that conceals some measure of true affection for you." "I'd think so if I could, but I can't. No, she thinks me tall and stupid, and I feel that she's right. I am tall and stupid, and that's the fact. I'd alter it if I could, but I can't. I'm sure I'd be very glad to change places with a brighter and a shorter man. But I can't grow brighter, try hard as I may; and I can't grow shorter, though I've tried that too." "You've tried to grow shorter ? " "Yes, over and over again. I'm for ever trying to grow shorter. I carry heavy weights on my head: lift that box for instance." As he spoke he drew from beneath his chair a substantial looking black box with iron handles. I tried to raise it, but I failed completely. It seemed to be of enormous weight. "I've walked miles and miles with that box on my head. It contains pig-iron. I thought that it might compress me. But it hasn't as yet, so far as I can see. I've tried all manner of ways indeed of packing myself into a smaller space, but all in vain. Miss Tiddler only laughs at me. 'Come to me when you're shorter, Doddy' (she always calls me Doddy-it's not my real name, which is something very different, but somehow it seems to please her to call me that-and I don't object; how can I?) Come to me when you're shorter, Doddy,' she says to me, and then, perhaps, we'll see about it.' She only says perhaps, you observe. No, she never means it to be; it never will be." He sighed heavily and noisily. "The plain truth is, that I'm too long, and she's too short." "Yes, I suppose that's the long and the short of it," I said abruptly. For a moment he seemed hurt at what he might reasonably have thought to be levity on my part. Still his look was meek and diffident. "I must go," he said, rising. "I've many miles to walk to-night, with my box on my head. Thank you for listening to me, for your sympathy, and-goodbye." "But you won't really resign all hope of winning Miss Tiddler ?" He looked at me despondently, shook his head, but said nothing. "Don't despair. Miss Tiddler may yet be yours. Remember, after all, extremes meet." "She's not short enough for that, even if I'm tall enough. Although I'm a giant, I can't think of her as a dwarf. She's really a very pretty size. And I love her! How I love her! So saying he grasped my hand tightly and painfully. My fingers seemed quite crunched in his. They crackled like dry twigs as he compressed them. I had never shaken hands with a giant before; I never will again. My last glimpse of him revealed a surprisingly tall, gaunt figure striding across the open country. The rising moon elongated his shadow with an effect that was suggestive of caricature. He carried his box on his head. He proceeded rapidly, yet not, I think, very regularly. Once it seemed to me that he was staggering, like one intoxicated; and once, I thought, he called out to me. But it occurred to me, afterwards, that the sound I had heard was, in truth, rather a hiccup than an articulate cry. I never saw him again. I can add no further particulars touching his career. I can supply no proper termination to his love story. Jecker's Van I did chance to meet at a later period; but that exhibition did not then number among its attractions either Miss Tiddler, the dwarf, or her lover, the giant. For my part, on taking leave of him, I had but to think of returning to the railway station, there to await the arrival of the train that was to take me back to London. I had first, however, to pay a rather heavy bill for brandy-and-water consumed at the Railway Hotel. A BATCH OF OLD BILLS. IN the year 1769, the sheriff of Flintshire, unable to persuade any native of the principality to aid in the disposal of a Welsh housebreaker, as justice commanded, was put to extraordinary trouble and expense ere he could execute the sentence of the law. Not caring to lose his money for the public benefit, he petitioned the Treasury for repayment, setting forth the following items:-Travelling and other expenses fifteen pounds ten shillings; a man in Salop engaged to do the business, gave him five guineas; two men for conducting him, and for their search of him on his deserting them on the road, and charges on inquiring for another executioner, four pound ten shillings. After much trouble and expense, John Babington, a convict in the same prison with Edwards, was, by means of his wife, pre vailed upon to execute his fellow-prisoner; pence upon the double operation, the gave the wife six pounds six shillings, and account running thus:-For half a ton of Babington six pounds six shillings. Paid timber to make a pair of gallows for to for erecting a gallows, materials and hang Friar Stone, two shillings and sixlabour, a business very difficult to be done