adages, still poured upon him, and no visible wife. Now did the voice speak from the curtains; now from the tester; and now did it whisper to Job from the very pillow that he pressed. "It's a dreadful thing that her tongue should walk in this manner," said Job; and then he thought confusedly of exorcism, or at least of counsel from the parish priest.

Whether Job followed his own brain, or the wise direction of another, we know not. But he resolved every night to commit to paper one curtain lecture of his late wife. The employment would, possibly, lay the ghost that haunted him. It was her dear tongue that cried for justice, and, when thus satisfied, it might possibly rest in quiet. And so it happened. And so it happened. Job faithfully chronicled all his late wife's lectures; the ghost of her tongue was thenceforth silent, and Job slept all his after-nights in peace. When Job died, a small packet of papers was found inscribed as follows:

"Curtain Lectures delivered in the course of Thirty Years, by Mrs. Margaret Caudle, and suffered by Job, her Husband."

LECTURE FIRST.

Mr. Caudle having lent Five Pounds to a Friend.

You ought to be very rich, Mr. Caudle. I wonder who'd lend you five pounds! But so it is: a wife may work and may slave. Oh, dear! the many things that might have been done with five pounds! As if people picked up money in the streets! But you always were a fool, Mr. Caudle! I've wanted a black satin gown these three years, and that five pounds would have pretty well bought it. But it's no matter how I go,-not at all. Everybody says I don't dress as becomes your wife,—and I don't; but what's that to you, Mr. Caudle? Nothing. Oh, no! you can have fine feelings for everybody but those that belong to you. I wish people knew you as I do,-that's all. You like to be called liberal, and your poor family pays for it.

All the girls want bonnets, and when they're to get 'em I can't tell. Half five pounds would have bought 'em,-but now they must go without. Of course, they belong to you; and anybody but your own flesh and blood, Mr. Caudle.

The man called for the water-rate to-day; but I should like to know how people are to pay taxes who throw away five pounds to every fellow that asks them.

Perhaps you don't know that Jack, this morning, knocked the shuttlecock through his bed-room window. I was going to send for the glazier to mend it; but, after you lent that five pounds, I was sure we couldn't afford it. Oh, no: the window must go as it is; and pretty weather for a dear child to sleep with a broken window. He's got a cold already on his lungs, and I

shouldn't at all wonder if that broken window settled him: if the dear boy dies, his death will be upon his father's head; for I'm sure we can't now pay to mend windows. We might, though, and do a good many more things, if people didn't throw away their five pounds.

Next Tuesday the fire insurance is due. I should like to know how it's to be paid. Why, it can't be paid at all. That five pounds would have just done it, and now insurance is out of the question. And there never were so many fires as there are now. I shall never close my eyes all night; but what's that to you, so people can call you liberal, Mr. Caudle? Your wife and children may all be burnt alive in their beds,—as all of us to a certainty shall be, for the insurance must drop. After we've insured for so many years! But how, I should like to know, are people to insure who make ducks and drakes of their five pounds?

I did think we might go to Margate this summer. There's poor Caroline, I'm sure she wants the sea. But no, dear creature, she must stop at home; she'll go into a consumption, there's no doubt of that; yes, sweet little angel. I've made up my mind to lose her now. The child might have been saved; but people can't save their children and throw away five pounds too.

I wonder where little Cherub is! While you were lending that five pounds, the dog ran out of the shop. You know I never let it go into the street, for fear it should be bit by some mad dog and come home and bite the children. It wouldn't at all

astonish me if the animal was to come back with the hydrophobia and give it to all the family. However, what's your family to you, so you can play the liberal creature with five pounds?

Do you hear that shutter, how it's banging to and fro? Yes, I know what it wants as well as you: it wants a new fastening. I was going to send for the blacksmith to-day. But now it's out of the question: now it must bang of nights, since you have thrown away five pounds.

Well, things have come to a pretty pass! This is the first night I ever made my supper of roast beef without pickles. But who is to afford pickles when folks are always lending five pounds?

Do you hear the mice running about the room? I hear them. If they were only to drag you out of bed, it would be no matter. Set a trap for 'em. But how are people to afford the cheese, when every day they lose five pounds?

Hark! I'm sure there's a noise down-stairs. It wouldn't surprise me if there were thieves in the house. Well, it may be the cat; but thieves are pretty sure to come some night. There's a wretched fastening to the back door; but these are not times

to afford bolts and bars, when fools won't take care of their five pounds.

Three

Mary Anne ought to have gone to the dentist's to-morrow. She wants three teeth pulled out. Now it can't be done. teeth that quite disfigure the child's mouth. But there they must stop, and spoil the sweetest face that was ever made. Otherwise, she'd have been the wife for a lord. Now, when she grows up, who'll have her? Nobody. We shall die and leave her alone and unprotected in the world. But what do you care for that? Nothing; so you can squander away five pounds.

And now, Mr. Caudle, see what a misery you've brought on your wretched family! I can't have a satin gown, the girls can't have new bonnets,-the water-rate must stand over,-Jack must get his death through a broken window,—our fire insurance can't be paid, so we shall all be victims to the devouring element, we can't go to Margate, and Caroline will go to an early grave, the dog will come home and bite us all mad,-that shutter will go banging forever,-the soot will always fall,-the mice never let us have a wink of sleep,-the thieves be always breaking in the house, and our dear Mary Anne be forever left an unprotected maid, and all, all, Mr. Caudle, because you will go on lending five pounds!

LECTURE SIXTH.

The Loaned Umbrella.

