CHOICE

OF

THE TRAGEDY OF THE TILL.

[Douglas Jerrold, born in London, 3d January, 1803; died at Kilburn, London, 8th June, 1857. Midshipman, printer, dramatist, journalist, novelist, essayist, humourist-and potent in all the many parts he played. His success was won by dint of hard honest work; his end came He was noted for saying in the sunshine of success. "sharp things: " he should also have been noted for saying them only when falsehood of some sort or other called them forth. He was one of the earliest contributors to Punch, in which the Caudle Lectures and other popular sketches first appeared. It was as a dramatist and humourist that he was best known; but it was the productions of his more serious moods which exhibited his best powers, whilst they showed his earnest sympathy with all who struggled and hoped, and his love of rural life. This is most apparent in the Chronicles of Clovernook, which, according to his son-Mr. Blanchard Jerrold-was his pet work. fragment of what it was originally intended by the author they should be;" says Mr. B. Jerrold in his in

"The Chronicles are a

are humorously set right.1]

VOL. III.

pluck a heart of meaning out of it. However, be it as it may, you shall hear it, sir.

Never

"There was a man called Isaac Pugwash, a dweller in a miserable slough of London, a squalid denizen of one of the foul nooks of that city of Plutus. He kept a shop; which, though small as a cabin, was visited as granary and store-house by half the neighbourhood. All the creature-comforts of the poor-from bread to that questionable superfluity, small-beerwere sold by Isaac. Strange it was, that with such a trade Pugwash grew not rich. He had many bad debts, and of all shopkeepers, was Certain it is, most unfortunate in false coin. he had neither eye nor ear for bad money. Counterfeit semblances of majesty beguiled him out of bread and butter, and cheese, and red herring, just as readily as legitimate royalty Malice might impute struck at the Mint. something of this to the political principles of Pugwash, who, as he had avowed himself again and again, was no lover of a monarchy. theless, I cannot think Pugwash had so little regard for the countenance of majesty as to welcome it as readily when silvered copper as when sterling silver. No, a wild, foolish enthusiast was Pugwash, but in the household matter of good and bad money he had very wholesome prejudices. He had a reasonable wish to grow rich, yet was entirely ignorant of the by-ways and short-cuts to wealth. would have sauntered through life with his hands in his pockets and a daisy in his mouth; and dying with just enough in his house to pay the undertaker, would have thought himself a fortunate fellow; he was, in the words of Mrs. Pugwash, such a careless, foolish, dreaming creature. He was cheated every hour by a customer of some kind; and yet to deny credit to anybody-he would as soon have denied the wife of his bosom. His customers knew the weakness, and failed not to exercise it. To be sure now and then, fresh from conjugal counsel, he would refuse to add a single

50

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herring to a debtor's score; no, he would not be sent to the workhouse by anybody. A quarter of an hour after, the denied herring, with an added small loaf, was given to the little girl sent to the shop by the rejected mother,' he couldn't bear to see poor children wanting anything.'

ness.

"Pugwash had another unprofitable weakHe was fond of what he called nature, though in his dim, close shop, he could give her but a stifling welcome. Nevertheless, he had the earliest primroses on his counter,— 'they threw,' he said, 'such a nice light about the place.' A sly, knavish customer presented Isaac with a pot of polyanthuses, and, won by the flowery gift, Pugwash gave the donor ruinous credit. The man with wall-flowers regularly stopped at Isaac's shop, and for only sixpence Pugwash would tell his wife he had made the place a Paradise. 'If we can't go to nature, Sally, isn't it a pleasant thing to be able to bring nature to us?' Whereupon Mrs. Pugwash would declare that a man with at least three children to provide for had no need to talk of nature. Nevertheless, the flower-man made his weekly call. Though at many a house, the penny could not every week be spared to buy a hint, a look of nature for the darkened dwellers, Isaac, despite of Mrs. Pugwash, always purchased. It is a common thing, an old familiar cry," said the Hermit-"to see the poor man's florist, to hear his loud-voiced invitation to take his nosegays, his penny-roots; and yet is it a call, a conjuration of the heart of man overlaboured and desponding-walled in by the gloom of a town-divorced from the fields and their sweet healthful influences-almost shut out from the sky that reeks in vapour over him; it is a call that tells him there are things of the earth beside food and covering to live for; and that God in his great bounty hath made them for all men. Is it not so?" asked the Hermit.

