Reprinted Pieces

I AM not used to writing for print.  What working-man, that never labours less (some Mondays, and Christmas Time and Easter Time excepted) than twelve or fourteen hours a day, is?  But I have been asked to put down, plain, what I have got to say; and so I take pen-and-ink, and do it to the best of my power, hoping defects will find excuse.

I was born nigh London, but have worked in a shop at Birmingham (what you would call Manufactories, we call Shops), almost ever since I was out of my time.  I served my apprenticeship at Deptford, nigh where I was born, and I am a smith by trade.  My name is John.  I have been called ‘Old John’ ever since I was nineteen year of age, on account of not having much hair.  I am fifty-six year of age at the present time, and I don’t find myself with more hair, nor yet with less, to signify, than at nineteen year of age aforesaid.

I have been married five and thirty year, come next April.  I was married on All Fools’ Day.  Let them laugh that will.  I won a good wife that day, and it was as sensible a day to me as ever I had.

We have had a matter of ten children, six whereof are living.  My eldest son is engineer in the Italian steam-packet ‘Mezzo Giorno, plying between Marseilles and Naples, and calling at Genoa, Leghorn, and Civita Vecchia.’  He was a good workman.  He invented a many useful little things that brought him in—nothing.  I have two sons doing well at Sydney, New South Wales—single, when last heard from.  One of my sons (James) went wild and for a soldier, where he was shot in India, living six weeks in hospital with a musket-ball lodged in his shoulder-blade, which he wrote with his own hand.  He was the best looking.  One of my two daughters (Mary) is comfortable in her circumstances, but water on the chest.  The other (Charlotte), her husband run away from her in the basest manner, and she and her three children live with us.  The youngest, six year old, has a turn for mechanics.

I am not a Chartist, and I never was.  I don’t mean to say but what I see a good many public points to complain of, still I don’t think that’s the way to set them right.  If I did think so, I should be a Chartist.  But I don’t think so, and I am not a Chartist.  I read the paper, and hear discussion, at what we call ‘a parlour,’ in Birmingham, and I know many good men and workmen who are Chartists.  Note.  Not Physical force.

It won’t be took as boastful in me, if I make the remark (for I can’t put down what I have got to say, without putting that down before going any further), that I have always been of an ingenious turn.  I once got twenty pound by a screw, and it’s in use now.  I have been twenty year, off and on, completing an Invention and perfecting it.  I perfected of it, last Christmas Eve at ten o’clock at night.  Me and my wife stood and let some tears fall over the Model, when it was done and I brought her in to take a look at it.

A friend of mine, by the name of William Butcher, is a Chartist.  Moderate.  He is a good speaker.  He is very animated.  I have often heard him deliver that what is, at every turn, in the way of us working-men, is, that too many places have been made, in the course of time, to provide for people that never ought to have been provided for; and that we have to obey forms and to pay fees to support those places when we shouldn’t ought.  ‘True,’ (delivers William Butcher), ‘all the public has to do this, but it falls heaviest on the working-man, because he has least to spare; and likewise because impediments shouldn’t be put in his way, when he wants redress of wrong or furtherance of right.’  Note.  I have wrote down those words from William Butcher’s own mouth.  W. B. delivering them fresh for the aforesaid purpose.

Now, to my Model again.  There it was, perfected of, on Christmas Eve, gone nigh a year, at ten o’clock at night.  All the money I could spare I had laid out upon the Model; and when times was bad, or my daughter Charlotte’s children sickly, or both, it had stood still, months at a spell.  I had pulled it to pieces, and made it over again with improvements, I don’t know how often.  There it stood, at last, a perfected Model as aforesaid.

William Butcher and me had a long talk, Christmas Day, respecting of the Model.  William is very sensible.  But sometimes cranky.  William said, ‘What will you do with it, John?’  I said, ‘Patent it.’  William said, ‘How patent it, John?’  I said, ‘By taking out a Patent.’  William then delivered that the law of Patent was a cruel wrong.  William said, ‘John, if you make your invention public, before you get a Patent, any one may rob you of the fruits of your hard work.  You are put in a cleft stick, John.  Either you must drive a bargain very much against yourself, by getting a party to come forward beforehand with the great expenses of the Patent; or, you must be put about, from post to pillar, among so many parties, trying to make a better bargain for yourself, and showing your invention, that your invention will be took from you over your head.’  I said, ‘William Butcher, are you cranky?  You are sometimes cranky.’  William said, ‘No, John, I tell you the truth;’ which he then delivered more at length.  I said to W. B. I would Patent the invention myself.

My wife’s brother, George Bury of West Bromwich (his wife unfortunately took to drinking, made away with everything, and seventeen times committed to Birmingham Jail before happy release in every point of view), left my wife, his sister, when he died, a legacy of one hundred and twenty-eight pound ten, Bank of England Stocks.  Me and my wife never broke into that money yet.  Note.  We might come to be old and past our work.  We now agreed to Patent the invention.  We said we would make a hole in it—I mean in the aforesaid money—and Patent the invention.  William Butcher wrote me a letter to Thomas Joy, in London.  T. J. is a carpenter, six foot four in height, and plays quoits well.  He lives in Chelsea, London, by the church.  I got leave from the shop, to be took on again when I come back.  I am a good workman.  Not a Teetotaller; but never drunk.  When the Christmas holidays were over, I went up to London by the Parliamentary Train, and hired a lodging for a week with Thomas Joy.  He is married.  He has one son gone to sea.

Thomas Joy delivered (from a book he had) that the first step to be took, in Patenting the invention, was to prepare a petition unto Queen Victoria.  William Butcher had delivered similar, and drawn it up.  Note.  William is a ready writer.  A declaration before a Master in Chancery was to be added to it.  That, we likewise drew up.  After a deal of trouble I found out a Master, in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, nigh Temple Bar, where I made the declaration, and paid eighteen-pence.  I was told to take the declaration and petition to the Home Office, in Whitehall, where I left it to be signed by the Home Secretary (after I had found the office out), and where I paid two pound, two, and sixpence.  In six days he signed it, and I was told to take it to the Attorney-General’s chambers, and leave it there for a report.  I did so, and paid four pound, four.  Note.  Nobody all through, ever thankful for their money, but all uncivil.

To come to the point at once, I beg to say that I have not the least belief in the Noble Savage.  I consider him a prodigious nuisance, and an enormous superstition.  His calling rum fire-water, and me a pale face, wholly fail to reconcile me to him.  I don’t care what he calls me.  I call him a savage, and I call a savage a something highly desirable to be civilised off the face of the earth.  I think a mere gent (which I take to be the lowest form of civilisation) better than a howling, whistling, clucking, stamping, jumping, tearing savage.  It is all one to me, whether he sticks a fish-bone through his visage, or bits of trees through the lobes of his ears, or bird’s feathers in his head; whether he flattens his hair between two boards, or spreads his nose over the breadth of his face, or drags his lower lip down by great weights, or blackens his teeth, or knocks them out, or paints one cheek red and the other blue, or tattoos himself, or oils himself, or rubs his body with fat, or crimps it with knives.  Yielding to whichsoever of these agreeable eccentricities, he is a savage—cruel, false, thievish, murderous; addicted more or less to grease, entrails, and beastly customs; a wild animal with the questionable gift of boasting; a conceited, tiresome, bloodthirsty, monotonous humbug.

