was waited upon by pages on bended knee, and that the minstrels tuned their lutes to sing my praises. Oh, I am fallen! I am fallen! for I never loved, and I became old; and the pages rose up and spat at me, and the minstrels twanged their lutes and sang ribald songs in my disfavour, and the kings' sons laughed and rode away, for I had nothing more to sell. Ye hags! I was the Fair Haulmiere! Whereat, hearing the name of one who had been the beautifullest, and the proudest, and the wickedest woman of a wicked time, the two remaining crones muttered even in their abasement words of loathing and contempt, and gathered their rags round them as though they feared pollution from one who had been so great, and was so fallen." Shut up, shut up the book of Gothic rhymes; for I, too, have been young and fair, and-heigho! let us come back to the behaviour of young ladies. Who are, I am pleased to maintain, in some respects, better behaved now than in times gone by. In Doctor Swift's "Polite Conversation," young ladies swear. Horace Walpole writes of a young lady, moving in the very first circles, who used to sing-the term is his, not mine"flash songs;" and Mr. Richardson, who wrote "Pamela" and "Clarissa Harlowe," was the pet and enfant chéri of half the fine ladies of England, who looked upon his novels as models of delicacy, refinement, and true morality; though, to tell the truth, the good man treated of such matters and in such downright language, that it would be considered as downright treason to discuss or even mention them now in society. Young ladies are so well-behaved. You have heard of Doctor Doddridge, my dear, the great theological scholar and divine-the purestminded, holiest-lived man a vicious world has seen since the days of good Bishop Jeremy Taylor. What do you think was a favourite amusement of young people in the days when saintly Philip Doddridge was a stripling? They used to spread a table-cloth or a large sheet on the stairs, on which the young ladies used to sit; and then the young gentlemen, who were at the foot of the stairs, used to take hold of the bottom corners of the table-cloth, and try to pull that, and the young ladies into the bargain, down pell mell. Who wouldn't be shocked at such a game of romps in eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. The art of making" cheeses" is, I daresay, gone out among young ladies at boarding-school. "Hunt-the-slipper," out of a north-country farm-house, is looked upon as unpardonable vulgarity. Every recurring Christmas, I am told, sees fewer games of "forfeits" in genteel families. The Spanish merchant," "Tell trade," and the "Lubber's exercise," I hear, are falling into disuetude. I could believe that we were growing really moral, if I did not read sometimes of a confessional in Belgravia, and of a certain court which you enter from Westminster Hall, and where a certain Judge sits in a court for divorce and matrimonial causes, hearing the very saddest and most scandalous tales. Moreover, in those rude, improper, romping, and frankspoken days I have spoken of, the reports of such dismal trials, and those for breaches of promise of marriage, were mainly confined to musty old law books, which only the gentlemen with the wigs and gowns opened and consulted. Now we have them, hot and hot, in the columns of twenty newspapers every morning at breakfast time. It is a thing to wonder at and admire, the good behaviour of modern young ladies. What an awfully improper thing it would be now, for a gallant princess defending a fortress to make a vow, like she who founded the couleur Isabelle, that she would not change her underlinen till the besiegers retired from the walls. Where is the Lady Godiva who would obey Earl Leofric's wild whim to save a people from taxation? Alack-a-day! the modern Godiva's style of costume affords plenty of employ. ment to Peeping Toms, and the people are only taxed the more to pay for my Lady Godiva's studied dishabille. Where is the young lady who would imitate the heroic girl who shielded Robert Strange from the bloodhounds of Cumberland beneath the ample circumference of her hoop? There, my dear, perhaps I am relapsing into my cynical mood, and am unjust to the present generation of young women. f great occasions arose, if imminent perils environed and threatened us, it may be that English girls would prove themselves worthy of the name of their ancestresses, and would cast a great deal of mock good behaviour to the winds, and do a great many things now lisped and simpered against as "shocking" for the glory of English girlhood. Mind, I am not advocating Joan of Arc-ism. Because the country may be