MRS. BROWN IN DUBLIN. I DON'T think as ever I should 'ave thought of goin' to Dubling; but when BROWN Come in and said as he were obligated to go there after a party in the name of WALKER, as 'ad levanted to Hireland, to get over to 'Merriker, as is easy done through bein' the next country, or contageous to it, as the jograffy books tells you. I says, "I should like to go too." BROWN says, "What for?" I says, "For my rights; for," I says, "I knows as there is property there as did ought to come to me, for MRS. POLLEN read it to me years ago in the paper, as any one in the name of BROWN would 'ear somethink about their advantages in Hireland;" as I never 'ad, though did ought to, for I've been kep' out of property by a fust cousin of my dear mother's, through bein' the daughter of a aunt by the father's side, and were consequentially own mother to 'er, as married a party in the name of CLANCEY, as were in the bricklayer line over in Dubling; and a wonderful stout man I've 'eard say, though never set eyes on one of 'em myself, but 'ave 'eard 'im spoke of as a beautiful singer, as could be 'eard for miles, and eighteen stun in weight; and when they was married danced a jig on the supper-table among the plates and dishes, and never even knocked over a glass, as is wonderful agility for any one to show without 'is shoes and stockin's, as would 'ave kep' me in a fidget if it 'ad been my best glass and china, as ain't easy matched nowadays, and is a sight for rivets aready. So BROWN says "Come if you like, for I've got a pass for two; but as to that property of yourn it's all moonshine I believe." So I says, "You'll excuse me, MR. BROWN, but it ain't nothink of the sort, but as 'andsome a teapot as ever you set eyes on, and must be worth its weight in silver, for I know as they was sixteen in family, growed up, as it was made for, besides a pair of real gold earrings, as she always told my dear mother should be 'ern, and then 'er daughter for to keep 'em back is werry aggrawatin', and often I've wished as I could see 'er face to face, as would 'ave my rights, and give 'er a bit of my mind into the bargain." If I'd knowed we'd 'ad to cross the sea for to get there I certingly should have thought twice afore goin', as I never 'adn't no suspicion on 'till a party mentioned in the train; and when I said as it was foolishness a 'avin' of the sea between us, bein' all the same country, if parties didn't larf; and BROWN says, "Don't expose your ignorance," as is nice manners arter seven-and-twenty years of married life. We certingly did have a lovely passage on the steamer; and it's werry grand for to see the sun a-risin' on Dubling Bay, as is a thing as people comes far and near to see, one of the sailors told me, as is done reg'lar every mornin', and shows what steam can do. I didn't think much of the railway station at Dubling; and as to them cars, as looks like shays tied back to back with the 'orse put in where the wheels did ought to be, I didn't relish 'em from the fust. I was werry much pleased with my breakfast, for the fresh 'errin's was delicious, as is only to be looked for in the Hile of Errins nat rally, as they calls it; but they're a light-hearted lot, and full of their compliments, for I'm sure the way as they kep' a-drawin' up them cars alongside of me, and askin' me to ride, was downright pressin', and one party says he'd take me for nothin' as I'd be a hornyment to 'is car, as is what I calls manners, though he mightn't mean it. me to get up on to them cars, and one young feller says, "Get up, my Lady, and put your pretty little foot on the step and you'll be no more weight than a bird;" but law bless you them cars is a deal too light for me. When I got back there was BROWN a-sayin' as he must go home at once, for the feller as he'd come arter 'ad bolted back to London, so he "What," I says, "Leave me says, "I'm off, but you needn't 'urry." "Ow about behind in a foreign land," I says, "Never!" He says, your teapot ?" I says, "Bother the teapot." So he says, "Well, then, I'll go on to the train and you can foller with the luggage," as wasn't much; "But," he says, "don't be late, there's two 'ours good, but I wants to call somewheres." I says, "All right," for it didn't take long to get ready thro' only 'avin' a carpet-bag and a band-box with a railway rug and my cloak