"Most certainly," we answered; "it would be the very sinfulness of avarice to think otherwise."

"Why, sir," said the Hermit benevolently smiling, "thus considered, the loud-lunged city bawler of roots and flowers becomes a high benevolence, a peripatetic priest of nature. Adown dark lanes and miry alleys he takes sweet remembrances-touching records of the loveliness of earth, that with their bright looks and balmy odours cheer and uplift the dumpish heart of man; that make his soul stir within him, and acknowledge the beautiful. The penny, the ill-spared penny-for it would buy a wheaten roll-the poor housewife pays for

root of primrose, is her offering to the hopeful loveliness of nature; is her testimony of the soul struggling with the blighting, crushing circumstance of sordid earth, and sometimes yearning towards earth's sweetest aspects. Amidst the violence, the coarseness, and the suffering that may surround and defile the wretched, there must be moments when the heart escapes, craving for the innocent and lovely; when the soul makes for itself even of a flower a comfort and a refuge."

The Hermit paused a moment, and then in blither voice resumed. "But I have strayed a little from the history of our small tradesman, Pugwash. Well, sir, Isaac for some three or four years kept on his old way, his wife still prophesying in loud and louder voice the inevitable workhouse. He would so think and talk of nature when he should mind his shop; he would so often snatch a holiday to lose it in the fields, when he should take stock and balance his books. What was worse, he every week lost more and more by bad money. With no more sense than a buzzard, as Mrs. Pugwash said, for a good shilling, he was the victim of those laborious folks who make their money with a fine independence of the state, out of their own materials. It seemed the common compact of a host of coiners to put off their base-born offspring upon Isaac Pugwash; who, it must be confessed, bore the loss and the indignity like a Christian martyr. At last, however, the spirit of the man was stung. A guinea, as Pugwash believed of statute gold, was found to be of little less value than a brass button. Mrs. Pugwash clamoured and screamed as though a besieging foe was in her house; and Pugwash himself felt that further patience would be pusillanimity. Whereupon, sir, what think you Isaac did? Why, he suffered himself to be driven by the voice and vehemence of his wife to a conjurer, who in a neighbouring attic was a sideral go-between to the neighbourhood-a vender of intelligence from the stars to all who sought and duly fee'd him. This magician would declare to Pugwash the whereabout of the felon coiner, andthe thought was anodyne to the hurt mind of Isaac's wife-the knave would be law-throttled.

"With sad indignant spirit did Isaac Pugwash seek Father Lotus; for so, sir, was the conjurer called. He was none of your common wizards. Oh no! he left it to the mere quack-salvers and mountebanks of his craft to take upon them a haggard solemnity of look, and to drop monosyllables, heavy as bullets, upon the ear of the questioner. The mighty and magnificent hocuspocus of twelvepenny magicians was

