The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1865-12-26 00:00:00

THE LIFE OF A CHEAP JACK.

(From the Christmas number of All the Year Round.)
I AN a Cheap Jack, and my own father's name was
Wi'Min Marigold. It was in his lifetime suppoeed by
sone, that his name was William, but any own father
slways consistently said, No, it was Wiliam. On whioh
point I content myself with looking at the argument
this way :—lf a man is not allowed to know his own name
in a free country how,much is he allowed to know in a lend
of alevery? As to looking at the argument through the
medium of the Register, Willem Marigold come into the
world before Registers come up much—ard went out
of it too. They wouldn't have been greatly in ilia line
neither, if they had chanced to corhe up before him.
I waliborn on the:Queen's highway, but It was the
Ring's at that time. A. doctor was fetched to my own
mother by my own father, when it took place on a com-
mon laild,Ein consequence of his being a very kind
gentleman, and accepting no fee but a tee-tray, I was
named Donor, out of gratitude end compliment to him.
There you have ine. Doctor Marigold.
I are at pra sent a middle-aged man of a broadish
build, in cords, leggings, and a sleeved waiAcoat,
strings of which is always gone behind. Repair them
how you will,",they go like fiddle,tringe. You have
been to the theatre, and you have seen one if the
wiolin-playere screw up his wiolin, after listening to it
as if it had been whlepering the secret to him that it
feared it was out of order, and then you have heard it
snap. That's as exactly similar to my waiscoat, as a
waistcoat and a wiolin can be 'dike one another.
.m partial to a white hat, and I like a shawl round
my neck wore loose and easy. Sitting down is my
favourite posture. If I inure a note in point of personal
jewellery, it is mother-of pearl buttons. There you
have inc again, as large as life.
The doctor having aecepted a tea-tray, you'll guess
that my father w-s a Cheap Jack before me. You are
right. He was. It was a pretty tray. It represented
a large lade going along • serpentining up-hill gravel-
' walk, to attend • little church. Two swans hod like-
wise come astray with the same intentions. When I
oall her a large lady. I don't mean in point of breadth,
for there she fell below my views, but she more than
made it twin height ; her height and slimness wag—in
abort THS heighth of both.
I oftn saw that tray, after I was the innocently
smiling cause (or more likely screeching one) of Cie
doctor's standing it up on a table agaiast the well in his
consulting-room. Whenever my own father and another
were in that part of the country, I used In put my head
(I have heard my own mother say it was flaxen curls at
Chat t me, though you wouldn't know an oil hearth.
broom from it now, till you come to the handle and
found it wasn't me) in at the doctor's door, and the
doctor was always glad to see me, and said, •` Alm, my
brother practioner ! Come in, little M.D. How are
your inclinations an to sixpence?'
You can't go on for ever, you'll find, nor yet could
my (ether nor yet my mother. If you don't go off AR
• whole when you are about des, you're liable to go oft
in part and two to one your head's the part. Gradually
my father went off his, and my mother went nff hers.
It was in a harmless way, but it put out the family
where I boarded them. The old couple, though retired,
got to be wholly and solely devoted to the Cheap Jack
business, and were always selling the family off. When-
ever the cloth was laid for dinner, my father began
rattling the plates and dishes, as we do in our line
when we put up crockery for a bid, only he had lost the
trick of it and mostly let 'em drop and broke 'em. As
the old lady had be it used to sit in the cart, and hand
the articles out one by one to the old gentleman on the
footboard to rell, jogt in the game way she handed him
every item of the family's property, and they di.pose
of it in their own imaginations from morning to night.
At last the old gentleman, lying bedridden in the same
room with the old lady, cries out in the old patter,
fluent, after having been silent for two days and nights :
"Now here, my jolly companions, every one—which
the Nightiogale club in a village was held, at the sign
of the Cabbage and Shears, where the singers no doubt
would have greatly excelled, hut for want of taste,
voices, and years—now here, my jolly oompsnione every
one. is • working model of amsed-up old Cheap Jack,
without a tooth in his head, and a pain in every bone ;
so like life that it would be just aa good if it was
better, just as bad if it wasn't worse, and just se new if
it wasn't worn out. Bid for the working model of the
old Cheap Jack, who has drunk o ore gunpowder tea
with the ladies in his time than would blow the lid off a
washerwoman's copper, and carry it as many thou-
sands of soles higher than the moon as nought nix
nought, divided by the national debt, carry nothing to
the poor rite, three under, and tweover. Now my
hearts of oak and men of straw, what do you say for the
lot? Two shillings, a shilling, teeoence, eightpence,
sixpence, fourpence. Twopence I Who said twopence'
The gentleman in the scarecrow's hat? lam as maned
of the gentleman in the scarecrow's hat. I really am
ashamed of him for his want of public spirit. Now I'll
tell you what I'll do with you. Come! I'll throw you
it • working model of old woman that was married to
the old Cheap Jock so long ago, that npon my word and
honour it took place in Noah'e Ark, before the Unicorn
could get in to forbid the banns by blowing a tune upon
his horn. There now. Come I What do you say to
both? I'll tell your what I'll do with you. I don't
beat- you malice for being so backward. Here? If
you'll make me a hid that'll only reflect a little credit
on your town, throw you in 4 warming-pan for
robbing, and lend you a toasting-fork for life. Now, come;
what do you say after blest splendid offer? Say two
pounds, say thirty chitlings, say a pound, way ten
shillings, say live, say two and six. You don't say even
two and six. You say two and three ! No. You
shan't have the lot for two and three I'd sooner give it
to you, if you was good looking enough. Here! Missue I
Check the old man and woman into the tart, put
the hor-e to, and drive 'em away and bury 'em !" Such
were the last words of 'Wiliam Marigold, me own
father, and they were carried out, by him and by his
wife, my own mother, on one and the sante day, as I
ought to know, having followed as mourner.