Public Executions In England.

One Saturday morning toward the close of November or beginning of December, I have forgotten the precise date, a letter was put into my hand at the office. It was from my quondam friend and employer the cutler editor, as whose agent I occasionally acted, and who charged me with a commission to procure him certain “sorts” from the foundry and transmit them by coach, in time for his next impression. Not choosing to disappoint my wife and lose my dinner, I deferred the visit to the foundry until after work in the evening; when, upon arriving at Chiswell-street, I found the men in the act of leaving, but was informed I could have the materials I wanted as early as I chose on Monday. On Monday morning, accordingly, having risen rather earlier than usual and breakfasted by candle-light, I set forth to execute my commission before proceeding to work. Crossing Blackfriars-bridge, and barely noticing that there was an unusual concourse of foot-passengers of the laboring and lower sorts, I turned up Ludgate-hill, where I found the crowd still greater, less equivocally disrespectable, and all hurrying forward at a rapid walking-pace. Intent upon the object I had in view, I pushed forward as rapidly as the rest, and turning sharp round into the Old Bailey, came suddenly upon a spectacle which, of all others, was the farthest from my thoughts. It was the morning of an execution. A thick damp haze filled the air, not amounting to an actual fog, but sufficiently dense to confine the limits of vision to a few hundred yards. The beams of the level sun threw an almost supernatural light of a dim but fiery hue into the mist which they yet had not force enough to penetrate; and there, darkly looming with grim and shadow-like outline against a background of lurid vapor, rose the gallows upon which a wretched fellow-creature was about to be death-strangled and dangled in expiation of the crime of murder. In a moment the commission I had in hand vanished from my thoughts, and, impelled by a fearful and morbid curiosity, I suffered myself to be borne by the pressure behind, every moment aggravated by the arrival of trampling multitudes to the spot, toward the object of the general gaze. One minute afterward, I saw that the attempt to retrace my steps would be not only vain but dangerous; and, compelled to make the best of what I could not now avoid, I was pressed onward as far as the outlet of Fleet-lane, when, contriving by main force to get my back against the end of a stout tressle upon which seven or eight fellows were mounted, I managed to maintain my position until the horrible ceremony was concluded. It wanted yet full twenty minutes to eight o'clock, when I stood fast-wedged within a few fathoms' length of the scaffold. As far as the eye could pierce through the misty glare, was one unbroken sea of human heads and faces; the outer masses reeling, staggering and driving in fitful currents against the firm, compact and solid centre, fixed and immovable as though charmed to stone by the horrible fascination of the gibbet. Far beyond and above all the tower of St. Sepulchre's, magnified by the morning haze, showed like a tall, transparent cloud, from which was soon to burst the thunder-peal of doom upon the miserable man who had shed his brother's blood. The subdued murmur of the immense mob rose and swelled like the hollow roar of a distant but angry sea. Here and there a tall and burly ruffian, pre-eminent above the crowd, signaled his fellow in the distance, or bellowed a ghastly witticism upon the coming horror across the heads of the throng. Women—if women they are to be called, who, like vultures to the carcass, flock to the spectacle of dying agonies—of all ages but of one indescribably vicious and repulsive class, had pushed, and struggled, and fought their way to an eligible point of view, where they awaited with masculine impatience the close of the fearful drama of which they formed so revolting a part. Children of tender age, who must have taken up their position ere the day had dawned, and before the arrival of the masses, made an unsightly addition to the scene. A boy of nine, borne aloft on the shoulders of a man of sixty, who stood by my side, expressed his uncontrollable delight at the tragedy he was about to witness. At every window in the houses opposite, the debtors' door, and indeed wherever a view of the gallows could be obtained, parties of pleasure were assembled for the recreation of the morning. The roofs, the parapets, the protruding eaves of the shops, all were populous with life; the very lamp-posts and projecting sign-boards were clung and clustered over with eager beings impatient to assist in the funeral obsequies of the victim of the law. And now a violent surging and commotion in the centre of the living mass gives token of a fierce quarrel which has ripened to a fight. Shrieks, yells, and cheers of encouragement issue from a hundred throats, while a crew of tall and powerful blackguards elbow and trample their way to the scene of action, and the glazed hats of the police are seen converging unerringly to the disturbed spot. Then there is the flourishing of gilded staves, the sound of sturdy blows followed by a roar of execration, and a gory-visaged culprit is dragged forth, defrauded of his expected banquet, and consigned to a cell in the nearest [pg 543] station. The tumult has hardly subsided when another claims attention. A brace of pickpockets, taking advantage of the fight, are caught in the too confident exercise of their profession; and these, much easier captives than the fighting Irishman, are led off in their turn to the same vile durance.