Yet it is extraordinary to observe how some people will talk about him, as they talk about the good old times; how they will regret his disappearance, in the course of this world’s development, from such and such lands where his absence is a blessed relief and an indispensable preparation for the sowing of the very first seeds of any influence that can exalt humanity; how, even with the evidence of himself before them, they will either be determined to believe, or will suffer themselves to be persuaded into believing, that he is something which their five senses tell them he is not.

There was Mr. Catlin, some few years ago, with his Ojibbeway Indians.  Mr. Catlin was an energetic, earnest man, who had lived among more tribes of Indians than I need reckon up here, and who had written a picturesque and glowing book about them.  With his party of Indians squatting and spitting on the table before him, or dancing their miserable jigs after their own dreary manner, he called, in all good faith, upon his civilised audience to take notice of their symmetry and grace, their perfect limbs, and the exquisite expression of their pantomime; and his civilised audience, in all good faith, complied and admired.  Whereas, as mere animals, they were wretched creatures, very low in the scale and very poorly formed; and as men and women possessing any power of truthful dramatic expression by means of action, they were no better than the chorus at an Italian Opera in England—and would have been worse if such a thing were possible.

Mine are no new views of the noble savage.  The greatest writers on natural history found him out long ago.  Buffon knew what he was, and showed why he is the sulky tyrant that he is to his women, and how it happens (Heaven be praised!) that his race is spare in numbers.  For evidence of the quality of his moral nature, pass himself for a moment and refer to his ‘faithful dog.’  Has he ever improved a dog, or attached a dog, since his nobility first ran wild in woods, and was brought down (at a very long shot) by Pope?  Or does the animal that is the friend of man, always degenerate in his low society?

It is not the miserable nature of the noble savage that is the new thing; it is the whimpering over him with maudlin admiration, and the affecting to regret him, and the drawing of any comparison of advantage between the blemishes of civilisation and the tenor of his swinish life.  There may have been a change now and then in those diseased absurdities, but there is none in him.

Think of the Bushmen.  Think of the two men and the two women who have been exhibited about England for some years.  Are the majority of persons—who remember the horrid little leader of that party in his festering bundle of hides, with his filth and his antipathy to water, and his straddled legs, and his odious eyes shaded by his brutal hand, and his cry of ‘Qu-u-u-u-aaa!’ (Bosjesman for something desperately insulting I have no doubt)—conscious of an affectionate yearning towards that noble savage, or is it idiosyncratic in me to abhor, detest, abominate, and abjure him?  I have no reserve on this subject, and will frankly state that, setting aside that stage of the entertainment when he counterfeited the death of some creature he had shot, by laying his head on his hand and shaking his left leg—at which time I think it would have been justifiable homicide to slay him—I have never seen that group sleeping, smoking, and expectorating round their brazier, but I have sincerely desired that something might happen to the charcoal smouldering therein, which would cause the immediate suffocation of the whole of the noble strangers.

There is at present a party of Zulu Kaffirs exhibiting at the St. George’s Gallery, Hyde Park Corner, London.  These noble savages are represented in a most agreeable manner; they are seen in an elegant theatre, fitted with appropriate scenery of great beauty, and they are described in a very sensible and unpretending lecture, delivered with a modesty which is quite a pattern to all similar exponents.  Though extremely ugly, they are much better shaped than such of their predecessors as I have referred to; and they are rather picturesque to the eye, though far from odoriferous to the nose.  What a visitor left to his own interpretings and imaginings might suppose these noblemen to be about, when they give vent to that pantomimic expression which is quite settled to be the natural gift of the noble savage, I cannot possibly conceive; for it is so much too luminous for my personal civilisation that it conveys no idea to my mind beyond a general stamping, ramping, and raving, remarkable (as everything in savage life is) for its dire uniformity.  But let us—with the interpreter’s assistance, of which I for one stand so much in need—see what the noble savage does in Zulu Kaffirland.

The noble savage sets a king to reign over him, to whom he submits his life and limbs without a murmur or question, and whose whole life is passed chin deep in a lake of blood; but who, after killing incessantly, is in his turn killed by his relations and friends, the moment a grey hair appears on his head.  All the noble savage’s wars with his fellow-savages (and he takes no pleasure in anything else) are wars of extermination—which is the best thing I know of him, and the most comfortable to my mind when I look at him.  He has no moral feelings of any kind, sort, or description; and his ‘mission’ may be summed up as simply diabolical.

The ceremonies with which he faintly diversifies his life are, of course, of a kindred nature.  If he wants a wife he appears before the kennel of the gentleman whom he has selected for his father-in-law, attended by a party of male friends of a very strong flavour, who screech and whistle and stamp an offer of so many cows for the young lady’s hand.  The chosen father-in-law—also supported by a high-flavoured party of male friends—screeches, whistles, and yells (being seated on the ground, he can’t stamp) that there never was such a daughter in the market as his daughter, and that he must have six more cows.  The son-in-law and his select circle of backers screech, whistle, stamp, and yell in reply, that they will give three more cows.  The father-in-law (an old deluder, overpaid at the beginning) accepts four, and rises to bind the bargain.  The whole party, the young lady included, then falling into epileptic convulsions, and screeching, whistling, stamping, and yelling together—and nobody taking any notice of the young lady (whose charms are not to be thought of without a shudder)—the noble savage is considered married, and his friends make demoniacal leaps at him by way of congratulation.

When the noble savage finds himself a little unwell, and mentions the circumstance to his friends, it is immediately perceived that he is under the influence of witchcraft.  A learned personage, called an Imyanger or Witch Doctor, is immediately sent for to Nooker the Umtargartie, or smell out the witch.  The male inhabitants of the kraal being seated on the ground, the learned doctor, got up like a grizzly bear, appears, and administers a dance of a most terrific nature, during the exhibition of which remedy he incessantly gnashes his teeth, and howls:—‘I am the original physician to Nooker the Umtargartie.  Yow yow yow!  No connexion with any other establishment.  Till till till!  All other Umtargarties are feigned Umtargarties, Boroo Boroo! but I perceive here a genuine and real Umtargartie, Hoosh Hoosh Hoosh! in whose blood I, the original Imyanger and Nookerer, Blizzerum Boo! will wash these bear’s claws of mine.  O yow yow yow!’  All this time the learned physician is looking out among the attentive faces for some unfortunate man who owes him a cow, or who has given him any small offence, or against whom, without offence, he has conceived a spite.  Him he never fails to Nooker as the Umtargartie, and he is instantly killed.  In the absence of such an individual, the usual practice is to Nooker the quietest and most gentlemanly person in company.  But the nookering is invariably followed on the spot by the butchering.

Some of the noble savages in whom Mr. Catlin was so strongly interested, and the diminution of whose numbers, by rum and smallpox, greatly affected him, had a custom not unlike this, though much more appalling and disgusting in its odious details.

The women being at work in the fields, hoeing the Indian corn, and the noble savage being asleep in the shade, the chief has sometimes the condescension to come forth, and lighten the labour by looking at it.  On these occasions, he seats himself in his own savage chair, and is attended by his shield-bearer: who holds over his head a shield of cowhide—in shape like an immense mussel shell—fearfully and wonderfully, after the manner of a theatrical supernumerary.  But lest the great man should forget his greatness in the contemplation of the humble works of agriculture, there suddenly rushes in a poet, retained for the purpose, called a Praiser.  This literary gentleman wears a leopard’s head over his own, and a dress of tigers’ tails; he has the appearance of having come express on his hind legs from the Zoological Gardens; and he incontinently strikes up the chief’s praises, plunging and tearing all the while.  There is a frantic wickedness in this brute’s manner of worrying the air, and gnashing out, ‘O what a delightful chief he is!  O what a delicious quantity of blood he sheds!  O how majestically he laps it up!  O how charmingly cruel he is!  O how he tears the flesh of his enemies and crunches the bones!  O how like the tiger and the leopard and the wolf and the bear he is!  O, row row row row, how fond I am of him!’ which might tempt the Society of Friends to charge at a hand-gallop into the Swartz-Kop location and exterminate the whole kraal.

