called. He steps into the witness-box, | deal to say, but it appears to have sud. looking very respectable, and totally un- denly gone from her, like King Nebuchad like the drunken man who couldn't drive nezzar's dream, and she can only admit my Aunt on the memorable night of her that Thomas Muddock did drive her, did visit to my cottage. wait for her about five hours, and that she has not paid him. Thomas Muddock takes his oath, and tells his story. He drove the lady from Jummin Street to the Hole, Squedgely, ten miles out of town, where he waited for her five hours, and he claims thirtytwo shillings. Which is all clear enough. So far the Cabman has it entirely his own way. My Aunt has come out of the pew, and is clutching me by the elbow. Where shall I go?" she asks, shaking all over. I am hot and excited. I beg of her to keep cool. She is called. The Clerk says, "Henrietta!" and then adds the surname. Mr. Sharply only catches half, and asks, abruptly, "Where is he? Where is Henry? Why doesn't he--" My Aunt is beckoned by the Clerk. She has heard of people "being accommodated with a seat on the bench," and she thinks she is to go and sit by the Magistrate, out of consideration for her sex, and tell her plain unvarnished tale confidentially. She is shaking her head, and explaining in dumb show, with her parasol, to the Clerk that she doesn't see how to get there, without climbing over the Solicitors' bench, and crossing the table, when Now, then," says the Magistrate, impatiently, "where is Henry-" he can't catch the other name "I can't wait. We must call the next case.' And the "next case" would have been called there and then, but for my Aunt trying to get into the dock, from which she is taken by a policeman, who informs her that she can stand behind the Solicitors. She has a sort of reticule on her left arm, she has given me her parasol to hold, and she places her right hand on the back of the seat. Seeing this figure before him, the Magistrate arrives at the conclusion that Henry is a surname, and addresses her with "Now, Miss Henry, what have you got to say to this?" Up to this moment she has had a great "Why not?" asks Mr. Sharply. Then, while my Aunt is looking piteously at mé (I studiously avoid catching her eye, not wishing to appear before I am absolutely required), he turns to the Cabman, Did you agree for a certain sum for the job? The Cabman reflects. "Did you, or did you not?" asks Mr. Sharply, who can't wait for thoughts. "Yes," says the Cabman, with such an air of uncertainty as to the statement that Mr. Sharply eyes him distrustfully, and then wants to know "How much?" "Well," answers Mr. Thomas Muddock, recovering himself a little, "the lady said fifteen shillings." For the job?" says Mr. Sharply, suggestively. "For the job," replies the Cabman, not clearly seeing what the result of his answer may be. 66 But," says my Aunt, now beginning to be quite at home, "I said distinctly that he might have to wait." "Not five hours," says Mr. Thomas Muddock. Mr. Sharply looks from one to the other. Yes," says my Aunt, "I said it might be one hour or five." "Did you agree as to the time?" asks Mr. Sharply of the Cabman. "No," says the Cabman, "I didn't— that is-in a way-yes." "I don't believe a word you're saying," says Mr. Sharply; whereat my Aunt, plucking up, and addressing the Maristrate, says, "I didn't pay him, your Worship," (she is very near saying "My Lord "), "because when I wanted him at night, he was so intoxicated that he couldn't drive me." Mr. Sharply looks fiercely at the Cabman, and wishes to know what he has to say to that. Mr. Thomas Muddock has not much to say to that, but he is understood to deny the charge in an undertone. The Magistrate eyes him suspiciously, and is about to make an observation when my Aunt lugs me into it. 'Here's my nephew, Sir, a barrister, saw him; he'll tell you, Sir." Whereat Mr. Sharply decides in a rapid, off-hand I feel that the eyes of Europe (specially manner. "You'll" (to my Aunt) "pay unwashed' Europe) are upon me, and be- him twelve shillings. Cabman pay his come very hot and uncomfortable in con- own costs. Now, then, call the next sequence. Oh!" says Mr. Sharply, witnesses. Now, Sir!" to me. there are The Cabman comes out of the box, and I go in. A stout Policeman hands me a Testament, and I take my oath to what I am going to say. I notice that, if not badgered, it is surprising how very soon one's nervousness wears off in a witness-box, and what a strong temptation there is to become confidential with the Magistrate, or with any one who "wishes to ask this witness a question." "Now, Sir, tell us what happened." case." I think the next case must be that of our friend the Rum Lady, as I see the dreaded Purkiss rising to address the Magistrate as we are leaving the Court. I look back once, tenderly, at Mr. Sharply, with a sort of lingering idea that he will yet send me the invitation to dinner, or, at all events, wave his hand to me genially from the bench. Nothing of the sort. I and my Aunt's case have gone clean out of his head, and he is telling Mr. Purkiss "that he really can't listen to this; that he hasn't got time