haberdasher in a great way of business, who lived in the same street. The carpenter, a plodding, frugal artisan of the old school, who trusted to indefatigable industry and undeviating sobriety for getting on in life, had an instinctive mistrust of the more dashing and speculative tradesman, and, even in the height of his prosperity, looked with cold and doubtful eyes on his son's engagement. Mr. Price's circumstances, however, seemed, and at the time were, so flourishing-his offers so liberal, and his daughter's character so excellent, that to refuse his consent would have been an unwarrantable stretch of authority. All that our prudent carpenter could do was, to delay the union, in hopes that something might still occur to break it off; and when ten days before the time finally fixed for the marriage, the result of an unsuccessful speculation placed Mr. Price's name in the Gazette, most heartily did he congratulate himself on the foresight which, as he hoped, had saved him from the calamity of a portionless daughterin-law. He had, however, miscalculated the strength of his son's affection for poor Mary, as well as the firm principle of honour, which regarded their long and every-way sanctioned engagement as a bond little less sacred than wedlock itself; and on Mr. Price's dying, within a very few months, of that death which, although not included in the bills of mortality, is yet but too truly recognised by the popular phrase, a broken heart, William Jervis, after vainly trying every mode of appeal to his obdurate father, married the orphan girl -in the desperate hope that, the step being once taken, and past all remedy, an only child would find forgiveness for an offence attended by so many extenuating circumstances. But here, too, William, in his turn, miscalculated the invincible obstinacy of his father's character. He ordered his son from his house and his presence, dismissed him from his employment, forbade his very name to be mentioned in his hearing, and, up to the time at which our story begins, comported himself exactly as if he never had had a child. William, a dutiful, affectionate son, felt severely the deprivation of his father's affection, and Mary felt for her William; but, so far as regarded their worldly concerns, I am almost afraid to say how little they regretted their change of prospects. Young, healthy, active, wrapt up in each other and in their lovely little girl, they found small difficulty and no hardship in earning-he by his trade, at which he was so good a workman as always to command high wages, and she by needle-worksufficient to supply their humble wants; and when the kindness of Walter Price, Mary's brother, who had again opened a shop in the town, enabled them to send their little Susy to a school of a better order than their own funds would have permitted, their utmost ambition seemed gratified. So far was speedily made known to me. I discovered also that Mrs. Jervis possessed, in a remarkable degree, the rare quality called taste-a faculty which does really appear to be almost intuitive in some minds, let metaphysicians laugh as they may; and the ladies of Belford, delighted to find an opportunity of at once exercising their benevolence, and pro-i curing exquisitely fancied caps and bonnets at half the cost which they had been accustomed to pay to the fine yet vulgar milliner, who had hitherto ruled despotically over the fashions: of the place, did not fail to rescue their new and interesting protegée from the drudgery of sewing white seam, and of poring over stitching and button-holes. For some years all prospered in their little | household. Susy grew in stature and in │ beauty, retaining the same look of intelligence and sweetness which had, in her early child- hood, fascinated all beholders. She ran some risk of being spoiled, (only that, luckily, she was of the grateful, unselfish, affectionate nature which seems unspoilable,) by the admiration of Mrs. Jervis's customers, who, whenever she took home their work, would send for the pretty Susan into the parlour, and give her fruit and sweetmeats, or whatever cakes might be likely to please a childish appetite; which it was observed, she contrived, whenever she could do so without offence, to; carry home to her mother, whose health, always delicate, had lately appeared more than usually precarious. Even her stern grandfather, now become a master-builder, and one of the richest tradesmen in the town, had been remarked to look long and wistfully on the lovely little girl, as, holding by her father's hand, she tripped lightly to church, although, on that father himself, he never deigned to cast a glance; so that the more acute denizens of Belford used to prognosticate that, although William was disinherited, Mr. Jervis's property would not go out of the family. So matters continued awhile. Susan was eleven years old, when a stunning and unexpected blow fell upon them all. Walter Price, her kind uncle, who had hitherto seemed as prudent as he was prosperous, became involved in the stoppage of a great Glasgow house, and was obliged to leave the town; whilst her father, having unfortunately accepted bills drawn by him, under an assurance. that they should be provided for long before. they became due, was thrown into prison for the amount. There was, indeed, a distant hope that the affairs of the Glasgow house might come round, or, at least, that Walter Price's concerns might be disentangled from