When war is afoot among the noble savages—which is always—the chief holds a council to ascertain whether it is the opinion of his brothers and friends in general that the enemy shall be exterminated.  On this occasion, after the performance of an Umsebeuza, or war song,—which is exactly like all the other songs,—the chief makes a speech to his brothers and friends, arranged in single file.  No particular order is observed during the delivery of this address, but every gentleman who finds himself excited by the subject, instead of crying ‘Hear, hear!’ as is the custom with us, darts from the rank and tramples out the life, or crushes the skull, or mashes the face, or scoops out the eyes, or breaks the limbs, or performs a whirlwind of atrocities on the body, of an imaginary enemy.  Several gentlemen becoming thus excited at once, and pounding away without the least regard to the orator, that illustrious person is rather in the position of an orator in an Irish House of Commons.  But, several of these scenes of savage life bear a strong generic resemblance to an Irish election, and I think would be extremely well received and understood at Cork.

In all these ceremonies the noble savage holds forth to the utmost possible extent about himself; from which (to turn him to some civilised account) we may learn, I think, that as egotism is one of the most offensive and contemptible littlenesses a civilised man can exhibit, so it is really incompatible with the interchange of ideas; inasmuch as if we all talked about ourselves we should soon have no listeners, and must be all yelling and screeching at once on our own separate accounts: making society hideous.  It is my opinion that if we retained in us anything of the noble savage, we could not get rid of it too soon.  But the fact is clearly otherwise.  Upon the wife and dowry question, substituting coin for cows, we have assuredly nothing of the Zulu Kaffir left.  The endurance of despotism is one great distinguishing mark of a savage always.  The improving world has quite got the better of that too.  In like manner, Paris is a civilised city, and the Théâtre Français a highly civilised theatre; and we shall never hear, and never have heard in these later days (of course) of the Praiser there.  No, no, civilised poets have better work to do.  As to Nookering Umtargarties, there are no pretended Umtargarties in Europe, and no European powers to Nooker them; that would be mere spydom, subordination, small malice, superstition, and false pretence.  And as to private Umtargarties, are we not in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-three, with spirits rapping at our doors?

To conclude as I began.  My position is, that if we have anything to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid.  His virtues are a fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility, nonsense.

We have no greater justification for being cruel to the miserable object, than for being cruel to a William Shakespeare or an Isaac Newton; but he passes away before an immeasurably better and higher power than ever ran wild in any earthly woods, and the world will be all the better when his place knows him no more.

When Don Diego de—I forget his name—the inventor of the last new Flying Machines, price so many francs for ladies, so many more for gentlemen—when Don Diego, by permission of Deputy Chaff-wax and his noble band, shall have taken out a Patent for the Queen’s dominions, and shall have opened a commodious Warehouse in an airy situation; and when all persons of any gentility will keep at least a pair of wings, and be seen skimming about in every direction; I shall take a flight to Paris (as I soar round the world) in a cheap and independent manner.  At present, my reliance is on the South-Eastern Railway Company, in whose Express Train here I sit, at eight of the clock on a very hot morning, under the very hot roof of the Terminus at London Bridge, in danger of being ‘forced’ like a cucumber or a melon, or a pine-apple.  And talking of pine-apples, I suppose there never were so many pine-apples in a Train as there appear to be in this Train.

Whew!  The hot-house air is faint with pine-apples.  Every French citizen or citizeness is carrying pine-apples home.  The compact little Enchantress in the corner of my carriage (French actress, to whom I yielded up my heart under the auspices of that brave child, ‘Meat-chell,’ at the St. James’s Theatre the night before last) has a pine-apple in her lap.  Compact Enchantress’s friend, confidante, mother, mystery, Heaven knows what, has two pine-apples in her lap, and a bundle of them under the seat.  Tobacco-smoky Frenchman in Algerine wrapper, with peaked hood behind, who might be Abd-el-Kader dyed rifle-green, and who seems to be dressed entirely in dirt and braid, carries pine-apples in a covered basket.  Tall, grave, melancholy Frenchman, with black Vandyke beard, and hair close-cropped, with expansive chest to waistcoat, and compressive waist to coat: saturnine as to his pantaloons, calm as to his feminine boots, precious as to his jewellery, smooth and white as to his linen: dark-eyed, high-foreheaded, hawk-nosed—got up, one thinks, like Lucifer or Mephistopheles, or Zamiel, transformed into a highly genteel Parisian—has the green end of a pine-apple sticking out of his neat valise.

Whew!  If I were to be kept here long, under this forcing-frame, I wonder what would become of me—whether I should be forced into a giant, or should sprout or blow into some other phenomenon!  Compact Enchantress is not ruffled by the heat—she is always composed, always compact.  O look at her little ribbons, frills, and edges, at her shawl, at her gloves, at her hair, at her bracelets, at her bonnet, at everything about her!  How is it accomplished?  What does she do to be so neat?  How is it that every trifle she wears belongs to her, and cannot choose but be a part of her?  And even Mystery, look at her!  A model.  Mystery is not young, not pretty, though still of an average candle-light passability; but she does such miracles in her own behalf, that, one of these days, when she dies, they’ll be amazed to find an old woman in her bed, distantly like her.  She was an actress once, I shouldn’t wonder, and had a Mystery attendant on herself.  Perhaps, Compact Enchantress will live to be a Mystery, and to wait with a shawl at the side-scenes, and to sit opposite to Mademoiselle in railway carriages, and smile and talk subserviently, as Mystery does now.  That’s hard to believe!

Two Englishmen, and now our carriage is full.  First Englishman, in the monied interest—flushed, highly respectable—Stock Exchange, perhaps—City, certainly.  Faculties of second Englishman entirely absorbed in hurry.  Plunges into the carriage, blind.  Calls out of window concerning his luggage, deaf.  Suffocates himself under pillows of great-coats, for no reason, and in a demented manner.  Will receive no assurance from any porter whatsoever.  Is stout and hot, and wipes his head, and makes himself hotter by breathing so hard.  Is totally incredulous respecting assurance of Collected Guard, that ‘there’s no hurry.’  No hurry!  And a flight to Paris in eleven hours!

It is all one to me in this drowsy corner, hurry or no hurry.  Until Don Diego shall send home my wings, my flight is with the South-Eastern Company.  I can fly with the South-Eastern, more lazily, at all events, than in the upper air.  I have but to sit here thinking as idly as I please, and be whisked away.  I am not accountable to anybody for the idleness of my thoughts in such an idle summer flight; my flight is provided for by the South-Eastern and is no business of mine.

The bell!  With all my heart.  It does not require me to do so much as even to flap my wings.  Something snorts for me, something shrieks for me, something proclaims to everything else that it had better keep out of my way,—and away I go.