in danger, I have no desire to see young ladies assume pantaloons of chain-mail, or their modern substitutes, knickerbockers and gaiters, and forthwith, wielding a two-handed sword bestride a great white war-horse en cavalier as in Mr. Etty's big picture. Leave rifle clubs alone, young ladies, and don't meddle too much with Toxopholite societies. The commanding, Field Marshal, Amazonian woman, is a rarity. Boadicea had better put up with a whipping, and bring her action for aggravated assault, than head the insurgent Iceni, give battle to the Romans, and end by taking poison; and I am sure if the invader were marching on London, that I should be one more to vote-if I had a vote-for our dear Queen, and the children, and the treasure, and the bank-books, and the national pictures being sent north of Trent for safety, while the men went forward to fight; rather than insist on a sort of parody on the famous behaviour of Queen Elizabeth under similar circumstances, and expect that the Sovereign should put on casque and corslet, harangue the troops at Tilbury Fort, and, returning to London, dine off pork and pease at the "King's Head," to show her "foul scorn" of the French, and her magnanimous stomach against them. Women have a different mission in war, and I believe did the necessity occur they would be found once more to be fully equal to its fulfilment. Only with extreme unfrequency are the functions they are called on to perform, belligerent. Sometimes it may hap pen that a Margaret Douglas must bar the door with her arm, that the Carthaginian ladies must give their hair for bowstrings, that a Maid of Saragossa must point and fire the cannon, that a Jeanne Hachette must drive back a host, that a Charlotte de la Turnouille must hold her own 2 axe. against the Roundheads, that delicate, tenderly- steady hand, intent only on her Master's businurtured English girls, made valiant by peril ness. Did you ever see the squalid springless worse than death, must be among the bravest of cart in which Miss Nightingale rode about in the beleaguered in an Indian mud fort, fetch the the Crimea ?-the comfortless dray they called failing ammunition to the ramparts, serve out her "carriage ?" Can you imagine the horror the scanty rations, keep watch and ward with, of those Crimean and Constantinople hospitals and give life and spirit to the vexed garrison, as she first saw them, bare, cheerless, grimy, and be ready to spring the mine when the last noisome, without comforts or even necessaries ? hope is gone and the Sepoys are pressing to the Have you any idea of the scenes through which assault. But war and tumult evoke and develop the heroic woman had to pass? A dear friend, more womanly ministrations than these. If a now dead, who was in the East when that apalfair young prince, driven from the throne of his ling drama was being played out, told me that ancestors, hunted like a fox by his enemies, were he was in a ward of Scutari hospital, when a wandering naked, fugitive, and penniless, but batch of soldiers wounded at Inkermann were with a price of thirty thousand pounds on his brought to Miss Nightingale and her nurses head, I do believe there would be found once from the transport which had conveyed the poor more a gently-daring Flora Macdonald to shelter fellows across the Black Sea. There was one and protect him, and make use of every weapon soldier horribly wounded, and who had suffered in her armoury of feminine subterfuges to save more horrible neglect, who, as they laid him that comely young head from the headsman's shrieking on his pallet, all unconscious of his For it is woman's part to assuage the hor- vicinage, burst into a flood of dreadful execraror and mitigate the black wickedness of war. tions and vile language. A surgeon who was The first drop of oil was cast on the raging there, "shocked" by such an unseemly exhibition waters of the Crimean strife by the wife of a in the presence of a lady, laid his hand on the Russian general, Madame Osten-Sacken, who poor wretch's arm, and angrily bade him rememtended with quite an angelic pity and tenderness ber where he was, and "behave himself;" but a poor little wounded midshipman taken out of MISS NIGHTINGALE, who was on the other side the wreck of the Tiger. What had she to do of the bed, looked up in the Doctor's face with with Hango massacres and Crimean guet-à-pens, a calm sternness, and said, "Don't you see, sir, good woman? She only recognised the sacred that the poor man is in pain, and does not know instincts of long-suffering maternity. After-what he is saying? Leave him to me." Indeed, wards, the vials of womanly compassion were poured