359 

 PATCHES AND THEIR PENALTIES. 



BY DOUGLAS JERROLD. 



" To pick a hole in a man's coat/' popularly implies to do his cha- 

 racter an injury. The phrase contains a subtler meaning a signifi- 

 cance more recondite : the evil is not in the " hole" itself, but in the 

 patch made indispensable by the wound. There was deep philoso- 

 phy in the saying of the wit, who averred that a hole might pass for 

 an accident but a darn was open and avowed poverty. The patch 

 is an elaborate declaration of penury a pains-taking manifesto an 

 outward and visible sign of inward destitution. Tatters may be a 

 fine, swash-buckler libertine ; but a patch is poor-spirited want ; 

 crawling, needful misery. How many think it nothing to have a 

 thousand holes picked in their coats, who would fume and glow, and 

 turn purple with shame to confront the stare of the world with a 

 patch ! To mend is to be lost. 



But a few days since, we witnessed a pertinent illustration of the 

 worldly impolicy of patching. It was the Sabbath (a day when, 

 according to certain gentle Christians, sackcloth and ashes should be 

 the only wear) and a mother, with her three children, presented 

 herself at the gate of the inner enclosure of St. James's Park. The 

 woman carried an infant, and two little boys were close at her apron- 

 strings. She was proceeding with her little ones into the holy of 

 holies, when the liveried functionary at the lodge stepped forward, 

 barring the way. The boys instinctively shrunk closer to their mo- 

 ther, and looked with curious eyes at what seemed to them the mys- 

 terious pantomime of the beadle. Indeed, the woman herself at first 

 appeared unconscious of the meaning of the arm that " sawed the 

 air" with authoritative motion. At length she was given to under- 

 stand that she must turn back there was no admittance. She 

 looked an inquiring look at the officer a look that plainly asked 

 "Why so?" 



The mother herself was poorly but cleanly habited. It was evi- 

 dent she had donned her best had quitted her room, probably in 

 some pent-up, squalid court or miserable alley, to come with her 

 children, and breathe an hour's fresh air, in sight of shrubs, and trees, 

 and green grass. It may be she had for some days promised to take 

 her young ones "to see the swans:" they had come out for a holi- 

 day ! The boys were fine little fellows ; and their clean, shining 

 faces, and smoothly combed hair, bore witness to the maternal atten- 

 tions. Their shoes showed no hole, and their long Holland pinafores 

 seemed white as washing could make them. Indeed, the whole 

 groupe was a picture of clean, pains-taking poverty : an honest pride 

 had given the most cheerful outside to penury. However, the beadle 

 liked not the tailor of the family, and they must go back. Still the 

 woman, having glanced at her boys, her baby, and herself, could not 