pence; to a carpenter for making the galin this part of the country, four pounds lows and the dray, one shilling and foureighteen shillings. For the hire of a cart pence; to a labourer that digged the holes, to convey the body, a coffin, and for the threepence; expenses setting up the same, burial, two pounds ten shillings; and for one shilling; for a load of wood, and for a other assistance, trouble, and petty expenses horse to draw him to the Dungeon, two on the occasion, at least five pounds-the shillings and threepence; paid two men sheriff's little bill comes to just a shilling that sat at the kettle and parboiled him, short of fifty pounds; how much he re- one shilling; to three men that carried covered from the Treasury is not recorded. his quarters to the gates and set them up, Half a century ago, the authorities of one shilling; for halters, Sandwich cord, Newcastle-on-Tyne expended twenty-five and screws, one shilling; for a woman that pounds on the hanging of an unfortunate scoured the kettle, twopence; to him that woman, namely-To seven serjeants, thirty- did execution, three shillings and eightfive shillings; to twenty constables, seventy pence. Turning over the pages of an shillings; to sixteen free porters, four almanac for 1666, once the property of a pounds; to tolling St. Andrew's great resident of Cambridge, we come upon bell, two shillings and sixpence; to execu- the following memorandum, which we tioner, three pounds; to halter and cord, take to be a copy of an account sent to the three shillings; to a cart and driver, fifteen nearest relation of a defunct collegian, at shillings; to mourning coach, fifteen shil- whose obsequies there had been no stint of lings and sixpence; to nine horses for cakes and ale:-" For little Hall funerall. officers, forty-five shillings: to swearing It. four bottles of sack. It. in ale, one the constables, five shillings; to joiner's shilling and sixpence; cakes, one shilling bill, eight pounds five shillings and three- and sixpence; Naples bisket, six shillings pence; to joiner's allowance, six shillings. and fivepence; for ringin, one shilling; In 1636, a couple of victims to superstition, gravemaking, two shillings and sixpence; William Coke and Dick Alison, were churchwardens, three shillings and fourburned at Kirkaldy, for practising witch- pence; clark, ninepence; affidavit, sixpence; craft, the Kirk-sessions and the town a coffin, two shillings and sixpence; beriall bearing the cost between them. The suit, two shillings; to the poore, two shilofficial accounts, being in Scots money, lings; flagin ale ringin, twopence; pd. look rather formidable, but setting the Mary her wages (you gave her for twelve amounts down in English money, we find weeks one shilling), six shillings; too letters the total to be something under three sent you one shilling; for ye bayliff, five shilpounds. Of this the Kirk-session paid- lings; Scotsman for ritein, two shillings." to Mr. Miller when he sent to Prestowe The last item indicates letter-writing to for a man to try them, three shillings and have been beyond our almanac owner, an eleven-pence; to the man of Culross, the undertaker probably, since, with the foreexecutioner, when he went away the first going exception, he has made a note of time, one shilling; in purchasing the com- nothing save the number of deaths occurmission, fifteen shillings and threepence; ring in the town. for coals for the witches, two shillings; for one to go to Finmouth for the laird to sit upon the assize as judge, sixpence; for "hardens to be jumps for them," five shillings and tenpence; for making them, eightpence. The town paid five shillings and sevenpence for coals, one shilling and twopence for a tar-barrel, sixpence for towes, four shillings and tenpence to the man who fetched the executioner, and fifteen shillings and tenpence to that functionary for his pains. In 1539, the good folks of Canterbury hanged and parboiled a friar, spending but fourteen shillings and eight When Edward the Third invaded Scotland, in 1336, Thetford furnished his ever-fighting majesty with two light horsemen; the bill the townsfolk had to pay for this contribution to the royal forces amounting to three pounds five shillings and elevenpence halfpenny. Of this sum two pounds went to the troopers; their uniform cost six and elevenpence, their boots two shillings and eightpence, and their gloves and staves twopence. Their horses cost thirty-five shillings and a halfpenny, not reckoning fourpence for shoeing them, and a shilling for four days pro moneys laid out upon a teacher for the said Thomas;" and a like sum for sundry other needs, besides two pounds per annum in finding him in clothes and shoes. The honest guardian