out in abundance on the contending hosts. Now it was the Empress Eugenie and her ladies scraping lint for the wounded. Now it was Cocotte or Babette-some sturdy little vivandière, in scarlet breeches and a white apron, a mob cap on her head and a keg of spirits by her side, kneeling down by some fainting Zouave, and succouring him amid a rain of bullets. Now it was brave old Mother Seacole, most Samaritan of sutlers, trudging up to the front with her brandy flask, and holding it to the lips alike of plumed staff officer and white-fringed drummer, and nursing big grenadier guardsmen like babies. And now it was the pearl and pride of womanhood, Florence Nightingale, leaving her easel, her Greek Testament, her splendid home, to go forth into the wilderness of war and do good. Ladies of England, Ladies of England, lay your hands My dear, you live in the midst of peace and upon the busks of your corsets, just where about comfort. A quiet round of daily duties is your you think your hearts should be, and confess portion; untroubled by cares or sorrows, it is that according to your code of good behaviour yours to indulge in harmless and cheerful remany of the things done by Florence Nightin- laxation. You are called upon to make no great gale would have been denounced a few years sacrifices, to participate in no great afflictions, since as, genteelly speaking, "shocking." I to console or assauge no great woes. It is don't say that such would be the case now; because, while I wish you to be as pretty and for Nightingale-ism has become, since the first engaging and fascinating and merry as nature shining example, somewhat of a fashion, and and competence happily permit you to be; while some ladies are almost too ready to call them-I would have you girt and fenced about by all selves "Sisters," and dress the sores of Lazarus. But think on what Florence Nightingale had to go through. To encounter brutal stupidity, and now sulky, now malevolent thwartings. To mix with the felonry of the Levant, and the scum of Scutari, and the rascal following of a great army. To be unceasingly in the midst of horrible sights, and sounds, and stenches; to go through all this violence, wretchedness, pollution, with a meek quiet face, calm eye, and the wounded soldier was raving. I daresay that if he recovered he would have been one of those who would have cut their tongues out sooner than use a coarse or ungainly word while his guardian angel was by, and who would rise in his bed as the Lady with the Lamp glided from ward to ward, to kiss her shadow as it floated o'er his couch. What were curses and revilings in her reckoning? The woman's ears were deaf to everything but the command to do good. Her eyes were blind to everything save the spectacle of suffering humanity before her; but eyes and ears shall be opened some day to hear a gracious commendation, and see a glorious reward, when you and I, and all the world, the evil and the just, the prevailing tyrant and the oppressed party, shall all appear and receive our symbol. due barriers of gentle, staid, and decorous maidenhood, I would still have you remember that, in the most refined woman's life, there may come stern and terrible actualities; that the proprieties of gentility and demure behaviour must sometimes be quite overthrown and cast on one side in the performance of your duty towards God and your neighbour. Be then well behaved, so far as modesty, humility, cheerful good nature, ready kindness, hatred of meanness Reverend Mr. Pinkey's entrance followed the and vulgarity go to make the best of good behaviour; but don't allow your too keen sense of the petty proprieties of life allow you to ignore the great and eruel truths by which you are surrounded. Don't be a hypocrite to yourself, and think that existence is one round of frivolity, and urbane tittle-tattle, and punctilious etiquette. Don't let your heart wear gloves. Don't think you have fulfilled all the requirements of politeness when you leave a card on your conscience. Call upon conscience.-in fact a somewhat lucrative investment of a Insist upon seeing her. Rout her up if she says she is not at home. Keep your veil down when you fancy gentlemen are watching you, as you survey life; but look at it with your veil up when alone. Try and understand the duties, the perils of your sex. Consider your sister who is in low or vile estate. Find out how poor women live; how they manage their husbands and children. Study the realities. Don't lecture about them at social science congresses, but lock each Truth up in your heart of hearts, to be made use of in action when the time comes. And it may come-a time of trial and a time of tribulation-even while you are trying on six-and-a-half gloves at Houbigant's, or inspecting Irish poplins, at Waterloo House. Adieu. A bientôt. CONSTANCE CHESTERFIELD. AMPLE SECURITY. BY EDWARD DRAPER. First Duckstealer." If these 'ere ducks vill snap at our Second Ditto. "In course not-ve only tries for fishes."