This Moloch of the west, A sainted thing o'er earth to roam, His name through every heart must steal, And night and morning humbly kneel PINE APPLE SHOT! A FACT AND A FANCY. BY PAUL BELL. Give every man his dessert, and who shall 'scape whipping? New reading of an Old Quotation. WHAT an odd list of claims to distinction might be made out, by a person curious in the Anatomy of Gentility! Gentleman Smith, as any stage story-teller will corroborate, was wont to pride himself on never having gone down through a trap!-T' other evening I paid a visit to a couple of old neighbours, who married at maturity and were blessed by the arrival of their "olive branch" some years later. It was hard to pay the expected compliment, to such a little fat formal creature-an aged woman on two short legs, as the Mackreth's offspring. But I was not called upon; the fond mother did it herself: A dear English child she is, Mr. Bell," said that wise woman, with a little tear of pride, "She won't learn any language but her own!" I remember the days when the relations of a man who had escaped from a French prison, gave themselves airs for many a long year on that account, till their next door neighbour's brother-in-law happened to pick up the poor Princess Charlotte's handkerchief, which, of course, snuffed out their pretensions completely and for ever. You Londoners, Sir, have no idea of what makes a Somebody, and why, in country towns. Going to and fro a good deal, as I have done of late, and remembering the things I have seen and heard, during the last forty years, however, has made me able to speak to the point. And odd are the thoughts, I promise you, which sometimes come into my mind, as I sit snugly leaning back in the corner of one of the railway carriages, unable to talk or look about me, because of the dinning noise and the lightning speed, and reflected upon, which happened only last week, when I was supposed to be asleep, "as one of the sort of persons we never used to be brought into contact with." The speaker was a great lady, whose notions of intercourse had not got beyond Sir Charles Grandison's coach and six, and "his Byron's" sedan-chair. "Ay," thought I to myself, "Steam does make one acquainted with odd things!" and then I remembered a scene I had heard described, when dining out one day, in Doughty Street, by one of those writers we used, when I was young, to be rather afraid of asking to dine with us, in towns where business is business. He, it seems, had crossed to Antwerp one summer, in the same packet with a lady whose name you all know-Miss Fanny Kemble that was. They had arrived there in the midst of the Kirmesse (the third week in August), when the old town is full of the old Flemish dresses. The high lace caps of the women, with their long lappet-like ears, so enchanted Mrs. that she bought one there and then, and came down in it to dinner at the table d'hôte. (Much as if a French lady were to choose to walk about London in the beaver hat and blue cloak of one of Rebecca's daughters: but that is neither here nor there.) Well, to be sure, every one was looking at the Englishwoman, and wondering who she was; and the next morning, when my friend got into the railway train for Brussels, a daisy-faced little German lady, who could hold no longer, and had seen the two speaking to each other, "begged to ask him the name of the wearer of the cap." She was soon told; and the answer was precious to her, for the Germans, his Royal Highness the Prince not excepted, I dare say, have a passion for English drama and English actors, and the niece of the Siddons, and the last of the Juliets, was as well known by name at Dresden as at Daventry. But on the other side of my friend sate another figure-a Beguine: a comely woman she was, with her clear oak-brown complexion, and her spotlessly-white linen headgear, and her pious hands folded on the crook of her pursy black umbrella. At first she sate like a statue, looking down, content with her own good thoughts (yet I have heard English single women say very wicked things of those like her); but the literary gentleman was aware, he said, that as the talk went on, the corners of the placid mouth began to twitch and to twirl, as if the world was working there, and then the mirth settled into a broad smile, and the head fairly raised itself, and the meek, darkbrown eyes set themselves with such a curiosity on the face of the German lady who asked, and the Englishman who answered, about the wearer of that Antwerp cap. She had heard the chimes at midnight too!" She too knew the word of power. And think you the refectory was not the better for her ride? I don't wonder that the Pope has a spite against those railroads. 66 66 Well, but I am doing anything rather than travelling first-class fashion to the point I want to reach-Distinction: or, as poor Hood used to say, "where one puts one's dig." When talking of our country neighbours, I can never forget the Pratts, of Pratt Park; an example, if there ever was one, of a reputation oddly built up. They were known throughout the country. Not for birth; as some one said, there were so many bends in their escutcheon, that the line of ancestry got out of sight and no one could find it." Not for beauty; both he and she were plain and pale, and if I were to add, platter-faced, it would be no scandal. Not for wealth; they were reasonably well off, nothing more; and it was always given out that they had not much to spare for charity. Not for talent; Mr. Pratt's "Just so,' came as often wrong as right, and his lady is the person (though the anecdote has been given to more than one) who said, "she could not read the Scott novels, they were so low-lived!" About their virtue I would rather not speak, having an objection to pronounce on my neighbours. The Pratts' reputation was neither "up nor "down" in that respect. Let us hope that they were not worse than the rest of us. Their place, too, was