("Who are you calling a rough'un, I should like to know ?" from the costermonger. "You're another!") "For uttering obscene language, and you refuse. There is my card, to convince you of my respectability." The policeman took my card, glanced at it, and smiled; though why a public functionary should smile at a private gentleman's address card, with nothing but the words "Mr. Felix Pickles, Turtledove Villa," on it, I confess I could not see. "Come, brush it, Tom!" says Z 22, having recourse to a fourth form of entreaty. "And you, too, governor; I can't have a row here." Well, to be sure!-this was what had come of it! "governor !"—" can't have a row!” "Policeman, what do you mean"There, go on-go on!" "But I say, sir"Will you move on?" "I will report you." "Report and be heard the words. "You too!" !" I saw it on his lips, but cannot swear I Remonstrance was in vain; so I moved on, with a retinue of rags behind me, a string of street boys, grinning loungers, and jeering louters, who accompanied me the whole length of two streets, to my great chagrin, now running ahead and looking back into my face, ducking under horses' heads to keep pace with me, never stopping to inform inquisitive passengers what's amiss, but only adding to their stupid curiosity by crying, as they run, "Here's a go!" Now, I maintain that such a state of things as this should not be tolerated in the metropolis of the most civilised nation. Pray, my noble lords and worthy gentlemen who sit at Westminster to legislate for us, forget for a little while what a very free country this is, wherein every man can speak and do as he listeth; and, excellent commissioners of police, to whose hardly-earned salaries I have the privilege of contributing, do see if something cannot be done! I don't want to see a working man locked up for using a thoughtless oath; but, when a string of foul language is being left behind him, like the stream of smoke from his pipe as he goes along, I would have a policeman touch his elbow, and expostulate: "Nicer language, my good fellow, in the public streets." If the law is powerless or unwilling to protect our necks and limbs from the "nursing" freaks of an overreaching omnibus company, if it won't look to our lives in the roadway, let it turn nurse itself, and see if it cannot look to our children's morals on the path. VI. PAROCHIAL AFFAIRS. WE are astonishing the old neighbourhoods of Steeple Bumpkin and Prickleton! We are driving them, with their great old red-brick houses, park fencings, oil lamps, old trees, rooks, and all, into modern notions and the nineteenth century—that is, we are driving them into it, or driving them away. We have had a great meeting at the Turtledove Arms, and raised a subscription for lighting "the freehold," as our neighbourhood is popularly called, and we have got huge pipes as big as Lord Rosse's telescope, that would admit of a fat dean with his umbrella up walking through them, deposited by the old gone-by country road, which still clings to its hedges here and there, and would, I dare say, like to see stage-coaches again. We have got an omnibus down Turtledoveroad, too (a well-conducted omnibus, for it is unconnected with the great nursing system of the metropolis as yet; our cab and fly proprietor is trying it, and the great company do not at present think it worth their while to run it off or confiscate it); and this accommodating vehicle the great guns, with their carriages, call an innovation and democratic. We are pulling down the old trees as injurious to the health of the neighbourhood. We are going a great pace, I can tell you! We are agitating! agitating!! agitating!!! Old people of the neighbourhood miss the great trees, the rooks, the red-brick houses (and perhaps some of the good things of this world they used to get at then), shake their heads, and say, "Ah! Prickleton isn't the sweet old place it used to be before this building affair began!" Of course it isn't! It isn't our mission to let it be so! We have a District Parochial Reform Association to look into and set to rights the affairs of the parish-to put down the great nobs of the old neighbourhood-to amend, reform, enlighten, and alter everything, with a shrewd fellow, clerk to a London attorney, for its secretary; and we hold our meetings weekly at the Turtledove Arms. We have taken a good deal of the parochial business out of the hands of the old red-brick inhabitants. We have rallied round our secretary, and turned out two collectors, whom they had elected and re-elected for thirty years, and got in young blood. It argues nothing against our cause that one of our new collectors went off the other day with twelve hundred pounds; for if we had not forgotten to take security, it would not have mattered how much he went off with. My friend Tallow, the retired candlemaker, who has four freehold plots of his own; Grit, the great unadulterated farm-house bread-baker of London and-of London, who holds two allotments; the shrewd attorney's clerk, our secretary-such men as these are heard now in the parish, and have a voice, my masters-a voice in matters parochial ! Think of that! a voice, as every free-born Briton should have! The immediate effects are a doubling of the rates throughout the parish; but this, as Snap very justly says, is only to make them equitable, and, as soon as they are adjusted, we shall see how parish affairs ought to be administered! We have astonished the old rector, who was leading his easy life, just going round among the red-brick houses, or taking a lazy walk across the fields to drop a paltry half-crown into the hands of the poor people in the frosty weather. We have shown the poor people what nonsense that was, and proved to them that they have a right-a positive right to the shelter of the Union. We have raised their standard-we have shown them that to receive the parson's half-crown was mendicancy, and they now clamour for their rights at the Union gates. A clever fellow among us has lately raised a tremendous storm against the red-brick men and their rooks. There was a right of way which crossed the garden of one of them, cutting it in two (and, I must admit, as useless a right of way as could be well conceived, but yet it was a right of way, and must be maintained, or else where is the liberty of the subject?). Well, this old Red Bricks wanted to take in this right of way (offering us, it is true, another perhaps more convenient, but then we should have been sacrificing our rights), but our sturdy Wachterblacher, a retired sugar-baker of our association, issued, at his own expense, handbills, warning us that the iron heel of despotism was upon us, and we opposed it with success. I am-may I say it in all humility after this?