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

JACK'S DAUGHTER.

The worst of it was, we had a daughter born to us,
and I love children with all my heart. When she was
in her furies, she beat the child. This got to be so
chocking as the child got to be four or five years old,
that I have many a time gone on with my whip over
my shoulder, at the old horse's head, sobbing and crying
worse than ever little Sophy did. For how could I
prevent it? Such a thing is not to be tried with such I
temper—in a cart—without wooing to a fight. It's ii
the natural size and information of a cart to bring it tp
a fight. And then the poor child got worse terrific
than before, as well as worse hurt generally, and he
mother made complaints to the next people we lighted
on, and the word went round, "Here's a wretch of •
Cheap Jock been a beating his wife."
Little Sophy was such a brave child I She grew to be
quite devoted to her poor father, though he could do so
little to help her. She had a wonderful quantity of
shining dark hair, all curling natural about her. It it
quite astonishing to me now, that I didn't go tearing
mad when I used to see her run from her mother before
the cart, and her mother catch her by this hair, and
pull her down by it, and beat her.
Such a brave child I said she was. Ali I with reason.
"Don't you mind next time, father dear," she would
whiqier to me, with her little fume still flashed, and her
bright eyes still wet; " if I don't cry out, yon may
know lem not much hurt. And even if I do cry on
it will only be to get mother to let go and leave off.,
What I have seen the little spirit bear—for me—withi
out crying out!
Yet in other respects her mother took great care
her. Her clothes were always clean and neat, and be
mother was never tired of working at 'em. Such is th
inconsistency in things. Our being down in the inaraN
country in unhealthy weather, I consider the cause oil
Sophy'a taking bad low fever; hot however she took it,)
once she got it she turned away from her mother foci
evermore, and nothing would persuade bar to
touched by her mother's band. She would shiver andi
say "No, no, no," when it was offered at, and would
hide her face on my shoulder, and hold me tighter round
the neck.
The Cheap Jack business had been worse than ever Il
had known it, what with one thing and what with'
another ( and not least what with railroads, which will
out it all to pieces, I expect at last), and I was run dry;
of money. For which reason, one night at that period ,
of little Sophy's being so bad, either we must have
come to a dead-luck for victuals and drink, or I must ,
haye pitched the cart as I did.
I couldn't get the dear child to lie down or leave go
of me, and indeed I hadn't the heart to try, sol stepped
out on the footboard with her holding round my neck.
They all set up a laugh when they see us, and one
chuckle-headed Joskin (that I hated for it) made the
bidding, "tuppence for her I"
"Now, you country boobies," says I, feeling as if my
heart was a heavy weight at the end of a broken sash.
line, "I give you notice that I am a going to charm the
money out of your pockets, and to give you so much
mm-e than your money's worth that you'll only persuade
yourselves to draw your Saturday night's wages elm
again arterwards, by the hopes of meeting me to lay
'em out with, which you never will, and why noVI
Because I've made my fortune by selling my goods on a
large scale for seventy-five per cent less than I give for
'em, and I am consequently to be elevated to the House
of Peers next week, tby the title of he Duke of Cheep
and Markin Jackaloorul. Now let's know what you
want to-night, and you shall have it. Bat fleet of
all, shall I tell you why I have got this little
girl round my neck? You don't want to
know? Then you shall She belongs to the Fairies.
She's a fortune-teller. She can tell me all about you in
, a whisper, and ran put me up to whether you're a.going
to buy a lot or leave it. Now do you want a saw? No,
she says you don't, because you're too clumsy to use
one. Else here's a saw which would be a lifelong
blessing to a handy man, at four shillings, at three and
six, at three, at two and six, at two, at eighteenpence.
But none of you shall have it at any price, on account of
your well-known awkardness which would make it
Manslaughter. The game ibjection applies to set of
three planes which I won't let you have neither so
don't bid for 'em Now [am a-going to ask her what
you do want. (Then I whispered "Your head burns
se, that ant afraid it hurt you had, my pet," and she
answered, without opening her heavy eyes, " Jutt
little, father.") Ohl This little fortune-teller says itls
meniorandam-book you want. Then why didn't you
mention it? Here it is. Look at it. Two hundred
superfine hot-pressed wire-wove pages—if you don't
believe me, count 'im—ready ruled for your expenses,
an everlastingly-pointed pencil to put 'em down with, a
double-bladed penknife to scratch 'em out with, a book
of printed tables to calculate your income with, and a
camp stool to sit down upon while you give your mind
to it! Stop! And an umbrella to keep the moon off
when you give your mind to it on a pitch dark night.
Now I wont ask you how much for the lot, but how
little? How little are you thinking of? Don't be
ashamed to mention it, because iny fortune-teller knoes
already. (Then tusking believe to whisper, I kissed her,
and she kissed me.) Why, she says you're thinking of
as little as three and threepence I I couldn't have be.
lieved, even of you, unless she told MP. • Three and
threepence! And a set of printed tables in the lot
that'll calculate your income up to forty thousand a•
year! With an income of forty-thousand a-year
you grudge throe and slept:nice. Well tbept I'll
tell you my opinion. I so despise the threepens*, that
I'd sooner take three shillings. There. For time
shillings, three shillings, three shillings I Gone.
'era over to the luoky man."
As there bad been no b,d at all, everybody looked
about and seined At everybody, while I touched little
Sophy's face and asked her if she felt faint or giddy.
"Not very, father. it will aeon be over." Then
turning from the pretty patient eyes, which were opened
',Ow, and seeing nothing but grins across my lighted
grease-pot, I went on again Cheap Jack style.
"Where's the butcher?" (ale sorrowfulteye hltd just
caught sight of • fat young butcher on the outside of
the crowd.) She says the good luck is the butcher's.
" Where is he?" Everybody handed on the blushing
butcher to the front and there was a roar, and the
butcher felt himself obliged to put his hand in his
pocket and take the lot. The party so picked out, in
general noes feel obliged to take the lot—good four times
out of six. Then we had another lot the counterpart of
that one, and sold it el:pence cheaper, whiCh is &Ways
wery much enjoyed. Then we hod the srasetacishi.
ain't a special profitable lot, bat I put 'em on and I see
what the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to take ,
off the taxes, and I see what the sweetheart of he
young woman in the shawl is doing at home, and I see
what the Bishops has got for dinner, and a deal more
that seldom (ails to fetch 'era up in tbek '044; end
tlee*thtle'thefeillafflth,iliebAterlheiriMs. "Thtn We
had the ladies' lot—the teapot, tea-ciddy, glass sugar
basin, half-a-dozen spoons, and caudlecup—and all the
time I was making similar excuses to give a look or two