claimed thirty pounds a year for his own trouble, making altogether, five hundred and nine pounds shillings and eightpence to be deducted from Master Thomas's little fortune; upon which, according to the custom of the City, he had to pay twenty per cent. interest. The son of Hugh-atBow had little reason to complain of the result of the arrangement. He had been fed, lodged, clothed, and educated for thirteen years, and at man's estate was master of five hundred and seventy-one pounds, instead of the three hundred bequeathed him by his sire. vender; the sum total being made up by threepence to a lad for going to Lynn, a distance of fifty-three miles, to look after the horses, and another threepence to a boy for carrying a letter to the same place. Money's worth was great in those days, as is shown by William Sunnynge's account for repairing a house in Cornhill, twenty-eighteen three years later :-Paid to a tiler for two days' wages for tiling the rooms of the said tenement, one shilling and twopence; for his man, the same time, tenpence; for their drink, twopence. Also for five-hundred tiles, four shillings; for a cart-load of sand, fourpence; for six sacks of lime, one shilling; for two small wedges, one shilling; for four cart-loads of stone for the pavement, ten shillings; for twentyfour cart-loads of gravel, eight shillings; for pavior's work, six shillings; for timber In the reign of Henry the Eighth, the and poncheons to mend the walls, three corporation of Faversham were able to shillings; for one thousand five hundred entertain the King and the Emperor laths, two shillings and threepence half- Charles the Fifth at the cost of twentypenny; for one thousand five hundred three shillings and threepence. We doubt trenails, one shilling and sixpence; for one not the fare was worthy of the occasion, thousand five hundred spriggs, one shilling for, when a party of court officials dined and threepence; for nails, fourpence. The together at the Star and Garter at Shene wages paid the tiler were the current-better known to us as Richmond-in wages for carpenters, masons, plasterers, the year 1509, their bill, presented with and other workmen employed in building, many salutations, came to exactly one all working twelve hours a day, except upon Saturday, when they struck work at four instead of seven o'clock, so that the artisan of that period worked sixty-nine hours a week for a wage of three shillings and twopence. Now, a London carpenter receives ninepence an hour, showing that, as regards labour, the purchase power of money was nearly fifteen times as great five hundred years ago as it is at the present time. Should labour go up, or money go down, at the same rate for the next five hundred years, the workman of 2374 will be earning something like five guineas a day; whether he will be any better off only time can decide. In 1361 Robert de Brynkeleye, citizen and mercer, undertook to take charge of the son of a deceased brother mercer, and employ the three hundred pounds the lad's father left him to the best advantage in his own trade. Thirteen years afterwards he rendered an account of his stewardship to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, showing he had paid two shillings a week for the boy's board at the school of Oxford; expended six pounds six shillings and eightpence for ten years' schooling; twenty shillings a year for the same period for "riding in Oxford and elsewhere, and pound sterling:-For brede, one shilling; ale, three shillings and fourpence; wyne, tenpence; two legges moton, eightpence; maribones, sixpence; powdered beef, fivepence; two capons, two shillings; two geese, one shilling and twopence; five conyes, one shilling and threepence; one legge moton, five lb. weight, fourpence; six plovers, one shilling and sixpence; six pigeons, fivepence; two dozen larks, one shilling; salt and sauce, sixpence; butter and eggs, tenpence; wardens and quynces, one shilling; herbes, one penny; spices, two shillings and fourpence; flour, fourpence; wight cups and cruses, sixpence. Eighty-five years later, a dinner at the Star Chamber, provided by Elizabeth's Most Honourable Privy Council, cost more than a pound a head, the sum total being twelve pounds eleven shillings and eightpence; while only ten persons sat down to table. The provisioning was on a rather extravagant scale, although meat was conspicuous by its absence, and the ten diners must have had extraordinary appetites if they succeeded in disposing of three old lings, four green fishes, two salt salmons, three great pikes, six great carps, four tenches, twelve knobbards, four perches, five pair of soles, one conger, four barbels, two hundred prawns, eighteen flounders, four crabs, six