and umbrella. So when I was ready I sends for a cab and if the servant gal didn't bring one of them cars. says to the lady where we was lodgin' as it wouldn't suit me, but she only said as he'd carry me to the world's end, and so I really thought he would, and it wasn't no use me a-sayin' nothink, for they'd put the things in, and afore I knowed where I was they'd 'oisted me up too. I 'adn't 'ardly time to say good-bye to MRS. O'GRADY, as were 'er name, and I'm sure as kind to me as a mother, when that beast of a 'orse was off with a start as pretty nigh sent me a-flyin'. I "Set back," says the driver. I says, "I can't." No more I couldn't, for there ain't no depth in them cars for any one as is stout. He says, "Set sideways," and so I did, jest for all the world like 'orseback, a-clutchin' on to the side like mad. I never did see any one drive like that, boy, as they called 'im, tho' no more a boy than I am, as must have been past forty. He cut among the carts and carriages as made me expect as I should 'ave my legs tore off, so I turns and tries to tuck 'em up, and if the car didn't give a jolt as sent me on to my back, and there I was a-goin' thro' the streets for all the world like MAZEPPA on his bare-back steed. He says, "Yes, my I screams out to the man, "Drive slower." lady," and took and 'it the 'orse that 'ard as made the hanimal go on like the wind. All of a suddin we turns a corner that wiolent that away flies my umbreller one way and my bandbox another; I felt as my bonnet were off my 'ead, and everythink a-blowin' off me, with my 'eels in the hair, and no use a-'ollerin' to that boy, as 'ad jumped my back down to pick the things up, and in my struggles to get off I ketched 'old of the reins unintentional, as sent the 'orse on I don't know where, for he started off and run slap on to the pavement, as made the car tip up and sent me off, and there I was a-rollin' in the mud jest agin a place as lots of gentlemen was a-comin' out on, as proved to be all the doctors from London as 'ad come over for to consult them Hirish doctors, as is wonderful clever, and that perlite as wanted me for to walk into a place as were their college. I says, "No thank you, I ain't no company for them as is my betters with no bones broke," as I could see, with all their perliteness, they was a-lookin' out for a job as wouldn't suit me, and to be made a mummy on or somethink, and by that time my things was picked up, and the man with the car tried to get me on to it agin, but I says, Never, I'd rather walk till I dropped," and them doctors said as I were right, and sent for a cab like a Christian country, and would make me 'ave a glass of wine as 'ad all been a lunchin', and was agoin' to dine, as is what they meets for, not as I should care for to talk about them medicinal things over my meals myself, but I will say it was kindness itself, as the sayin' is, a-gettin' me out of that car feller's 'ands, as spoke jeerin', but got too late for the train for all that, and a nice temper BROWN were in, for he'd left word with a porter as he'd gone without me. I don't know what would 'ave become on me only he thought better on it and come back, and I will say, though only three days in Dubling myself, it's a werry nice place, and I certingly will go back some day and ferret out that MARY ANN CLANCEY, for rights is rights all the world over, and that teapot I'll and may well call 'em outside cars, as is enough to shake you inside out, as no doubt 'ave been the death of many, though, in course, they keeps it dark, as the sayin' is, and no wonder as the QUEEN give orders for the PRINCE OF WALES not to trust 'isself on one, as went about shet up in a close carriage, for fear of being shot out of one of them cars, as is easy done I knows to my cost, and 'ighly danger I'd'eard say where MRS. CLANCEY was a-livin', though many years afore, as I'd 'eard my dear mother speak on, as MARY ANN as were 'er name afore marriage. I should 'ave gone to find 'er the werry next day arter we got there only BROWN kep' on a-sayin' as it were a fool's errand, so 'ad to wait till 'is back were turned, 'aving gone out to look arter WALKER, and then I makes up my mind for to start at once. So I dresses myself werry genteel for to go and find that double-faced MARY ANN CLANCEY. I wasn't a-goin' to stand none of their