-the unworthy president of the District Association; but "What is all this nonsense that you are now writing to the papers, Mr. Pickles ?" asks Mrs. P., over my shoulder. "You know that it was only this morning at breakfast you said you would not have anything more to do with that nasty, low, upsetting lot; that you knew they wanted to pull down everything; that you had even heard that Snap had offered to sell you all-opposition, great principles, enlightenment, reform, and allfor the vestry clerkship, as soon as poor old Mr. Parker dies; and that you always took too much at their meetings." "More than I am used to, Mrs. Pickles," I suggest. "More than did you good, sir, were your own words." "Well, my dear, I confess I have lost faith in them. I believe they are all trying to get places, but then what else do the great state parties do? It is only the same game of politics." "Yes, and you are the pawns! Psha! to compare those men of the Turtledove Arms with Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston"-(the ladies will stand by him)—"or Well, there is sense in what Mrs. Pickles says; I will not contend that Prickleton looks any better under the sun for its odd-and-even houses than the Prickleton of fields, and trees, and rooks. But then there is the high moral view of it to be taken. "Consider what a blessing that the highly-taxed, the overworked, and underfed should be enabled to live in the country!" "Country once-country do you call it now? undefiled by smoke?—its clover-fields ?—its"Its gravelly soil!" I moaned, in anguish. Where is its clear air Oh, that's there, of course, and always will be; but where, after all, are the overworked and underfed? I don't see them here. Highlytaxed we all are, sure enough, since this association's been working for our good! Come, put down your pen for to-night; I will write about a social grievance one of these evenings.' There, now, as Mr. Pickles has gone to bed-and the best place for him after he has been attending these meetings (for he's got at it again)-I will first ask if this pipe-and-porter politician work isn't a social grievance? I don't blame Mr. Grit or Mr. Tallow-they are only tools, like poor Mr. Pickles himself—but it's that Snap; always hunting after abuses, as he calls them-a nasty little, pettifogging, mischief-making peace-andquietness-upsetting fellow! He's set the heads of the others crazy. Mr. Wachterblacher is nearly insane, and (his name isn't pronounced as it's spelt, but I can never get hold of it, so I will say) Mrs. W. is quite annoyed, as well she may be. We have got up a Dorcas society for visiting, and making pretty little ornamental things for the poor-not exactly flannel petticoats or stuff gowns, of course, but knick-knacks—and have an opportunity of mixing in good society down here; and then, when we walk out with our husbands, one of these red-faced, loud-voiced men meets us, and says, "How are you, Mr. Pickles," or "Mr. W. ?" and makes some grossly familiar remark about the missis or the kids! It's very unpleasant, not to say low. But Mr. Pickles is such a good, easy sort of soul, and, having nothing to do, he so soon takes up what seems to him a case of wrong or hardship; and they know it, and have got hold of him. Oh! he's a nasty fellow, that Snap! He never did any good for himself, I know, and is only working for a place that he'll afterwards lose by embezzlement or misconduct. "Well, it shall all go as it stands," I say next morning, with a dreadful smell of tobacco in my clothes, a slight inclination to headache, and a great loss of faith in agitating attorneys' clerks in a new neighbourhood; "only give up your Visiting Society; let us attend to our own concerns, give our own charity, keep ourselves to ourselves, and I give up the District Parochial Reform Association. Surely I may be better employed in putting my own house in order than pulling down my neighbour's, even if it be built of red bricks-in keeping my own garden tidy than tearing up his-in attending to Sarah Jane's linnet than scaring away his crows! They are shams, and failures, and causes of dissensions and heartburnings, half these Parochial Reform Associations. Not but what they may be useful sometimes, under particular circumstances, and at particular seasons-perhaps. But I'll have no further hand in bringing St. Pancras or Marylebone down to once peaceful Prickleton, although a hundred lawyers' clerks might get places by it. And, besides, I hear that Scamp, the builder, is to be proposed as treasurer, and, after what has passed between us, I shouldn't like to meet him at our board." A FROST SONG. TO THE TUNE OF A PAIR OF SKATES. BY W. CHARLES KENT. DRAWN each strap through the buckle tightly, One scarce may the slippery surface feel: With a joyous rush through the wholesome breeze, Of which none yonder can form a notion, Shivering under the snow-plumed trees. Twittering, glittering-shod as with light, Away! on our chirruping swallow flight. Not jockey blithe on his blood-mare riding, With foot well poised in the stirrup thong; Thus reared on the crest of a steel-blue keel, Driven by a force that like fury lashes, As though we were charging with pike or lance, Till drifting by as in whirlwind eddy |