Ah!  The fresh air is pleasant after the forcing-frame, though it does blow over these interminable streets, and scatter the smoke of this vast wilderness of chimneys.  Here we are—no, I mean there we were, for it has darted far into the rear—in Bermondsey where the tanners live.  Flash!  The distant shipping in the Thames is gone.  Whirr!  The little streets of new brick and red tile, with here and there a flagstaff growing like a tall weed out of the scarlet beans, and, everywhere, plenty of open sewer and ditch for the promotion of the public health, have been fired off in a volley.  Whizz!  Dust-heaps, market-gardens, and waste grounds.  Rattle!  New Cross Station.  Shock!  There we were at Croydon.  Bur-r-r-r!  The tunnel.

I wonder why it is that when I shut my eyes in a tunnel I begin to feel as if I were going at an Express pace the other way.  I am clearly going back to London now.  Compact Enchantress must have forgotten something, and reversed the engine.  No!  After long darkness, pale fitful streaks of light appear.  I am still flying on for Folkestone.  The streaks grow stronger—become continuous—become the ghost of day—become the living day—became I mean—the tunnel is miles and miles away, and here I fly through sunlight, all among the harvest and the Kentish hops.

There is a dreamy pleasure in this flying.  I wonder where it was, and when it was, that we exploded, blew into space somehow, a Parliamentary Train, with a crowd of heads and faces looking at us out of cages, and some hats waving.  Monied Interest says it was at Reigate Station.  Expounds to Mystery how Reigate Station is so many miles from London, which Mystery again develops to Compact Enchantress.  There might be neither a Reigate nor a London for me, as I fly away among the Kentish hops and harvest.  What do I care?

Bang!  We have let another Station off, and fly away regardless.  Everything is flying.  The hop-gardens turn gracefully towards me, presenting regular avenues of hops in rapid flight, then whirl away.  So do the pools and rushes, haystacks, sheep, clover in full bloom delicious to the sight and smell, corn-sheaves, cherry-orchards, apple-orchards, reapers, gleaners, hedges, gates, fields that taper off into little angular corners, cottages, gardens, now and then a church.  Bang, bang!  A double-barrelled Station!  Now a wood, now a bridge, now a landscape, now a cutting, now a—Bang! a single-barrelled Station—there was a cricket-match somewhere with two white tents, and then four flying cows, then turnips—now the wires of the electric telegraph are all alive, and spin, and blurr their edges, and go up and down, and make the intervals between each other most irregular: contracting and expanding in the strangest manner.  Now we slacken.  With a screwing, and a grinding, and a smell of water thrown on ashes, now we stop!

Demented Traveller, who has been for two or three minutes watchful, clutches his great-coats, plunges at the door, rattles it, cries ‘Hi!’ eager to embark on board of impossible packets, far inland.  Collected Guard appears.  ‘Are you for Tunbridge, sir?’  ‘Tunbridge?  No.  Paris.’  ‘Plenty of time, sir.  No hurry.  Five minutes here, sir, for refreshment.’  I am so blest (anticipating Zamiel, by half a second) as to procure a glass of water for Compact Enchantress.

Who would suppose we had been flying at such a rate, and shall take wing again directly?  Refreshment-room full, platform full, porter with watering-pot deliberately cooling a hot wheel, another porter with equal deliberation helping the rest of the wheels bountifully to ice cream.  Monied Interest and I re-entering the carriage first, and being there alone, he intimates to me that the French are ‘no go’ as a Nation.  I ask why?  He says, that Reign of Terror of theirs was quite enough.  I ventured to inquire whether he remembers anything that preceded said Reign of Terror?  He says not particularly.  ‘Because,’ I remark, ‘the harvest that is reaped, has sometimes been sown.’  Monied Interest repeats, as quite enough for him, that the French are revolutionary,—‘and always at it.’

Bell.  Compact Enchantress, helped in by Zamiel (whom the stars confound!), gives us her charming little side-box look, and smites me to the core.  Mystery eating sponge-cake.  Pine-apple atmosphere faintly tinged with suspicions of sherry.  Demented Traveller flits past the carriage, looking for it.  Is blind with agitation, and can’t see it.  Seems singled out by Destiny to be the only unhappy creature in the flight, who has any cause to hurry himself.  Is nearly left behind.  Is seized by Collected Guard after the Train is in motion, and bundled in.  Still, has lingering suspicions that there must be a boat in the neighbourhood, and will look wildly out of window for it.

Flight resumed.  Corn-sheaves, hop-gardens, reapers, gleaners, apple-orchards, cherry-orchards, Stations single and double-barrelled, Ashford.  Compact Enchantress (constantly talking to Mystery, in an exquisite manner) gives a little scream; a sound that seems to come from high up in her precious little head; from behind her bright little eyebrows.  ‘Great Heaven, my pine-apple!  My Angel!  It is lost!’  Mystery is desolated.  A search made.  It is not lost.  Zamiel finds it.  I curse him (flying) in the Persian manner.  May his face be turned upside down, and jackasses sit upon his uncle’s grave!

Now fresher air, now glimpses of unenclosed Down-land with flapping crows flying over it whom we soon outfly, now the Sea, now Folkestone at a quarter after ten.  ‘Tickets ready, gentlemen!’  Demented dashes at the door.  ‘For Paris, sir?  No hurry.’

Not the least.  We are dropped slowly down to the Port, and sidle to and fro (the whole Train) before the insensible Royal George Hotel, for some ten minutes.  The Royal George takes no more heed of us than its namesake under water at Spithead, or under earth at Windsor, does.  The Royal George’s dog lies winking and blinking at us, without taking the trouble to sit up; and the Royal George’s ‘wedding party’ at the open window (who seem, I must say, rather tired of bliss) don’t bestow a solitary glance upon us, flying thus to Paris in eleven hours.  The first gentleman in Folkestone is evidently used up, on this subject.

Meanwhile, Demented chafes.  Conceives that every man’s hand is against him, and exerting itself to prevent his getting to Paris.  Refuses consolation.  Rattles door.  Sees smoke on the horizon, and ‘knows’ it’s the boat gone without him.  Monied Interest resentfully explains that he is going to Paris too.  Demented signifies, that if Monied Interest chooses to be left behind, he don’t.

‘Refreshments in the Waiting-Room, ladies and gentlemen.  No hurry, ladies and gentlemen, for Paris.  No hurry whatever!’

Twenty minutes’ pause, by Folkestone clock, for looking at Enchantress while she eats a sandwich, and at Mystery while she eats of everything there that is eatable, from pork-pie, sausage, jam, and gooseberries, to lumps of sugar.  All this time, there is a very waterfall of luggage, with a spray of dust, tumbling slantwise from the pier into the steamboat.  All this time, Demented (who has no business with it) watches it with starting eyes, fiercely requiring to be shown his luggage.  When it at last concludes the cataract, he rushes hotly to refresh—is shouted after, pursued, jostled, brought back, pitched into the departing steamer upside down, and caught by mariners disgracefully.

A lovely harvest-day, a cloudless sky, a tranquil sea.  The piston-rods of the engines so regularly coming up from below, to look (as well they may) at the bright weather, and so regularly almost knocking their iron heads against the cross beam of the skylight, and never doing it!  Another Parisian actress is on board, attended by another Mystery.  Compact Enchantress greets her sister artist—Oh, the Compact One’s pretty teeth!—and Mystery greets Mystery.  My Mystery soon ceases to be conversational—is taken poorly, in a word, having lunched too miscellaneously—and goes below.  The remaining Mystery then smiles upon the sister artists (who, I am afraid, wouldn’t greatly mind stabbing each other), and is upon the whole ravished.