Hancri

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grziy
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and say a word or two to my poor child. It was while
the second ladies' lot was bolding 'em enchained that I
elt her lift herself • little on my shoulder to look across
the dark ati eet. " What troubles you, darling?"
"Nothing trouhlea me, father. I ant not at all troubled.
But don't I see a pretty churchyard over there ?'"• Yes,
my dear." "Kiss me twice, dear father, and lay me
down to rest upon that churchyard grass so soft and
green." I staggered back into the cart with her head
dropped on my shoulder, and I says to her mother,
"Quick. Shut the door! Don't let those laughing
people see 1" " What's the matter?" she cries. 0,
woman, woman," I tells her, " You'll never catch my
little Booby by her hair again, for she has flown away
from you 1"

DEATH OF HIS WIFE.
May be those were harder words than I meant 'em,
but from that time forth my wife took to brooding, and
would sit in the cart or walk beside it hours at a stretch,
with her arms crossed and her eyes looking on .the
ground. When her furies took her (which waexathrc
seldorner than before) they tpok her in • new was -
she banged herself about to that extent that I Ist ao
hold her. She got none the better for a little think
now andlthen, and through some years I used to wonder
as I plodded along at the old horse's head whether there
was many out., upon the road that held no much dr,ari-
nese gamine, for ell my being looked up to as the King
of the Cheap Jacks. So sad our lives went on till one
summer evening, when as we were coming into Exeter
out of the further West of Eneltud, we saw a woman
beating a child in a cruel manner, she screamed,
"Don't beat me! 0 mother, mother, mother !" Then
my wife stopped her ears and ran away like a wild
thing, and next day she was found in the river.
Me and my dog were all the company left in the cart
now, and the dog learned to give a short bark when they
wouldn't bid, and to give another and a nod of his head
when I asked bin,: "Who sail half-a-crown ? Are
you the gentleman, sir, that offered balla.crown T' He
attained to an immense heighth of p•lntlarity,.and I
shall always believe taught himself entirely out of his
own heed to growl at any person in the.crowd that bid
as low as sixpence. But he gtto be well on in years,
and one night when I was conwulsing Yo,lr with the
spectacles, he took a conwulsion on his own account
:upon the very footboard by me, and it 'finished him.