By this time, weary and actually sore with the repeated violent collisions I had undergone in sustaining my post, I was glad to make a bargain with the man perched above me, who, for a bribe of a few pence, allowed me to effect a footing in his front. I had scarcely accomplished this when the church-clock in the distance rung out the quarters. The crowd, listening for this, had been comparatively silent for the last few minutes, and the note of the bell was acknowledged by a kind of shuddering deprecation for silence, by the instant uncovering of innumerable heads, and the involuntary direction of every eye toward the debtors' door. As the fatal hour at length pealed forth the door was slowly opened, and there came out upon the scaffold, not the mournful death-procession which all were awaiting with such intense interest, but its grim herald and precursor, the crime-honored aristarch of kill-craft, the great stage-manager of the law's last scene, whose performances are so much relished by the mob—the hangman, bearing the odious strand of new rope coiled upon his arm. He was received with a low but universal hum of recognition from the vast multitude now breathless with the exciting anticipation of what was so soon to follow. With an apparent perfect unconsciousness of the presence of a single spectator, he proceeded to mount to the cross-piece of the gibbet, to which, with an air of professional dexterity, he deliberately attached the loathsome cord, occasionally pausing and measuring with his eye the distance to the level of the platform. During this operation he was favored with a running fire of comments and counsels, garnished with infernal jokes and sallies of insane humor, from the mob who stood nearest. Having made the necessary preparations he withdrew for a few minutes, amidst the mock cheers and congratulations of some kindred spirits below. The awful pause which ensued was but of brief duration. Too soon a group of dark figures slowly emerged from the open door-way, among which I could discern the chaplain reading the burial-service, and then the quivering criminal, his hands clasped in prayer, yet bound together in front of his breast: he was supported by two assistants, and was already, to all appearance, more than half dead with mortal terror. These demonstrations of insupportable anguish on the part of the principal performer were received with evident and audible dissatisfaction by a large portion of the spectators of the drama. Derisive sneers on the want of “pluck” manifested by the poor, horror-stricken wretch were expressed in language which can not be repeated; and in many a female but unfeminine face, hardened by embruting vice and callous to every feeling of humanity, I read a contemptuous scorn of the timorous sufferer and a proud and fiend-like consciousness that they themselves would have dared the dark ordeal with less shrinking. The very boy mounted on the old man's shoulders at my side called his “grand-dad” to witness that “the cove as was to be hanged wasn't game;” a declaration which was received with a hoarse chuckle and a corroborative verdict by the standers-by, while the repulsive ceremony went on with fearful rapidity. In less than a minute the light of day was shut forever from his eyes, the last prayerful accents from human lips were dumb to his ears, and the body of the malefactor, sinking with a sudden fall until half concealed by the level platform, struggled in the final throes of agony for a few moments—mercifully abbreviated, as some well-experienced amateurs at my side plainly pointed out, by the coadjutors of the hangman pulling heavily at the feet in the inclosure below—and then swung senseless, veering slowly round upon the now deserted stage.

The very instant the “drop” fell, and while the short gasping cry from a thousand lips which hailed the close of the tragedy yet rung in the air, the scene assumed a new character: the elements of business were borne into the arena of pleasure. Three or four nondescript specimens of the street-orator, who were standing just beneath me, drew suddenly forth from the depths of their long-tailed greasy coats of serge each a bundle of damp paper, which they flourished into flags in a twinkling; and while the death-struggle was acting before their eyes, eager to turn it to account and to realize an honest penny, filled the air with their roaring intonations of “the last dying speech, confession, and behavior” of the murderer of the season. Their example was imitated by fifty others on different parts of the ground, and the chorus of their united voices formed but a beggarly requiem to the departing spirit. The tragedy ended, the farce, as a matter of course, came next. The body had to remain suspended for an hour, and during that hour amusement must be provided, at least for that portion of the spectators who can never have enough unless they have the whole of an entertainment. To swing a live cat from a side avenue into the middle of the crowd; to whirl a heavy truncheon from one broken head on a mission to another; to kick, maul, and worry some unfortunate stray cur that has unhappily wandered from his master; to get up a quarrel or a fight, if between women so much the better—such are some of the time-honored diversions chosen to recreate the hour which a sagacious legislature presumes to be spent in moral reflections upon the enormity of crime and the certainty of its bitter punishment, in the presence of the law-strangled dead.