And now I find that all the French people on board begin to grow, and all the English people to shrink.  The French are nearing home, and shaking off a disadvantage, whereas we are shaking it on.  Zamiel is the same man, and Abd-el-Kader is the same man, but each seems to come into possession of an indescribable confidence that departs from us—from Monied Interest, for instance, and from me.  Just what they gain, we lose.  Certain British ‘Gents’ about the steersman, intellectually nurtured at home on parody of everything and truth of nothing, become subdued, and in a manner forlorn; and when the steersman tells them (not exultingly) how he has ‘been upon this station now eight year, and never see the old town of Bullum yet,’ one of them, with an imbecile reliance on a reed, asks him what he considers to be the best hotel in Paris?

Now, I tread upon French ground, and am greeted by the three charming words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, painted up (in letters a little too thin for their height) on the Custom-house wall—also by the sight of large cocked hats, without which demonstrative head-gear nothing of a public nature can be done upon this soil.  All the rabid Hotel population of Boulogne howl and shriek outside a distant barrier, frantic to get at us.  Demented, by some unlucky means peculiar to himself, is delivered over to their fury, and is presently seen struggling in a whirlpool of Touters—is somehow understood to be going to Paris—is, with infinite noise, rescued by two cocked hats, and brought into Custom-house bondage with the rest of us.

Here, I resign the active duties of life to an eager being, of preternatural sharpness, with a shelving forehead and a shabby snuff-coloured coat, who (from the wharf) brought me down with his eye before the boat came into port.  He darts upon my luggage, on the floor where all the luggage is strewn like a wreck at the bottom of the great deep; gets it proclaimed and weighed as the property of ‘Monsieur a traveller unknown;’ pays certain francs for it, to a certain functionary behind a Pigeon Hole, like a pay-box at a Theatre (the arrangements in general are on a wholesale scale, half military and half theatrical); and I suppose I shall find it when I come to Paris—he says I shall.  I know nothing about it, except that I pay him his small fee, and pocket the ticket he gives me, and sit upon a counter, involved in the general distraction.

Railway station.  ‘Lunch or dinner, ladies and gentlemen.  Plenty of time for Paris.  Plenty of time!’  Large hall, long counter, long strips of dining-table, bottles of wine, plates of meat, roast chickens, little loaves of bread, basins of soup, little caraffes of brandy, cakes, and fruit.  Comfortably restored from these resources, I begin to fly again.

I saw Zamiel (before I took wing) presented to Compact Enchantress and Sister Artist, by an officer in uniform, with a waist like a wasp’s, and pantaloons like two balloons.  They all got into the next carriage together, accompanied by the two Mysteries.  They laughed.  I am alone in the carriage (for I don’t consider Demented anybody) and alone in the world.

Fields, windmills, low grounds, pollard-trees, windmills, fields, fortifications, Abbeville, soldiering and drumming.  I wonder where England is, and when I was there last—about two years ago, I should say.  Flying in and out among these trenches and batteries, skimming the clattering drawbridges, looking down into the stagnant ditches, I become a prisoner of state, escaping.  I am confined with a comrade in a fortress.  Our room is in an upper story.  We have tried to get up the chimney, but there’s an iron grating across it, imbedded in the masonry.  After months of labour, we have worked the grating loose with the poker, and can lift it up.  We have also made a hook, and twisted our rugs and blankets into ropes.  Our plan is, to go up the chimney, hook our ropes to the top, descend hand over hand upon the roof of the guard-house far below, shake the hook loose, watch the opportunity of the sentinels pacing away, hook again, drop into the ditch, swim across it, creep into the shelter of the wood.  The time is come—a wild and stormy night.  We are up the chimney, we are on the guard-house roof, we are swimming in the murky ditch, when lo!  ‘Qui v’là?’ a bugle, the alarm, a crash!  What is it?  Death?  No, Amiens.

More fortifications, more soldiering and drumming, more basins of soup, more little loaves of bread, more bottles of wine, more caraffes of brandy, more time for refreshment.  Everything good, and everything ready.  Bright, unsubstantial-looking, scenic sort of station.  People waiting.  Houses, uniforms, beards, moustaches, some sabots, plenty of neat women, and a few old-visaged children.  Unless it be a delusion born of my giddy flight, the grown-up people and the children seem to change places in France.  In general, the boys and girls are little old men and women, and the men and women lively boys and girls.

Bugle, shriek, flight resumed.  Monied Interest has come into my carriage.  Says the manner of refreshing is ‘not bad,’ but considers it French.  Admits great dexterity and politeness in the attendants.  Thinks a decimal currency may have something to do with their despatch in settling accounts, and don’t know but what it’s sensible and convenient.  Adds, however, as a general protest, that they’re a revolutionary people—and always at it.

Ramparts, canals, cathedral, river, soldiering and drumming, open country, river, earthenware manufactures, Creil.  Again ten minutes.  Not even Demented in a hurry.  Station, a drawing-room with a verandah: like a planter’s house.  Monied Interest considers it a band-box, and not made to last.  Little round tables in it, at one of which the Sister Artists and attendant Mysteries are established with Wasp and Zamiel, as if they were going to stay a week.

Anon, with no more trouble than before, I am flying again, and lazily wondering as I fly.  What has the South-Eastern done with all the horrible little villages we used to pass through, in the Diligence?  What have they done with all the summer dust, with all the winter mud, with all the dreary avenues of little trees, with all the ramshackle postyards, with all the beggars (who used to turn out at night with bits of lighted candle, to look in at the coach windows), with all the long-tailed horses who were always biting one another, with all the big postilions in jack-boots—with all the mouldy cafés that we used to stop at, where a long mildewed table-cloth, set forth with jovial bottles of vinegar and oil, and with a Siamese arrangement of pepper and salt, was never wanting?  Where are the grass-grown little towns, the wonderful little market-places all unconscious of markets, the shops that nobody kept, the streets that nobody trod, the churches that nobody went to, the bells that nobody rang, the tumble-down old buildings plastered with many-coloured bills that nobody read?  Where are the two-and-twenty weary hours of long, long day and night journey, sure to be either insupportably hot or insupportably cold?  Where are the pains in my bones, where are the fidgets in my legs, where is the Frenchman with the nightcap who never would have the little coupé-window down, and who always fell upon me when he went to sleep, and always slept all night snoring onions?

A voice breaks in with ‘Paris!  Here we are!’

I have overflown myself, perhaps, but I can’t believe it.  I feel as if I were enchanted or bewitched.  It is barely eight o’clock yet—it is nothing like half-past—when I have had my luggage examined at that briskest of Custom-houses attached to the station, and am rattling over the pavement in a hackney-cabriolet.

Surely, not the pavement of Paris?  Yes, I think it is, too.  I don’t know any other place where there are all these high houses, all these haggard-looking wine shops, all these billiard tables, all these stocking-makers with flat red or yellow legs of wood for signboard, all these fuel shops with stacks of billets painted outside, and real billets sawing in the gutter, all these dirty corners of streets, all these cabinet pictures over dark doorways representing discreet matrons nursing babies.  And yet this morning—I’ll think of it in a warm-bath.

Very like a small room that I remember in the Chinese baths upon the Boulevard, certainly; and, though I see it through the steam, I think that I might swear to that peculiar hot-linen basket, like a large wicker hour-glass.  When can it have been that I left home?  When was it that I paid ‘through to Paris’ at London Bridge, and discharged myself of all responsibility, except the preservation of a voucher ruled into three divisions, of which the first was snipped off at Folkestone, the second aboard the boat, and the third taken at my journey’s end?  It seems to have been ages ago.  Calculation is useless.  I will go out for a walk.