THE PHILOSOPHY 'OF JOY.
I [From Wayside Thoughts, by D'Arcy W. Thompson.]
In silence and solitude, our thoughts are very apt to
wander So our own supposed trial's or good qualities, or
to the good fortune and supposed bad qualities of our
neighbour. As a kind of antidote against a mental
habit so unwholesome, I have brought together a series
of considerations, which might at any time, if remem-
bered, withdraw our minds from idle and unprofitable
thoughts to reflections upon the goodness of God as
displayed in the beau‘y of his works, or in the happiness
of his enAtures ; sod might lead us to sing, as it were in
our own hearts, a private, inncial, and particular
Te Deem.

--ICSeels to me a sweet and pleasant thing to know
that spring is at all times sojonreing somewhere on our
earth; that somewhere, every day in the blessed year,
are budding and blossoming the flower-children of the
sun and rain; and to know that, wheresoever there are
flowers, there also will be their kin-folk of butterflies,
and bright winged insects, and beetles in shiny &moor,
and other creatures happy and beautiful and void of
care; which all, after their kind, with buzzing voioes
and spangled raiment, give glory to God.
And it la also ierbet to think that there are some-
where at all tunes great waterfells,,a-falling ; • bridgied
over, many of them, with the eternal sign of God's
covenerit with mart; sand that at all timee there are
little streams a-runeing in among the hills, end tumbling
clnwn, as'if in play, to the Valleys underneath; telmigig
with. finny life, and aparklingin the noonday sum; and
that at all times there are somewhere, great, silent
lakes lying stretched beneath the moon hid stare; and
though it be midnight with us, pud the rain be on the
roof, ii.lB sweet no reflect that, at this very moment,
there are green forest-glades, flecked with sunlight, in
the which children are running to and fro, and skirling
with happy laughter, and, in their way, glorifying God;
somewhere.
And it is pleaaant to know.that there are at all times
innumerable little ones in this world, of two years old
and under; and that they are, for the most part, beauti-
ful ; end that they all, without etception, are pure and
innocent, and as utterly devoid of sin as cowslips or
primroses.
And it is sweet to think of the many toyshops in the
world, crammed with inn.. eat pleasures, all packed
away in wooden boxes; of the quaint city of toy-makers,
itdelfan architectural toy, old, beautiful, gabled Nilrem-
berg ;of the ungainly arks that sail only on floor or
table, With jumbled freights of etifteoated patriarehe,
and beset, and birds, and comparatively gigantic creep-
ing things ; of the amount of scattered pleasure brought
by these stiange boats from sge to age; greater in amount
perhami, than the trouble caused long ago by the one,
great drowning.
And it. is pl, scant to think of %Re great number of
pictures and tunes and stories that are floating in the
world, to the ever.reoureing amusement of young and
old; that the number is slowly but continually in-
'vermin ; and that no good tune or story is ever lost,
but outlives an empire or:a ,passing invisibly from
nursery to nursery.
_ . . . .

It 1. thankworihy, also, to know that -ragamuffin
children can find amusement everywhere, as a duck finds
food ; can be satisfied as it were with wind, and filled
with very emptineFs ; can draw merriment out of things
refuse, as a chemist draws sweet perfume; can rejoice
greatly in the treasuring of cherry-stones, in the r.ttling
of bone-castanets, in the building of oyster-shell grottoes,
and in the making of mud-pies.
. . . . - .

And It is pleasant to think of the free, wild ereatures
of the forest, and the cattle on a thousand hills of the
birds, that are never snared bz fowler, or killed by gun ;
of the great whales, that in a‘summer can swim from
pole to pole ; of the little, tiny fishes, that are never
caught with hook or net; of the innwnerable aping.
sparrows, that g ther crumbs in our streets; of the dogs
and cats and cockatoos, that ant ad ruirted in to f riendsh p
with man, and learn his ways, and partake of his table,
and receive of him their daily meat and drink, gratis;
asking so questions; liable to no payment of rent, or
toll,, or tax ;.tif the little. tame canary-birds, that have
forgotten their tiunidities and flutteringa, and perch
• comfortably upon oar fingers. emit chirp boldly in our
faces, and peck food-rnorsela from between our lips; the
feathery aimpletons, that to cowardly and diapering and
unbelieving Christians are a reproachful parable of that
, perfect love that casseth out fear.
It is a good thing, also, and a profitable for an that
are growing gradually old, and involuntarily peevish, to
consider that somewhere, evermore, will youth and
maid be discoursing one with other, with a sweet aid
pleasant foelishness ; that at every moment, somewhere,
merry feet will be glinting to the mesh) of wind or
stringed instrument; that, though we may be frowning
here, there will elsewhere be smiles and laughter that,
for all our niggard 'will to stifle merriment and circum-
scribe joy, there will for eve rand for ever be forth-
caning a plentiful supply of fresh cakes and ale.
. And it is edifying to think in what curious ways God's
providence is visibly acting; how that foolish and dis-
agreeable people see themselves and others through
spectacles of conceit and vanity; and so live on to old
age, mercif rally unconscious of their own defects, and as
little suspecting that they are foolish and disagreeable,
as does the raven that lie is black and indifferently
honest.