- A CASUAL remark of the " Inconstant Reader," in a recent number of the Welcome Guest, appears to have attracted some attention to the constant publication in a daily contemporary, one may as well name the Telegraph, of certain advertisements, promising tempting inducements for the loan of small sums of money upon undeniable security. It is, of course, known to nearly all persons experienced in London life and London ways (the honourable proprietors of the Telegraph of course excepted), that these same advertisements are simply the means by which a gang of knaves strive to entrap, gull, and swindle the unwary and confiding. This knowledge is in many cases sufficient; but although the trick has been over and over again exposed, it still finds its victims. This is clear from the simple fact of the continuance of the advertisements. A description of the modus operandi of the vagabonds who make their account in the swindle, although, probably, once or twice related in general terms, might perhaps furnish in its details some interest, if no necessary warning to the readers of these pages. The following narration may be depended upon as literally true, with the simple, necessary alteration of names, and other means of identification of the actors. With this sole object of retaining the verisimilitude of the story, we will present it, as it was originally told, by a London Solicitor of some experience in the tracking of similar frauds. I was sitting alone in my office, when the small amount of capital. To that advertisement, sir, I forwarded a reply, intimating in somewhat general terms." Of course this way of telling a story would not do for the office at eleven o'clock a.m. in term time. So just to shorten matters, I struck in"Excuse me, my dear, sir; but as I understand, you lent the money ?" "Really, sir, that is the point to which I was coming. But, pray, how did you know that ?" "In our profession we are compelled to learn much. For instance the journal in which you read the advertisement, was the Daily Tele graph. The security consisted of a bill of exchange drawn and accepted by strangers to you, and, moreover, of certain duplicates of property alleged to be valuable, and of the actual existence of which, you most probably satisfied your self by personal enquiry at the pawnbroker's before advancing the money." then "Not professionally, certainly. But as a man of the world, and attentive reader of the newspapers, one can easily keep tolerably as fait to the very shallow devices of professional swindlers." "Swindlers! Do you then think I have been tricked? No, no, sir! you are wrong there, in deed. See-see-this and this-I hold the duplicates, sir, actually hold them in my own hands. Gold hunting-watch, fifteen pounds silver coffee-pot, seventeen pounds ten; tea-pot, twelve pounds; chased gold goblet, thirty pounds; drawing-room clock—” ditto "And you have advanced on these and the bills, how much?” "Sixty pounds, and have two bills amounting together to eighty. So that you see I am quite safe. In fact, I only called upon you with respect to the first bill, which is now just due a day or two since; but I am really ignorant of these matters." "Well, let us take it then in your way. In the first place, then, both drawer and acceptor have absconded.” "How did you know that ?" "As certainly as if I had but just left their doors, and yet by mere inference. Leave the bill with me, and you shall receive evidence which may be more convincing to you, if not to me." "But then-you see the security-” "Is pawned for-allow me-fifteen, seventeen, ten, twelve-hum-in all ninety pounds, with interest-say a hundred. Are you willing to redeem it for that sum ?" "It would be awkward to be forced to do so, I confess. Still, as it must be worth so very much more-" Why?" "Why ?