for these details;" and becoming once more so irritable that even the dreaded Purkiss will be quenched, and the Rum Lady remain unheard. I detail the facts of the Cabman's being unable to find the road, and attempt some pathos about my fear for my Aunt's safety. Having finished my facts, and got On mature reflection, it occurs to me quite pleasant with Mr. Sharply, I should that Mr. Sharply is the right man in the now like to romance a little, and intro- right place, and his brisk method of siftduce a joke or two, just by way of light-ing the Wheat from the intolerable ening the entertainment. I have a sort amount of Chaff, is, on the whole, beneof latent idea that Mr. Sharply will ask ficial to the public. me to step into his private room, or send me, by a policeman, an invitation to dinner that night. I fancy that with the second bottle of port, or the first cigar, he would say, "And now, old fellow, what was the truth about that Cabman, eh? I suppose he really was drunk, eh?" But this is an ideal Sharply at home, and not Sharply the real on the bench. This occurs to me in the few seconds that Mr. Sharply takes to consider the case, and he interrupts my reflections with "What do you consider the right fare to your house?" I answer boldly, "Eight shillings," this being rather a fancy price of my own than what I am obliged to give when I take a cab from town to my Cottage near a Wood, known as "The Hole," near Squedgely, Middlesex. "Twelve shillings there and back, you would consider quite sufficient?" asks Mr. Sharply, giving the finishing touches to the case. I reply, that this sum would be, in my opinion, Munificent. [What a row there would have been at my gate had I ever offered a cabman this sum as his fare "there" from town, let alone "and back."] The following day my Aunt comes down to see me. She brings with her all the day's newspapers. The Case has not been reported in any one of them. She is in consequence very much disappointed. "If," she says, "I had lost it, you may depend upon it all London would have been reading about it now." She begs me to take up the study of the Law, and has the happiness to announce that her solicitor has written to her to say that the Legacy will be duly paid on a certain day, but that he must request the favour of an interview. "If," she adds, as she steps into her fly, "this leads to any Chancery suit, I will tell my solicitor that he had better come to you." I thank her, and determine to look up the subject, generally, in the interim. However, so ends my Aunt's great Police Case, and I have as yet had no intimation of an impending Chancery suit. SURE CURE FOR PRIDE. An old man who had for years been a strict church member, and had done much effective work for the cause of temperance, was found lying by the roadside the other day in a state of intoxication. He was drawn up before a committee of the church, and asked to show cause why he should not be excommunicated, "I acknowledge that I was drunk, brethren, and I've a mighty good reason for it." 'Family trouble?" asked the chairman of the committee. "No, sir; I've no trouble. It was pride." "Pride!" exclaimed the chairman. "Yes, pride. As I went along to town I met a drunken fellow, and I began to think well of myself because I had never been drunk. Pretty soon I began to feel proud about it. A little further on I met an ordinary-lookin' feller, and wouldn't speak to him. My neck was so stiff with my pride that I wouldn't even nod to people. I reflected that my pride was wicked, and I tried and tried but could'nt throw it off. I tried to pray, but was a good deal too proud to pray with fervor. This won't do,' I mused. I am getting to be a regular Pharisee.' After walking round a while I met an old negro, and asked: "Uncle, can you tell me how to throw off my pride?" "Dat I ken, dat I ken." "Well, I wish you would, for to continue in this proud way will be dangerous to my soul." "Wall, dar's one thing that never fails to knock down a man's pride, boss, and dat is whiskey. Get drunk, and when yer gets sober yer'll feel mighty 'miliated.' "I acted on this suggestion, and got as drunk as a-well, as an owl, though I never saw an owl drunk. When I got sober I was the most humiliated man in the world, and I prayed with an earnestness I never felt before. I am now willing to leave my case in your hands." "Brethren," said the chairman, "what do you think?" ،، Well," said one old fellow, "I feel sorter proud. How is it with yourself?" "Sorter Pharisee. How do you feel, Brother Jenks?" "Proud as a Peacock. Brother Larkins, how do you feel?" Mighty proud. Let us go down to the still-house and humiliate ourselves!" NEAL MALONE. [WILLIAM CARLETON, one of the most popular writers of tales illustrative of Irish life and manners, was born in the County of Tyrone, Ireland, in 1798 and died there in 1869. With only a “Hedge School" educa tion he achieved a distinction among the literary men Although the majority of his Tales were written with a view to influence the repeal of the Union, the Eng. lish government in recognition of his literary services, bestowed on him, in 1865, a pension of £200 per annum. On