(important;) three pieces of rope; (not worth much, but fit for oakum any day;) an old shoe-slight, and upper leather wanting; (good for nothing-but will burn;) a bit of stranded fish of the flat kind-much bruised, and rather on the go;' (to be reserved for dame Wolgar's judgment:) a piece of canvas-a mere rag, and quite rotten; (see how it turns out when dry-and when the worst's told will do for the paper-makers :) a piece of blue cloth→→ coarse-but in tolerable preservation; (do for a seat for son-in-law's breeches-make a mop- or a thousand things;) seven bones of the cuttle fish (sold at three pence a pound, to make pounce-or something white' for the doctors :) the brim of a hat; (no great matter, but to be taken home for consideration:) a ship's block belonging to(Hush!)." Add to this miscellany, a handful or two of sticks or chips for fire-wood, and you will have what Johnny would have esteemed a very reasonable day's allowance. One of the articles, the bones of the cuttlefish, valued at three-pence a pound, may raise an image of gain, which it is necessary to qualify a little. True it is that these bones could be sold at three-pence a pound, and a pound, with all Johnny's spirit and perseverance, could be collected in about a week. In the beginning of the winter, indeed, when these fish cast their bones (an odd habit! but I speak on Johnny's credit, being myself but superficial-only skin-deep -on cuttle fish) they might be procured in greater abundance; but, even with this golden time included, he did not make up for the merchant more than a bushel in a winter. "And what, Johnny," said I, " be the average amount of your daily profits?" "Why, Sir," said he, may affected no republican rudeness and It will scarcely be supposed that I was so incurious as not to have my peep into his basket. I would not trifle with my reader's suspense; but what does he suppose that I saw there? What was the result of the laborious preparations-the toilsome marches and long scuffling with the tempest that I have explained to him? The produce was variable; but the following inventory may be relied upon as a pretty fair representation of its kind and amount for four days out of the six. "A piece of wood-oak-with a nail in it; taking one day with another, Í think I might go so far as to say four-pence a day." He sometimes got less--sometimes nothing--but he sometimes got more-sixpence-a shilling-and this very precariousness of his returns gave an anima tion to his pursuit, that blinded him to its worthlessness, and was its own sufficient reward. "I wonder what it will be to-day "-he would say at starting; and this wonder at his age his care. was worth any thing. A tub of that his life, so destitute of all that is gin might be picked up-there was commonly esteemed pleasurable and no telling and here was a ground of comfortable, must, of necessity, have hope that sent him day after day to been a miserable one. But it was the beach, with a heart as light as no such thing ; had it been so, I his basket. should not have treated it so lightly He had his comforts too of a more and mirthfully. He was the most substantial character. Little as you uninterruptedly cheerful creature that might have thought of him, he had ever I conversed with ; not alone generally a piece of bread and cheese placid and patient, but full of an acstowed away in some hole of his tive, bustling happiness, extracted dress or other. This he called his from the very circumstances that dinner, and, incredible as it may ap- might have been regarded as his most pear to some people, he desired not a grievous hardships. His business was better. He never was hungry, and the delight of his heart. The diffihad outlived therefore all relish in culties and uncertainties of his pureating. He used to talk of his sto- suit invested it with a dignity and a mach as if it and he were two per- complication of relations, that kept -sons; as if he had no living sympa- his mind in continual and healthful thies with it, and provided for its agitation, and preserved in it, what necessities as for those of his horse, is so rarely felt at his age in any conor any foreign matter dependent on dition, an interest in the common re “ My stomach," he would volutions of the seasons, and the say, “wants something-but I care daily necessity of being alive. He little about it.” He knew that he was awake in every sense when he should become faint and weak by was not asleep; and had found out long inanition, and, to avoid this ex- the great secret of eamd contenttremity, required himself to eat, ment, in having a something having certain signs through the day before him that he considered worth out of himself, which regulated for doing or suffering. He did not affect him the seasons when this duty was to love cold and