scorned by Lotus. There was nothing in his look or manner that showed him the worse for keeping company with spirits: on the contrary, perhaps, the privileges he enjoyed of them served to make him only the more blithe and jocund. He might have passed for a gentleman, at once easy and cunning in the law; his sole knowledge, that of labyrinthine sentences made expressly to wind poor common sense on parchment. He had an eye like a snake, a constant smile upon his lip, a cheek coloured like an apple, and an activity of movement wide away from the solemnity of the conjurer. He was a small, eel-figured man of about sixty, dressed in glossy black, with silver buckles and flowing periwig. It was impossible not to have a better opinion of sprites and demons, seeing that so nice, so polished a gentleman was their especial pet. And then, his attic had no mystic circle, no curtain of black, no death's head, no mummy of apocryphal dragon -the vulgar catch-pennies of fortune-telling trader. There was not even a pack of cards to elevate the soul of man into the regions of the mystic world. No, the room was plainly yet comfortably set out. Father Lotus reposed in an easy chair, nursing a snow-white cat upon his knee; now tenderly patting the creature with one hand, and now turning over a little Hebrew volume with the other. If a man wished to have dealings with sorry demons, could he desire a nicer little gentleman than Father Lotus to make the acquaintance for him? In few words Isaac Pugwash told his story to the smiling magician. He had, amongst much other bad money, taken a counterfeit guinea; could Father Lotus discover the evil-doer?

"Yes, yes, yes,' said Lotus, smiling, 'of course to be sure; but that will do but little: in your present state-but let me look at your tongue. Pugwash obediently thrust the organ forth. 'Yes, yes, as I thought. 'Twill do you no good to hang the rogue; none at all. What we must do is this-we must cure you of the disease.'

"Disease!' cried Pugwash. 'Bating the loss of my money, I was never better in all my days.' "Ha! my poor man,' said Lotus, 'it is the benevolence of nature, that she often goes on, quietly breaking us up, ourselves knowing no more of the mischief than a girl's doll, when the girl rips up its seams. Your malady is of the perceptive organs. Leave you alone, and you'll sink to the condition of a baboon.'

"God bless me!' cried Pugwash.

"A jackass with sense to choose a thistle from a toadstool will be a reasoning creature

to you! for consider, my poor soul,' said Lotus in a compassionate voice, 'in this world of tribulation we inhabit, consider what a benighted nincompoop is man, if he cannot elect a good shilling from a bad one.'

"I have not a sharp eye for money,' said Pugwash modestly. 'It's a gift, sir; I'm assured it's a gift.'

"A sharp eye! An eye of horn,' said Lotus. 'Never mind, I can remedy all that; I can restore you to the world and to yourself. The greatest physicians, the wisest philosophers, have, in the profundity of their wisdom, made money the test of wit. A man is believed mad; he is a very rich man, and his heir has very good reason to believe him lunatic; whereupon the heir, the madman's careful friend, calls about the sufferer a company of wizards to sit in judgment on the suspected brain, and report a verdict thereupon. Well, ninety-nine times out of the hundred, what is the first question put, as test of reason? Why, a question of money. The physician, laying certain pieces of current coin in his palm, asks of the patient their several value. If he answer truly, why truly there is hope; but if he stammer, or falter at the coin, the verdict runs, and wisely runs, mad-incapably mad.'

"I'm not so bad as that,' said Pugwash, a little alarmed.

"Don't say how you are— e-it's presumption in any man,' cried Lotus. 'Nevertheless, be as you may, I'll cure you, if you'll give attention to my remedy.'

"I'll give my whole soul to it,' exclaimed Pugwash.

"Very good, very good; I like your earnestness, but I don't want all your soul,' said Father Lotus, smiling-'I want only part of it: that, if you confide in me, I can take from you with no danger. Ay, with less peril than the pricking of a whitlow. Now, then, for examination. Now, to have a good stare at this soul of yours.' Here Father Lotus gently removed the white cat from his knee, for he had been patting her all the time he talked, and turned full round upon Pugwash. 'Turn out your breeches' pockets,' said Lotus; and the tractable Pugwash immediately displayed the linings. 'So!' cried Lotus, looking narrowly at the brown holland whereof they were made —'very bad, indeed; very bad; never knew a soul in a worse state in all my life.'

"Pugwash looked at his pockets, and then at the conjurer: he was about to speak, but the fixed, earnest look of Father Lotus held him in respectful silence.

"Yes, yes,' said the wizard, still eyeing

the brown holland, I can see it all; a vagabond soul; a soul wandering here and there, like a pauper without a settlement; a ragamuffin soul.' "Pugwash found confidence and breath. 'Was there ever such a joke?' he cried; 'know a man's soul by the linings of his breeches' pockets!' and Pugwash laughed, albeit uncomfortably.