I had never before seen a public execution in England, but I knew perfectly well—as who does not know?—the feeling with which such exhibitions are regarded by the lower orders, and I had often revolved in my mind the probable cause of that feeling. In now witnessing thus accidentally the whole ceremony, I thought I [pg 544] perceived one source of it, and that not a trifling one, in the ceremony itself. It struck me, and I have no doubt but others have received the same impression, that with all the actual horrors of the dismal process, in addition to a great deal that is disgusting, there is a great deal more that is essentially though horribly ridiculous in our national legal method of public killing. The idea of tying a man's hands, of drawing over his face a white night-cap, through which his features yet remain dimly legible, and then hanging him up in the air is manifestly a ridiculous idea—and connect it with what dreadful realities we may, the sense of the comic or absurd will predominate in the minds of the populace, ever alive to the appreciation of the preposterous or the discrepant, and never willingly disposed to serious reflection. The vagabond kennel-raker, the nomadic coster, the houseless thief, the man of the lowest order of intellect or of morals, sees the majesty of the law descending to the punch-and-judy level, and getting rid of its criminals by the same process as the hunch-backed worthy adopts to get rid of his tormentor—and being accustomed from his infancy to laugh heartily at the latter exhibition, he is not likely to retain for any length of time a grave demeanor in presence of the former one. A flogging in the army is allowed by all unfortunate enough to have witnessed it to be a far more impressive spectacle than a hanging at the Old Bailey. Strong men are known to faint at the sight of the one, while boys and women find amusement in the other. If the object of either exhibition be to deter the spectators from offending against the laws, why is the discrepancy between the effects of the two all on the wrong side? unless it be that the one exhibits the semblance at least of Justice vindicating her violated authority with a deserved though terrible measure of severity, while the other comes into view as a mere hasty and bungling business of killing, the vulgar and beggarly details of which it is impossible to connect in imagination with her divine attributes.

Some years before, I had witnessed in Paris the execution of two men for assassination. The crowd on that occasion, in the Place de GrÈve, was as great as now in the Old Bailey; but their decorum, I am bound to state, was infinitely greater. I can only account for this difference in favor of a population among whom human life is at a far greater discount than it is with us, from the fact that among the French a public execution is a much more impressive spectacle than it can be made to be in England. The guillotine bears a higher character, perhaps, because it wears a more serious and terrible aspect than the gallows; and the functionary who controls its avenging blade does not, as with us, bear a name the synonym of all that is loathsome and repulsive. It is the same class of men and the same order of minds that flock together to gaze at public executions wherever they take place; but I question whether, in any other country than England, a class of traders could be found corresponding with our hawkers and bawlers of last dying speeches, who congregate with their lying wares around the foot of the gallows, watchfully waiting for the commencement of the death-struggle, to them the signal of commerce, and then at the precise moment of horror, unanimously exploding from their hoarse throats “a full, true, and particular account, for the small charge of one half-penny.” The meanest mud-lark in all Gaul, the infamous and mal-odorous chiffonier of Paris, would recoil with disgust from such a species of traffic, the prevalence and prosperity of which at such a time among the lowest orders of London, testify perhaps more than any other single fact to the degraded state of the popular feeling in reference to death-punishment by the hands of the hangman.

Second, to the influence of the hangman, and the scene in which he figures in the production of a degrading and disgraceful estimate of the terrible solemnities of justice, is that of the press. What the Old Bailey or the Horsemonger-lane exhibition is to the uneducated spectator, the broad-sheet is to the uneducated reader; and it requires no great discrimination to recognize in the publication of every minute particular of deeds of violence and bloodshed, looking to the avidity with which such details are seized upon by the public, one of the most fruitful sources of demoralization and crime. The wretched criminal whose language, looks, and deportment are chronicled as matters of general importance, becomes first an object of interest, then an idol to those of his own class. If, as we know to be the case, men are led by the force of example to the commission of suicide, why not of any other species of crime? If a fashion may spring up, and prevail for a time, of leaping headlong from the top of a monument or the parapet of a bridge through the publicity given to such acts by means of the press, how shall the exploits of the felon or the assassin escape imitation when made the subjects of a far more extensive and pertinacious publicity, and paraded as they are before the world with all the importance they can be made to assume? There can be no question but that this practice of pandering to a morbid taste for a detestable species of excitement results largely in engendering the very crimes which certain public writers find it so profitable to detail at such length. The performer on the Old Bailey stage becomes a veritable hero in the eyes of the mob of readers for whose especial delectation his history is periodically dished up, and they gloat over the recital of his acts with a relish and a gusto which no other species of literature can awaken. So great, indeed, of late years, has grown the appetite for violence and villainy of all kinds, that our romance-writers have generously stepped forward to supplement the exertions of the last-dying-speech patterer, as a pendant to whose flimsy damp sheets they supply a still more “full, true, and particular account” in the form of three volumes post octavo. Thus, besides the certainty of being hanged in the presence of ten or twenty thousand admiring spectators, the daring and darling desperado who “dies [pg 545] game” stands the enviable chance of becoming a literary property in the hands of one of those gentlemen, and of running a second course, in half-calf and lettered, to interest and instruct that very community whom it was his life-long occupation to rob, to plunder, or to slay.

