VOL. I.
LONDON:
SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.
1830.
LONDON:
IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY-STREET, STRAND.
All the mottoes annexed to the chaptersof this work, have been selected from theAuthor’s dramatic and other poeticalworks, not yet published.
FIRST LOVE.
“No hut shelters Comala from the rain.”
A family of travelling vagrants were overtakenon the high road just leading out ofKeswick, on the Penrith side, by a gentlemanon horseback. He had observed the samegroup begging during the entertainments ofthe regatta which had concluded but the eveningbefore.
“Ho! ho! my good woman,” he said, ashe passed in a sling trot, “I am glad to seeyour boy has found his second leg!”
The woman, who appeared to be young, andwho would have been handsome, had not dirtand impudence rendered her disgusting, lookedbehind her, and perceived that a poor, sickly,ragged child, apparently about five years old,who followed her, tired of his crutches, whichpushed up his little shoulders almost out oftheir sockets, had contrived to loosen the bandageof his tied-up leg, and slip it down outof the dirty linen bag, in which it usuallyhung on the double, and from which it was notalways released, even at night, as so doing necessarilyincurred the further trouble of tyingit up again in the morning. She laid downher bundle, and stood still with her armsa-kimbo, till, with hesitating steps, and looks ofsuppressed terror, her victim came up; thenglancing round, to ascertain that the gentlemanwas out of sight, she seized the child, snatched[3]both the crutches from his trembling hands,and grasping them in one of hers, she beganto flog him without pity. He seemed used tothis, for he uttered no sound of complaint;silent tears only rolled down his face.
“Ye villain!” said she at last, with a strongCumberland accent, and gasping for breath,“it’s not the first time, is it? it’s not the firsttime I’ve beat you within an inch of your lifefor this. But I’ll do for you this time: that Iwill! You shan’t be a burden to me anylonger, instead of a profit. If it wasn’t for themiserable looks of ye,” she added, shakinghim almost to atoms as she wheeled him round,“that sometimes wrings a penny out of thefolk, I’d ha’ finished ye long ago.” Then,with her great foot, armed with an iron-rimmedwooden shoe, she gave him a violent kick onthe offending leg, continuing thus:—“Its[4]best break the shanks on ye at ance, ye whey-facedurchin ye! and then ye’ll tak te yeercrutches without biddin’!”
Finding, however, that though he had staggeredand fallen forward on both hands, he hadyet risen again, and still contrived to stand,she once more lifted her foot, to repeat the kickwith increased force: for she was as much intoxicatedby drink as by rage, and reallyseemed to intend to break the child’s leg; buther husband, a sort of travelling tinker, comingup at the moment, and uttering a violentcurse, struck her a blow that, poised as she justthen was on one foot, brought her to theground.
During the scuffle which ensued, the poorlittle sufferer, who had occasioned it all, creptthrough the hedge of a field by the roa