-well, because, of course, no pawnbroker would otherwise have lent so much upon it." "I do not see that. Why should he not make a bad bargain now and then like other folks? Nay, more, how can it be told by any person living, but himself and the borrower, whether he actually ever lent a farthing? I know that he did, and that the goods are worth just what he lent; but all this I know by inference. For had he not lent the money, or had he lent it upon glaringly insufficient security, he might have been placed in awkward position on a charge of fraud and conspiracy. The goods are worth a hundred pounds. You have lost sixty. How will you be better off by buying these, or any other goods, at their value, even should you immediately sell them for the same?" And in this manner our conversation approached an end. It was at last arranged, to make matters certain, that I should go to the pawnbroker's, pay the interest due upon the duplicate for the watch, and, by inspection, ascertain how far the suspicions entertained of the transaction were correct. The duplicate, for such it was, although pretentiously styled a "silversmith's warrant," was a large official looking document, far more "genteel" in appearance than its humble congeners. Its very form, and the formal language in which it was couched seemed to be a portion of the fraud, I took a cab to the "silversmith's;" first, however, being driven to the West End, to call on an intimate friend J-, a watchmaker, as eminent at the present day, as the renowned Jim Vin in the age of James the First. When I say, as is the truth, that J-is the inventor of the famous three-quarter-plate watch, any one who understands such matters will not only know who he is, but be able to appreciate his talents. For my own part, I don't know what the three-quarter-plate is, and this I honestly confess, considering one business enough for one man. So does and that's why he has got on so well with his. Not I explained partially the business, without, however, a hint of the fraud; asked him as a favour to accompany me, and this he did at once. The interest was paid, and the watch produced. J-- opened it, inspected the works silently for about three minutes, closed it, and laid it down upon the counter in silence. a movement of his calm, studious face, gave the slightest clue to his opinion. We then bid the silversmith good morning, and departed. When again in the cab, on our return, J-began to tell me his opinions of the watch. The cases were certainly handsome enough, and, moreover, of tolerably good gold. As for the works, they contained all the very newest improvements - three-quarter-plate, and going fuzee to prevent loss of time in winding-up. The only drawback to the value of the watch, was that the works, nevertheless, were of the very worst possible description. It was one of a class known as duffers; but curious in its way for the peculiarities above noted, which it will be seen were of a kind to lull the suspicion on the part of a victim of ordinary intelligence. But," said I, "with all faults, what is the watch worth ?" "Just the value of the metal to melt up, and not a farthing more. If you brought it to me, it would be as much as my credit would be worth to sell it at any price. An unscrupulous dealer, if he sold it at all, might as well do so for thirty guineas as ten. Taking, therefore, the value as what it might fetch, it might be anything. The gold in it may be worth six or seven pounds for the pot." This reply, of course, proved, as I had expected, that the pawnbroker was tolerably secure against any criminal charge. No legal authority, more learned than an Alderman, would entertain such a charge for a moment. What, punish pawnbroker because he happened to form an incorrect estimate of the value of a watch, and that watch, too, constructed for the express purpose of fraud! It was hopeless. Subsequent enquiries proved the fact of the actual flight of the parties to the bill. Each of them left his residence a day or two before the bill became due. The proprietors of the houses knew nothing of them, except that they took the apartments and were "most respectable," always paying the rent to the day. The receipts, of course, might serve the purposes of "reference" elsewhere. The fellows' business was not in victimising lodging house-keepers. The Reverend Mr. Pinkey naturally enough wished to avoid any stir in the matter, after finding out how he had been defrauded; otherwise, it would, perhaps, have been not very difficult after all to bring to justice the perpetrators of the "little game," especially as it appears, just at present, to be carried on as vigorously as ever. A CHRISTMAS COMPLAINT, This Christmas time, that's made to look If not so gastronomic. Though making mouths to raise a smile, I've spent the week at Merton Hall: (Excuse a long narrationMy presence in this house at all, Shows but a poor relation!) A welcome guest 'neath Gothic roofs, Illumed by windows oriel, Where I was set to work at proofs, By no means editorial! Whose digestive powers-now for the first time publicly alluded to-have been positively not worth speaking of for the last fifteen years. |