Pondering such discursive philosophy as this in my mind, I stood still on my three-penny eminence until the crowd had sufficiently cleared away to allow me to retrace my steps as far as Ludgate-hill without inconvenience. Then, having no great relish for the cadaverous jocularity which generally characterizes the scene of an execution during the removal of the body of the malefactor, I descended and turned my back upon the ignominious spectacle, with a feeling of disgust for the multitude of my fellows who could find recreation in the elements of cruelty and horror, and with anger and vexation at myself for having added one to their number.

What To Do In The Mean Time?

It has been frequently remarked by a philosopher of our acquaintance, whose only fault is impracticability, that in life there is but one real difficulty: this is simply—what to do in the mean time? The thesis requires no demonstration. It comes home to the experience of every man who hears it uttered. From the chimney-pots to the cellars of society, great and small, scholars and clowns, all classes of struggling humanity are painfully alive to its truth.

The men to whom the question is pre-eminently embarrassing are those who have either pecuniary expectancies, or possess talents of some particular kind, on whose recognition by others their material prosperity depends. It may be laid down as a general axiom in such cases, that the worst thing a man can do is to wait, and the best thing he can do is to work; that is to say, that in nine cases out of ten, doing something has a great advantage over doing nothing. Such an assertion would appear a mere obvious truism, and one requiring neither proof nor illustration, were it not grievously palpable to the student of the great book of life—the unwritten biographical dictionary—of the world—that an opposite system is too often preferred and adopted by the unfortunate victims of this “condition-of-every-body question,” so clearly proposed, and in countless instances so inefficiently and indefinitely answered.

To multiply dismal examples of such sad cases of people ruined, starved, and in a variety of ways fearfully embarrassed and tormented during the process of expectation, by the policy of cowardly sloth or feeble hesitation, might, indeed, “point a moral,” but would scarcely “adorn a tale.” It is doubtless an advantage to know how to avoid errors, but it is decidedly a much greater advantage to learn practical truth. We shall therefore leave the dark side of the argument with full confidence to the memories, experience, and imaginations of our readers, and dwell rather—as both a more salutary and interesting consideration—on the brighter side, in cases of successful repartee to the grand query, which our limited personal observation has enabled us to collect. Besides, there is nothing attractive or exciting about intellectual inertia. The contrast between active resistance and passive endurance is that between a machine at rest and a machine in motion. Who that has visited the Great Exhibition can have failed to remark the difference of interest aroused in the two cases? What else causes the perambulating dealers in artificial spiders suspended from threads to command so great a patronage from the juvenile population of Paris and London? What else constitutes the superiority of an advertising-van over a stationary poster? What sells Alexandre Dumas's novels, and makes a balloon ascent such a favorite spectacle? “Work, man!” said the philosopher: “hast thou not all eternity to rest in?” And to work, according to Mill's “Political Economy,” is to move; therefore perpetual motion is the great ideal problem of mechanicians.

The first case in our museum is that of a German officer. He was sent to the coast of Africa on an exploring expedition, through the agency of the parti prÊtre, or Jesuit party in France, with whose machinations against Louis Philippe's government he had become accidentally acquainted. The Jesuits, finding him opposed to their plans, determined to remove him from the scene of action. In consequence of this determination, it so happened that the captain of the vessel in which he went out, set sail one fine morning, leaving our friend on shore to the society and care of the native negro population. His black acquaintances for some time treated him with marked civility; but as the return of the ship became more and more problematical, familiarity began to breed its usual progeny, and the unhappy German found himself in a most painful position. Hitherto he had not been treated with actual disrespect; but when King Bocca-Bocca one day cut him in the most unequivocal manner, he found himself so utterly neglected, that the sensation of being a nobody—a nobody, too, among niggers!—for the moment completely overcame him. A feeble ray of hope was excited shortly afterward in his despondent heart by a hint gathered from the signs made by the negro in whose hut he lived, that a project was entertained in high quarters of giving him a coat of lamp-black, and selling him as a slave; but this idea was abandoned by its originators, possibly for want of opportunity to carry it out. Now our adventurer had observed that so long as he had a charge of gunpowder left to give away, the black men had almost worshiped him as an incarnation of the Mumbo-Jumbo adored by their fathers. Reflecting on this, it occurred to him that if, by any possibility, he could contrive to manufacture a fresh supply of the valued commodity, his fortunes would be comparatively secure.

