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DOUGLAS JERROLD'S

SHILLING MAGAZINE.

THE HISTORY OF ST. GILES AND ST. JAMES.* BY THE EDITOR..

CHAPTER XXXV.

We will not linger with Snipeton. For why cast away sympathy-that essence of our moral being-upon an old, moneyloving man, gulled of his youthful wife? Wherefore pity him, made, by the lucky boldness of hired knavery, retained and paid by scoundrel cowardice, the living joke of the best society, shaking its sides at the best of clubs ? Had the miserable man been left upon the road, with out-turned pockets, and a medicable bruise or gash or two, why, there would have been no jest whatever in the dull mishap; the robbery and the wound might have passed among the serious things that lengthen even careless faces. But how different the casualty! A man-an old man-and the quintessence of the drollery lay in his wrinkles -had been robbed of his other self; had had his very being rent in twain, and to think of his loss was rarest comedyto picture him writhing in the agony of that forced separation was to crow with laughter. Such was the compassion bestowed by men upon the old money-merchant, as rumour, like a wild-goose, cackled as she flew. Therefore, for a time, we will leave Snipeton at his solitary hearth. No; not solitary. For now the figure, the features of his wife-the run-away; yes, there was the horror; there the burning truth that poisoned the wound-were multiplied about him. It would have been some relief to the * Continued from page 492, Vol. IV.

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tortured a passing breath cooling the damned-to think that beautiful mischief the victim of violence: but no; she had clubbed her share of cunning; she had played a free part in the wickedness; she had fled from him; and he could hear her laughter at the trick. And then those very numerals-things that in pleasant idleness of heart he had jotted down, as fancied guards and retinue of wealth, to glorify and do homage to that idol of his home-they rose in his brain like sparks of fire, and he howled and whined like idiotcy. And at the same time, as we have said, there was great laughter-very great enjoyment at the clubs.

The scene is shifted: night has passed away. For a time poor Snipeton sat with his eyes upon the hand of the clock as though he watched a dagger aimed to strike him. And the hand moved from hour to hour; and then, in deep night, as one on whom despair had fastened, not to be loosed but at the grave, he sat in silent, sullen misery.

The scene is shifted. We are miles away in pleasant Surrey. In an old house-old as the gnarled elms and oaks that majestically stand, the sylvan guards, around it—is Snipeton's stolen wife. That house is the abiding-place of the luckless horseman thrown from his steed at Hampstead, and duly tended by Crossbone, and duly robbed by Blast. Accident and sickness save a world of ceremony, and the patient and the surgeon were in briefest season, fast friends. You may grow a friendship quick as a salad, that like the salad, shall serve the required purpose; and so it was with the intimacy sprung up twixt Shoveller and Crossbone. Shoveller was pleased to call himself—a man of the world. We say pleased; for he proclaimed his title, as though it was one of honour; a distinction stoutly won at the Battle of Guineas—(what Gazette shall number the killed and wounded of that still-fought field?) and therefore to be mightily proud of. He would say, "I am a man of the world : indicating that he was wholly and entirely of the world: that he dealt with facts; hard facts; hard and real as the world he felt with his soles; and quite a different matter from the misty, cloudy world, that swam above his head. He was a man of the world- —a real bit of its real loam; unalloyed by any thought that for a moment should lift him off his feet. When a sage of this sort says, 'I am a man of the world; " he means, with significant emphasis to impart-"I have been such a hard student of the ways of this world; that, between ourselves— so you may speak your wishes safely, and without offence between

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