theirs; and for this purpose, his presence, as a man full of activity and intelligence, was absolutely necessary in Scotland; but this prospect was precarious and distant. In the mean time, William Jervis lay lingering in prison, his creditor relying avowedly on the chance that a rich father could not, for shame, allow his son to perish there; whilst Mary, sick, helpless, and desolate, was too brokenspirited to venture an application to a quarter, from whence any slight hope that she might otherwise have entertained was entirely banished by the recollection that the penalty had been incurred through a relation of her own. Why should I go to him?" said poor Mary to herself, when referred by Mr. Barnard, her husband's creditor, to her wealthy father-in-law," why trouble him? He will never pay my brother's debt: he would only turn me from his door, and, perhaps, speak of Walter and William in a way that would break my heart." And, with her little daughter in her hand, she walked slowly back to a small room that she had hired near the jail, and sat down sadly and heavily to the daily diminishing millinery work, which was now the only resource of the once happy family. love don't be dashed." And, with this encouraging exhortation, the kind housekeeper retired. Susan continued clasping her grandfather's hand, and leaning her face over it, as if to conceal the tears which poured down her cheeks like rain. "What do you want with me, child?" at length interrupted Mr. Jervis, in a stern voice. "What brought you here?" "Oh, grandfather! Poor father's in prison!" "I did not put him there," observed Mr. Jervis, coldly; "you must go to Mr. Barnard on that affair." "Mother did go to him this morning," replied Susan," and he told her that she must apply to youWell!" exclaimed the grandfather, impatiently. you." "She was right enough there," returned Mr. Jervis. "So she sent you ?" "But she said she dared not, angry as you were with her more especially as it is through In the afternoon of the same day, as old uncle Walter's misfortune that all this misMr. Jervis was seated in a little summer-ery has happened. Mother dared not come to house at the end of his neat garden, gravely smoking his pipe over a tumbler of spirits and water, defiling the delicious odour of his honey-suckles and sweetbriers by the two most atrocious smells on this earth-the fumes of tobacco and of gin-his meditations, probably none of the most agreeable, were interrupted, first by a modest single knock at the front door, (which, the intermediate doors being open, he heard distinctly,) then by a gentle parley, and, lastly, by his old housekeeper's advance up the gravel-walk, followed by a very young girl, who approached him hastily yet tremblingly, caught his rough hand with her little one, lifted up a sweet face, where smiles seemed breaking through her tears, and, in an attitude between standing and kneeling-an attitude of deep reverence-faltered, in a low, broken voice, one low, broken word,-" Grandfather!" "How came this child here ?" exclaimed Mr. Jervis, endeavouring to disengage the hand which Susan had now secured within both hers-"how dared you let her in, Norris, when you knew my orders respecting the whole family?" "How dared I let her in?" returned the housekeeper "how could I help it? Don't we all know that there is not a single house in the town where little Susan (Heaven bless her dear face!) is not welcome! Don't the very jailers themselves let her into the prison before hours and after hours? And don't the sheriff himself, as strict as he is said to be, sanction it? Speak to your grandfather, Susy, 1 Whenever one thinks of Sir Walter Raleigh as the importer of this disgusting and noisome weed, it tends greatly to mitigate the horror which one feels for his unjust execution. Had he been only beheaded as the inventor of smoking, all would have been right. "No, indeed; she knows nothing of my coming. She sent me to carry home a cap to Mrs. Taylor, who lives in the next street, and, as I was passing the door, it came into my head to knock-and then Mrs. Norris brought me here-Oh, grandfather! I hope I have not done wrong! I hope you are not angry!— But if you were to see how sad and pale poor father looks in that dismal prison-and poor mother how sick and ill she is; how her hand trembles when she tries to work-Oh, grandfather! if you could but see them, you would not wonder at my boldness." "All this comes of trusting to a speculating knave like Walter Price!" observed Mr. Jervis, rather as a soliloquy than to the child, who, however, heard and replied to the remark. "He was very kind to me, was uncle Walter! He put me to school, to learn reading, and writing, and ciphering, and all sorts of needle-work-not a charity-school, because he wished me to be amongst decent children, and not to learn bad ways. And he has written to offer to come to prison himself, if father wishes it-only-I don't understand about business-but even Mr. Barnard says that the best chance of recovering the money is his remaining at liberty; and, indeed, indeed, grandfather, my uncle Walter is not so wicked as you think for-indeed he is not." "This child is grateful!" was the thought that passed through her grandfather's mind; but he did not give it utterance. He, how + Dashed-frightened. I believe this expression, though frequently used there, is not confined to Berkshire. It is one of the pretty provincial phrases by which Richardson has contrived to give a charming rustic grace to the early letters of Pamela. 