Ah! that's the third umbrella gone since Christmas. What were you to do! Why, let him go home in the rain, to be sure. I'm very certain there was nothing about him that could spoil. Take cold, indeed! He doesn't look like one of the sort to take cold. Besides, he'd have better taken cold than take our only umbrella. Do you hear the rain, Mr. Caudle? I say, do you hear the rain? And as I'm alive, if it isn't Saint Swithin's day! Do you hear it against the windows? Nonsense; you don't impose upon me. You can't be asleep with such a shower as that! Do you hear it, I say? Oh, you do hear it! Well, that's a pretty flood, I think, to last for six weeks; and no stirring all the time out of the house. Pooh! don't think me a fool, Mr. Caudle. Don't insult me. He return the umbrella! Anybody would think you were born yesterday. As if anybody ever did return an umbrella! There!-do you hear it? Worse and worse! Cats and dogs, and for six weeks,-always six weeks. And no umbrella!

But I know why you lent the umbrella. Oh, yes; I know very well. I was going out to tea at dear mother's to-morrow,-you knew that, and you did it on purpose. Don't tell me; you hate me to go there, and take every mean advantage to hinder

me.

But don't you think it, Mr. Caudle. No, sir; if it comes down in buckets-full, I'll go all the more. No: and I won't have a cab! Where do you think the money's to come from? You've got nice high notions at that club of yours! A cab, indeed! Cost me sixteen pence at least,-sixteen pence!-two-andeight pence, for there's back again! Cabs, indeed! I should like to know who's to pay for 'em? I can't pay for 'em; and I'm sure you can't, if you go on as you do; throwing away your property, and beggaring your children-buying umbrellas!

"Here," says Caudle in his MS., "I fell asleep, and dreamt that the sky was turned into green calico, with whalebone ribs; that, in fact, the whole world revolved under a tremendous umbrella!"

LECTURE EIGHTH.

Caudle has been made a Mason.

Now, Mr. Caudle-Mr. Caudle, I say: oh! you can't be asleep already, I know. Now, what I mean to say is this; there's no use, none at all, in our having any disturbance about the matter; but, at last my mind's made up, Mr. Caudle; I shall leave you. Either I know all you've been doing to-night, or to-morrow morning I quit the house. No, no; there's an end of the marriagestate, I think,- —an end of all confidence between man and wife,— if a husband's to have secrets and keep 'em all to himself. Pretty secrets they must be, when his own wife can't know 'em. Not fit for any decent person to know, I'm sure, if that's the case. Now, Caudle, don't let us quarrel, there's a good soul: tell me what's it all about? A pack of nonsense, I dare say; still,—not that I care much about it,-still, I should like to know. There's

a dear. Eh? Oh, don't tell me there's nothing in it; I know better. I'm not a fool, Mr. Caudle; I know there's a good deal i in it. Now, Caudle; just tell me a little bit of it. I'm sure I'd tell you any thing. You know I would. Well?

And you're not going to let me know the secret, eh? You mean to say, you're not? Now, Caudle, you know it's a hard matter to put me in a passion,-not that I care about the secret itself: no, I wouldn't give a button to know it, for it's all nonsense, I'm sure. It isn't the secret I care about; it's the slight, Mr. Caudle; it's the studied insult that a man pays to his wife, when he thinks of going through the world keeping something to himself which he won't let her know. Man and wife one, indeed! I should like to know how that can be when a man's a mason,when he keeps a secret that sets him and his wife apart? Ha! you men make the laws, and so you take good care to have all the best of 'em to yourselves: otherwise a woman ought to be allowed a divorce when a man becomes a mason. When he's got

a sort of corner-cupboard in his heart-a secret place in his mind--that his poor wife isn't allowed to rummage!

Was there ever such a man! A man, indeed! A brute!—yes, Mr. Caudle, an unfeeling, brutal creature, when you might oblige me, and you won't. I'm sure I don't object to your being a mason; not at all, Caudle; I dare say it's a very good thing; I dare say it is it's only your making a secret of it that vexes me. But you'll tell me,-you'll tell your own Margaret? You won't? You're a wretch, Mr. Caudle.

WINTER IN LONDON.

The streets were empty. Pitiless cold had driven all who had the shelter of a roof to their homes; and the northeast blast seemed to howl in triumph above the untrodden snow. Winter was at the heart of all things. The wretched, dumb with excessive misery, suffered, in stupid resignation, the tyranny of the season. Human blood stagnated in the breast of want; and death in that despairing hour, losing its terrors, looked in the eyes of many a wretch a sweet deliverer. It was a time when the very poor, barred from the commonest things of earth, take strange counsel with themselves, and, in the deep humility of destitution, believe they are the burden and the offal of the world.

It was a time when the easy, comfortable man, touched with the finest sense of human suffering, gives from his abundance, and, whilst bestowing, feels almost ashamed that, with such widespread misery circled round him, he has all things fitting, all things grateful. The smitten spirit asks wherefore he is not of the multitude of wretchedness; demands to know for what especial excellence he is promoted above the thousand, thousand starving creatures; in his very tenderness for misery, tests his privilege of exemption from a woe that withers manhood in man, bowing him downward to the brute. And, so questioned, this man gives in modesty of spirit,-in very thankfulness of soul. His alms are not cold, formal charities, but reverent sacrifices to his suffering brother.

It was a time when selfishness hugs itself in its own warmth; with no other thoughts than of its pleasant possessions; all made pleasanter, sweeter, by the desolation around. When the mere worldling rejoices the more in his warm chamber, because it is so bitter cold without; when he eats and drinks with whetted appetite, because he hears of destitution prowling like a wolf around his well-barred house; when, in fine, he bears his every comfort about him with the pride of a conqueror. A time when such a man sees in the misery of his fellow-beings nothing save his own victory of fortune, his own successes in a suffering world. To