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you; but great people's money is sometimes as hard to get as poor ones'; besides, this Sir Robert is a prodigal chap, dresses as smart and talks as fine as his valet-'twas best to secure the money if he were ten times over a baronet. You can tell him, though, that I did not know him, if you like, sir, the next time you meet." And the white fib was told, accordingly, and the affront happily got over. This fact, however illustrative of Master Ben's general character, has nothing to do with our present story, though, as the dénouement of the tambourine adventure took place on the same day, the two legends may be considered as in some small degree connected. Amongst Ben's other peculiarities was a strong faculty of imitation, which he possess ed in common with monkeys, magpies, and other clever and mischievous animals, but which, in his particular case, applied as it generally was to copying so correct a model as John, served as a sort of counterpoise to his more volatile propensities, something like the ballast to the ship, or the balance-wheel to the machinery. The point to which this was carried was really ludicrous. If you saw John in the garden carrying a spade, you were pretty sure to see Ben following him with a rake. When John watered my geraniums after the common fashion of pouring water into the pots, Ben kept close behind him, with a smaller implement, pouring the refreshing element into the pans. Whilst John washed one wheel of my pony phaeton, Ben was, at the self-same moment, washing another. Were a pair of shoes sent to be blacked, so sure as John assumed the brush to polish the right shoe, Ben took possession of the left. He cleaned the forks to John's knives; and if a coat were to be beaten, you were certain to hear the two boys thumping away at once, on different sides.

Of course, if this propensity were observable in their work, it became infinitely more so in their amusements. If John played marbles, so did Ben; if cricket, there, in the same game, on the same side, was Ben. If the one went a-nutting, you were sure, in the self-same copse, to find his faithful adherent; and when John, last winter, bought a fiddle, and took to learning music, it followed, as a matter of necessity, that Ben should become musical also. The only difficulty was the choice of an instrument. A fiddle was out of the question, not only because the price was beyond his finances, and larger than any probable sum out of which he could reasonably expect to coax those who, wrongfully enough, were accused of spoiling him-the young gentleman being what is vulgarly called spoiled, long before he came into their hands-but because Master Ben had a very rational and well-founded doubt of his own patience, (John, besides his real love of the art, being naturally of a plodding disposition, widely differ

ent from the mercurial temperament of his light-hearted and light-headed follower,) and desired to obtain some implement of sound, (for he was not very particular as to its sweetness,) on which he might, with all possible speed, obtain sufficient skill to accompany his comrade in his incessant, and, at first, most untunable practice.

Ben's original trial was an old battered flageolet, bestowed upon him by the ostler at the Rose, for whom he occasionally performed odd jobs, which, at first, was obstinately mute, in spite of all his blowings, and when it did become vocal. under his strenuous efforts, emitted such a series of alternate shrieks, and groans, and squeaks, as fairly frightened the neighbourhood, and made John stop his ears. So Ben found it convenient to put aside that instrument, which, in spite of the ostler's producing from it a very respectable imitation of "Auld Lang Syne," Ben pronounced to be completely good for nothing.

His next attempt was on a flute, which looked sufficiently shapeable and glittering to have belonged to a far higher performer, and which was presented to him by our excellent neighbour, Mr. Murray's smart footman, who being often at our house with notes and messages from his mistress, had become captivated, like his betters, by Ben's constant gaiety and good-humour-the delightful festivity of temper and fearless readiness of wit, which rendered the poor country-boy so independent, so happy, and so enviable. Mr. Thomas presented his superb flute to Ben-and Ben tried for three whole days to make it utter any sound-but, alas! he tried in vain. So he honestly and honourably returned the gift to Mr. Thomas, with a declaration "that he had no doubt but the flute was an excellent flute, only that he had not breath to play on it; he was afraid of his lungs." Ben afraid of his lungs! whose voice could be heard, of a windy day, from one end of the village street to the other-ay, to the very hill-top, rising over all the din of pigs, geese, children, carriages, horses, and cows! Ben in want of breath! Ben! whose tongue during the whole four-and-twenty hours, was never still for a moment, except when he was asleep, and who even stood suspected of talking in his dreams! Ben in want of breath! However, he got out of the scrape, by observing, that it was only common civility to his friend, Mr. Thomas, to lay the fault on himself rather than on the flute, which, as Ben sagaciously, and, I think, truly observed, was like the razors of the story," made for sale and not for use."

The next experiment was more successful.

