Jarvis. Your uncle in Italy preparing to disinherit you; your own fortune almost spent ; and nothing but pressing creditors, false friends, and a pack of drunken servants that your kindness has made unfit for any other family.

Honeywood. Then they have the more occasion for being in mine.

Jarvis. Soh! What will you have done with him that I caught stealing your plate in the pantry? In the fact; I caught him in the fact.

Honeywood. In the fact? If so, I really think that we should pay him his wages, and turn him off.

Jarvis. He shall be turned off at Tyburn,' the dog; we'll hang him, if it be only to frighten the rest of the family.

Honeywood. No, Jarvis; it's enough that we have lost what he has stolen; let us not add to it the loss of a fellow-creature!

Jarvis. Very fine! well, here was the footman just now, to complain of the butler; he says he does most work, and ought to have most wages.

Honeywood. That's but just; though perhaps here comes the butler to complain of the footman.

Jarvis. Ay, it's the way with them all, from the scullion to the privy-counsellor. If they have a bad master, they keep quarrelling with him; if they have a good master, they keep quarrelling with one another. Enter Butler, drunk.

Butler. Sir, I'll not stay in the family with Jonathan; you must part with him, or part with me, that's the ex-ex-exposition of the matter, sir.

1 turned off at Tyburn: Tyburn was the regular place of execution near London. Hanging was in these days the not unusual punishment for petty crimes. See The Vicar of Wakefield (chap. xv), "Don't you know, now, I could hang you all for this?"

Honeywood. Full and explicit enough. But what's his fault, good Philip?

Butler. Sir, he's given to drinking, sir, and I shall have my morals corrupted by keeping such company. Honeywood. Ha! ha! he has such a diverting way Jarvis. Oh, quite amusing.

Butler. I find my wine's a-going, sir; and liquors don't go without mouths, sir; I hate a drunkard, sir! Honeywood. Well, well, Philip, I'll hear you upon that another time; so go to bed now.

Jarvis. To bed! let him go to the devil!

Butler. Begging your honor's pardon, and begging your pardon, master Jarvis, I'll not go to bed, nor to the devil neither. I have enough to do to mind my cellar. I forgot, your honor, Mr. Croaker is below. I came on purpose to tell you.

Honeywood. Why did n't you show him up, block

head?

Butler. Show him up, sir? With all my heart, sir. Up or down, all's one to me.

[Exit.

Jarvis. Ay, we have one or other of that family in this house from morning till night. He comes on the old affair, I suppose. The match between his son, that's just returned from Paris, and Miss Richland, the young lady he's guardian to.

Honeywood. Perhaps so. Mr. Croaker, knowing my friendship for the young lady, has got it into his head that I can persuade her to what I please.

Jarvis. Ah! if you loved yourself but half as well as she loves you, we should soon see a marriage that would set all things to rights again.

Honeywood. Love me! Sure, Jarvis, you dream. No, her intimacy with me never amounted to more than friendship-mere friendship. That she is the most

no;

lovely woman that ever warmed the human heart with desire, I own. But never let me harbor a thought of making her unhappy, by a connection with one so unworthy her merits as I am. No, Jarvis, it shall be my study to serve her, even in spite of my wishes; and to secure her happiness, though it destroys my own.

Jarvis. Was ever the like! I want patience.

Honeywood. Besides, Jarvis, though I could obtain Miss Richland's consent, do you think I could succeed with her guardian, or Mrs. Croaker, his wife; who, though both very fine in their way, are yet a little opposite in their dispositions, you know.

Jarvis. Opposite enough, Heaven knows! the very reverse of each other; she, all laugh and no joke; he, always complaining and never sorrowful; a fretful, poor soul, that has a new distress for every hour in the four-and-twenty

Honeywood. Hush, hush, he's coming up, he'll hear you.

Jarvis. One whose voice is a passing bell1.
Honeywood. Well, well; go, do.

Jarvis. A raven that bodes nothing but mischief: a coffin and cross-bones; a bundle of rue; a sprig of deadly nightshade; a- (Honeywood, stopping his mouth at last, pushes him off.)

[Exit Jarvis.

Honeywood. I must own, my old monitor is not entirely wrong. There is something in my friend Croaker's conversation that quite depresses me. His very mirth is an antidote to all gaiety, and his appearance has a stronger effect on my spirits than an undertaker's shop. Mr. Croaker, this is such a satisfaction

Enter Croaker.

Croaker. A pleasant morning to Mr. Honeywood, 1 a passing bell: a bell tolling for the dying.

and many of them. How is this! You look most shockingly to-day, my dear friend. I hope this weather does not affect your spirits. To be sure, if this weather continues- I say nothing. But God send we be all better this day three months!

Honeywood. I heartily concur in the wish, though, I own, not in your apprehensions.

Croaker. May be not. Indeed, what signifies what weather we have in a country going to ruin like ours? Taxes rising and trade falling. Money flying out of the kingdom, and Jesuits 1 swarming into it. I know at this time no less than a hundred and twenty-seven Jesuits between Charing Cross and Temple Bar."

1

Honeywood. The Jesuits will scarce pervert you or me, I should hope.

Croaker. May be not. Indeed, what signifies whom they pervert in a country that has scarce any religion to lose? I'm only afraid for our wives and daughters.

Honeywood. I have no apprehensions for the ladies, I assure you.

1 Jesuits: The Jesuits were the bogies of the eighteenth century. "Have I been all this time entertaining a Jesuit in parson's clothes!" says a character in The Vicar of Wakefield (chap. xix). At this time the Jesuits offered no problem in politics nearer than in Japan.

2 Charing Cross: A monument built in imitation of the cross of stone erected, 1291-94, at what is now the junction of the Strand, Whitehall, and Cockspur Street, to Eleanor, Queen of Edward I, marking the last stage of the funeral procession to Westminster Abbey. The plot of ground surrounding the cross is now pretty well absorbed in Trafalgar Square. To-day it is the point of the Charing Cross Railway Station. "I think the full tide of human existence is at Charing Cross." Johnson. (Hill's Boswell, vol. ii, p. 386.)

› Temple Bar: Up to 1878 a gateway separating the Strand from Fleet Street, and the old city of London from the city of Westminster. Not far from the rendezvous of Johnson's circle.

Croaker. May be not. Indeed, what signifies whether they be perverted or no ? The women in my time were good for something. I have seen a lady dressed from top to toe in her own manufactures formerly. But now-a-days, the devil a thing of their own manufacture's about them, except their faces.

Honeywood. But, however these faults may be practised abroad, you don't find them at home, either with Mrs. Croaker, Olivia, or Miss Richland.

Croaker. The best of them will never be canonized for a saint when she's dead. By the bye, my dear friend, I don't find this match between Miss Richland and my son much relished, either by one side or t'other.

Honeywood. I thought otherwise.

Croaker. Ah, Mr. Honeywood, a little of your fine serious advice to the young lady might go far: I know she has a very exalted opinion of your understanding. Honeywood. But would not that be usurping an authority that more properly belongs to yourself?

Croaker. My dear friend, you know but little of my authority at home. People think, indeed, because they see me come out in the morning thus, with a pleasant face, and to make my friends merry, that all's well within. But I have cares that would break an heart of stone. My wife has so encroached upon every one of my privileges, that I'm now no more than a mere lodger in my own house.

Honeywood. But a little spirit exerted on your side might perhaps restore your authority.

Croaker. No, though I had the spirit of a lion! I do rouse sometimes. But what then? Always haggling and haggling. A man is tired of getting the better before his wife is tired of losing the victory.