City Sketches. 341 



pepper and salt coats, muffin caps and study, at a parish school. His 

 education completed, a liberal patron of the industrious classes placed 

 at his disposal the sum of one and sixpence per week, for polishing 

 the boots and shoes, cleaning the knives and forks, running on errands, 

 waiting at table, looking after the house-dog, and quarrelling with 

 the cook. It were tedious, perhaps, to trace the gradations by which 

 Mr. Snooks ascended from errand-boy to light porter from light 

 porter to junior clerk and from junior^clerk to book-keeper, in one 

 of the first manufacturing houses of his native place. It may be 

 permitted, however, to remark that these successive elevations supply 

 the best evidence of his talent and acquirements. 



Mr. Snooks had occupied his responsible situation for some years 

 when a conspiracy was, it seems, set on foot against him by the part- 

 ners. Who can successfully resist oppression when it is backed by 

 wealth and power ? The sensitive soul of Snooks did not feel itself 

 equal to a moral set-to against such fearful odds : he abruptly left 

 the place of his nativity. He departed from Manchester for ever, 

 regretted by many of the inhabitants, whose pecuniary demands 

 upon him, in the perturbation of his soul and in the hurry of his de- 

 parture, he had omitted to satisfy, and arriving in London he changed 

 his name to that of Storks, that he might baffle the pursuit of his 

 unrelenting foes. And in this metropolis lived Mr. Storks in com- 

 parative peace for some years, until but why anticipate? 



Turn we, therefore, to Hookem. Mr. Hookem was the only son 

 of a most worthy character, who had for half a century satisfactorily 

 fulfilled the onerous duties of a messenger to the Navy Pay Office. 

 The old gentleman lived just long enough to know that he had be- 

 stowed a good plain education upon his son, and to feel that he was 

 comfortably settled at Salamanca House the large linen-draper's in 

 Oxford-street: and here, indeed, the sole surviving Hookem vege- 

 tated for a considerable period. His imposing head of hair that 

 unexceptionable abundance of whisker the lightness of his finger 

 the rapidity of his movements, and the urbanity of his deportment, 

 won and secured for him the esteem, admiration, and confidence of 

 both sides of the counter. 



Let us not call it an evil hour in which Mr. Hookem fixed his eyes 

 and rivetted his affections upon Miss Sarah Sparks, a young lady who 

 had at one time carried on business in the corset line, but who, in a 

 fit of the tender passion, cut her stay-laces, and flung herself into 

 the arms or, to speak without excitement, accepted the hand of 

 the devoted linen-draper's factotum. There can be no doubt that 

 Mrs. Hookem had been presented with many opportunities, in the 

 course of her profession, of mixing with the best society ; nor is it 

 surprising that her naturally genteel soul should have imbibed the 

 refined tastes and polite predilections of her truly respectable cus- 

 tomers ; so that, when Mr. Hookem obtained permission from his 

 employers to live out of the house, and to occupy one portion of his 

 own domestic hearth, a scale of expenses was offered to his inspec- 

 tion, which, making a rough "estimate, seemed to be more than com- 

 mensurate with his income. Mrs. IL, too, had a passion for dressing, 

 as she said, " like other people," and her perhaps too-indulgent con- 

 sort wished to place her upon a level with society in general. And 

 then she was so often "not fit to be seen/' that Hookem was com- 