No sooner had this idea arisen in his brain, than, with prodigious perseverance, he proceeded to work toward its realization. The worst of it was, that he knew the native names neither of [pg 546] charcoal, sulphur, nor nitre. No matter; his stern volition was proof against all difficulties. Having once conveyed his design to the negroes, he found them eager to assist him, though, as difficulty after difficulty arose, it required all the confidence of courage and hopeful energy to control their savage impatience. The first batch was a failure, and it was only by pretending that it was yet unfinished he was enabled to try a second, in which he triumphed over all obstacles. When the negroes had really loaded their muskets with his powder, and fired them off in celebration of the event, they indeed revered the stranger as a superior and marvelous being. For nearly eighteen months the German remained on the coast. It was a port rarely visited, and the negroes would not allow him to make any attempt to travel to a more frequented place. Thus he continued to make gunpowder for his barbarous friends, and to live, according to their notions, “like a prince;” for to do King Bocca-Bocca justice, when he learned our friend's value, he treated him like a man and a brother. What might have been his fate had he awaited in idle despondency the arrival of a vessel? As it was, the negroes crowded the beach, and fired off repeated salvos at his departure. Doubtless his name will descend through many a dusky generation as the teacher of that art which they still practice, carrying on a lucrative commerce in gunpowder with the neighboring tribes. A small square chest of gold-dust, which the escaped victim of Jesuit fraud brought back to Europe, was no inappropriate proof of the policy of doing something “in the mean time,” while waiting, however anxiously, to do something else.

We knew another case in point, also connected with the late king of the French. M. de G—— was, on the downfall of that monarch, in possession of a very handsome pension for past services. The revolution came, and his pension was suspended. His wife was a woman of energy: she saw that the pension might be recovered by making proper representations in the right quarters; but she, also, saw that ruinous embarrassment and debt might accrue in the interim. Her house was handsomely furnished—she had been brought up in the lap of wealth and luxury. She did not hesitate; she turned her house into a lodging-house, sank the pride of rank, attended to all the duties of such a station, and—what was the result? When, at the end of three years, M. de G—— recovered his pension, he owed nobody a farthing, and the arrears sufficed to dower one of his daughters about to marry a gentleman of large fortune, who had become acquainted with her by lodging in their house. Madame de G——'s fashionable friends thought her conduct very shocking. But what might have become of the family in three years of petitioning?

Again: one of our most intimate acquaintance was an English gentleman, who, having left the army at the instance of a rich father-in-law, had the misfortune subsequently to offend the irascible old gentleman so utterly, that the latter suddenly withdrew his allowance of £1000 per annum, and left our friend to shift for himself. His own means, never very great, were entirely exhausted. He knew too well the impracticable temper of his father-in-law to waste time in attempting to soften him. He also knew that by his wife's settlement he should be rich at the death of the old man, who had already passed his seventieth year. He could not borrow money, for he had been severely wounded in Syria, and the insurance-offices refused him: but he felt a spring of life and youth within him that mocked their calculations. He took things cheerfully, and resolved to work for his living. He answered unnumbered advertisements, and made incessant applications for all sorts of situations. At length matters came to a crisis: his money was nearly gone; time pressed; his wife and child must be supported. A seat—not in parliament, but on the box of an omnibus, was offered him. He accepted it. The pay was equivalent to three guineas a week. It was hard work, but he stuck to it manfully. Not unfrequently it was his lot to drive gentlemen who had dined at his table, and drunk his wine in former days. He never blushed at their recognition; he thought working easier than begging. For nearly ten years he endured all the ups and downs of omnibus life. At last, the tough old father-in-law, who during the whole interval had never relented, died; and our hero came into the possession of some £1500 a year, which he enjoys at this present moment. Suppose he had borrowed and drawn bills instead of working during those ten years, as many have done who had expectancies before them, where would he have been on his exit from the Queen's Bench at the expiration of the period? In the hands of the Philistines, or of the Jews?

Our next specimen is that of a now successful author, who, owing to the peculiarity of his style, fell, notwithstanding a rather dashing dÉbut, into great difficulty and distress. His family withdrew all support, because he abandoned the more regular prospects of the legal profession for the more ambitious but less certain career of literature. He felt that he had the stuff in him to make a popular writer; but he was also compelled to admit that popularity was not in his case to be the work of a day. The res angustÆ domi grew closer and closer; and though not objecting to dispense with the supposed necessity of dining, he felt that bread and cheese, in the literal acceptation of the term, were really indispensable to existence. Hence, one day, he invested his solitary half-crown in the printing of a hundred cards, announcing that at the “Classical and Commercial Day-school of Mr. ——, &c., Young Gentlemen were instructed in all the Branches, &c., for the moderate sum of Two Shillings weekly.” These cards he distributed by the agency of the milkman in the suburban and somewhat poor neighborhood, in which he occupied a couple of rooms at the moderate rent of 7s. weekly. It was not long before a few pupils made, one by one, their appearance at the [pg 547] would-be pedagogue's. As they were mostly the sons of petty tradesmen round about, he raised no objection to taking out their schooling in kind, and by this means earned at least a subsistence till more prosperous times arrived, and publishers discovered his latent merits. But for this device, he might not improbably have shared the fate of Chatterton and others, less unscrupulous as to a resource for the “mean time”—that rock on which so many an embryo genius founders.