rain on their own to be performed. It was not account; but he had some little prefeel hungry,” but," it is low-water," tence for exposing himself to themor “ the flood-tide is making,” and and then is heroism nothing? Is out came the bread and cheese. glory nothing? Old gentlemen in Bob was still more abstemious, their easy chairs and by their firethough his appetite probably, if he sides, will scarcely believe that the could have told his mind, was not consummation of all their brother quite so neutral on the subject of Johnny's pleasures (and pleasures food as that of his master. He had they were) was being wet to the a wonderful faculty of living both in skin; yet to my knowledge it was and on the air, and tasted nothing simply so. It is excitement-emoelse from early morning till he re- tion—that people want, and this turned to his damaged hay at night. Johnny never was without. He atIn the meanwhile, his monstrous tached as much importance to his belly grew larger and larger, as it occupation, and combined his plots grew emptier, though certain que- and calculations, with as much earnrulous expressions from within an- estness and solemnity, as if he had nounced, from time to time, that this been a secretary of state. What does inflation had no refreshment in it. the pampered and gouty old alderman As the day advanced, Bob's visceral care to know, that the wind will be lamentations grew more urgent and westerly next Wednesday; and that audible, till they finally settled into the sun went down last night in an awful and continuous rumbling a fog bank? He is not moved, not and rolling, like the muttering of he, though it be certain that spring distant thunder; and when it came tides are coming, which will lay bare to this pass, his master knew that it the Cuckmore Sands, and the Forewas time to be thinking of home. Ness Rock. The world goes on It may be imagined from the ac- without him, and he heeds it not ; count that I have given of his ha- but languishes in a living death, in bits and modes of passing his time, the midst of abundance, a finished fortune, and completed hopes. No such apathy ever fell upon Johnny; he looked out upon the heavens to the last, like one who had a personal concern-a voice in the great operations of nature; studied the lee and the weather sky, and the prognostications of the north-west (a mighty point with him) with as much anxiety as though he had had treasures due from all the quarters of the globe. A change of wind gave a new face to his destiny; and a shower of rain was a sign pregnant with infinite expectations. Even his grievances (for the best of us must have some care) had a vivacity and variety in them, that in the end did him service stirred him up-and kept the elements of his mind and feelings sound, sweet, and wholesome. An east wind, for instance, was not received by him with the mere puny peevishness of age and rheumatism; he abused it heartily, and showed you on this topic that he had a tongue in his head, which would not bear an injury tamely. Was it not a smoothwater wind? Was it not a sheep'shead wind?-A perverse-starving -beggarly wind, that never brought good to man or brute, since the days of Adam? He never sunk into dull ness-melancholy or despondence. If he was crossed, he was angryand once in a way it is good to be angry. "Curse the east wind, and welcome-but cheer up withal; never despair, man: the south-west will come again, never fear, with its hurricanes and driving rains-its bottom-sweeping seas-its beachstirring surfs, and cuttle-fish bones." There is something in these matters, we must allow, and they are surely better than utter indolence and satiety. Supplementary to his pleasing fatigues abroad, Johnny had the match less comfort of an easy and quiet home, enlivened by the presence of one who had been his helpmate for fifty years, and in all the offices of affection and respect was still untired. His wife had a little more bodily activity than he had, and devoted all her surviving faculties to his service, and a sincere co-operation with him in his adventures by the sea-side. These were quite as important in her estimation as in his, and as far as her department in the concern allowed, she was quite as eager and persevering in promoting them. When he was with her there was always enough to do; and, in his absence, she had to set things in order for his return-and might help out the lingering time by visions of strange findings, and dreams of El Dorado. No man could be more decidedly "master in his own house' than Johnny: yet he was not harshly so-but rather, let me say, through the influence of his deserts-his importance in the state-his basket-of his knowledge and services; and, above all, of his wants and infirmities. There was something beautiful in his wife's