It so happened that a party of gipsies had pitched their tent and tethered their donkeys in Kibes-lane, and fowls were disappearing from the henroost, and linen vanishing from the clothesline, as is usual where an encamp

ment of that picturesque but slippery order | din, and for four-and-twenty hours (for I really of vagabonds takes place. The party in ques- believe that during the first night of its betion consisted as usual of tall, lean, suspicious- longing to him the boy never went to bed) it looking men, an aged sibyl or two of fortune- was one incessant tornado of beating, jingling, telling aspect, two or three younger women and rumbling-the whole house was deafened with infants at their backs, and children of all by the intolerable noise which the enraptured ages and sizes, from fifteen downwards. One tambourinist was pleased to call music. At lad, apparently about our hero's age, but con- the end of that time the parchment (already siderably larger, had struck up an acquaint-pretty well worn) fairly cracked, as well it ance with Ben, who used to pass that way to might, under such unmerciful pommelling, fetch a dole of milk from our kind neighbours and a new head, as Ben called it, became nethe Murrays, and usually took his master's cessary. It had been warranted to wear for greyhounds with him for company and had six months, under pain of forfeiting eighteen made sufficient advances towards familiarity pence by the former possessor; but on repair-: to challenge him to a coursing expedition, ing to Kibes-lane, Dick and his whole tribe, promising that their curs should find hares, tents, donkeys, and curs, had disappeared, and provided the greyhounds would catch them; the evil was so far without remedy. The and even endeavouring to pique' him on the purchaser had exhausted his funds; every point of honour (for Ben was obviously proud body was too much out of humour with the of his beautiful and high-bred dogs,) by in-noise to think of contributing money to prosinuating that the game might be more easily mote its renewal, and any other boy would found than caught. Ben, however, too con- have despaired. versant with the game-laws to fall into the snare, laughed at the gipsy-boy, and passed quietly on his way.

The next day, Dick (for such was the name of his new acquaintance) made an attack upon Ben, after a different fashion, and with a more favourable result.

Amongst

But Ben was a lad of resource. his various friends and patrons, he numbered the groom of an eminent solicitor in Belford, to whom he stated his case, begging him to procure for him some reversionary parchment, stained, or blotted, or discoloured, or what not -any thing would do, so that it were whole; Perched on a knoll, under a fine clump of and the groom was interested, and stated the oaks, at a turning of the lane, stood the gipsy- case to the head clerk; and the clerk was boy, beating the march in Bluebeard, with the amused, and conveyed the petition to his masmost approved flourishes, on a tambourine of ter; and the master laughed, and sent Ben the largest size. Ben was enchanted. He forthwith a cancelled deed; and the tambouloitered to listen, stopped to admire, proceeded rine was mended; and for another four and to question Dick as to the ownership of the twenty hours we were stunned. instrument, and on finding that this splendid At the end of that time, having laid down implement of noise was the lad's own proper- the instrument from pure weariness, his left ty, and to be sold to the best bidder, com- arm being stiff from holding and tossing, and menced a chaffering and bargaining, which in his right knuckles raw from thumping, Ben its various modifications of beating down on deposited his beloved treasure in a nook which, one side, and crying up on the other, and pre- he had especially prepared for it in the stable; tended indifference on both, lasted five days and on going to pay it a visit the next mornand a half, and finally became the happy pos- ing, the dear tambourine was gone-vanished sessor of the tambourine for the sum of four-stolen-lost, as we all thought, for ever! shillings-half a guinea having been the price originally demanded.

Who now so triumphant as Ben! The tambourine (though greatly the worse for wear) was still a most efficient promoter of

*Besides their eminent picturesqueness, there is a poetical feeling about these wandering tribes, that can hardly fail to interest. The following anecdote, illustrative of this fact, is new to me, and may be so to my readers: One fine spring morning, a friend of mine saw a young gipsy-girl jumping and clapping her hands, and shouting to an elderly female, "I have done it! I have done it!"-"Done what?" inquired my friend."Set my foot on nine daisies at once, ma'am," was the reply; and then she and an elder one began chanting a song, the burden of which was, as near as the auditress could recollect, as follows: Summer is come!

With the daisy bud,

To gladden our tents

By the merry green wood;

Summer is come! Summer is come!"

and poor Ben was so grieved at the loss of his plaything, that, nuisance as the din had been, we could not help being sorry too, and had actually commissioned him to look out for another second-hand instrument, and promised to advance the purchase-money, when the aspect of affairs was suddenly changed by the adventure before alluded to, which occurred at the great cheese-fair at Belford.