lobsters, two turbots, twelve whitings, three gurnards, five dories, eight plaice, sundry small carp, pike and grey fish, two capons, four chickens, and four rabbits; with strawberries, gooseberries, apples, pears, quinces, oranges, lemons, barberries, and butter in unstated quantity. If this fishy feast was comparatively costly, at any rate there was plenty for the money. That much might be said too for the more modest meal to which Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer-prisoners for conscience sake-sat down together; when salmon, ling, oysters, bread, butter, cheese, pears, ale, and wine appeared on the board, and the three famous churchmen had to pay ten pence a-piece. Such Lenten fare would scarcely have suited the eight lovers of good living, whose dinner bill (in 1751) came to eighty-one pounds eleven shillings and sixpence; and included the following items:-bread and beer, fourpence; haunch of venison, two pounds twelve shillings; salmon, one pound ten shillings; partridges in champagne, one pound ten shillings; ten ortolans, seven pounds four shillings; butter and cheese, two shillings; oranges and lemons, five shillings; ice creams and fruit, five pounds five shillings; forced fruits, sixteen pounds sixteen shillings; market fruits, two pounds two shillings; coffee and tea, ten shillings and sixpence; lemonade, sixteen shillings; Spa and Bristol waters, six shillings; usquebagh, ten shillings: Burgundy, six shillings; claret, one pound ten shillings; hock, twelve shillings; white-wine, two shillings; Madeira, one shilling and sixpence; Cape, two pounds; Cyprus, three shillings; Neuilly, ten shillings and sixpence; sack, one shilling and sixpence; and champagne, seven pounds ten shillings. In odd contrast to this is the bill of expenses incurred by a gentleman in 1823, who wagered he would travel two hundred miles, eat and drink on the road, sup and sleep at a good hotel, and yet have something left out of a sovereign. His fare from London to Birmingham, one hundred and twenty-seven miles, cost him ten shillings and sixpence; breakfast—a roll and milk and water, threepence; dinnerbread, cheese, and ale, fourpence; supper at the Swan, Birmingham, of poached eggs, toast, and ale, not forgetting the waiter, one shilling and sixpence; bed and chambermaid, two shillings and sixpence; fare to Sheffield, seventy-three miles, four shillings; breakfast and dinner as before, sevenpence; leaving fourpence unexpended. When Sir Frechville Hollis told Pepys that he feared, if he stood for Grimsby, he should have to follow his predecessor's example, and spend three hundred pounds in ale, and fifty-two pounds in buttered ale, the disbelieving secretary took the statement to be one of Hollis's lies." He might well do so, if would-be members of parliament were then accustomed to get off as easily as the candidate for Bath did in 1646. Mr. Harrington dined with the mayor and citizens one Saturday, which cost him three shillings, "for strong beer and metheglin." The following Monday saw him duly elected, and three days afterwards, he celebrated his return by entertaining the mayor and four citizens at the George Inn, spending eleven shillings and fourpence upon victuals; seven shillings and twopence in drink; and four shillings and fourpence in tobacco and drinking vessels. Altogether, from first to last, his election cost Mr. Harrington three pounds seven. shillings! Very different notions prevailed in Somersetshire, when the representation of the county was in question in 1813, the landlord of a small inn at Ilchester scoring against a candidate in a single day, three hundred and fifty-three bottles of rum and gin, at six shillings; fifty-seven bottles of brandy at half-a-guinea; five hundred and fourteen gallons of beer at two shillings and eightpence; and seven hundred and ninety-two dinners at half-acrown each. Aspirants to parliamentary honours have had still stranger claims made upon them. One of the items in the bill sent to Sir Francis Delaval by his attorney ran, "To being thrown out of the George Inn, Andover; to my legs being thereby broken, to surgeon's bill, and loss of time, and business, all in the service of Sir F. B. Delaval, five hundred pounds." By way of promoting his client's cause, this limb of the law invited the officers of the regiment quartered at Andover to dine with the mayor and corporation upon the king's birthday; and sent a similar invitation to the town officials in the name of the colonel. The dinner went off capitally, but unluckily before the party broke up, the colonel got upon his legs and thanked the mayor for his hospitality. The mayor replied that the obligation lay on his side. The colonel produced his card of