"I will call at Mr. Jackson's," continued my friend, and learn all the particulars from him."

He departed that moment: he had not far to go; he returned in an hour afterwards, and informed me his conjecture was quite right, and that he had learned from Mr. J. the whole details of the awkward business.

The story may be told in few words. The two Jacksons, as formerly mentioned, resided in the same street. The right house had no brass plate with the name inscribed on the door; the wrong one had. Being ignorant of the number of the right house, I could not of course mark it on the back of my letter. The postman, in these circumstances, very naturally delivered the letter at the wrong place. I scrawl a wretched and most illegible hand; so that when the letter arrived Miss was read for Mrs. The latter lady probably wishing to pass, in the estimation of her husband, for a woman of surpassing rectitude, showed him my letter, instead of consigning it, as she ought to have done, to the flames.

66

Why, Charlotte, my dear," said the husband,

"if ever villain deserved chastisement this amorous rascal does. You only do as I desire you, and zounds! if I don't give it him in style."

Mrs. Jackson, being newly-married, expressed her readiness to do anything her husband desired. "Augustus," said she, "you know, dear, your will is always a law with me."

"Well," pursued he, "as Solomon enjoins us to answer fools according to their folly, you shall answer this villain according to his villany. You shall immediately write to him, declaring that he made an indelible impression on your heart when you saw him at the party to which he refers, and acquiescing in his proposal for a meeting at Hyde Park Corner."

She did as she was bid. I, never having seen Miss Jackson's hand-writing, was of course easily deceived. I was in perfect raptures with the supposed success of my proposal for a meeting. The reader is already informed how transitory was my joy. I never saw Miss Jackson after this. I never wished to see her: I could not, after what had occurred, look her in

the face though worlds were to be my reward for so doing.

It was long before I recovered from the effects of this new shock. I had well nigh determined never again to speak to woman-kind; but a little reflection served to convince me, that, constituted as society is, that was impossible, unless I should turn hermit.

126

MISADVENTURES OF A LOVER.

CHAPTER V.

Ir is the error of a great many, even of those who are considered sensible men, that they run from one extreme to another.

next mistake I committed in my

a suitable matrimonial alliance.

This was the

efforts to form

I resolved, as

the best way of avoiding the recurrence of such mishaps as had already befallen me, to dispense with everything in the shape of courtship, and by some means or other get married at once. This resolution was taken shortly after the execution of Corder, of Red Barn notoriety. The well-authenticated statement was then going the round of the journals, that, though Corder was an unprincipled man himself, his wife was an amiable and excellent woman, and that his marriage with her was the result of an advertisement, headed "Matrimony," in a Sunday journal;

in other words, the result of a notification in a newspaper that he wanted a wife. Why, thought I, might not I be equally fortunate, and the world never be the wiser as to the way in which I had been led to form a matrimonial connection. The idea struck me as a happy one. I resolved to carry it into effect without any unnecessary loss of time. Accordingly, snatching up my pen, I that moment drew up the following advertisement, and caused it to be published in the Morning Herald,'—that journal being then, as I believe it still is, the medium most generally made use of for sending forth such notices to the unmarried portion of the sex:

"MATRIMONY.-Circumstances which it is unnecessary here to detail, having prevented the advertiser from mingling much in female society, he takes this opportunity of appealing to the heart, and soliciting the hand, of any young lady who, like himself, possesses a good temper and a disposition to be happy. If the partiality of private friendship has not led his acquaintances to form too favourable an estimate of his personal