perfect submission to him; she obeyed him, as it were involuntarily; his wants and wishes were to her as her will-the necessity that determined her motives, and directed all her actions. There is striking truth in Bacon's remark, that wives are young men's mistresses, and old men's nurses. A rheumatic lover-a worshipper with a white beard, is neither to be expected nor desired; and, oh! how much it speaks for the enduring kindness and constancy of women, that when we masters desist from our patronizing attentions, and lordlily demand their ministration in the day of our decline, they forget not their fealty, but look down upon, and serve us-pity, and obey us. The sight of this old woman, herself so feeble and wasted, hovering about her wreck of a husband, with fearful tenderness-tyrannized over by his dependence enslaved by his helplessness-was really as much as a bachelor (poor barren unit) could bear. Such were the duties and delights of Johnny's winter days. In the summer, whose gentle winds and moderate seas bring no harvest to the beach, he forsook his natural haunts, cast away his lance and basket, and appeared in the tame, dull character of an inland traveller and trader. Shrimping and prawning, according to the regular roamer's calendar, should have succeeded to the business of the winter; but as these tasks involved the necessity of standing and stooping, Johnny, who was nobody on the ground, was obliged. to resign them to more pliant frames, and in the flowery month of May, retired absolutely and most reluctantly from all his maritime connections. Amongst his worldly goods, he numbered a cart, which had de scended to him from his father, though he had mended it till you might almost say he had made it. One of the wheels, I believe, was aboriginal, and he used to point it out as something not to be matched by modern wheelwrights, and certainly not by its companion. In this vehicle, such as it was, with Bob appended, and freighted with a light cargo of nuts, gingerbread, and such child's matters, together with a few fish.occasionally, when he could raise money or credit for the purchase, he visited the neighbouring villages and farms -the delight of little children-the play-thing of village maids-and the butt of every clown that had a joke and a grin to spare. By such excursions he beguiled a little the long light of the summer; but they yielded him a miserable profit, and no cordial pleasure in any way. He would return sometimes bringing sad accounts of trade, and the condition of the country. "There never were such times would you believe it?— a pint and a half of nuts-three ha'p'orth of gingerbread-with three whitings-and a dab-no more and a day's work-it was enough to ruin any man." "The fact is," said he, "there is no money,"-and he put on a definitive look that added-and you have my authority for saying so. I fear that Johnny was no unprejudiced reporter on this subject. Independent of his beggarly gains he had a manifest distaste for the whole huckstering business, and never spoke of it in any of its circumstances without scorn. He pursued it as a duty, and because something like a daily task was necessary to his existence but he was clearly like a creature out of his element in his cart. He languished under the tiresome sameness and stillness of sunny skies and dusty roads; and yearned for the animating violences, and all the hurly-burly of the beach, with a piping gale from the south. Besides there was a meanness-a paltry narrowness in all his inland transactions that humbled and dispirited him. He who had so long been used to deal with the ocean, and bargain with the storm, could ill condescend to higgle with a child for a halfpenny, and squabble with an old wife over a stale mackarel. With this indisposition to his commercial concerns, he attended to them but irregularly, and dozed away much of his time on the beach, stretched at his length in the sun, whose warmth kept him alive, supplying the place in his system of those kindling hopes and stirring chances, which bore him so bravely through the severities of his winter campaigns. Bob, in the meanwhile, who did not examine things so curiously, we may suppose, yielded to the leisure and quietness of these holiday-times with no apparent dissatisfaction. Tether ed at the roadside, he had free access to the pasture of a parched, powdered hedge; and if he got not a full meal, he had his next best blessing in this world, a long stop. There he stood, the nucleus of a cloud of flies-a picture of patience vacant-noteless-or sometimes napping brokenly-with no care but how to keep his heavy drowsy headfrom the ground. As my own summer tastes led me rather to the solitudes of meadows and corn-fields, than to the haunts of my fellows, my communication with Johnny was not so