The crowds in the streets, the lights in the shops and balconies, the elegance, variety, and beauty of their decorations, the number of the theatres, the brilliant cafés with their windows thrown up high and their vivacious groups at little tables on the pavement, the light and glitter of the houses turned as it were inside out, soon convince me that it is no dream; that I am in Paris, howsoever I got there.  I stroll down to the sparkling Palais Royal, up the Rue de Rivoli, to the Place Vendôme.  As I glance into a print-shop window, Monied Interest, my late travelling companion, comes upon me, laughing with the highest relish of disdain.  ‘Here’s a people!’ he says, pointing to Napoleon in the window and Napoleon on the column.  ‘Only one idea all over Paris!  A monomania!’  Humph!  I THINK I have seen Napoleon’s match?  There was a statue, when I came away, at Hyde Park Corner, and another in the City, and a print or two in the shops.

I walk up to the Barrière de l’Etoile, sufficiently dazed by my flight to have a pleasant doubt of the reality of everything about me; of the lively crowd, the overhanging trees, the performing dogs, the hobby-horses, the beautiful perspectives of shining lamps: the hundred and one enclosures, where the singing is, in gleaming orchestras of azure and gold, and where a star-eyed Houri comes round with a box for voluntary offerings.  So, I pass to my hotel, enchanted; sup, enchanted; go to bed, enchanted; pushing back this morning (if it really were this morning) into the remoteness of time, blessing the South-Eastern Company for realising the Arabian Nights in these prose days, murmuring, as I wing my idle flight into the land of dreams, ‘No hurry, ladies and gentlemen, going to Paris in eleven hours.  It is so well done, that there really is no hurry!’

We are not by any means devout believers in the old Bow Street Police.  To say the truth, we think there was a vast amount of humbug about those worthies.  Apart from many of them being men of very indifferent character, and far too much in the habit of consorting with thieves and the like, they never lost a public occasion of jobbing and trading in mystery and making the most of themselves.  Continually puffed besides by incompetent magistrates anxious to conceal their own deficiencies, and hand-in-glove with the penny-a-liners of that time, they became a sort of superstition.  Although as a Preventive Police they were utterly ineffective, and as a Detective Police were very loose and uncertain in their operations, they remain with some people a superstition to the present day.

On the other hand, the Detective Force organised since the establishment of the existing Police, is so well chosen and trained, proceeds so systematically and quietly, does its business in such a workmanlike manner, and is always so calmly and steadily engaged in the service of the public, that the public really do not know enough of it, to know a tithe of its usefulness.  Impressed with this conviction, and interested in the men themselves, we represented to the authorities at Scotland Yard, that we should be glad, if there were no official objection, to have some talk with the Detectives.  A most obliging and ready permission being given, a certain evening was appointed with a certain Inspector for a social conference between ourselves and the Detectives, at The Household Words Office in Wellington Street, Strand, London.  In consequence of which appointment the party ‘came off,’ which we are about to describe.  And we beg to repeat that, avoiding such topics as it might for obvious reasons be injurious to the public, or disagreeable to respectable individuals, to touch upon in print, our description is as exact as we can make it.

The reader will have the goodness to imagine the Sanctum Sanctorum of Household Words.  Anything that best suits the reader’s fancy, will best represent that magnificent chamber.  We merely stipulate for a round table in the middle, with some glasses and cigars arranged upon it; and the editorial sofa elegantly hemmed in between that stately piece of furniture and the wall.

It is a sultry evening at dusk.  The stones of Wellington Street are hot and gritty, and the watermen and hackney-coachmen at the Theatre opposite, are much flushed and aggravated.  Carriages are constantly setting down the people who have come to Fairy-Land; and there is a mighty shouting and bellowing every now and then, deafening us for the moment, through the open windows.

Just at dusk, Inspectors Wield and Stalker are announced; but we do not undertake to warrant the orthography of any of the names here mentioned.  Inspector Wield presents Inspector Stalker.  Inspector Wield is a middle-aged man of a portly presence, with a large, moist, knowing eye, a husky voice, and a habit of emphasising his conversation by the aid of a corpulent fore-finger, which is constantly in juxtaposition with his eyes or nose.  Inspector Stalker is a shrewd, hard-headed Scotchman—in appearance not at all unlike a very acute, thoroughly-trained schoolmaster, from the Normal Establishment at Glasgow.  Inspector Wield one might have known, perhaps, for what he is—Inspector Stalker, never.

The ceremonies of reception over, Inspectors Wield and Stalker observe that they have brought some sergeants with them.  The sergeants are presented—five in number, Sergeant Dornton, Sergeant Witchem, Sergeant Mith, Sergeant Fendall, and Sergeant Straw.  We have the whole Detective Force from Scotland Yard, with one exception.  They sit down in a semi-circle (the two Inspectors at the two ends) at a little distance from the round table, facing the editorial sofa.  Every man of them, in a glance, immediately takes an inventory of the furniture and an accurate sketch of the editorial presence.  The Editor feels that any gentleman in company could take him up, if need should be, without the smallest hesitation, twenty years hence.

The whole party are in plain clothes.  Sergeant Dornton about fifty years of age, with a ruddy face and a high sunburnt forehead, has the air of one who has been a Sergeant in the army—he might have sat to Wilkie for the Soldier in the Reading of the Will.  He is famous for steadily pursuing the inductive process, and, from small beginnings, working on from clue to clue until he bags his man.  Sergeant Witchem, shorter and thicker-set, and marked with the small-pox, has something of a reserved and thoughtful air, as if he were engaged in deep arithmetical calculations.  He is renowned for his acquaintance with the swell mob.  Sergeant Mith, a smooth-faced man with a fresh bright complexion, and a strange air of simplicity, is a dab at housebreakers.  Sergeant Fendall, a light-haired, well-spoken, polite person, is a prodigious hand at pursuing private inquiries of a delicate nature.  Straw, a little wiry Sergeant of meek demeanour and strong sense, would knock at a door and ask a series of questions in any mild character you choose to prescribe to him, from a charity-boy upwards, and seem as innocent as an infant.  They are, one and all, respectable-looking men; of perfectly good deportment and unusual intelligence; with nothing lounging or slinking in their manners; with an air of keen observation and quick perception when addressed; and generally presenting in their faces, traces more or less marked of habitually leading lives of strong mental excitement.  They have all good eyes; and they all can, and they all do, look full at whomsoever they speak to.

We light the cigars, and hand round the glasses (which are very temperately used indeed), and the conversation begins by a modest amateur reference on the Editorial part to the swell mob.  Inspector Wield immediately removes his cigar from his lips, waves his right hand, and says, ‘Regarding the swell mob, sir, I can’t do better than call upon Sergeant Witchem.  Because the reason why?  I’ll tell you.  Sergeant Witchem is better acquainted with the swell mob than any officer in London.’

Our heart leaping up when we beheld this rainbow in the sky, we turn to Sergeant Witchem, who very concisely, and in well-chosen language, goes into the subject forthwith.  Meantime, the whole of his brother officers are closely interested in attending to what he says, and observing its effect.  Presently they begin to strike in, one or two together, when an opportunity offers, and the conversation becomes general.  But these brother officers only come in to the assistance of each other—not to the contradiction—and a more amicable brotherhood there could not be.  From the swell mob, we diverge to the kindred topics of cracksmen, fences, public-house dancers, area-sneaks, designing young people who go out ‘gonophing,’ and other ‘schools.’  It is observable throughout these revelations, that Inspector Stalker, the Scotchman, is always exact and statistical, and that when any question of figures arises, everybody as by one consent pauses, and looks to him.

