Nuts and Nutcrackers. Lever Charles James
to his temperament as train-oil to a Russian. He likes sporting, he likes billiards, he likes his club, and he likes the ladies; but he has just as much intention of turning a huntsman at the one, or a marker at the other, as he has of matrimony. He knows life is a chequered table, and that there could be no game if all the squares were of one colour. He alternates, therefore, between love and sporting, between cards and courtship, and as the pursuit is a pleasant one, he resolves never to give up. He waxes old, therefore, with young habits, adapting his tastes to his time of life; he does not kneel so often at forty as he did at twenty, but he ogles the more, and is twice as good-tempered. Not perhaps as ready to fight for the lady, but ten times more disposed to flatter her. She may love him, or she may not; she may receive him as of old, or she may marry another. What matters it to him? All his care is that he shouldn’t change. All his anxiety is, to let the rupture, if there must be one, proceed from her side. He knows in his heart the penalty of breach of promise, but he also knows that the Chancellor can issue no injunction compelling a man to marry, and that in the courts of love the bills are payable at convenience.
Here, then, are the two cases, which, in conformity with the world’s opinion, I have dignified with every possible term of horror and reproach. In the one, the measure of iniquity is but half filled; in the other, the cup is overflowing at the brim. For the lesser offence, the law awards damages and defamation: for the greater, society pronounces an eulogy upon the enduring fidelity of the man thus faithful to a first love.
If a person about to buy a horse should, on trying him for an hour or two, discover that his temper did not suit him, or that his paces were not pleasant, and should in consequence restore him to the owner: and if another, on the same errand, should come day after day for weeks, or months, or even years, cantering him about over the pavement, and scouring over the whole country; his answer being, when asked if he intended to purchase, that he liked the horse exceedingly, but that he hadn’t got a stable, or a saddle, or a curb-chain, or, in fact, some one or other of the little necessaries of horse gear; but that when he had, that was exactly the animal to suit him – he never was better carried in his life. Which of these two, do you esteem the more honest and more honourable? When you make up your mind, please also to make the application.
A NUT FOR THE POLICE AND SIR PETER
When the Belgians, by their most insane revolution, separated from the Dutch, they assumed for their national motto the phrase “L’union fait la force” It is difficult to say whether their rebellion towards the sovereign, or this happy employment of a bull, it was, that so completely captivated our illustrious countryman, Dan, and excited so warmly his sympathies for that beer-drinking population. After all, why should one quarrel with them? Nations, like individuals, have their coats-of-arms, their heraldic insignia, their blazons, and their garters, frequently containing the sharpest sarcasm and most poignant satire upon those who bear them; and in this respect Belgium is only as ridiculous as the attorney who assumed for his motto “Fïat justitia.” Time was when the chivalrous line of our own garter, “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” brought with it, its bright associations of kingly courtesy and maiden bashfulness: but what sympathy can such a sentiment find in these degenerate days of rail-roads and rack-rents, canals, collieries, and chain-bridges? No, were we now to select an inscription, much rather would we take it from the prevailing passion of the age, and write beneath the arms of our land the emphatic phrase, “Push along, keep moving.”
If Englishmen have failed to exhibit in machinery that triumphant El Dorado called perpetual motion, in revenge for their failure, they resolved to exemplify it in themselves. The whole nation, from John o’ Groat to Land’s End, from Westport to Dover, are playing cross-corners. Every body and every thing is on the move. A dwelling-house, like an umbrella, is only a thing used on an emergency; and the inhabitants of Great Britain pass their lives amid the smoke of steam-boats, or the din and thunder of the Grand-Junction. From the highest to the lowest, from the peer to the peasant, from the lord of the treasury to the Irish haymaker, it is one universal “chassée croissée.” Not only is this fashionable – for we are told by the newspapers how the Queen walks daily with Prince Albert on “the slopes” – but stranger still, locomotion is a law of the land, and standing still is a statutable offence. The hackney coachman, with wearied horses, blown and broken-winded, dares not breathe his jaded beasts by a momentary pull-up, for the implacable policeman has his eye upon him, and he must simulate a trot, though his pace but resemble a stage procession, where the legs are lifted without progressing, and some fifty Roman soldiers, in Wellington boots, are seen vainly endeavouring to push forward. The foot-passenger is no better off – tired perhaps with walking or attracted by the fascinations of a print-shop, he stops for an instant: alas, that luxury may cost him dear, and for the momentary pleasure he may yet have to perform a quick step on the mill. “Move on, sir. Keep moving, if you please,” sayeth the gentleman in blue; and there is something in his manner that wont be denied. It is useless to explain that you have nowhere particular to go to, that you are an idler and a lounger. The confession is a fatal one; and however respectable your appearance, the idea of shoplifting is at once associated with your pursuits. Into what inconsistencies do we fall while multiplying our laws, for while we insist upon progression, we announce a penalty for vagrancy. The first principle of the British constitution, however, is “keep moving,” and “I would recommend you to go with the tide.”
Thank heaven, I have reached to man’s estate – although with a heavy heart I acknowledge it is the only estate I have or ever shall attain to; for if I were a child I don’t think I should close my eyes at night from the fear of one frightful and terrific image. As it is, I am by no means over courageous, and it requires all the energy I can summon to combat my terrors. You ask me, in all likelihood, what this fearful thing can be? Is it the plague or the cholera? is it the dread of poverty and the new poor-law? is it that I may be impressed as a seaman, or mistaken for a Yankee? or is it some unknown and visionary terror, unseen, unheard of, but foreshadowed by a diseased imagination; No; nothing of the kind. It is a palpable, sentient, existent thing – neither more nor less than the worshipful Sir Peter Laurie.
Every newspaper you take up announces that Sir Peter, with a hearty contempt for the brevity of the fifty folio volumes that contain the laws of our land, in the plenitude of his power and the fulness of his imagination, keeps adding to the number; so that if length of years be only accorded to that amiable individual in proportion to his merits, we shall find at length that not only will every contingency of our lives be provided for by the legislature, but that some standard for personal appearance will also be adopted, to which we must conform as rigidly as to our oath of allegiance.
A few days ago a miserable creature, a tailor we believe, some decimal fraction of humanity, was brought up before Sir Peter on a trifling charge of some kind or other. I forget his offence, but whatever it was, the penalty annexed to it was but a fine of half-a-crown. The prisoner, however, who behaved with propriety and decorum, happened to have long black hair, which he wore somewhat “en jeune France” upon his neck and shoulders; his locks, if not ambrosial, were tastefully curled, and bespoke the fostering hand of care and attention. The Rhadamanthus of the police-office, however, liked them not: whether it was that he wore a Brutus himself, or that his learned cranium had resisted all the efficacy of Macassar, I cannot say; but certain it is, that the tailor’s ringlets gave him the greatest offence, and he apostrophised the wearer in the most solemn manner:
“I have sat,” said he, “for – ,” as I quote from memory I sha’n’t say how many, “years upon the bench, and I never yet met an honest man with long hair. The worst feature in your case is your ringlets. There is something so disgusting to me in the odious and abominable vice you have indulged in, that I feel myself warranted in applying to you the heaviest penalty of the law.”
The miserable man, we are told, fell upon his knees, confessed his delinquency, and, being shorn of his locks in the presence of a crowded court, his fine was remitted, and he was liberated.
Now, perhaps, you will suppose that all this is a mere matter of invention. On the faith of an honest man I assure you it is not. I have retrenched considerably the pathetic eloquence of the magistrate, and I have left altogether untouched the poor tailor’s struggle between pride and poverty – whether, on the one hand, to suffer the loss of his half-crown, or, on