Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/581

 . 17, 1860.] the piggery. It is the season of sausage-making and black-puddings (for those who like them), and pork pies (which everybody likes), and for the curing of hams and bacon. The cook’s office is rather a dignified one this month. There are the very last preserves—apple jelly, for one—to be made: and oysters in their many forms occupy her; and hare, whether in soup, or boned, or jugged; and geese, with the concomitant giblet-pie or soup; and the delicious grayling which so many of our rivers yield; and the sprats which date from Lord Mayor’s Day, and for the sake of which gentlemen will dine or sup in the kitchen, that the frying-pan may be within a second of their plates. These are among the dainties of November.

After these busy short days there are long evenings which are not idle. In cottages and in farmhouse kitchens, in old-fashioned districts, men are as busy as the women. They are mending their tools, or cobbling their shoes, or patching their waistcoats, or making tackle and traps for fish and rabbits, or weaving baskets or bee-hives, or making netting of wire or twine, or splitting rods for hoops; or, where there is room, making hurdles or hen-coops. This is a field where ingenuity and dexterity are sure to be duly honoured.

In other sitting-rooms, in parlours, and drawing-rooms, what is doing meanwhile?

It is a season for entering upon a course of study, of a language, or a science, or a period of history. It is the season for opening the annual domestic Shakspere club; the weekly or fortnightly meeting which brings two or three neighbourly families together to read a play. No summer evening can put down by comparison the charms of the Shakspere club, where there is no constraint, but enjoyments as diversified as the resources of the idol of the night. This is the season for music, and for a dance before bed-time, to send all warm and cheerful to their rest. It is also the season of some bitter storms, of gusty days and wild nights, and moaning blasts, and dashing floods. It has its evil and its good, like all the seasons of Nature and human life: but I think I have shown that it is a mere dwelling on the dark side of things to be always talking of this month as “gloomy November.”

the annual increase in the Civil Service Estimates, and the efforts which, we learn from “Punch,” are being made in Dean’s Yard to raise the examinations to the proper standard, the Service is not what it was. We use these words in the popular and depreciatory sense, with the conventional shake of the head as we write them, which our readers may have observed to be their usual accompaniment. The present system has a tendency to check the graceful benevolence of the Prime Minister; and is there any virtue which a liberal nation, like the English, could wish to see more strongly developed in that functionary? Snug berths are on the decrease. There is a mean and revolutionary idea becoming prevalent that men should work their way upwards; in fact, that it is better to enter the ship through the hawse-hole than by the cabin windows. It has become more difficult now for a secretary of state to reward, with a quiet two thousand a-year, the Eton chum who stood point to his bowling, or the Christchurch man who kept on the same staircase, and helped him to screw in the dean. But some five-and-thirty years ago, such an exercise of benevolence was not only possible but practicable, and occasionally practised.

On a fine May morning, in the year 182—, Mr. Scenter was pacing the High Street of that large sea-port, Shortpond, with very rapid steps. He had not got more than a dozen yards down the left-hand side before he met Mr. Chaser. Now, Chaser was a man whom he knew so well, that he felt bound to stop and speak a word to him, though evidently chafing at the delay.

“Heard the news?” he inquired.

“No,—what is it?” replied Chaser.

“Filliter died at nine this morning.”

“You don’t say so.”

And they nodded and passed on.

Now, be it known to our readers, that the lamented Filliter had been his Majesty’s Inspector of Hampers and Comptroller of Carpet-bags in the good port of Shortpond. The duties connected with that office were admirably performed by subordinates with whom Filliter had the good sense not to interfere, feeling that he should probably obstruct public business if he did. He therefore limited his attendance at the Hamper and Carpet-bag office, appearing there only on the last day of each quarter, when he signed his salary-receipt for five hundred pounds.

Mr. Scenter walked on pretty rapidly until he reached the Blue Lion. A quarter of an hour afterwards he was rattling along the London road as fast as a postchaise-and-four could take him.

He had good reasons for his haste. He had had the honour of blacking the Prime Minister’s boots in earlier days, as his fag at Eton, and the acquaintance had not been allowed to drop. When Lord C came in, it was clearly understood that something was to be done for Scenter. They had only been waiting for a vacancy to occur, which might be worth his acceptance. The office of Inspector of Hampers and Comptroller of Carpet-bags at Shortpond was the very thing. Pleasant visions floated in his brain as he lolled back in the chaise and enjoyed the exhilaration of rapid motion; for the post-boys had been made clearly to understand that their tip would depend on their pace.

It occurred to him that an additional two thousand a-year was the exact sum which, as he had frequently observed, would make him comfortable. When he reached the end of the first stage, he continued his meditations in the inn-yard, pacing up and down, as he waited for fresh horses.

He was still debating about a second hunter, and a pair of greys for Mrs. thinking which purchase he should make first, when a second postchaise-and-four dashed into the yard, with horses a shade more blown than his own.

Out of this vehicle stepped Mr Chaser. Now Mr. Chaser’s relations with the noble lord at the head of the government were not very dissimilar in their nature to Mr. Scenter’s, as the latter gentleman now remembered.