larks, so wouldn't trust myself in one of them cars, but thought as I'd get a omblibus, but law bless you they all runs one way in Dubling, and never comes back, for I'm sure I waited and waited down by a bridge'ave, but never no more cars, as I felt the effects on for many a day, for one till I was ready to drop, and 'ad to take a cab at last as took me where I wanted to go. As to findin' MARY ANN it was downright 'opeless, through only a-knowin' the street and not the number. There was a good many of the name all about that street, but all denied bein' my cousin, as never 'avin' seen, in course I couldn't swear to. One ouse as I went to there was a MRS. CLANCEY, she said she lived a long time in London, but denied all knowledge of my aunt pretty sharp, tho' somehow I didn't quite believe 'er, and was put out with her rudeness. So I says, "I daresay if I'd come to give MRS. CLANCEY somethin' instead of claimin' what is my own property, I should find 'er easy enough." Says she, "What is the property?" So I says, Why the silver teapot and gold earrings as my aunt left me." she didn't take and call me a old divil and says, "Get out with your dirty taypot or I'll tear the old jasey of the head of yer!" I was "Look took aback, for if she didn't call the neighbours out and says, at the old figger of fun as have come after her taypot," and the way as they all laughed didn't show their manners. I was glad to get away from 'em, and get 'ome as quick as I could, and I must say as the Hirish is wonderful perlite and paid me them compliments, a-wantin' If ous too. What Next? : AN announcement of a marriage appeared in the Standard the other day, and wound up with this delightful bit of gentility :"After the interesting scene the happy couple were received at the hospitable mansion of Mrs. M. G. Blank, widow of the late Lieut.-Colonel M. G. Blank, and sister of the bride, by a select society of the converted." How genteel! Not the converted tag-rag and bobtail, but the upper ten thousand-the crème de la crème--a select society of the converted. There was very little "humble pie "-ety at that marriage feast! THE RED-SKINS AT SYDENHAM. Ir was on the hill at Sydenham. Not Sydenham-hill; that lies more to the nor-nor-west, and as it might be by a sort of bowline beyond Penge; but on the hill at Sydenham. For Sydenham-hill is no more like the hill at Sydenham than the Crystal Palace itself is like Weston's Music Hall. The hill at Sydenham is better described as a grassy wooded slope where a fringe of wood breaks by almost imperceptible gradations into the thicket, and where the tender greenery of the young trees unites with the deeper tints of the more distant headlands; once the sequestered home of market gardeners, until the incursions of unscrupulous directors drove the children of the soil from the possessions of their fathers. On the hill of Sydenham, then, and not on Sydenham-hill, the moonlight fell, lighting up the water of the big lake, where only an occasional flash marked the passage of some member of the finny tribe. Every part of the surrounding plain lay in the verdant livery of nature, except where the limpid water mellowed the view of the darker hills which reflected their bald, scrubby heads in the mirroring wavelets beneath. Two men stood on this hill-not Sydenham-hill, but the hill at Sydenham-men who, though they were now habited in the garments of ordinary life, and were both evidently of great age, still exhibited in the freedom and muscular power of their tall and airy frames, a strength which years had been powerless utterly to subdue. The taller and stouter of these men leaned thoughtfully on the remains of a rusty and dilapidated rifle-not one of the modern breech-loading inventions, but an engine of earlier date; his fur cap was pulled down over his brow; his legs, encased in corduroy trousers, were stretched wide apart, and he spoke in low and guttural tones. His companion, whose expressive but unmoved countenance was nearly concealed by a pair of large and stiffly-starched collars, was habited in a white hat; a long, blue coat generally known as a swallow-tail encased his broad and sinewy frame, and a pair of nankeen continuations disguised limbs which would have been displayed to more advantage in the deer-skin leggins and gaily-decorated mocassins of the