invitation, the mayor trumped it with the one he had received, and the hoax was discovered. The attorney in some way betrayed that he was the author of it, whereupon the angry men of war pitched him out of the window, thereby entailing the personal damage for which the victim of his own cleverness chose to hold Sir Francis answerable. Another candidate, quite innocent of encouraging cannibalism, upon examining his election accounts discovered he had paid "for eating thirty-six freemen upstairs, for eating six freemen downstairs, and for eating a parson, his two friends, and a dog." He was not the only man who had done so, witness Bryan Garratry's bill against Sir Mark Somerville, still preserved, as such a curiosity deserved to be, at Somerville Hall:-"16 April 1826. My Bill.-To eating sixteen freeholders above-stairs for Sir Marks at three shillings and sixpence a head, is to me two pounds twelve shillings. To eat ing sixteen more below-stairs, and two priests after supper, is to me two pounds fifteen shillings and ninepence. To six beds in one room and four in another, at two guineas every bed, and not more than four in any bed at any time, cheap enough God knows, is to me twenty-two pounds five shillings. To eighteen horses and five mules about my yard all night at three shillings every one of them, and for a mare which was lost on the head watching them all night, is to me five pounds five shillings. For breakfast or tay in the morning, for every one of them and as many more as they brought, as near as I can guess, is to me four pounds twelve shillings. To raw whisky and punch, without talking of pipes, tobacco, as well as for porter and as well as for breaking a pot above-stairs and other glasses and delf for the first day and night, I am not very sure, but for the first three days and a half of the election as little as I can tell it, and to be very exact, is in all or thereabout, as near as I can guess it and not to be too particular, is to me at least seventy-nine pounds fifteen shillings and ninepence. For shaving and cropping off the heads of the fourty-nine freeholders for Sir Marks at thirteenpence for every head of them by my brother as has a vote, is to me two pounds thirteen shillings one penny. For a vomit and nurse for poor Tom Kerman in the middle of the night, when he was not expected, is to me ten hogs. I don't talk of the pipes or for keeping him sober as long as he was sober, is to me fourty pounds ten shillings. The total one hundred and ten pounds eight shillings and sevenpence. You may say one hundred and eleven, so your honour Sir Marks send me the eleven hundred by Bryan himself who and I prays for your success always in Trim and no more at present.-Signed in the place-Jenny Car's wife Bryan Garratry + "his mark." The Irish innkeeper's comical statement of accounts was doubtless sufficiently intelligible to its recipient, which is more than could be said of a Beddgelert lodgingletter's bill for "bettadoes, twopence; abes, one shilling and twopence; begn, one shilling and ninepence; fluar, one shilling; four loofs ot geas, eightpence; egs one penny;" articles resolved after some cogitation into potatoes, apples, bacon, flour, oatcake loaves, and eggs. Quite as original in his orthography was the Essex host who took a horse into his stables for a night, and sent him home next morning with the brief bill of charges-"To anos four shillings and sixpence; to ogitinonimom sixpence;" although his customer was not likely to be so puzzled as the gentleman who, having rejected a wheelbarrow and received another in its place, found himself set down as a debtor, To a wooden barrow and a wooden do. four shillings and sixpence. To a wooden barrow and a wood do. four shillings and sixpence. or the Devonshire tourist whose washerwoman demanded 000 III of him, taking it for granted he would understand the large Os stood for shillings, the little one for sixpence, and the Is for pence. A NARROW ESCAPE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "DENIS DONNE," "NO ALTERNATIVE," &c. &c. CHAPTER XLV. BLOOD IS THICKER THAN "As our dear Kate is going to marry so brilliantly and happily, she may think it very unkind of us if we abstain from writing to wish her well," Mrs. Forest says to her daughters one morning, when they have finished reading Kate's letter announcing the fact. "She might have thought it equally unkind of us to abstain from writing to wish her well if she had been going to marry badly and miserably," Marian says; "but you're right, mamma! it's the one marriage in the family from which we may expect good things." "Wishing joy on such occasions is utter nonsense," Gertrude says, pettishly, "we shall each and all have our allotted share |