nothing particular; a square brick house, with doors that shut and chimneys that drew. in a very sufficient park, neither beautiful nor ancient; but belonging to it was the strong point of the Pratts-their Pinery! You must have lived in the country, I say, to conceive the everlastingness of such a topic as this. Nay, too, and its value. I for one would far sooner have heard Mr. Pratt talk of pine-apples than politics. One might learn something on that subject. He and his wife were urbane, as all distinguished people should be. Every new stove, every new species, Mr. Knight's discovery of turf in pots, Mr. Loudon's suggestions for the economising of fuel, had been one and all anticipated at Pratt Park, to hear them tell the tale. The Horticultural Society had taken its rise from a case of unsuccessful rivalry betwixt them and the Potters: "a good sort of people, who had since wisely confined their attention to pippins. The great glass-house, at Chatsworth, had been originally intended to demolish their "crowns of glory;" "but the Duke, like a sen sible man, had looked into matters for himself, &c., &c." For results; a Brobdignag specimen had been ripened up to the hour of her Majesty's coronation dinner; the Emperor of all the Brutes "had taken one home with him," in token whereof a malachite vase was a few months after seen in the great forcing-house. During the forty-two strikes and turns-out, "the neighbours had come forward very properly; there were some institutions it was agreeable to see, which persons of all parties still agreed in supporting-privileges only at command of oldestablished tan-pits, which new people's money could not buy; for you know," was Mrs. Pratt's perpetual winding up, "it is a fruit which never can become common. A present of one is a present; and ours, people are good enough to say, are peculiarly wellgrown; not, however, that I am a judge-Mr. Pratt is, I believe." Happy mortals in their stronghold of pride, to have one thing of their own-in itself a rare luxury, which they had carried to the highest perfection! One may buy a waterfall. (I knew a man who did, and was arrested because he never paid for its being set up in his park.) One may even remove old trees; Sir Harry Stewart has taught that trick to the upstarts who have no delicacy, and wish to have "as umbrageous a shade," to speak in the language of the Robins, as persons who have long been settled; but to vie with the Pines of Pratt Park was religiously believed to be impossible throughout shire. But, well-a-day! Time, the improver, who hath made strawberries two mouthfuls big, and the "little, old-fashioned, rough, red gooseberry," into a load for a child's hand-Time, thanks to whom, roses are now counted by thousands, and heartseases by the tens of thousands-turns Pratts old, though he aggravates their treasures to a bulk I should be afraid to mention. The lord and the lady of the park began to wane, owned themselves "to be not what they had been," and in spite of the wondrous speed of the age we are living in, to feel their chariot wheels drive heavily. I must not say they pined, because that with them would have meant that they waxed heavier and heavier, rounder and rounder. But their eyes grew dim, making it difficult for them any longer to read the papers; their old neighbours began to drop through the pitfalls of Mirza's bridge; and the great houses round about them to remain untenanted, save one or two, perhaps, which were taken by cotton lords, whom it was a principle with them to discountenance. In short the pair had been missed from church and market, race and festival, for some time, when about eight weeks ago, I was struck, on entering the yard of the terminus, by the sight of a tiny, elderly gentlewoman in weeds, followed by a livery servant bearing a huge basket. Herself I should not have recollected-it seems to me, now-a-days, as if everybody shrinks up so, when they get into years-b -but who could mistake that rich, rich odour? Had not the eye been directed to follow the nose, by something like the crown of a cacique, which peered out with a sort of princely nonchalance, from among the folds of the tissue paper, which was tied over the receptacle? It was Mrs. Pratt on her way to London; "the first time she had stirred out since her loss," with an offering for the dear little princes and princesses-one a-piece. "She knew that everything had been sadly neglected of late, but she believed they were still equal to that at the park." And she mounted alone, into her bottle-green chaise, and drew down the blinds; while her maid and man, the latter with his gorgeous burden, cast in their lot with us less aristocratic passengers. Desirous as I am of keeping pace with my species-which means, as some one has ingeniously stated it, knowing all the eoncerns of one's neighbours-I became, as usual, presently, too stupid, to report clearly the conversation which went on; in which " poor dear master's end, who went off so like a lamb," and "the bed in the west house," and " mistress's mourning," and "black Jamaica," were so oddly jumbled, that I scarce knew where the grief ended and where the gardening began. But I could gather that Mr. Pratt's disconsolate relict had, after some months of seclusion and sorrow, been prevailed upon "to rouse herself, and to go into the houses again ;" and that, some gleams of the ancient spirit reviving in her, she had determined, with the romance of age (for age hath a romance, which lingers behindas youth's goes before-its time!) to attempt a pilgrimage to Babylon to see the royal children, with her present in her lapsecure, dear woman, of thanks and civilities-the ordinary fare of those who approach our gracions Queen and her consort, with courtesy and service! For in feeling and sense of obligation, poor Mistress Pratt was still at the respectable days of George the Third, and Miss Burney's "sweet Queen Charlotte. The rail |