After receiving the money from Sir Robert -or rather, after getting his check cashed at the bank, and delivering the horse to the groom, as I have before stated,-Ben having transferred the notes to his master, and received half-a-crown to purchase a fairing, proceeded to solace himself by taking a leisurely view of the different shows, and having laughed at Punch, stared at the wild-beasts, and admired the horsemanship, was about to enter a booth, to enjoy the delight of a three

penny play, when, on a platform in front, where the characters, in full costume, were exhibiting themselves to attract an audience to the entertainment about to commence, he was struck by the apparition of a black boy in a turban, flourishing a tambourine, and in spite of the change of colour in the player, and a good deal of new gilding on the instrument, was instantly convinced that he beheld his quondam friend Dick the gipsy, and his own beloved tambourine!

Ben was by no means a person to suffer such a discovery to pass unimproved; he clambered on the railing that surrounded the booth, leaped on the platform, seized at one clutch the instrument and the performer, and in spite of the resistance offered by a gentleman in a helmet and spangles, a most Amazonian lady in a robe and diadem, and a personage, sex unknown, in a pair of silver wings, gold trousers, and a Brutus wig, he succeeded in mastering the soi-disant negro-boy, and raising such a clamour as brought to his assistance a troop of constables and other officials, and half the mob of the fair.

Ben soon made known his grievance. "He's no blackamoor!" shouted the lad, dexterously cleaning with a wetted finger part of the cheek of the simulated African, and discovering the tanned brown skin underneath. "He's a thief and a gipsy! And this is my tambourine! I can prove the fact!" roared Ben. "I can swear to the parchment, and so can lawyer Lyons," added Ben (displaying the mutilated but clerk-like writing, by which Simon Lackland, Esq., assigned over to Daniel Holdfast, Gent. the manor and demesnes, woods and fisheries, parklands and pightles, of Flyaway, in consideration, and so forth.) "I can swear to my tambourine, and so can my master, and so can the lawyer! Take us to the bench! Carry us before the Mayor! I can swear to the tambourine, and the thief who is playing it, who is no more a negro than I am!" pursued Ben, sweeping off another streak of the burnt cork from the sunburnt face of the luckless Dick. "I'm Doctor M's. boy," bawled Ben, "and he'll see me righted, and the tambourine's mine, and I'll have it!"

And have it he did; for the lawyer and his master both happened to be within hearing, and bore satisfactory testimony to his veracity; and the mob, who love to administer summary justice, laid hold of the culprit, whom Ben, having recovered his property, was willing to let off scot-free, and amused themselves with very literally washing the blackamoor white by means of a sound ducking in the nearest horse-pond. And the tambourine was brought home in triumph; and we are as much stunned

as ever.

MRS. HOLLIS, THE FRUITERER.

AT the corner of St. Stephen's churchyard, forming a sort of angle at the meeting of four roads, stands a small shop, the front abutting on the open space caused by the crossing of the streets, one side looking into the Butts, the other into the church-yard, and one end only connected with other houses; a circumstance which, joined to the three open sides being, so to say, glazed-literally composed of shop-windows, gives an agreeable singularity to the little dwelling of our fruiterer. By day it looks something like a greenhouse, or rather like the last of a row of stovehouses; and the resemblance is increased by the contents of the shop-windows, consisting of large piled-up plates of every fruit in season, interspersed with certain pots of plants which, in that kind of atmosphere, never blow,

outlandish plants, names unknown, whose green, fleshy, regular leaves, have a sort of fruity-look with them, seem as if intended to be eaten, and assort wonderfully well with the shaddocks, dates, cocoa-nuts, pine-apples, and other rare and foreign fruits, amongst which they stand. By night it has the air of a Chinese lantern, all light and colour; and whether by night or by day, during full eight months of the year, that ever-open door sends forth the odours of countless chests of oranges, with which, above all other productions of the earth, the little shop is filled, and which comes steaming across the pavement like a perfume.

I have an exceeding affection for oranges and the smell of oranges in every shape: the leaf, the flower, the whole flowering tree, with its exquisite elegance,* its rare union of richness and delicacy, and its aristocratic scarcity and unwillingness to blossom, or even to grow in this climate, without light and heat, and shelter and air, and all the appliances which its sweetness and beauty so well deserve. I even love that half-evergreen, flexible honey

per

*So elegant is it, that the very association connected with it will sometimes confer a grace not its own. For instance, an indifferent play called Elvira, taken from the Spanish some two hundred years ago by George Digby, Earl of Bristol, is really made tasteful by the scene being laid partly amongst the orangegroves of a Spanish garden, and partly in the " fuming room," a hall, or laboratory, where the flowers her attendants, a lady in disguise, the pretty task of were distilled, and in which the mistress sets one of gathering and changing the flowers. No one can conceive the effect of this tasteful fixing of the scene, in heightening and ennobling the female characters. Our own green-houses were originally built for tenorangery is still one of the rarest and most elegant der evergreens, chiefly oranges and myrtles; and an appurtenances to a great house. Some of my hap piest days were spent in that belonging to Belford Manor-house, looking out from amid orange-trees, second only to those at Hampton Court, on gay flowers, green trees, and a bright river, in the sunny month of June, and enjoying society worthy of the scenery.

