Page:The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance 1832.pdf/36

Rh however, in the placid manner of Mrs. Tompkins had produced an influence upon them which counteracted the natural effects ofthe irritability arising from ungrateful curiosity. Their hypotheses in relation to her were by no means so uncharitable as might have been expected. Mrs. Hawkins had no doubt it was Dorothy Ripley, a woman who had a call to straggle through the country, vending her religious experience ; and that her escort was no less a personage than Johnny Edwards, a lay enthusiast of great notoriety. Miss Cross, the least complimentary in her conjectures, supposed it was Mrs. Royal, a traveling authoress, and bugbear to booksellers and editors. After a walk of two hours or more, Mr. Tompkins returned from his perambulations, and stepped in at the tavern or stagehouse, where he seated himself in an unobtrusive place, and began to read the newspapers. He perused these budgets of literature systematically and thoroughly ; and the anxious expectant of the reversion of any particular journal he had in hand, waited in vain for him to lay it down. When he had finished one broad-side, and the fidgetty seeker after the latest news had half thrust forth his hand to grasp the prize, Mr. Tompkins, gently heaving a complacent sigh, turned over the folio, and began to read the next page with the same quiet fixedness of attention, and unequivocally expressed purpose of suffering nothing it contained to escape his attention. It thus took him about two hours to finish his prelection of one of the issues of that great moral engine, as it is called, by whose emanations the people of this country are made so wise and happy. Advertisements and all he read, except poetry, which he seemed to skip conscientiously, generally uttering an interjection, not of admiration. Notwithstanding he thus tried the patience of those who wanted a share of periodical light, he was so quiet and respectable a looking man, that not even a highwayman, or a highwayman's horse (supposing that respectable beast to be entitled to its proverbial character for assurance, ) would have attempted to take the paper away from him by violence. His person was in nobody's way. His elbows and knees were kept in ; and there was no quarrelling with his shoe or his shoe-tie. There was a simplex munditiis—a neatbut-not gaudiness about him, which every body understood without understanding Latin. When he had apparently exhausted the contents of all the periodicals that lay on the bar-room table, just as the village clock struck one, Mr. Tompkins asked for a glass of cider, which he drank and departed. I need make no apology to an