"And your own clothes; how do you
manage?"

"Well, clothes last a good while with care
and mending. I've got the suit I was married
in, and it looks pretty good still. Boots are
the most expensive articles that I have to buy.
The wife manages; and she is a clever woman,
as I have reason to know. She goes out
charing sometimes, and gets herself a little bit
of finery, and a few  ribbons. Lord love her!
She deserves them. And you see I am a sober
man, and waste no money in drink, though, as
I said, I like my beer, and I like it good, and
would like to have the pillory once more in our
parish. Wouldn't I pelt some people if they
got there!"

I took care that the road-mender had some
good beer that day—Bass's bottled—which he
highly relished, and was unfeignedly grateful
for. I had the pleasure too, of giving him as
much money as would purchase a bottle of the
same for "the missus." He is, it will be seen
a very favourable specimen of the English
peasantry—an honest, hard-working, cheerful, but
hopeless man; born to be a drudge, eking out his
life with the aid of charitable coals and chance
kindnesses; one who had but little idea of, or
care for, the promises of religion—a good man
in his way, but practically as much a heathen as
his compeers in Greece in the days of Plato.
He harboured no resentment against, and
entertained no jealousy of, his superiors in
station and worldly wealth, and spoke ill of
nobody but the adulterators of his beer. The
portrait is from the life; and were there no
worse or more ignorant people in England than
he, England would be a better place than it is.

TRICKS.

IF people commit crimes, we can give them
into custody, and so get rid of them. Acquaintances
who are the slaves of vicious indulgence,
generally take pains to conceal their propensities,
and we are therefore not annoyed by
them; but against habitual tricks we are
defenceless. I once knew an elderly gentleman
who poked the man he was conversing with, in
the ribs with great force and a sharp forefinger,
whenever either said anything which he thought
remarkable. The trick is amusing enough when
represented on the stage, but in real life and to
persons who are ticklish, it is an insufferable
nuisance. The last time this man made me
his victim was after a political dinner in the
days of the Anti-Corn Law League, when, being
quite out of my depth, I was naturally anxious
to impress the assembled guests with a conviction
of my profoundness, and had partially
succeeded, when my troublesome friend caused the
most sapient of my remarks to terminate in a
wriggle and a giggle with his cruel digit of
approbation. I gave him a wide berth after that,
and he has now gone to that bourne where there
can be little satisfaction in poking his neighbours'
ribs; for his finger would go between
them unresisted. It is an absurd fancy, and
yet I should not like to be buried next him.

Some persons have a trick of winking. I
could mention a most polite and modest young
man who most desperately offends ladies,
unaware of his unfortunate habit. The offer,
"Will you allow me to give you a glass of
champagne?" at a ball supper, is, taken alone,
a civility; but if accompanied, as ten to one it
would be in Brown's case, with a wink, it might
annoy some ladies into hysterics, especially if
they were really addicted to a little stimulant in
private. Yet, however much shocked she might
be, no recipient of one of Brown's offensive
though unconscious movements of the eye-
lid could be more astonished than I was once,
by a good but prim old lady of strong religious
principles, who uttered a solemn dogma for my
benefit, and then—winked at me! For a
moment I thought it was Mephistopheles himself
who sat before me, disguised in elderly female
garb; but a continual repetition of the trick
explained the mystery.

It is difficult to relinquish tricks of a different
nature; gnawing the nails, or a pen for
example. I knew a man who used to devour
his pocket-handkerchiefs while reading, until a
female relative got him to transfer his attentions
to an ivory paper cutter, and he positively
ate one in about a fortnight. It was tooth
versus tusk, and he beat the elephant.
However, he was a careless man about the affairs of
this world, and lived in an atmosphere of meta-
physics. Smith, lieutenant and adjutant of
the Hundred and Fiftieth, raised from the ranks
for most exceptional good conduct and devoted
heroism, was anxious beyond all things to
break himself of every habit which he had
picked up in a lower grade of life. He
succeeded most wonderfully; as he was a gentleman
at heart, so he acquired the manners and
the tone of conversation of a gentleman; but
one little trick beat him. If he sat down to a
rubber, he could not for the life of him help
wetting his thumb when he dealt the cards.
Sometimes he would catch himself doing it, and
mutter "there I go again!" But he never got
over it, and consequently declined to play at
whist, of which he was very fond, when strangers
were present. And yet that man had conquered
military routine and social prejudice! An old
schoolfellow of mine had a trick which is
mentioned, I think, by Boswell as having been a
peculiarity of Doctor Johnson's: the trick of touching
things. "When he had reached the door of a
room he was leaving, he would return to touch a
book, the back of a chair, or a table. No matter
how great a hurry he might be in, he obeyed
the impulse; indeed the more flurried and
nervous he was, the stronger it became. When
late for school, to which he was running from
the house where he boarded, I have seen him
stop, and turn back three times to touch a
tree: though in those days the wasted moments
probably represented a flogging, of which he
had an unwonted horror. I have often
wondered what became of him as a man. Could a