The misfortune of our next case was, not that he abandoned the law, but that the law abandoned him. He was a solicitor in a country town, where the people were either so little inclined to litigation, or so happy in not finding cause for it, that he failed from sheer want of clients, and, as a natural consequence, betook himself to the metropolis—that Mecca cum Medina of all desperate pilgrims in search of fickle Fortune. There his only available friend was a pastry-cook in a large way of business. It so happened that the man of tarts and jellies was precisely at that epoch in want of a foreman and book-keeper, his last prime-minister having emigrated to America with a view to a more independent career. Our ex-lawyer, feeling the consumption of tarts to be more immediately certain than the demand for writs, proposed, to his friend's amazement, for the vacant post; and so well did he fill it, that in a few years he had saved enough of money to start again in his old profession. The pastry-cook and his friends became clients, and he is at present a thriving attorney in Lincoln's Inn, none the worse a lawyer for a practical knowledge of the pÂtÉs filled by those oysters whose shells are the proverbial heritage of his patrons.

A still more singular resource was that of a young gentleman, of no particular profession, who, having disposed somehow or other in nonprofitable speculations, of a very moderate inheritance, found himself what is technically termed “on his beam-ends;” so much so, indeed, that his condition gradually came to verge on positive destitution; and he sat disconsolately in a little garret one morning, quite at his wits' end for the means of contriving what Goethe facetiously called “the delightful habit of existing.” Turning over his scanty remains of clothes and other possessions, in the vain hope of lighting upon something of a marketable character, he suddenly took up a sheet of card-board which in happier days he had destined for the sketches at which he was an indifferent adept. He had evidently formed a plan, however absurd: that was plain from the odd smile which irradiated his features. He descended the stairs to borrow of his landlady—what? A shilling?—By no means. A needle and thread, and a pair of scissors. Then he took out his box of water-colors and set to work. To design a picture?—Not a bit of it; to make dancing-dolls!—Yes, the man without a profession had found a trade. By the time it was dusk he had made several figures with movable legs and arms: one bore a rude resemblance to Napoleon; another, with scarcely excusable license, represented the Pope; a third held the very devil up to ridicule; and a fourth bore a hideous resemblance to the grim King of Terrors himself! They were but rude productions as works of art; but there was a spirit and expression about them that toyshops rarely exhibit. The ingenious manufacturer then sallied forth with his merchandise. Within an hour afterward he might have been seen driving a bargain with a vagrant dealer in “odd notions,” as the Yankees would call them. It is unnecessary to pursue our artist through all his industrial progress. Enough that he is now one of the most successful theatrical machinists, and in the possession of a wife, a house, and a comfortable income. He, too, had prospects, and he still has them—as far off as ever. Fortunately for him, he “prospected” on his own account, and found a “diggin'.”

“There is always something to be done, if people will only set about finding it out, and the chances are ever in favor of activity. Whatever brings a man in contact with his fellows may lead to fortune. Every day brings new opportunities to the social worker; and no man, if he has once seriously considered the subject, need ever be at a loss as to what to do in the mean time. Volition is primitive motion, and where there is a will there is a way.”

Blighted Flowers.

The facts of the following brief narrative, which are very few, and of but melancholy interest, became known to me in the precise order in which they are laid before the reader. They were forced upon my observation rather than sought out by me; and they present, to my mind at least, a touching picture of the bitter conflict industrious poverty is sometimes called upon to wage with “the thousand natural shocks which flesh is heir to.”

It must be now eight or nine years since, in traversing a certain street, which runs for nearly half a mile in direct line southward, I first encountered Ellen ——. She was then a fair young girl of seventeen, rather above the middle size, and with a queen-like air and gait, which made her appear taller than she really was. Her countenance, pale but healthy and of a perfectly regular and classic mould, was charming to look upon from its undefinable expression of lovableness and sweet temper. Her tiny feet tripped noiselessly along the pavement, and a glance from her black eye sometimes met mine like a ray of light, as, punctually at twenty minutes to nine, we passed each other near —— House, each of us on our way to the theatre of our daily operations. She was an embroideress, as I soon discovered from a small stretching-frame, containing some unfinished work, which she occasionally carried in her hand. She set me a worthy example of punctuality, and I could any day have told the time to a minute without looking at my watch, by marking the spot where we passed each other. I learned to look for her regularly, and before I knew her name, had given her that of “Minerva,” in acknowledgment of her efficiency as a mentor.

