264 Some Account of a Lover. [$KPT. 



I was ever an indifferent substitute for the god of love, my ovention being 

 altogether hostile to such embassies of moment , but, faithful to the duty 

 I had imposed upon myself, I lay in wait for the man-servant ; and placing 

 the letter in one palm, I infused a sixpence into the other, to secure its safe 

 delivery into the young lady's own hands. 



Being ushered into an elegantly furnished apartment, I began to specu- 

 late upon the brilliant prospects of my friend. He has disdained, thought 

 I, to pay an abject homage to some proud beauty, who, every time she 

 opened her mouth, would shut his eyes, that he might afterwards see what 

 the devil had sent him ; no, he has wisely sought elsewhere, and the 

 property will be all the safer for the scarecrow on the premises. In the 

 midst of these delighted visions, I was astounded by the violent opening of 

 an adjoining door, from which flew first a tremendous courier of a voice, 

 articulating, " Where is this impudent rascal ?" followed by its master, a 

 tall military figure ; to whom succeeded the identical daughter the " mon- 

 strum horrendum" of the morning torturing her unique frontispiece by 

 demoniac cachinnations. 



Approaching me, a scroll in one hand, covered over with slender iambics 

 (the detestable versification of Diaper), and an uplifted cane in the other, 

 this military man began to imprecate curses, and to hold out threats of a 

 very horrid description. My presence of mind instantly suggested my 

 absence of body, which I, who profess only a moral courage and am not 

 quarrelsome, happily succeeded in effecting. 



I have said that I am no god of love ; yet truly did I shew my wings 

 in this critical moment flying down the flight of steps, and darting from 

 the house with as much precipitation as a tenant at quarter-day. Hurry- 

 ing to the lover at the corner of the street, I upbraided him bitterly for 

 having so cruelly trifled with my personal safety perhaps magnifying in 

 my wrath the indignation of the captain, and the insane grins of his 

 daughter. 



The state of mind of the ill-fated sentimentalist at this intelligence can 

 neither be conceived nor described. He cast himself upon the earth, and 

 exhibited several mathematical lines upon the pavement ; and rising sud- 

 denly, assaulted the dead walls with his head. To these exertions, 

 another train of thought succeeded, as I collected from his frequent imita- 

 tion of the action of a knot under the left ear ; and now he threw out more 

 than hints of self-destruction. Not content with the bare imagination of 

 making away with himself, he luxuriated in all the possible modes and 

 practices on record by which it might be accomplished from strangulation 

 in a water-butt to immersion in the crater of Vesuvius ; finally, entreating, 

 with tears, the loan of my garters for a few minutes, that he might attach 

 himself without delay to the lamp-post opposite his inexorable fair one's 

 abode. 



Upon these symptoms, I was for bearing him away to the Lambeth 

 Asylum ; but this he would by no means permit. I was under the neces- 

 sity, therefore, of leading him to the door of his lodgings, where I gave 

 private injunctions to the servant to screw down the windows, and to secure 

 all knives, washing-lines, and bodkins ; accompanying the douceur of a 

 shilling with another request that she would refuse to furnish the sufferer 

 with any Epsom salts, which the apothecaries have lately discovered to be 

 the same thing as oxalic acid.* 



It is the p.itient, wo are afraid, that makes the discovery. Ed. 



