The poor men are dead, and the harm has gone forth! But is not there comfort arising from the very calamity? Did not the big ship steam on bravely after a concussion that, it is decided, would have swamped the strongest vessel ever previously built? Is not the great problem solved, that ocean can be traversed in less than one-half the time, and with more than double the security we have hitherto dreamed What if the big ship had gone down? Therein would have been the paralization of all such enterprizes for our lifetime. of? The brain from which that "big ship" sprang will never ache with scheme of any kind again; will never be troubled with its own great knowledge of difficulties to be surmounted, or vexed with the evil bodings of the envious, the foolish, and the timid. Isambard Kingdom Brunel is dead. Though the dangers of overworking the brain have been voted "all nonsense," by persons competent to take a thoroughly unprejudiced view, I think there is no reasonable doubt that the great engineer was one of the martyrs of science. Makepeace Thackeray is announced to start a new monthly magazine. I am not particularly glad to hear of it. I would rather see him advertised as a contributor under somebody else's management. "There's nothing ne-ew, there's nothing tre-ew, and it don't signify," seems to be Makepeace's creed, borrowed from his favourite Americans. We want writers willing to assert that everything changes continually, that no lie must ever be tolerated, and that "there is Providence in the fall of a sparrow." I am one of old W. M. T.'s most intense admirers, but I shudder at the thought of his infecting, with his easy cynical venom, a writers. Serjeant Kite and Corporal Punishment have caught it nicely from England's future Premier -I don't mean Derby's future Earl. Mr. Bright's recent speech at Huddersfield, (not that I have read it, but there is no difflculty in telling what he must have said) was a necessity. All great things are. We wanted a man like him to mention that recruiting serjeants happen to be, in a vast proportion of cases, "unmitigated scoundrels." The truth has been attempted before, but not with so good a chance of being listened to as it derives from the circumstance of being told by John Bright. One of the papers I occasionally peep into is Punch, (for the illustrations of course.) What an extraordinarily gifted artist is Leech! But what a terribly cruel, granite-natured man he must be! I never saw him or his portrait; but well-cut sort of countenance, with little pity in I should imagine that he has a harsh, regular, its expression. A How mercilessly he satirizes Poverty, and Poverty alone. Poverty of means, Poverty of form and feature, Poverty of wisdom or of training-no matter what, so that it be a phase of human weakness and suffering! poor holiday serving-wench consoling herself with a little harmless affectation of gentility; withered up in her bosom, striving to conserve an old woman, whose heart may not yet have some semblance of departed juvenility; a hardworking city wife, who has not had much leisure to pay particular attention to her H's; a scrubby clerk, who can not sit a horse quite as gracefully as a Melton Mowbray squire, not quite or whose legs and whiskers are up to the standard of Horse Guards' perfection; a sorry music-master presuming to ride in a cab when he has only sixpence to pay for it. These, and such as these only, are the objects of Mr. Leech's unsparing castigation. How bitterly severe is he upon that squinting housemaid's artificial flowers, and huge sandal-shod feet! On the other hand, what an impressive picture of high-bred indignation is displayed by the majestic lady and her scornful daughters, in whose presence the insolent wretch is presuming to sit, affronting, perhaps, by some stipulation for a little unusual indulgence! What majestic, leonic beings are those colossal guardsmen (the real swells, and objects of Mr. Leech's idolatry) frowning the poor little bearded gents, their simious parodies, into annihilation. How charmingly tolerant, too, even to active championship, can Mr. Leech be of the wellto-do egotisms and minor vices of the drawing-room! Lady Geraldine flirting with the captain on the staircase or in the conservatory, and uttering some genteel fib to her lady mother in excuse for that proceeding, is viewed in a widely different aspect to that infamous hussey, Jemima the cook, who dares to make false pretext for an opportunity to snatch a few minutes' gossip with her faithful policeman. If human wickedness were only as detestable in Mr. Leech's eyes as human weakness, we new generation of might still have a Hogarth among us. THE INCONSTANT READER. |