CHAPTER I. HIS LEAVING IT TILL CALLED FOR The writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, and having come of a family of Waiters, and owning at the present time five brothers who are all Waiters, and likewise an only sister who is a Waitress, would wish to offer a few words respecting his […]

TO THE YOUNG LADIESOF THE UNITED KINGDOMOF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND;ALSO THE YOUNG LADIES OF THE PRINCIPALITY OF WALES,AND LIKEWISETHE YOUNG LADIES RESIDENT IN THE ISLESOF GUERNSEY, JERSEY, ALDERNEY, AND SARK,THE HUMBLE DEDICATION OF THEIR DEVOTED ADMIRER,SHEWETH, – THAT your Dedicator has perused, with feelings of virtuous indignation, a work purporting to be ‘Sketches of […]

IT was profoundly observed by a witty member of the Court of Common Council, in Council assembled in the City of London, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty, that the French are a frog-eating people, who wear wooden shoes. We are credibly informed, in reference to the nation whom […]

To The Right ReverendTHE BISHOP OF LONDON MY LORD, You were among the first, some years ago, to expatiate on the vicious addiction of the lower classes of society to Sunday excursions; and were thus instrumental in calling forth occasional demonstrations of those extreme opinions on the subject, which are very generally received with derision, […]

PUTTING up for the night in one of the chiefest towns of Staffordshire, I find it to be by no means a lively town. In fact, it is as dull and dead a town as any one could desire not to see. It seems as if its whole population might be imprisoned in its Railway […]

WE are delighted to find that he has got in! Our honourable friend is triumphantly returned to serve in the next Parliament. He is the honourable member for Verbosity – the best represented place in England. Our honourable friend has issued an address of congratulation to the Electors, which is worthy of that noble constituency, […]

WE have the glorious privilege of being always in hot water if we like. We are a shareholder in a Great Parochial British Joint Stock Bank of Balderdash. We have a Vestry in our borough, and can vote for a vestryman – might even BE a vestryman, mayhap, if we were inspired by a lofty […]

WE went to look at it, only this last Midsummer, and found that the Railway had cut it up root and branch. A great trunk-line had swallowed the playground, sliced away the schoolroom, and pared off the corner of the house: which, thus curtailed of its proportions, presented itself, in a green stage of stucco, […]

IT is unnecessary to say that we keep a bore. Everybody does. But, the bore whom we have the pleasure and honour of enumerating among our particular friends, is such a generic bore, and has so many traits (as it appears to us) in common with the great bore family, that we are tempted to […]

A VERY dark night it was, and bitter cold; the east wind blowing bleak, and bringing with it stinging particles from marsh, and moor, and fen – from the Great Desert and Old Egypt, may be. Some of the component parts of the sharp-edged vapour that came flying up the Thames at London might be […]

ON a certain Sunday, I formed one of the congregation assembled in the chapel of a large metropolitan Workhouse. With the exception of the clergyman and clerk, and a very few officials, there were none but paupers present. The children sat in the galleries; the women in the body of the chapel, and in one […]

ONCE upon a time, and of course it was in the Golden Age, and I hope you may know when that was, for I am sure I don’t, though I have tried hard to find out, there lived in a rich and fertile country, a powerful Prince whose name was BULL. He had gone through […]

TO come to the point at once, I beg to say that I have not the least belief in the Noble Savage. I consider him a prodigious nuisance, and an enormous superstition. His calling rum fire- water, and me a pale face, wholly fail to reconcile me to him. I don’t care what he calls […]

WHEN Don Diego de – I forget his name – the inventor of the last new Flying Machines, price so many francs for ladies, so many more for gentlemen – when Don Diego, by permission of Deputy Chaff-wax and his noble band, shall have taken out a Patent for the Queen’s dominions, and shall have […]

WE are not by any means devout believers in the old Bow Street Police. To say the truth, we think there was a vast amount of humbug about those worthies. Apart from many of them being men of very indifferent character, and far too much in the habit of consorting with thieves and the like, […]

I. THE PAIR OF GLOVES ‘IT’S a singler story, sir,’ said Inspector Wield, of the Detective Police, who, in company with Sergeants Dornton and Mith, paid us another twilight visit, one July evening; ‘and I’ve been thinking you might like to know it. ‘It’s concerning the murder of the young woman, Eliza Grimwood, some years […]

HOW goes the night? Saint Giles’s clock is striking nine. The weather is dull and wet, and the long lines of street lamps are blurred, as if we saw them through tears. A damp wind blows and rakes the pieman’s fire out, when he opens the door of his little furnace, carrying away an eddy […]

SITTING, on a bright September morning, among my books and papers at my open window on the cliff overhanging the sea-beach, I have the sky and ocean framed before me like a beautiful picture. A beautiful picture, but with such movement in it, such changes of light upon the sails of ships and wake of […]

IT fell to my lot, this last bleak Spring, to find myself in a watering-place out of the Season. A vicious north-east squall blew me into it from foreign parts, and I tarried in it alone for three days, resolved to be exceedingly busy. On the first day, I began business by looking for two […]

I AM not used to writing for print. What working-man, that never labours less (some Mondays, and Christmas Time and Easter Time excepted) than twelve or fourteen hours a day, is? But I have been asked to put down, plain, what I have got to say; and so I take pen-and-ink, and do it to […]