Delawares, when there were any Delawares, or of those Mohicans of whom this very man claimed to be the last. "CHINGACHGOOK," said the man who held the rifle, in a low, guttural tone, "when we agreed to total up our goings together, and I said that we would never part, you thought you were a blazed pine in a clearing of the pale-faces, and I knew that I had neither kith nor kin to speak on; but probably neither on us calkilated on living on to see the Mingoes convarted, and the children of the Lenape strike ile, and go into trade, with a taste for apple-sass, and chicken fixin's. When a man has been called HAWKEYE all his life too, he doesn't suppose that he'll do wuss when he opens a shootin' gallery in Montreal, than what he did when he was trappin' martens and shooting beavers among the big waters when you and yours wore the sign of the tortoise, and the Huron dogs slunk like women from the name of UNCAs the son of UNAMIS. For you to have had to take the part of Banjo in a troupe of Ethiopians has been a come-down; but who can stand up agin trade, and the levelling of all the institutions that made us what we was all them years agone?" To this address the lean and wiry form gave no response; while the lean, bronzed face showed no more emotion than that of one of the carved statues round the great fountains, for the form was that of an Indian; the face was set with the stoical indifference that belonged to the children of the prairie before they struck ile. At last, with that grave and sententious dignity which nothing could deteriorate, not even the garb of negro minstrelry, CHINGACH GOOK threw out his right hand in a gesture of proud defiance, and pronounced the monosyllable "Wow." Then, after looking around him, but exhibiting no sign of surprise or alarm at the discovery that one of the A division of police was secretly smoking a pipe, under the pretence of looking for something in the crown of his helmet, the Sagamore spoke. My pale-faced brother is very wise, and his years are many as the years of CHINGACHGOOK; for the wind of the pine forests has dried up the youth of HAWKEYE and the Mohican alike, and their skins are as the skin of the deer when it has been made into hunting shirts; yet have they kept together all these years, and have left the woods of the Delawares and the Great River of the children of UNAMIS to trade with the people of the cities. Well has it been, however, for CHINGACHGOOK that his people have not yet forgotten him, and that the braves can still run like moose and strike the ball when they have time to remember their hunting grounds, and to forget that they are the servants of the pale-faces, and put on the war paint no more. It is before the cunning of his white brother that CHINGACHGOOK is silent, for the old fox shall teach the panther wisdom; and when the Mingo, DEERFOOT, who runs like a quail as squaws pelt him from the wigwams, came back with wealth, why should not the stags of the Delawares come also? They, the hurlers of the ball, the wielders of the hide-thonged Crosse! Now I have said." "No more talk won't grease a fiddler's elber," returned the old woodsman, in his quaint dialect. "But the Directors, they're having of a palaver now over their firewater and the things they call cigars, and give us your hand, old Muss. La Crosse is to be the next sensation, so our fortin's is made." THE TRAVELLER'S RETURN. A SCORE years since-a tidy span- I left my home for Hindustan I went without misgiving Where the lofty palm trees quiver- Au contraire I marr'd my liver. And so at last I'm coming back- Yet though my purse can show no lae, You might take me for a Sikh. My youth's warm friends are fled- And some are very married; That they all regard me shyly! The promises of youth Turn out but piecrust flaky Old Friendship's hand, in truth, But I won't be unmanned This thought my lot shall sweeten- OUR LIBRARY TABLE. We have been favoured, we presume for review, with a copy of a brief tractate, entitled, 4 Remark on Strikes and Unions, by H. WAMPEN, Ph. D., Professor of Mathematics. Our advice to the learned gentleman is, to cut at once and for ever those heartless wags of his acquaintance whom he mentions in a prefatory note that we must quote in its entirety : In conversations with several of my acquaintances and friends on the matter of Strikes, I was asked to write down my ideas upon the subject, especially upon that of Tailors' Strikes; and that. just in my own way, regardless of how other people might take the matter. I did so, and sent the following short scribble to be inserted; but my writing was not accepted, for reasons better known to the editors. As, however, I was again urged to commit my ideas to writing, I do so, and present them to my readers in this small pamphlet. But in order that every one may see that which I wrote and was not permitted insertion, I subjoin, before entering farther into the matter, the following exact copy.