pleaaant, also to think upon those islands in the
Southern seas, to which no merchantman or missionary
had ever ,ailed ; of the gentle race of happy and un-
tutored biing., that were there a law unto themselves;
that lived an innooent life there of unbroken week-day
Sabbaths; that ant up day by day the inoense of blame-
as thoughts, an incense smelling sweetly in the nostrils
of our common Father; that through centuries of tin-
chronicled simplicity did glorify God there—maybe, un-
wittingly,—in a very simple, but very beautlful way;
although they had never read a tract—poor things—and
had never heard a sermon.

And it is pleasant, and withal profitable, to recall,
. ever and anon, the tumefied those that, in our own days,
orb the days of OUT fathers, have glorified God and
dignified humanity by holy living or heroic death; of
, the old man that spoke for a summer's day concerning
the life eternal, and in the evening drank the hemlock-
juice, calmly and without fear; of E, aminondas, asleep
, on the fi.M.of htantinzes ; of Xavier, dying in far India,
spent with toil, and ripe for glory; of Ken, that feared
the grave as little as he feared his bed ; of Havelock,
I getting wearied to an honourable rest; of those soldims,
that *cot down in deep wateraby the ,•hores of Southern i
Africa, in their ranks as on a parade-ground ; of those
sailors on the sunken reef that cheered as the waves '
closed over them; of that surgeon of the good ship, '
Alabama, who but yesterday, in the discharge of ditty,
clui sink with all Ma maimed and wounded; sank for a
while, to be rahmd one day—maybe' with all his maimed 1
and wounded—by the great Haalere and Physician; of
that nobly-wilful soldier in the army of the line, who
yesterday did break fearlessly the temporary law of
"11, because that,beleared to break the eternal law of
HMI who heretofore was anointed to preach the gospel '
to the poor, to preach deliverance to the csptives, aod
to set at liberty them that were bruised ;, of this nobly-
wilful, righteously-disobedient man, who but yesterday
did pass through the portals of • seemingly-ignominious
death to the peso, and quiet of a memorable grave; lo
rest there for a little while; hut to be raised one day,
with other good and faithful servants, and to bear the
gracious words: "Come, blessed of my Father, enter
into the kingdom."
And it is abo a sweet, and admit thing to think of
is many green and quiet graveyards on which the moon
even at this moment softly shining; of the hands
.leekly folded, and the faces upwards turned with an
enduring patience; of the exceeding stillness and repose
that reigns for ever in these hamlets enderground, un-
disturbed by wind or storm, or the ruder jarring of
i and unchristian speech ; and to know that. be a
.., limn ever so poor and miserable, thole is reserved
or him along, luxurious, and refreshing sleep,—a sleep
pore sound than poppy or mandragora can give, and
ram which no noised hitrriciane, no thunder-peal, can
taken.
And it is a thing of marvel to refieot, that there are
evermore &elicits( off into space from the sides of oar
ra•volving earth the sounds of many human languages,
the manifold noises of beasts, the pipings of bird,, and
the shrillings of little creeping things; and to know that
each language, and noise, and piping, and shrilling, hi
a separwe instrument in a great and varied orchestra,
alrid that the sound' of all, by intermixing, lose their
stomata dissonances, and blend harmoniously with
, heavenly choirs, that slog eternally the praises of the
Fearn and the glory, and the loving-kindness of
Ain'
nd It is also sweet and profitable to recall the various
ways in which nations aid peoples have pi tured to
themselves the hrippioess of • future life ; the li writing-
grounds of the Red Indian ; the Elysian Fields of the
Qreek ; the Beds of Asphodel; the white.robed Angels, !
1
d the never-ending, ever-varying song of jubilant
eine. It is comforting to think that even they, that
ly saw the light afar off, had dim forecasting,. of that
miag time, when tears shall be wiped away from all
e eel of he now Heavens that .shall be paved -with
hteousoess ; of the pew Earth thalshall be felled the
rd's goodness, as the waters Covet the sea; in which
all be neither hail, nor ntin, nor snow, nor wind tem-
Winona ; where shall be any darkness of midnight, nor
ilight-tior Awrir; but whersehakkieeli• &Ming of'st
rnal noon : where the starlight shall be as the in,on-
ight, and the moonlight as the sunlight, and the tun as
twelve suns; where the Lord Himself shall be our ever.
leasing Light, and our God our Glory.