"Father Lotus looked at the man with philosophic compassion. Ha, my good friend!' he said, 'that all comes of your ignorance of moral anatomy.'

"Well, but, Father Lotus,'

"God bless 'em, poor souls!' said Pugwash 'It's a sad scramble some of 'em have, isn't it?" "Well,' said the conjurer, 'for a tradesman, your soul is in a wretched condition. However, it is not so hopelessly bad that I may not yet make it profitable to you. I must cure it of its vagabond desires, and above all make it respectful of money. You will take this book." Here Lotus took a little volume from a cupboard, and placed it in the hand of Pugwash. 'Lay it under your pillow every night for a week, and on the eighth morning let me see you.' Come, there's nothing easier than that,' said Pugwash, with a smile, and reverently putting the volume in his pocket-(the book was closed by metal clasps, curiously chased)he descended the garret stairs of the conjurer.

"On the morning of the eighth day Pugwash again stood before Lotus.

"How do you feel now?' asked the conjurer with a knowing look.

"I haven't opened the book-'tis just as I took

vously.

"I never laid out a penny in law upon a customer; I never refused small-beer to '

"Silence!' cried Father Lotus; 'don't offend philosophy by thus bragging of your follies. You are in a perilous condition; still you may be saved. At this very moment, I much fear it, gangrene has touched your soul: nevertheless, I can separate the sound from the mortified parts, and start you new again as though your lips were first wet with mother's milk.'

"Pugwash merely said-for the wizard began to awe him-'I'm very much obliged to you.' "Now,' said Lotus, answer a few questions, and then I'll proceed to the cure. What do you think of money?'

"A very nice thing,' said Pugwash, 'though I can do with as little of it as most folks.' "Father Lotus shook his head. 'Well, and the world about you?'

"A beautiful world,' said Pugwash; 'only the worst of it is, I can't leave the shop as often as I would to enjoy it. I'm shut in all day long, I may say, a prisoner to brick-dust, herrings, and bacon. Sometimes, when the sun shines, and the cobbler's lark over the way sings as if he'd split his pipe, why then, do you know, I do so long to get into the fields; I do hunger for a bit of grass like any cow.'

"The wizard looked almost hopelessly on Pugwash. And that's your religion and business? Infidel of the counter! Saracen of the till! However patience,' said Lotus, 'and let us conclude.--And the men and women of the world, what do you think of them?

"I know that,' said Lotus; the clasps be thanked for your ignorance.' Pugwash slightly coloured; for to say the truth, both he and his wife had vainly pulled and tugged, and fingered and coaxed the clasps, that they might look upon the necromantic page. 'Well, the book has worked,' said the conjurer, 'I have it.'

"Have it! what?' asked Pugwash.

"Your soul,' answered the sorcerer. 'In all my practice,' he added, gravely, 'I never had a soul come into my hands in worse condition."

"Impossible!' cried Pugwash. 'If my soul is, as you say, in your own hands, how is it that I'm alive? How is it that I can eat, drink, sleep, walk, talk, do everything, just like any body else?'

"Ha!' said Lotus, 'that's a common mistake. Thousands and thousands would swear, ay, as they'd swear to their own noses, that they have their souls in their own possession; bless you,' and the conjurer laughed maliciously, 'it's a popular error. Their souls are altogether out of 'em.'

"Well,' said Pugwash, if it's true that you have, indeed, my soul, I should like to have a look at it.'

"In good time,' said the conjurer; 'I'll bring it to your house, and put it in its proper lodging. In another week I'll bring it to you; 'twill then be strong enough to bear removal.'

"And what am I to do all the time without it?' asked Pugwash, in a tone of banter. 'Come,' said he, still jesting, 'if you really have my soul, what's it like-what's its colour; if indeed souls have colours?'