1 ever, drew her closer to him, and seated her pipe, taking the last sip of his gin and water, in the summer-house at his side. "So you and then proceeding to adjust his hat and wig I can read and write, and keep accounts, and do -"Don't be in such a hurry: you and I all sorts of needle-work, can you, my little shan't part so easily. You're a dear little maid? And you can run of errands, doubt-girl, and since you won't stay with me, I must less, and are handy about a house? Should you like to live with me and Norris, and make my shirts, and read the newspaper to me of an evening, and learn to make puddings and pies, and be my own little Susan? Eh! -Should you like this?" "Oh, grandfather!" exclaimed Susan, enchanted. "And water the flowers," pursued Mr. Jervis, "and root out the weeds, and gather the beau-pots? Is not this a nice garden, Susy?" Oh, beautiful! dear grandfather, beauti 66 ful!" "And would you like to live with me in this pretty house and this beautiful gardenshould you, Susy?" "Oh, yes, dear grandfather!" "And never wish to leave me ?" "Oh, never! never!" "Nor to see the dismal jail again—the dismal, dreary jail?" "Never!-but father is to live here too?" inquired Susan, interrupting herself—“ father and mother?" "No" replied her grandfather" neither of them. It was you whom I asked to live here with me. I have nothing to do with them, and you must choose between us." "They not live here! I to leave my father and my mother- my own dear mother, and she so sick! my own dear father, and he in a jail! Oh, grandfather! you cannot mean it -you cannot be so cruel!" "There is no cruelty in the matter, Susan. I give you the offer of leaving your parents, and living with me; but I do not compel you to accept it. You are an intelligent little girl, and perfectly capable of choosing for your self. But I beg you to take notice that, by remaining with them, you will not only share, but increase their poverty; whereas, with me, you will not only enjoy every comfort your self, but relieve them from the burden of your support." "It is not a burden," replied Susan, firmly; "I know that, young and weak, and ignorant as I am now, I am yet of some use to my dear mother-and of some comfort to my dear father; and every day I shall grow older and stronger, and more able to be a help to them both. And to leave them! to live here in plenty, whilst they were starving! to be gathering posies, whilst they were in prison! Oh, grandfather! I should die of the very thought. Thank you for your offer," continued she, rising, and dropping her little curtsy" but my choice is made. Good evening, grandfather!" "Don't be in such a hurry, Susy," rejoined her grandfather, shaking the ashes from his | e'en go with you. The father and mother who brought up such a child, must be worth bringing home. So, with your good leave, Miss Susan, we'll go and fetch them." And, in the midst of Susy's rapturous thanks, her kisses and her tears, out they sallied: and the money was paid, and the debtor released, and established with his overjoyed wife in the best room of Mr. Jervis's pretty habitation, to the unspeakable gratitude of the whole party, and the ecstatic delight of the CARPENTER'S DAUGHTER. SUPPERS AND BALLS; OR, TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY. THIRTY years ago Belford was a remarkably sociable place, just of the right size for pleasant visiting. In very small towns people see each other too closely, and fall almost unconsciously into the habit of prying and peeping into their neighbours' concerns, and gossiping and tittle-tattling, and squabbling, and jostling, as if the world were not wide enough for them; and such is the fact-their world is too narrow. In very great towns, on the other hand, folks see too little of one another, and do not care a straw for their near dwellers. Large provincial towns, the overgrown capitals of overgrown counties, are almost as bad in that respect as London, where next-door neighbours may come into the world, or go out of it-be born, or married, or buried, without one's hearing a word of the birth, or the wedding, or the funeral, until one reads the intelligence, two or three days afterwards, in the newspapers. Now in Belford, thirty years ago, whilst you were perfectly secure from any such cold and chilling indifference to your well or ill being, so you might reckon on being tolerably free from the more annoying impertinence of a minute and scrutinizing curiosity. The place was too large for the one evil, and too small for the other: almost every family of the class commonly called genteel, visited and was visited by the rest of their order; and not being a manufacturing town, and the trade," although flourishing, being limited to the supply of the inhabitants, and of the wealthy and populous neighbourhood, the distinction was more easily drawn than is usual in this commercial country; and the gentry of Belford might be comprised in the members of the three learned professions, the principal partners in the banks, one or two of the most thriving, brewers, and that numerous body of idle persons who live upon their means, and whom the political economists are pleased, somewhat uncivilly, to denominate "the unproductive classes." of pounds, shillings, and pence, was the art of spending them, in which he was a proficient. A gay, agreeable, thoughtless creature he was, and so