suckle, with the long wreaths of flowers, which does condescend to spread and flourish, and even to blow for half the year, all the better, because its fragrance approaches nearer to that of the orange blossom than any other that I know and the golden fruit with its golden rind, I have loved both for the scent and the taste from the day when a tottering child, laughing and reaching after the prize which I had scarcely words enough to ask for, it was doled out to me in quarters, through the time when, a little older, I was promoted to the possession of half an orange to my own share, and that still prouder hour when I attained the object of my ambition, and had a whole orange to do what I liked with, up to this very now, when, if oranges were still things to sigh for, I have only to send to Mrs. Hollis's shop, and receive in return for one shilling, lawful money of Great Britain, more of the golden fruit than I know what to do with. Every body has gone through this chapter of the growth and vanity of human wishes-has longed for the fruit, not only for its own sweetness, but as a mark of property and power which vanish when possessed great to the child, to the woman nothing. But I still love oranges better and care for them more than grown people usually do, and above all things I like the smell; the rather, perhaps, that it puts me in mind of the days when, at school in London, I used to go to the play so often, and always found the house scented with the quantity of orange-peel, in the pit, so that to this hour that particular fragrance brings John Kemble to my recollection. I certainly like it the better on that account, and as certainly, although few persons can be less like the great tragedian-glorious John-as certainly I like it none the worse for recalling to my mind, my friend Mrs. Hollis.*

As long as I can recollect, Mrs. Hollis has been the inhabitant of this grand depôt of choice fruits, the inmate not so much of the house as the shop. I never saw her out of that well-glazed apartment, or heard of any one that did, nor did I ever see the shop with out her. She was as much a fixture there as one of her flowerless plants, and seemed as little subject to change or decay in her own person. From seven o'clock, when it was opened, till nine, when the shutters were closed, there she sat in one place, from whence she seldom stirred, a chair behind the righthand counter, where she could conveniently reach her most tempting merchandise, and hold discourse with her friends and customers, (terms which in her case were nearly synonymous,) even although they advanced no nearer

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towards the sanctum than the step at the door. There she has presided, the very priestess of that temple of Pomona, for more years than I can well reckon,-from her youth (if ever she were young,) to now, when, although far from looking so, she must, I suppose, according to the register, be accounted old. What can have preserved her in this vigorous freshness, unless it be the aroma of the oranges, nobody can tell. There she sits, a tall, stout, square, upright figure, surmounted by a pleasant comely face, eyes as black as a sloe, cheeks as round as an apple, and a complexion as ruddy as a peach, as fine a specimen of a healthy, hearty English tradeswoman, the feminine of "John Bull," as one would desire to see on a summer day.

One circumstance which has probably contributed not a little to that want of change in her appearance, which makes people who have been away from Belford for twenty years or more declare, that every thing was altered except Mrs. Hollis, but that she and her shop were as if they had left it only yesterday, is undoubtedly her singular adherence to one style of dress-a style which in her youth must have had the effect of making her look old, but which now, at a more advanced period of life, suits her exactly. Her costume is very neat, and, as it never can have been at | any time fashionable, has the great advantage of never looking old-fashioned. Fancy a dark gown, the sleeves reaching just below the elbow, cotton in summer, stuff or merino in winter, with dark mittens to meet the sleeves; a white double muslin handkerchief outside of the gown, and a handsome shawl over that, pinned so as not to meet in front; a white apron, a muslin cap with a highish formal crown, a plaited muslin border trimmed with narrow edging, (I dare say she never wore such a gewgaw as a bit of net in her life,) a plaited chinnum to match fastened to the cap at either ear, and a bit of sober-coloured satin riband pinned round without bow or any other accompaniment; imagine all this delicately neat and clean, and you will have some notion of Mrs. Hollis. There is a spice of coquetry in this costume—at least, there would be, if adopted with malice prepense, it is so becoming. But as she is, probably, wholly unconscious of its peculiar allurement, she has the advantage without the sin, the charm “without the illness should attend it."