When we have exhausted the various schools of Art—during which discussion the whole body have remained profoundly attentive, except when some unusual noise at the Theatre over the way has induced some gentleman to glance inquiringly towards the window in that direction, behind his next neighbour’s back—we burrow for information on such points as the following.  Whether there really are any highway robberies in London, or whether some circumstances not convenient to be mentioned by the aggrieved party, usually precede the robberies complained of, under that head, which quite change their character?  Certainly the latter, almost always.  Whether in the case of robberies in houses, where servants are necessarily exposed to doubt, innocence under suspicion ever becomes so like guilt in appearance, that a good officer need be cautious how he judges it?  Undoubtedly.  Nothing is so common or deceptive as such appearances at first.  Whether in a place of public amusement, a thief knows an officer, and an officer knows a thief—supposing them, beforehand, strangers to each other—because each recognises in the other, under all disguise, an inattention to what is going on, and a purpose that is not the purpose of being entertained?  Yes.  That’s the way exactly.  Whether it is reasonable or ridiculous to trust to the alleged experiences of thieves as narrated by themselves, in prisons, or penitentiaries, or anywhere?  In general, nothing more absurd.  Lying is their habit and their trade; and they would rather lie—even if they hadn’t an interest in it, and didn’t want to make themselves agreeable—than tell the truth.

From these topics, we glide into a review of the most celebrated and horrible of the great crimes that have been committed within the last fifteen or twenty years.  The men engaged in the discovery of almost all of them, and in the pursuit or apprehension of the murderers, are here, down to the very last instance.  One of our guests gave chase to and boarded the emigrant ship, in which the murderess last hanged in London was supposed to have embarked.  We learn from him that his errand was not announced to the passengers, who may have no idea of it to this hour.  That he went below, with the captain, lamp in hand—it being dark, and the whole steerage abed and sea-sick—and engaged the Mrs. Manning who was on board, in a conversation about her luggage, until she was, with no small pains, induced to raise her head, and turn her face towards the light.  Satisfied that she was not the object of his search, he quietly re-embarked in the Government steamer along-side, and steamed home again with the intelligence.

When we have exhausted these subjects, too, which occupy a considerable time in the discussion, two or three leave their chairs, whisper Sergeant Witchem, and resume their seat.  Sergeant Witchem, leaning forward a little, and placing a hand on each of his legs, then modestly speaks as follows:

‘My brother-officers wish me to relate a little account of my taking Tally-ho Thompson.  A man oughtn’t to tell what he has done himself; but still, as nobody was with me, and, consequently, as nobody but myself can tell it, I’ll do it in the best way I can, if it should meet your approval.’

We assure Sergeant Witchem that he will oblige us very much, and we all compose ourselves to listen with great interest and attention.

‘Tally-ho Thompson,’ says Sergeant Witchem, after merely wetting his lips with his brandy-and-water, ‘Tally-ho Thompson was a famous horse-stealer, couper, and magsman.  Thompson, in conjunction with a pal that occasionally worked with him, gammoned a countryman out of a good round sum of money, under pretence of getting him a situation—the regular old dodge—and was afterwards in the “Hue and Cry” for a horse—a horse that he stole down in Hertfordshire.  I had to look after Thompson, and I applied myself, of course, in the first instance, to discovering where he was.  Now, Thompson’s wife lived, along with a little daughter, at Chelsea.  Knowing that Thompson was somewhere in the country, I watched the house—especially at post-time in the morning—thinking Thompson was pretty likely to write to her.  Sure enough, one morning the postman comes up, and delivers a letter at Mrs. Thompson’s door.  Little girl opens the door, and takes it in.  We’re not always sure of postmen, though the people at the post-offices are always very obliging.  A postman may help us, or he may not,—just as it happens.  However, I go across the road, and I say to the postman, after he has left the letter, “Good morning! how are you?”  “How are you?” says he.  “You’ve just delivered a letter for Mrs. Thompson.”  “Yes, I have.”  “You didn’t happen to remark what the post-mark was, perhaps?”  “No,” says he, “I didn’t.”  “Come,” says I, “I’ll be plain with you.  I’m in a small way of business, and I have given Thompson credit, and I can’t afford to lose what he owes me.  I know he’s got money, and I know he’s in the country, and if you could tell me what the post-mark was, I should be very much obliged to you, and you’d do a service to a tradesman in a small way of business that can’t afford a loss.”  “Well,” he said, “I do assure you that I did not observe what the post-mark was; all I know is, that there was money in the letter—I should say a sovereign.”  This was enough for me, because of course I knew that Thompson having sent his wife money, it was probable she’d write to Thompson, by return of post, to acknowledge the receipt.  So I said “Thankee” to the postman, and I kept on the watch.  In the afternoon I saw the little girl come out.  Of course I followed her.  She went into a stationer’s shop, and I needn’t say to you that I looked in at the window.  She bought some writing-paper and envelopes, and a pen.  I think to myself, “That’ll do!”—watch her home again—and don’t go away, you may be sure, knowing that Mrs. Thompson was writing her letter to Tally-ho, and that the letter would be posted presently.  In about an hour or so, out came the little girl again, with the letter in her hand.  I went up, and said something to the child, whatever it might have been; but I couldn’t see the direction of the letter, because she held it with the seal upwards.  However, I observed that on the back of the letter there was what we call a kiss—a drop of wax by the side of the seal—and again, you understand, that was enough for me.  I saw her post the letter, waited till she was gone, then went into the shop, and asked to see the Master.  When he came out, I told him, “Now, I’m an Officer in the Detective Force; there’s a letter with a kiss been posted here just now, for a man that I’m in search of; and what I have to ask of you, is, that you will let me look at the direction of that letter.”  He was very civil—took a lot of letters from the box in the window—shook ’em out on the counter with the faces downwards—and there among ’em was the identical letter with the kiss.  It was directed, Mr. Thomas Pigeon, Post Office, B—, to be left till called for.  Down I went to B— (a hundred and twenty miles or so) that night.  Early next morning I went to the Post Office; saw the gentleman in charge of that department; told him who I was; and that my object was to see, and track, the party that should come for the letter for Mr. Thomas Pigeon.  He was very polite, and said, “You shall have every assistance we can give you; you can wait inside the office; and we’ll take care to let you know when anybody comes for the letter.”  Well, I waited there three days, and began to think that nobody ever would come.  At last the clerk whispered to me, “Here!  Detective!  Somebody’s come for the letter!”  “Keep him a minute,” said I, and I ran round to the outside of the office.  There I saw a young chap with the appearance of an Ostler, holding a horse by the bridle—stretching the bridle across the pavement, while he waited at the Post Office Window for the letter.  I began to pat the horse, and that; and I said to the boy, “Why, this is Mr. Jones’s Mare!”  “No.  It an’t.”  “No?” said I.  “She’s very like Mr. Jones’s Mare!”  “She an’t Mr. Jones’s Mare, anyhow,” says he.  “It’s Mr. So and So’s, of the Warwick Arms.”  And up he jumped, and off he went—letter and all.  I got a cab, followed on the box, and was so quick after him that I came into the stable-yard of the Warwick Arms, by one gate, just as he came in by another.  I went into the bar, where there was a young woman serving, and called for a glass of brandy-and-water.  He came in directly, and handed her the letter.  She casually looked at it, without saying anything, and stuck it up behind the glass over the chimney-piece.  What was to be done next?