his death the Queen gave his widow a pension of £100 per annum.] THERE never was a greater-souled or doughtier tailor than little Neal Malone. Though but four feet in height, he paced the earth with the courage and confidence of a giant; nay, one would have imagined that he walked as if he feared the world itself was about to give way under him. Let no one dare to say in future that a tailor is but the ninth part of a man. That reproach has been gloriously taken away from the character of the crosslegged corporation by Neal Malone. He has wiped it off like a stain from the collar of a second-hand coat; he has pressed this wrinkle out of the lying front of antiquity; he has drawn together this rent in the respectability of his profession. No. By him who was breechesmaker to the gods,-that is, unless, like Highlanders, they eschewed inexpressibles,-by him who cut Jupiter's frieze jocks for winter, and eke by the bottom of his thimble, we swear that Neal Malone was more than the ninth part of a man. Setting aside the Patagonians, we maintain that two-thirds of mortal humanity were comprised in Neal; and perhaps we might venture to assert that two-thirds of Neal's humanity were equal to six-thirds of another man's. It is right Iwell known that Alexander the Great This excellent heroism was all wasted; Neal could not find a single adversary. Except he divided himself like Hotspur, and went to buffets one hand against the other, there was no chance of a fight; no person to be found sufficiently magnanimous to encounter the tailor. On the contrary, every one of his friendsor, in other words, every man in the parish-was ready to support him. He was clapped on the back until his bones were nearly dislocated in his body, and his hand shaken until his arm lost its cunning at the needle for half a week afterwards. This, to be sure, was a bitter business, a state of being past endurance. Every man was his friend,-no man was his enemy. A desperate position for any person to find himself in, but doubly calamitous to a martial tailor. was a little man, and we doubt whether, a traneen which, only out o' pure frindhad Alexander the Great been bred ship, let us have a morsel o' the rale to the tailoring business, he would have kick-up, 'tany rate. Frind or inimy, I exhibited so much of the hero as Neal say agin, if you regard me; sure that Malone. Neal was descended from a makes no differ, only let us have the fighting family, who had signalized them- fight." selves in as many battles as ever any single hero of antiquity fought. His father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather were all fighting men, and his ancestors in general, up, probably, to Con of the Hundred Battles himself. No wonder, therefore, that Neal's blood should cry out against the cowardice of his calling; no wonder that he should be an epitome of all that was valorous and heroic in a peaceable man, for we neglected to inform the reader that Neal, though "bearing no base mind," never fought any man in his own person. That, however, deducted nothing from his courage. If he did not fight, it was simply because he found cowardice universal. No man would engage him; his spirit blazed in vain; his thirst for battle was doomed to remain unquenched, except by whiskey, and this only increased it. In short, he could find no foe. He has often been known to challenge the first cudgel-players and pugilists of the parish, to provoke men of fourteen stone weight, and to bid mortal defiance to faction heroes of all grades, but in vain. There was that in him which told them that an encounter with Neal would strip them of their laurels. Neal saw all this with a lofty indignation; he deplored the degeneracy of the times, and thought it hard that the descendant of such a fighting family should be doomed to pass through life peaceably, whilst so many excellent rows and riots took place around him. It was a calamity to see every man's head broken but his own; a dismal thing to observe his neighbors go about with their bones in bandages, yet his untouched; and his friends beat black and blue, whilst his own cuticle remained undiscolored. "Blur-an'-agers!" exclaimed Neal one day, when half tipsy in the fair, "am I never to get a bit of fightin'? Is there no cowardly spalpeen to stand afore Neal Malone? Be this an' be that, I'm bluemowlded for want of a batin'! I'm disgracin' my relations by the life I'm ladin'! Will none o' ye fight me aither for love, money, or whiskey, frind or inimy, an' bad luck to ye? I don't care Many a dolorous complaint did Neal make upon the misfortune of having none to wish him ill; and what rendered this hardship doubly oppressive, was the unlucky fact that no exertions of his, however offensive, could procure him a single foe. In vain did he insult, abuse, and malign all his acquaintances. In vain did he father upon them all the rascality and villany he could think of; he lied against them with a force and originality that would have made many a modern novelist blush for want of invention,-but all to no purpose. The world for once became astonishingly Christian; it paid back all his efforts to excite its