was his pretty wife. They had married so young, that whilst still looking were rising round them, all alike gay and kind, and merry and thoughtless. They were the very persons to promote parties, since without them they could not live. Another favourable circumstance in the then state of the Belford society, was the circum-like boy and girl, a tribe of boys and girls stance of nobody's being over-rich. Some had, to be sure, larger incomes than others; but there was no great monied man, no borough Croesus, to look down upon his poorer neighbours, and insult them by upstart pride or pompous condescension. All met upon the table-land of gentility, and the few who were more affluent contrived, almost without exception, to disarm envy by using their greater power for the gracious purpose of diffusing pleasure and promoting sociability. And certainly a more sociable set of people could not easily have been found. Then came a Scotch colonel in the Company's service, with an elegant wife and a pretty daughter. A mighty man for dinnering and suppering was he! I question if Ude be a better cook. I am quite sure that he does not think so much of his own talents in that way as our colonel did. He never heard of a turtle within twenty miles, but he offered to dress it, and once nearly broke his neck in descending into a subterranean kitchen to superintend the haunches at a mayor's feast. An excellent person was he, and a jovial, and a perfect gentleman even in his white apron. Then came two graver pairs: a young cler charming widow, and seemed to think it right to appear staid and demure to conceal the halfa-dozen years by which she had the disadvantage of him; and a widow and her son, a young man just from college, and intended for the diplomatic line, for which, if to be silent, solemn, safe, and dull, be a recommendation, he was very eminently gifted. To say nothing at present of the professional gentlemen, or of that exceedingly preponderating part of the female "interest" (to borrow another cant phrase of the day,) the widows and single ladies, the genteel inhabitants of Belford were as diversified as heart could de-gyman, who had married a rich and very sire. We had two naval captains: the one, a bold, dashing, open-hearted tar, who after remaining two or three years unemployed, fuming, and chafing, and grumbling over his want of interest, got a ship, and died, after a brilliant career, at the summit of fame and fortune; the other, a steady, business-like person, who did his duty as an English sailor always does, but who, wanting the art of making opportunities, the uncalculating bravery, the happy rashness, which seems essential to that branch of the service, lived obscurely, and died neglected. His wife had in her temperament the fire that her husband wanted. She was a virago, and would, beyond all doubt, have thought nothing of encountering a whole fleet, whether friends or foes; whilst Sir Charles's lady (for our gallant officer had already won that distinction) was a poor, shrinking, delicate, weak-spirited little woman, who would have fainted at the sound of a signal-gun, and have died of a royal salute. They were great acquisitions to the society, especially Sir Charles, who, though he would have preferred a battle every day, had no objection, in default of that diversion, to a party of any sort,-dance, supper, dinner, rout, nothing came amiss to him, although it must be confessed that he liked the noisest best. Then arrived a young Irish gentleman, who having run away with an heiress, and spent as much of her fortune as the Court of Chancery would permit, came to Belford to retrench, and to wait for a place, which, through some exceedingly indirect and remote channel of interest, he expected to procure, and for which he pretended to prepare, and doubtless thought that he was preparing himself by the study of Cocker's Arithmetic. He study Cocker! Oh, dear me! all that he was ever likely to know Then we had my friend the talking gentleman and his pretty wife; then a half-pay major, very prosy; then a retired commissary, very dozy; then a papa with three daughters; then a mamma with two sons; then a family too large to count; and then some score of respectable and agreeable ladies and gentlemen, the chorus of the opera, the figurantes of the ballet, who may fairly be summed up in one general eulogy as very good sort of people in their way. This catalogue raisonné of the Belford gentlefolks does not sound very grand or very intellectual, or very much to boast about; but yet the component parts, the elements of society, mingled well together, and the result was almost as pleasant as the colonel's inimitable punch-sweet and spirited, with a little acid, and not too much water- or as Sir Charles's champagne, sparkling and effervescent, and completely up as his own brilliant spirits and animated character. I was a girl at the time-a very young girl, and, what is more to the purpose, a very shy one, so that I mixed in none of the gaieties; but, speaking from observation and recollection, I can fairly say that I never saw any society more innocently cheerful, or more completely free from any other restraints than those of good breeding and propriety. The gentlemen had frequent dinner-parties, and the young people occasional dances at such houses where the rooms were large enough; but the pleasantest | nights, from which, by way of retaliation, the meetings were social suppers, preceded