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once, and to leave his reader for a week in an agreeable state of suspense and expectation.

Morality, though not essential, is a pretty ornament to a tale; yet it should be sparingly adopted. I have ever greatly admired the insinuation which authors of this description so delicately convey respecting the conjugal fidelity of their married heroines; for we are universally informed, that the boys are the very pictures of their fathers, and that the girls have all the graces of their mothers.

Such, sir, are some of the opinions I have formed on this subject, which I have thrown together without order or connexion; and if from them the 9 rising generation of tale-writers may cull any useful or improving hints, my ambition will be gratified. If you imagine that they may contribute to the amusement of the public, they are very much at your service.

A. M. HAMMOND.

No. XXXV.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1787.

Ille ego qui quondam

SIR,

A CORRESPONDENT, who may or may not have engaged the attention of your readers, once more addresses you. My last letter to you, which con

tained an account of Mr. Hatchpenny, contained likewise my promise to give you some insight into the character of his wife. I shall therefore proceed in my plan without farther ceremony, notwithstanding that my correspondence with you has procured me, among my school-fellows, the title of "The Sucking Socrates."

Mrs. Hatchpenny is that sort of woman, which the kindness or the sarcasm of the world (I am at a loss to say which) calls a managing housewife. Being rather limited in her ideas of human capacity, she considers it as the sum total of every virtue to make things go as far as they can, and the perfection of accomplishments to keep her house clean. Her refinements in economy are the general topics of her conversation, and she triumphs in defying her neighbours to say they ever saw a speck of dirt upon her hearth, or a chair out of its proper place.

Not long ago I heard her informing a company, that she never hired a man-servant unless he could whistle. When her audience were staring at each other with looks of eager inquiry, she added, "When he goes to draw the beer, I constantly attend him to the top of the cellar-stairs, and insist upon his whistling all the time he remains below :" concluding naturally enough, that the same mouth cannot whistle and drink at the same time.

My aunt makes her Solomon and me scrape our feet twenty times a day; and every Saturday night we are compelled to go up stairs without our shoes, because the house has been washed, and Molly has something else to do, besides scrubbing after us for

ever.

Notwithstanding her attention to economy, she is fond of fine clothes, or, as she calls it, "looking like other people" to accomplish which, being now about eleven years past her meridian, and weighing about twenty-three stone avoirdupoise, she dresses herself in white, with a pink sash, and a proper assortment of pink ribbons. If you have ever been so fortunate, gentle reader, as to catch an Aurora borealis in the via lactea, you cannot be at a loss for a simile to which you may liken the heroine of my history.

The conversation of my aunt, particularly when she looks like other people, has something in it not perhaps very peculiar, yet not altogether unworthy of notice. She is what I have heard in the Borough called, a fine spoken gentlewoman; by which I am led to conceive their fine speaking consists in volubility of utterance, and a readiness in the vulgar tongue. Her speeches, however, are full of animated matter and rhetorical figure, and delivered in a tone of voice much like that of Caius Gracchus without his pitch-pipe. She talks of “giving the hydra-head of fashion a rap on the knuckles ;" and, when she wants a simile, generally has recourse to a sugar-loaf, a roll of pig-tail, or the Monument; sometimes however observing, that the coaches rattle by her door like any thing.

Thus her style is ornamented with the best flowers of rhetoric, similes, and metaphors; similes which, by a peculiar felicity, convey no ideas of similitude; and metaphors which illustrate nothing but their own confusion.

My aunt has many amiable qualities. Her fidelity to Solomon is unimpeached, and invincible.

She is constant in her attendance at church, unless perchance she has received a card of information, that Mrs. Deputy Peppercorn will wait on Mrs. Hatchpenny to dinner on Monday. In this case she prudently stays at home, whips up five syllabubs when there will be only four at dinner, returus her card of compliments, and waits with impatience to see Mrs. Peppercorn. The good lady has a just claim to the title of compassionate. She cannot bear those vile people who drive oxen through the streets of London, and cut the poor creters about the legs till they look enough to make one sick. But compassion, which consists only in words, does not content her. She gives in charity to a poor boy every week a penny, contriving within the seven days to send him at least on fourteen errands. My aunt contents herself with the idea that no one can say she is uncharitable. I have somewhere heard of an ingenious philosopher, who turned his shirt, and observed with the same spirit of contentment and satisfaction, “What a comfort there is in clean linen !"

Mrs. Hatch penny was so kind as to take me with her, on Saturday last, to a tea-drinking party, at Brompton, to which my uncle Solomon was invited; but the wind being in the east, and stocks low, he fancied he had a cold, and stayed at home. As we went by appointment early, we had discussed some weighty points before the tea entered. We had already learnt, that Miss Primrose gave fifteen shillings a yard for her apron, and that she bought it from the shop at the corner of Juniper-street. Captain Makeweight had bruised his side by a fall in the Artillery-ground, his sword getting between

his legs, and thereby laying him sprawling. Mr. Titus Oats, a country cousin, had lost his turnips by the fly-Miss Tallboy had sprained her ancle, by climbing an apple-tree-Mrs. Posset had been at the Hackney assembly; and to be sure Miss Cardamum was the belle of the place, till she began dancing, and then she moved for all the world like a raw militia-man to the quick march; or, said the lady of the house, with a good-humoured smile, "like an elephant upon hot bricks"-" Or (added my aunt) like St. Paul's upon four wheels." The tea now arrived; and between the rattling of the cups, we had only time to fling in an observation or two like the chorus of a Greek play, when the persons of the dialogue are taking breath. We passed a few strictures upon the widow Scramble's fourth marriage; and after the removal of the tea-table, and a short review of our absent neighbour's conduct, a general conversation took place, each addressing the person who sat upon the nearest chair. My aunt, in the mean time, could not help glancing first at the apron which had created a former conversation, and then at her own, being conscious that she had given two and twenty shillings a yard for every inch of her's-Unfortunately, no one asked the price of it, and she found herself under the disagreeable necessity of informing the compauy, unsolicited, that she bought it at the same time when Mr. Hatchpenny fined for sheriff; which is now seven years, come next Lord Mayor. My aunt then took occasion to descant upon the convenient situation of their shop in the Borough; to do the business of which, she observed with some emphasis, "they were obliged to keep four

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