A year after the commencement of our acquaintance, which never ripened into speech, happening to set out from home one morning a quarter of an hour before my usual time, I made the pleasing discovery that my juvenile Minerva had a younger sister, if possible still more beautiful than herself. The pair were taking an affectionate leave of each other at the crossing of the New Road, and the silver accents of the younger as kissing her sister, she laughed out, “Good-by, Ellen,” gave me the first information of the real name of my pretty mentor. The little Mary—for so was the younger called, who could not be more than eleven years of age—was a slender, frolicsome sylph, with a skin of the purest carnation, and a face like that of Sir Joshua's seraph in the National Gallery, but with larger orbs and longer lashes shading them. As she danced and leaped before me on her way home again, I could not but admire the natural ease and grace of every motion, nor fail to comprehend and sympathize with the anxious looks of the sisters' only parent, their widowed mother, who stood watching the return of the younger darling at the door of a very humble two-storied dwelling, in the vicinity of the New River Head.

Nearly two years passed away, during which, with the exception of Sundays and holidays, every recurring morning brought me the grateful though momentary vision of one or both of the charming sisters. Then came an additional pleasure—I met them both together every day. The younger had commenced practicing the same delicate and ingenious craft of embroidery, and the two pursued their industry in company under the same employer. It was amusing to mark the demure assumption of womanhood darkening the brows of the aerial little sprite, as, with all the new-born consequence of responsibility, she walked soberly by her sister's side, frame in hand, and occasionally revealed to passers-by a brief glimpse of her many-colored handiwork. They were the very picture of beauty and happiness, and happy beyond question must their innocent lives have been for many pleasant months. But soon the shadows of care began to steal over their hitherto joyous faces, and [pg 550] traces of anxiety, perhaps of tears, to be too plainly visible on their paling cheeks. All at once I missed them in my morning's walk, and for several days—it might be weeks—saw nothing of them. I was at length startled from my forgetfulness of their very existence by the sudden apparition of both, one Monday morning, clad in the deepest mourning. I saw the truth at once: the mother, who, I had remarked, was prematurely old and feeble, was gone, and the two orphan children were left to battle it with the world. My conjecture was the truth, as a neighbor of whom I made some inquiries on the subject was not slow to inform me. “ Ah, sir,” said the good woman, “poor Mrs. D—— have had a hard time of it, and she born an' bred a gentleooman.”

I asked her if the daughters were provided for.

“Indeed, sir,” continued my informant, “I'm afeard not. 'Twas the most unfortunatest thing in the world, sir, poor Mr. D——'s dying jest as a' did. You see, sir, he war a soldier, a-fightin' out in Indy, and his poor wife lef at home wi' them two blossoms o' gals. He warn't what you call a common soldier, sir, but some kind o' officer like; an' in some great battle fought seven year agone he done fine service I've heerd, and promotion was sent out to un', but didn't get there till the poor man was dead of his wounds. The news of he's death cut up his poor wife complete, and she ban't been herself since. I've know'd she wasn't long for here ever since it come. Wust of all, it seems that because the poor man was dead the very day the promotion reached 'un, a' didn't die a captain after all, and so the poor widder didn't get no pension. How they've managed to live is more than I can tell. The oldest gal is very clever, they say; but Lor' bless 'ee! 'taint much to s'port three as is to be got out o' broiderin'.”

Thus enlightened on the subject of their private history, it was with very different feelings I afterward regarded these unfortunate children. Bereft of both parents, and cast upon a world with the ways of which they were utterly unacquainted, and in which they might be doomed to the most painful struggles even to procure a bare subsistence, one treasure was yet left them—it was the treasure of each other's love. So far as the depth of this feeling could be estimated from the looks and actions of both, it was all in all to each. But the sacred bond that bound them was destined to be rudely rent asunder. The cold winds of autumn began to visit too roughly the fair pale face of the younger girl, and the unmistakable indications of consumption made their appearance: the harassing cough, the hectic cheek, the deep-settled pain in the side, the failing breath. Against these dread forerunners it was vain long to contend; and the poor child had to remain at home in her solitary sick chamber, while the loving sister toiled—harder than ever to provide, if possible, the means of comfort and restoration to health. All the world knows the ending of such a hopeless strife as this. It is sometimes the will of Heaven, that the path of virtue, like that of glory, leads but to the grave. So it was in the present instance: the blossom of this fair young life withered away, and the grass-fringed lips of the child's early tomb closed over the lifeless relics ere spring had dawned upon the year.

Sorrow had graven legible traces upon the brow of my hapless mentor when I saw her again. How different now was the vision that greeted my daily sight from that of former years! The want that admits not of idle wailing compelled her still to pursue her daily course of labor, and she pursued it with the same constancy and punctuality as she had ever done. But the exquisitely chiseled face, the majestic gait, the elastic step—the beauty and glory of youth, unshaken because unassaulted by death and sorrow—where were they? Alas! all the bewitching charms of her former being had gone down into the grave of her mother and sister; and she, their support and idol, seemed no more now than she really was—a wayworn, solitary, and isolated struggler for daily bread.