by a whole male sex was banished except Mr. Sinquiet rubber, and a noisy round game, suc-gleton. At the time, however, of which I ceeded by one or two national airs, very sweet-speak, these clubs had passed away; and the ly sung by the Irishman's wife and the colo- public diversions were limited to an annual nel's daughter, enlivened by comic songs by visit from a respectable company of actors, the talking gentleman-a genius in that line, the theatre being, as is usual in country places, and interspersed with more of fun and jest, very well conducted and exceedingly ill at and jollity of jokes that nobody could explain, tended; to biennial concerts, equally good in and of laughter no one knew why, than I ever their kind, and rather better patronised; and have happened to witness amongst any assem- to almost weekly incursions from itinerant blage of well-behaved and well-educated peo- lecturers on all the arts and sciences, and from ple. One does sometimes meet with enjoy- prodigies of every kind, whether three-year ment amongst a set of country lads and lasses; old fiddlers or learned dogs. but to see ladies and gentlemen merry as well as wise, is, in these utilitarian days, somewhat uncommon. There were also balls in their spacious and commodious town-hall, which seemed as much built for the purposes of dancing as for that of trying criminals. Public balls there were in abundance; but at the time of which I speak they were of less advantage to the good town of Belford than any one, looking at the number of good houses and of pretty young women, could well have thought possible. Never was a place in which the strange prejudice, the invisible but strongly felt line of demarcation, which all through England divides the county families from the townspeople, was more rigidly sustained. To live in that respectable borough was in general a recognised exclusion from the society of the neighbourhood; and if by chance any one so N. B. If I were asked whether this happy state of things still continues, I should find the question difficult to answer. Belford is thirty years older since the joyous Christmas holidays which have left so pleasant an impression on my memory, and more than thirty years larger, since it has increased and multiplied, not after the staid and sober fashion of an English country town, but in the ratio of an American city-Cincinnati for instance, or any other settlement of the West, which was the wilderness yesterday, and starts into a metropolis to-morrow. Moreover, I doubt if the habits of the middle ranks in England be as sociable now as they were then. The man-high in wealth, or station, or talent, or conners immortalized by Miss Austen are rapidly passing away. There is more of finery, more of literature, more of accomplishment, and, above all, more of pretension, than there used to be. Scandal vanished with the tea-table; gossiping is out of fashion; jokes are gone by; conversation is critical, analytical, political-any thing but personal. The world is a wise world, and a learned world, and a scientific world; but not half so merry a world as it was thirty years ago. And then, courteous reader, I too am thirty years older, which must be taken into the account; for if those very supper-parties, those identical Christmas holidays, which I enjoyed so much at fourteen, were to return again bodily, with all their "quips and cranks, and jollity," it is just a thousand to one but they found the woman of forty-four too grave for them, and longing for the quiet and decorum of the elegant conversazione and select dinners of 1834: of such contradictions is this human nature of ours mingled and composed! To return once more to Belford, as I remember it at bonny fifteen. The public amusements of the town were sober enough. Ten years before, clubs had flourished; and the heads of houses had met once a week at the King's Arms for the purpose of whist-playing; whilst the ladies, thus deserted by their liege lords, had established a meeting at each other's mansions on club nexion, as to set the proscription at defiance, happened to settle within the obnoxious walls, why then the country circle took possession of the new-comer, and he was, although living in the very heart of the borough, claimed and considered as a country family, and seized by the county and relinquished by the town accordingly. The thing is too absurd to reason upon; but so it was, and so to a great degree it still continues all over England. A public ball-room is, perhaps, of all others, the scene where this feeling is most certain to display itself; and the Belford balls had, from time immemorial, been an arena where the conflicting vanities of the town and county belles came into collision. A circumstance that had happened some twenty years before the time of which I write (that is to say, nearly fifty years ago) had, however, ended in the total banishment of the Belford beauties from the field of battle. Every body remembers the attack made upon George III. by an unfortunate mad woman, of the name of Margaret Nicholson; the quantity of addresses sent up in consequence, from all parts of the kingdom, and the number * They order matters rather better now; at least. I although guilty of living amongst streets and brick know some three or four very delightful persons who, walls, do yet visit in town or country as they see fit; and the ball-room distinction is, I believe, partly swept away—but not quite. |