constant at this season as in the winter; but we occasionally met in the roads, and I saw quite enough of him in his new character to complete my general portrait of him. If he had a satis faction in his cart, it was derived certainly from his horse, and the pride of driving; he had no little conceit in himself as a whip." The first time I ever met him on the road, he asked me how I thought Bob" looked in harness." My own interest (that perhaps of an idle and listless mind) in the small doings of this simple creature, may be betraying me, I fear, into a prolixity of trifling, that may be tiresome to my readers. I hasten-poor old soul! as he did-to his end. 66 Towards the close of a wet and stormy day in February last, a man living at a tide-mill close upon the sea-shore, observed Johnny's horse, at the distance of about half a mile. from him, standing alone on the beach, his rider being no where to be seen. As such a circumstance was not quite unprecedented, he retired to his work, giving it little consideration; but when, in half an hour afterwards, he looked out again and saw things precisely in the same posture, he began to think, making all due allowances for their peculiar usages, there was something in this protracted stedfastness of the horse, and concealment of his master, that was strange and alarming. An hour elapsed the night was drawing on, and still there was no change; when the man, a good-natured fellow, who knew Johnny well, and would not have had him come to harm for a trifle, felt his apprehensions so much awakened, that he determined to walk down to the place where the horse stood, and ascertain what was the matter. When he had got better than half way, he began hallooing as he walked, and then stopped in the fearful hope of seeing Johnny's well-known hat peep up above the long level ridge of the shingles, and hearing himself hailed in his turn; but no such image appeared on the dreary waste, and no voice but his own mingled with the raving of the wind and the roar of the surf. He then advanced till he distinguished the body of the old man, lying on its face, stretched stiff out (as it always was, lying or standing), and close under his horse, whose nose was drooping down, till it rested apparently on the shoulders of his master. With a sickening foreboding of the truth that held back his feet, the man was still willing to hope that the travellers were both asleep, and he called out lustily upon Johnny; but received no notice in return, except from the horse, who raised his head, looked at him for a moment, and then resumed his former attitude, to wait for another signal of release, which was never to be seen again. The friendly miller now hastened at once to the body, " gave it a bit of a kick," crying, "Master Wolgar, Master Wolgar," stooped down, and turning over the face, which was bloody, and rooted down among the stones, found the old roamer stiff and cold-that indeed he had been for years, and alive-but he was now stiff and cold, and dead. His horse's bridle was still twisted as usual round his wrist, and, had he not been discovered before dark, the patient beast, confined by that slight bond as by a chain of iron, would have stood, probably, till he had dropped and perished by his master's side. It was "a fit," people said, that thus suddenly terminated poor Johnny's career; and the coroner with all his skill could make out little more than what will be reported of us all in our turn, that he was " found dead." This was following up his business with a gallantry that was worthy of him-facing the enemy to the last moment, and dying under arms. He had complained of no indisposition, no unusual sensations on last leaving his home; but started on his expedition with his accustomed alacrity beat his way against wind and rain, to the ordinary boundary of his outward voyage-and there" brought up," to rest from his roaming for ever. How much I grieved for his losswhat gloom was cast over my solitary rambles on the shore, by this sudden removal of his friendly familiar face-my readers may guess; I will not oppress them with any parade of sentiment. To my imagination the beach has been haunted ever since; in certain states of the weather I still see the grotesque figure of the mounted roamer poking and peering about on the border of the surf. In a few days a solemn bell announced to us poor Johnny's funeral always an impressive scene in a small community, where all are known, and the meanest is missed. There was no lack of honest mourners to follow him; and if I breathed out my prayer with the rest for his peace, it was an act of obsequiousness (to say nothing of feeling) which I owed him, had it been only in return for the many, many times that he had bared his white head to the wind in courtesy to me. R. A. |