Were this a fiction that I am writing, it would be an easy matter to deal out a measure of poetical justice, and to recompense poor Ellen for all her industry, self-denial, and suffering in the arms of a husband, who should possess as many and great virtues as herself, and an ample fortune to boot. I wish with all my heart that it were a fiction, and that Providence had never furnished me with such a seeming anomaly to add to the list of my desultory chronicles. But I am telling a true story of a life. Ellen found no mate. No mate, did I say? Yes, one: the same grim yoke-fellow, whose delight it is “to gather roses in the spring,” paid ghastly court to her faded charms, and won her—who shall say an unwilling bride? I could see his gradual but deadly advances in my daily walks: the same indications that gave warning of the sister's fate admonished me that she also was on her way to the tomb, and that the place that had known her would soon know her no more. She grew day by day more feeble; and one morning I found her seated on the step of a door, unable to proceed. After that she disappeared from my view; and though I never saw her again at the old spot, I have seldom passed that spot since, though for many years following the same route, without recognizing again in my mind's eye the graceful form and angel aspect of Ellen D——.

“And is this the end of your mournful history?” some querulous reader demands. Not quite. There is a soul of good in things evil. Compassion dwells with the depths of misery; and in the valley of the shadow of death dove-eyed Charity walks with shining wings.... It was nearly two months after I had lost sight of poor Ellen, that during one of my dinner-hour perambulations about town, I looked in, almost accidentally, upon my old friend and chum, Jack W——. Jack keeps a perfumer's shop not a hundred miles from Gray's Inn, where, ensconced up to his eyes in delicate odors, he passes his leisure hours—the hours when commerce flags, [pg 551] and people have more pressing affairs to attend to than the delectation of their nostrils—in the enthusiastic study of art and virtu. His shop is hardly more crammed with bottles and attar, soap, scents, and all the et ceteras of the toilet, than the rest of his house with prints, pictures, carvings, and curiosities of every sort. Jack and I went to school together, and sowed our slender crop of wild-oats together; and, indeed, in some sort, have been together ever since. We both have our own collections of rarities; such as they are, and each criticises the other's new purchases. On the present occasion, there was a new Van Somebody's old painting awaiting my judgment; and no sooner did my shadow darken his door, than, starting from his lair, and bidding the boy ring the bell, should he be wanted, he bustled me up-stairs calling by the way to his housekeeper, Mrs. Jones—Jack is a bachelor—to bring up coffee for two. I was prepared to pronounce my dictum on his newly-acquired treasure, and was going to bounce unceremoniously into the old lumber-room over the lobby to regale my sight with the delightful confusion of his unarranged accumulations, when he pulled me forcibly back by the coat-tail. “Not there,” said Jack; “you can't go there. Go into my snuggery.”

“And why not there?” said I, jealous of some new purchase which I was not to see.

“Because there's some body ill there; it is a bed-room now; a poor girl; she wanted a place to die in, poor thing, and I put her in there.”

“Who is she?—a relative?”

“No; I never saw her till Monday last. Sit down, I'll tell you how it was. Set down the coffee, Mrs. Jones, and just look in upon the patient, will you? Sugar and cream? You know my weakness for the dead-wall in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields.” (Jack never refuses a beggar backed by that wall, for the love of Ben Jonson, who, he devoutly believes, had a hand in building it.) “Well, I met with her there on Monday last. She asked for nothing, but held out her hand, and as she did so the tears streamed from her eyes on the pavement. The poor creature, it was plain enough, was then dying; and I told her so. She said she knew it, but had no place to die in but the parish workhouse, and hoped that I would not send her there. What's the use of talking? I brought her here, and put her to sleep on the sofa while Jones cleared out the lumber-room and got up a bed. I sent for Dr. H—— to look at her; he gave her a week or ten days at the farthest: I don't think she'll last so long. The curate of St. —— comes every day to see her, and I like to talk to her myself sometimes. Well, Mrs. Jones, how goes she on?”

“She's asleep,” said the housekeeper. “Would you like to look at her, gentlemen?”

We entered the room together. It was as if some unaccountable presentiment had forewarned me: there, upon a snow-white sheet, and pillowed by my friend's favorite eider-down squab, lay the wasted form of Ellen D——. She slept soundly and breathed loudly; and Dr. H——, who entered while we stood at the bedside, informed us that in all probability she would awake only to die, or if to sleep again, then to wake no more. The latter was the true prophecy. She awoke an hour or two after my departure, and passed away that same night in a quiet slumber without a pang.

I never learned by what chain of circumstances she was driven to seek alms in the public streets. I might have done so, perhaps, by inquiry, but to what purpose? She died in peace, with friendly hands and friendly hearts near her, and Jack buried her in his own grave in Highgate Cemetery, at his own expense; and declares he is none the worse for it. I am of his opinion.

Monthly Record of Current Events.