第47章

Shall I describe that kitastrafy with which hall Hengland is familliar? My & rifewses to cronnicle the misfortns which lassarated my bleeding art in Hoctober last. On the fust of Hawgust where was I? Director of twenty-three Companies; older of scrip hall at a primmium, and worth at least a quarter of a millium. On Lord Mare's day my Saint Helenas quotid at 14 pm, were down at 1/2 discount; my Central Ichaboes at 3/8 discount; my Table Mounting & Hottentot Grand Trunk, no where; my Bathershins and Derrynane Beg, of which I'd bought 2000 for the account at 17primmium, down to nix; my Juan Fernandez, my Great Central Oregons, prostrit. There was a momint when I thought I shouldn't be alive to write my own tail!"(Here follow in Mr. Plush's MS. about twenty-four pages of railroad calculations, which we pretermit.)"Those beests, Pump & Aldgate, once so cringing and umble, wrote me a threatnen letter because I overdrew my account three-and-sixpence: woodn't advance me five thousand on 25,000 worth of scrip; kep me waiting 2 hours when I asked to see the house; and then sent out Spout, the jewnior partner, saying they wouldn't discount my paper, and implawed me to clothes my account. I did: Ipaid the three-and-six balliance, and never sor 'em mor.

"The market fell daily. The Rewin grew wusser and wusser.

Hagnies, Hagnies! it wasn't in the city aloan my misfortns came upon me. They beerded me in my own ome. The biddle who kips watch at the Halbany wodn keep misfortn out of my chambers; and Mrs.

Twiddler, of Pall Mall, and Mr. Hunx, of Long Acre, put egsicution into my apartmince, and swep off every stick of my furniture.

'Wardrobe & furniture of a man of fashion.' What an adwertisement George Robins DID make of it; and what a crowd was collected to laff at the prospick of my ruing! My chice plait; my seller of wine; my picturs--that of myself included (it was Maryhann, bless her! that bought it, unbeknown to me); all--all went to the ammer.

That brootle Fitzwarren, my ex-vally, womb I met, fimilliarly slapt me on the sholder, and said, 'Jeames, my boy, you'd best go into suvvis aginn.'

"I DID go into suvvis--the wust of all suvvices--I went into the Queen's Bench Prison, and lay there a misrabble captif for 6mortial weeks. Misrabble shall I say? no, not misrabble altogether; there was sunlike in the dunjing of the pore prisner.

I had visitors. A cart used to drive hup to the prizn gates of Saturdays; a washywoman's cart, with a fat old lady in it, and a young one. Who was that young one? Every one who has an art can gess, it was my blue-eyed blushing hangel of a Mary Hann! 'Shall we take him out in the linnen-basket, grandmamma?' Mary Hann said.

Bless her, she'd already learned to say grandmamma quite natral:

but I didn't go out that way; I went out by the door a whitewashed man. Ho, what a feast there was at Healing the day I came out!

I'd thirteen shillings left when I'd bought the gold ring. Iwasn't prowd. I turned the mangle for three weeks; and then Uncle Bill said, 'Well, there IS some good in the feller;' and it was agreed that we should marry."The Plush manuscript finishes here: it is many weeks since we saw the accomplished writer, and we have only just learned his fate.

We are happy to state that it is a comfortable and almost a prosperous one.

The Honorable and Right Reverend Lionel Thistlewood, Lord Bishop of Bullocksmithy, was mentioned as the uncle of Lady Angelina Silvertop. Her elopement with her cousin caused deep emotion to the venerable prelate: he returned to the palace at Bullocksmithy, of which he had been for thirty years the episcopal ornament, and where he married three wives, who lie buried in his Cathedral Church of St. Boniface, Bullocksmithy.

The admirable man has rejoined those whom he loved. As he was preparing a charge to his clergy in his study after dinner, the Lord Bishop fell suddenly down in a fit of apoplexy; his butler, bringing in his accustomed dish of devilled kidneys for supper, discovered the venerable form extended on the Turkey carpet with a glass of Madeira in his hand; but life was extinct: and surgical aid was therefore not particularly useful.

All the late prelate's wives had fortunes, which the admirable man increased by thrift, the judicious sale of leases which fell in during his episcopacy, &c. He left three hundred thousand pounds--divided between his nephew and niece--not a greater sum than has been left by several deceased Irish prelates.

What Lord Southdown has done with his share we are not called upon to state. He has composed an epitaph to the Martyr of Bullocksmithy, which does him infinite credit. But we are happy to state that Lady Angelina Silvertop presented five hundred pounds to her faithful and affectionate servant, Mary Ann Hoggins, on her marriage with Mr.

James Plush, to whom her Ladyship also made a handsome present--namely, the lease, good-will, and fixtures of the "Wheel of Fortune"public-house, near Shepherd's Market, May Fair: a house greatly frequented by all the nobility's footmen, doing a genteel stroke of business in the neighborhood, and where, as we have heard, the "Butlers' Club" is held.

Here Mr. Plush lives happy in a blooming and interesting wife:

reconciled to a middle sphere of life, as he was to a humbler and a higher one before. He has shaved off his whiskers, and accommodates himself to an apron with perfect good humor. Agentleman connected with this establishment dined at the "Wheel of Fortune" the other day, and collected the above particulars. Mr.