resentment with the purest of charity; when Neal struck it on the one cheek, it meekly turned unto him the other. It could scarcely be expected that Neal would bear this. To have the whole world in friendship with a man is beyond doubt an affliction. Not to have the face of a single enemy to look upon, would decidedly be considered a deprivation of many agreeable sensations by most people, as well as by Neal Malone. Let who might sustain a loss, or experience a calamity, it was a matter of indifference to Neal. They were only his friends, and he troubled neither his head nor his heart about them. Heaven help us! There is no man 66 His friends, finding that he reserved his blood for more heroic purposes than dastardly phlebotomy, knew not what to do with him. His perpetual exclamation was, as we have already stated, "I'm blue-mowlded for want of a batin'!" They did everything in their power to cheer him with the hope of a drubbing; told him he lived in an excellent country for a man afflicted with his malady; and promised, if it were at all possible, to create him a private enemy or two, who, they hoped in heaven, might trounce him to some purpose. This sustained him for a while; but as day after day passed, and no appearance of action presented itself, he could not choose but increase in courage. His soul, like a sword-blade too long in the scabbard, was beginning to get fuliginous by inactivity. He looked upon the point of his own needle, and the bright edge of his scissors, with a bitter pang, when he thought of the spirit rusting within him: he meditated fresh insults, studied new plans, and hunted out cunning devices for provoking his acquaintances to battle, until by degrees he began to confound his own brain, and to commit more grievous oversights in the business than ever. Sometimes he sent home to one person a coat, with the legs of a pair of trousers attached to it for sleeves, and despatched to another the arms of the aforesaid coat tacked together as a pair of trousers. Sometimes the coat was made to button behind instead of before; and he frequently placed the pockets in the lower part of the skirts, as if he had been in league with cut-purses. without his trials; and Neal, the reader perceives, was not exempt from his. What did it avail him that he carried a cudgel ready for all hostile contingencies, or knit his brows and shook his kippeen at the fiercest of his fighting friends? The moment he appeared, they softened into downright cordiality. His presence was the signal of peace; for, notwithstanding his unconquerable propensity to warfare, he went abroad as the genius of unanimity, though carrying in his bosom the redoubtable disposition of a warrior; just as the sun, though the source of light himself, is said to be dark enough at bottom. It could not be expected that Neal, with whatever fortitude he might bear his other afflictions, could bear such tranquillity like a hero. To say that he bore it as one, would be basely to surrender his character; for what hero ever bore a state of tranquillity with courage? It affected his cutting out! It produced what Burton calls a windie melancholie," which was nothing else than an accumulation of courage that had no means of escaping, if courage can, without indignity, be ever said to escape. He sat uneasy on his lapboard. Instead of cutting out soberly, he flourished his scissors as if he were heading a faction; he wasted much chalk by scoring his cloth in wrong places, and even caught his hot goose without a holder. These symptoms alarmed his friends, who persuaded him to go to a doctor. Neal went, to satisfy them; but he knew that no prescription could drive the courage out of him,-that he was too far gone in heroism to be made a coward of by apothecary stuff. Nothing in the pharmacopoeia could physic him into a pacific state. His disease was simply the want of an enemy, and an unaccountable "Don't be cast down, Neal," said they; superabundance of friendship on the part 'your friends feel for you, poor fellow." of his acquaintances. How could a doctor "Divil carry my frinds," replied Neal; remedy this by a prescription? Impos-"sure there's no one o' yez frindly enough sible. The doctor, indeed, recommended to be my inimy. Tare-an'-ounze! what'll blood-letting; but to lose blood in a peace- I do? I'm blue-mowlded for want of a able manner was not only cowardly, but a batin'!" bad cure for courage. Neal declined it: he would lose no blood for any man until he could not help it; which was giving the character of a hero at a single touch. His blood was not to be thrown away in this manner; the only lancet ever applied to his relations was the cudgel, and Neal scorned to abandon the principles of his family. This was a melancholy situation, and his friends pitied him accordingly. was Seeing that their consolation thrown away upon him, they resolved to leave him to his fate; which they had no sooner done than Neal had thoughts of taking to the Skiomachia as a last remedy. In this mood he looked with considerable antipathy at his own shadow for several nights; and it is not to be questioned but that some hard battles would have taken |