‘I turned it over in my mind while I drank my brandy-and-water (looking pretty sharp at the letter the while), but I couldn’t see my way out of it at all.  I tried to get lodgings in the house, but there had been a horse-fair, or something of that sort, and it was full.  I was obliged to put up somewhere else, but I came backwards and forwards to the bar for a couple of days, and there was the letter always behind the glass.  At last I thought I’d write a letter to Mr. Pigeon myself, and see what that would do.  So I wrote one, and posted it, but I purposely addressed it, Mr. John Pigeon, instead of Mr. Thomas Pigeon, to see what that would do.  In the morning (a very wet morning it was) I watched the postman down the street, and cut into the bar, just before he reached the Warwick Arms.  In he came presently with my letter.  “Is there a Mr. John Pigeon staying here?”  “No!—stop a bit though,” says the barmaid; and she took down the letter behind the glass.  “No,” says she, “it’s Thomas, and he is not staying here.  Would you do me a favour, and post this for me, as it is so wet?”  The postman said Yes; she folded it in another envelope, directed it, and gave it him.  He put it in his hat, and away he went.

‘I had no difficulty in finding out the direction of that letter.  It was addressed Mr. Thomas Pigeon, Post Office, R—, Northamptonshire, to be left till called for.  Off I started directly for R—; I said the same at the Post Office there, as I had said at B—; and again I waited three days before anybody came.  At last another chap on horseback came.  “Any letters for Mr. Thomas Pigeon?”  “Where do you come from?”  “New Inn, near R—.”  He got the letter, and away he went at a canter.

‘I made my inquiries about the New Inn, near R—, and hearing it was a solitary sort of house, a little in the horse line, about a couple of miles from the station, I thought I’d go and have a look at it.  I found it what it had been described, and sauntered in, to look about me.  The landlady was in the bar, and I was trying to get into conversation with her; asked her how business was, and spoke about the wet weather, and so on; when I saw, through an open door, three men sitting by the fire in a sort of parlour, or kitchen; and one of those men, according to the description I had of him, was Tally-ho Thompson!

‘I went and sat down among ’em, and tried to make things agreeable; but they were very shy—wouldn’t talk at all—looked at me, and at one another, in a way quite the reverse of sociable.  I reckoned ’em up, and finding that they were all three bigger men than me, and considering that their looks were ugly—that it was a lonely place—railroad station two miles off—and night coming on—thought I couldn’t do better than have a drop of brandy-and-water to keep my courage up.  So I called for my brandy-and-water; and as I was sitting drinking it by the fire, Thompson got up and went out.

‘Now the difficulty of it was, that I wasn’t sure it was Thompson, because I had never set eyes on him before; and what I had wanted was to be quite certain of him.  However, there was nothing for it now, but to follow, and put a bold face upon it.  I found him talking, outside in the yard, with the landlady.  It turned out afterwards that he was wanted by a Northampton officer for something else, and that, knowing that officer to be pock-marked (as I am myself), he mistook me for him.  As I have observed, I found him talking to the landlady, outside.  I put my hand upon his shoulder—this way—and said, “Tally-ho Thompson, it’s no use.  I know you.  I’m an officer from London, and I take you into custody for felony!”  “That be d-d!” says Tally-ho Thompson.

‘We went back into the house, and the two friends began to cut up rough, and their looks didn’t please me at all, I assure you.  “Let the man go.  What are you going to do with him?”  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do with him.  I’m going to take him to London to-night, as sure as I’m alive.  I’m not alone here, whatever you may think.  You mind your own business, and keep yourselves to yourselves.  It’ll be better for you, for I know you both very well.”  I’d never seen or heard of ’em in all my life, but my bouncing cowed ’em a bit, and they kept off, while Thompson was making ready to go.  I thought to myself, however, that they might be coming after me on the dark road, to rescue Thompson; so I said to the landlady, “What men have you got in the house, Missis?”  “We haven’t got no men here,” she says, sulkily.  “You have got an ostler, I suppose?”  “Yes, we’ve got an ostler.”  “Let me see him.”  Presently he came, and a shaggy-headed young fellow he was.  “Now attend to me, young man,” says I; “I’m a Detective Officer from London.  This man’s name is Thompson.  I have taken him into custody for felony.  I am going to take him to the railroad station.  I call upon you in the Queen’s name to assist me; and mind you, my friend, you’ll get yourself into more trouble than you know of, if you don’t!”  You never saw a person open his eyes so wide.  “Now, Thompson, come along!” says I.  But when I took out the handcuffs, Thompson cries, “No!  None of that!  I won’t stand them!  I’ll go along with you quiet, but I won’t bear none of that!”  “Tally-ho Thompson,” I said, “I’m willing to behave as a man to you, if you are willing to behave as a man to me.  Give me your word that you’ll come peaceably along, and I don’t want to handcuff you.”  “I will,” says Thompson, “but I’ll have a glass of brandy first.”  “I don’t care if I’ve another,” said I.  “We’ll have two more, Missis,” said the friends, “and confound you, Constable, you’ll give your man a drop, won’t you?”  I was agreeable to that, so we had it all round, and then my man and I took Tally-ho Thompson safe to the railroad, and I carried him to London that night.  He was afterwards acquitted, on account of a defect in the evidence; and I understand he always praises me up to the skies, and says I’m one of the best of men.’

This story coming to a termination amidst general applause, Inspector Wield, after a little grave smoking, fixes his eye on his host, and thus delivers himself:

‘It wasn’t a bad plant that of mine, on Fikey, the man accused of forging the Sou’-Western Railway debentures—it was only t’other day—because the reason why?  I’ll tell you.

‘I had information that Fikey and his brother kept a factory over yonder there,’—indicating any region on the Surrey side of the river—‘where he bought second-hand carriages; so after I’d tried in vain to get hold of him by other means, I wrote him a letter in an assumed name, saying that I’d got a horse and shay to dispose of, and would drive down next day that he might view the lot, and make an offer—very reasonable it was, I said—a reg’lar bargain.  Straw and me then went off to a friend of mine that’s in the livery and job business, and hired a turn-out for the day, a precious smart turn-out it was—quite a slap-up thing!  Down we drove, accordingly, with a friend (who’s not in the Force himself); and leaving my friend in the shay near a public-house, to take care of the horse, we went to the factory, which was some little way off.  In the factory, there was a number of strong fellows at work, and after reckoning ’em up, it was clear to me that it wouldn’t do to try it on there.  They were too many for us.  We must get our man out of doors.  “Mr. Fikey at home?”  “No, he ain’t.”  “Expected home soon?”  “Why, no, not soon.”  “Ah!  Is his brother here?”  “I’m his brother.”  “Oh! well, this is an ill-conwenience, this is.  I wrote him a letter yesterday, saying I’d got a little turn-out to dispose of, and I’ve took the trouble to bring the turn-out down a’ purpose, and now he ain’t in the way.”  “No, he ain’t in the way.  You couldn’t make it convenient to call again, could you?”  “Why, no, I couldn’t.  I want to sell; that’s the fact; and I can’t put it off.  Could you find him anywheres?”  At first he said No, he couldn’t, and then he wasn’t sure about it, and then he’d go and try.  So at last he went up-stairs, where there was a sort of loft, and presently down comes my man himself in his shirt-sleeves.