Nobody that knew Mrs. Hollis would suspect her of coquetry, or of any thing implying design or contrivance of any sort. She was a thoroughly plain and simple-minded woman, honest and open in word and deed, with an uncompromising freedom of speech, and a directness and singleness of purpose, which answer better, even as regards worldly prosperity, than the cunning or the cautious would allow themselves to believe. There was not a bolder talker in all Belford than Mrs. Hollis,

who saw in the course of the day people of all | A contested election turns her and her shop ranks, from my lord in his coronet carriage, to topsy-turvy. One wonders how she lives the little boys who came for ha'porths or through the excitement, and how she contrives penn'orths of inferior fruits (judiciously pre- to obtain and exhibit the state of the poll alferring the liberality and civility of a great most as it seems before the candidates themshop to the cheatery and insolence of the infe- selves can know the numbers. It even puts rior chapwoman, who makes money by the her sober-suited attire out of countenance. poor urchins, and snubs them all the while :) Green and orange being the colours of her from the county member's wife to the milk- party, she puts on two cockades of that livery, | woman's daughter, every body dealt with which suit as ill with her costume as they Mrs. Hollis, and with all of them did Mrs. would with that of a Quaker; she hoists a gay Hollis chat with a mixture of good-humour flag at her door, and sticks her shop all over and good spirits, of perfect ease and perfect with oranges and laurel-leaves, so that it vies respectfulness, which made her one of the in decoration with the member's chair; and in most popular personages in the town. As a return for this devotion, the band at an elecgossip she was incomparable. She knew tion time, make a halt of unusual duration beevery body and every thing, and every thing fore her door, (to the great inconvenience of about every body; her reports, like her plums, the innumerable stage-coaches and other vehad the bloom on them, and she would as hicles which pass that well-frequented corner, much have scorned to palm upon you an old which by the way is the high road to Lonpiece of scandal as to send you strawberries don,) and the mob, especially that part of it that had been two days gathered. Moreover, which consists of little boys and girls, with considering the vast quantity of chit-chat of an eye to a dole of nuts or cherries, bestow which she was the channel, (for it was com- upon her almost as many cheers as they would puted that the whole gossip of Belford passed inflict upon the candidate himself. through her shop once in four-and-twenty hours, like the blood through the heart,) it was really astonishing how authentic, on the whole, her intelligence was; mistakes and mis-statements of course there were, and a plentiful quantity of exaggeration; but of actual falsehood there was comparatively little, and of truth, or of what approached to truth, positively much. If one told a piece of news out of Mrs. Hollis's shop, it was almost an even wager that it was substantially correct. And of what other gossip-shop can one say so much?

Chit-chat, however, eminently as she excelled in it, was not the sort of discourse which our good fruiterer preferred. Her taste lay in higher topics. She was a keen politician, a zealous partisan, a red-hot reformer, and to declaim against taxes and tories, and poor-rates and ministers-subjects which she handled as familiarly as her pippins-was the favourite pastime of our fruiterer. Friend or foe made little difference with this free-spoken lady, except that perhaps she preferred the piquancy of a good-humoured skirmish with a political adversary to the flatness of an agreement with a political ally; and it is saying not a little for tory good-humour, that her antagonists listened and laughed, and bought her grapes and oranges just as quietly after a diaI tribe of her fashion as before. I rather think that they liked her oratory better than the whigs did-it amused them.*

* As an illustration both of her passion for politics, and of the way in which one is oneself possessed by the subject that happens to be the point of interest at the moment, I cannot help relating an equivoque which occurred between Mrs. Hollis and myself. I had been to London on theatrical business, and called at the shop a day or two after my return, and our little 30 * 2U

At these times, Mr. Hollis (for there was such a personage, short and thick, and very civil) used to make his appearance in the shop, and to show his adhesion to the cause by giving a plumper to its champion; on other occasions he was seldom visible, having an extensive market-garden to manage in the suburbs of the town, and being for the most part engaged in trotting to and fro between Mount Pleasant and the Church-yard corner, the faithful reporter of his wife's messages and orders. As you might be certain at any given hour to find Mrs. Hollis at her post behind the counter

for little as she looked like a person who lived without eating, she never seemed to retire for the ordinary purposes of breakfast or dinner, and even managed to talk scandal | without its usual accompaniment of tea-so sure were you to see her quiet steady husband (one of the best-natured and honestest men in the place) on the full trot from the garden to the shop, or the shop to the garden, with a huge fruit-basket on one arm, and his little grand-daughter, Patty, on the other.

Patty Hollis was the only daughter of our

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