* We have looked at this ingenious and eloquent composition in every way-we have stood on our head before it, and looked between our legs at it, and find those methods only add to the confusion into which a first perusal threw us. The "remark"-which is rather a long one, running to nearly five pages of smallish print-is almost as striking as the preface. It commences thus:-"It is curious to see, by the disinterested observer, that," &c. Then it waxes poetical:-" The customers themselves-the more wealthy, they of taste, they of love for the beautiful, for the better and the best; nay, they of luxury, actually caused this division-created these two classes of tailors." Further, it becomes philosophic:-"There is one point in which customers will have trouble to distinguish; namely, there are houses," &c. Finally it sinks into poetry:-" Ill-shapen garments, which cannot by the workman's labour alone be rendered asthetic on the wearer's figure." We trust these examples of the manner (about the matter there is nothing to say—ex nihilo !) of this curious pamphlet will send many to study in its pages the wateriest CARLYLE-and-water that was ever pumped out. Oh, those wicked wags of acquaintances and friends! Answers to Correspondents. [We cannot return rejected MSS. or Sketches unless they are accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope.] WE should feel obliged if those correspondents who require answers would facilitate matters by legible signatures. We cannot waste space upon hap-hazard guesses at the real meaning of monograms or dubious initials. LARK.-Not a-laudable bird. F. A. B. G. H. K. (Camberwell-green).-May be a man of letters, but he is not an artist. S. T. C. (Cambridge.)—We are not in the habit of making jokes about creeds. C. M. (Cosmo-place).-You deserve to be made a fellow of the Antiquarian Society for collecting so many venerable jokes in a sheet of notepaper. A PUNSTER.-Your best and only joke is your selection of a nom de plume. H. S. H. writes to complain that the Post Office authorities made him pay twopence-letter rate-for a newspaper because the word "nothing" the worse than nothing which NEMO sent us to-day with insufficient was written on it. What would he say to being mulcted of twopence for stamps ? PLUM.-Plum-colour in your case is green, we'll engage. DIOGENES. We never say Di-ogenes! R. M. (Manchester.)-We do not understand your meaning. "MARTHA."-Nobody wants you to be clever, but do try to be original; or apply to the Porcupine, which seems fond of plagiarisms. A QUIZZER (Carmarthen).-We really cannot say. BIFFIN.-Rather flat. AN INDIGNANT READER.-You should do your best to understand a thing before you criticise. S.-Rhymes better, but rhythm terribly out. J. C. (Werrington-street.)-The case is a bad one, but we fear your verses won't better it. "GENT WITH A COLD IN HIS HEAD" should try to get a few original ideas there to keep the cold out. The joke he sends is so venerable that it' may be the identic (c)old in the head he refers to. Declined with thanks :-W. R., Ringwood; H. H. F.; W. H., Dublin; Vox e Deserto; L. A. P.; C. J. W., Angel-court (?); J. W. S.; A Constant Subscriber, Sydenham; Promoter; G. D., Glasgow; R. W., Belfast; E. P., Stoneclough; J. W., Glasgow; R. W., Carey-street; J. L. L. F., Wareham; G. R., Camden-square; J. B. D., Lesmahagow; Quaestor; Ć. J. C., Cloughton; G. W.; G. W., Eynesford; S. G., Liverpool; Undergraduate; G. M. T., Taunton; R. C. C.; G. P., Star-street; R. E. N.; F. T. M., Leicester; F. B., Formby. This appears to have slipt out of our copy. What follows on the preface is the pamphlet itself, discussing the matter, previously to entering on which the Professor promises an exact copy of his "scribble." |