These violent efforts were, however, always succeeded by silent repentance, and an effort to reconcile herself to her habits by a stricter domestic economy. Then were the poor maids condemned for three days to get her to witness the apparition of the same calf's head upon the dinner-table; and when at last they laid it in the Red Sea, they not unfrequently imported a red herring in exchange. The French restaurateurs, who give dinners at twenty-five sous & head, pompously announce in their bills, "Pain à discretion," well knowing that no person of the least discretion will eat much of so sour a commodity; and Mrs. Pitman informed her nymphs, that she left the small beer to their free and uncontrolled disposal, though she must confess she abominated female tipplers. It was magnifying things, to give such a pigmy beverage, innocent of hops and scarcely tinged with the first blush of malt, the name of even small beer ; but the same cause that made Mrs. Pitman lavish, made the liquor poor. It was always sent as a present from her cousin, Mr. Swipes the brewer, who was trying by every art and attention to ingratiate himself with the old lady's will, and who, knowing that she never tasted any thing but currant wine, or rather water, of her own concoction, sometimes fobbed off her servants with a returned cask, whose acidity he had partially disguised by fortifying it from the pump. Probably he extended to unpaid beer the proverb applied to a gift horse---that it should not be looked at in the mouth: all the world agreed that it was "dull, flat, and stale," and he was the only per

But

son not justified in calling it "unprofitable." enough of this compound; we must not speak ill of the dead.

Mr. Currie, the saddler, another cousin, who had also a shrewd eye to the "post mortem appearances " of the widow's testament, and could not very appropriately ingratiate himself by a spur or a horse-whip, kept her supplied with other equally stimulating presents of sausages, hams, fish, poultry, and game; chuckling at the idea of the enormous usury at which he was putting them out, which he estimated in his own mind at about the rate of a hundred pounds a basket. Mr. Swipes was neither less liberal, nor less sanguine; scarcely a week elapsed without his despatching a savoury parcel, which he deemed equivalent to sowing legacies and planting codicils. Nor had they any reason to doubt the old lady's intentions, for, as they fed her with good things, she fed them with hope, which is a better; and as to her nephew Frank Millington, against whom they combined all their powers of misrepresentation and abuse, he himself became their most efficient ally, by the wildness of his life, and the unbridled insolence of his demeanour towards his aunt. Frank was a patron of pugilists and cock-fighters, whose constant demands upon his purse occasioned as regular applications to hers; and though she really answered these claims with more liberality than could have been expected from her penurious habits, he could never endure with any decency of patience the long lecture which filled up the time, from the moment of his

arrival to the production of what he emphatically termed "the tip," whose apparition was always the signal for his disappearance. His last application, being somewhat too rapid as well as heavy, was encountered with a positive denial, and the recusant was commencing her usual exhortation, when Frank disrespectfully exclaimed, " Come, come, no preachee and floggee too," and muttering, loud enough to be heard, the words "stingy old mummy!" flung himself out of the room.

Now, though it must be candidly confessed that Mrs. Pitman, who had by this time become somewhat aged, and brown, and shrivelled, bore no small resemblance to those leathern ladies and gentlemen of Egypt, who mount guard at Museums in their glazed sentry-boxes, she considered herself too young by three thousand years to justify any such comparison, and was indignant in proportion to her own sense of juvenility. Mr. Swipes and Mr. Currie were even more moved than the old lady, for they felt the value of the insult. Never was a sorrow more joyous, or an anger more complacent, than that which they expressed upon the occasion. So deeply were their feelings injured, that they declared themselves unable to continue their visits, if they ran any risk of encountering such an ungrateful profligate; and Frank was accordingly forbidden the house.

As the tanner's widow waxed sickly and infirm, she became an enticing object for Mrs. Doldrum, an inhabitant of Leighton-Buzzard, one of those human screech-owls who prowl about the abodes of misery

and death, croaking out dismal tidings, and hovering over corpses. She seemed only happy when surrounded by wretchedness, and her undertaker-like mind appeared to live upon death. When she could not treat herself with a dissolution, she would look about her for a broken leg, a bankruptcy, a family where there was a dishonoured daughter, a runaway son, or any calamity she could by good fortune discover. "O my dear friend," she exclaimed to Mrs. Pitman, a short time before her death, "I am so delighted to see you, (here a groan)—you know my regard for you, (another groan)-seeing your bedroom shutters closed, I took it for granted it was all over with you, so I came in just to close your eyes and lay out your body. Delighted to find you alive, (groan the third)-let us be of good cheer, perhaps you may yet linger out a week longer, though it would be a great release if it would please God to take you. (Groan the fourth.)—And yet I fear you are sadly prepared for the next world. (Groan the fifth and longest.)--You know my regard for you. The Lord be good unto us! Hark! is that the death-watch? I certainly heard a ticking."

This consolatory personage was all alive the moment she heard of Mrs. Pitman's death, which occurred shortly after; and she was obviously in, her proper element, when superintending the closing of window-shutters, and all the minute arrangements usually adopted upon such mournful occasions. At her own particular request, she was indulged with the privilege of sitting up with the body the first

night, and would not even resign her station on the second day, which was the time appointed for the reading of the will. Frank Millington had been sent for express to attend this melancholy ceremony. Mr. Swipes and Mr. Currie were of course present in deep mourning, with visages to match, and each with a white pocket-handkerchief to hide the tears which he feared he would be unable to shed. Mr. Drawl, the attorney, held the portentous document in his hand, bristling with seals; and two or three friends were requested to attend as witnesses. The slow and precise man of law, who shared none of his auditors' impatience, was five minutes in picking the locks of the seals, as many more in arranging his spectacles, and, having deliberately blown his nose, through which he always talked, (as if to clear the way,) he at length began his lecture. As the will, at the old lady's particular request, had been made as short and simple as posble, he had succeeded in squeezing it into six large skins of parchment, which we shall take the liberty of crushing into as many lines. After a few unimportant legacies to servants and others, it stated that the whole residue of her property, personal and real, consisting of [here a formidable schedule of houses, farms, messuages, tenements, buildings, appurtenances, stocks, bonds, monies, and possessions, occupying twenty minutes in the recital,]---was bequeathed to her dear cousins, Samuel Swipes of the Pond-street Brewery, and Christopher Currie of the Market-place, Saddler.

Here Mr. Drawl laid down his parchment, drew