48 A Christinas Party. [JAN. 



her in the face, that this entertainment was to be a bona-Jide treat that 

 not only the leg of mutton, the fat goose, and the plum-puddings, but 

 the ale, wine, spirits and tobacco were to come out of her coffers, then 

 party, dancing, and fiddler became nuisances past endurance, the latter 

 above all. 



Old Timothy was a person of some note in our parish, known to every 

 man, woman, and child in the place, of which, indeed, he was a native. 

 He had been a soldier in his youth, and having had the good luck to 

 receive a sabre wound on his skull, had been discharged from the service 

 as infirm of mind, and passed to his parish accordingly ; where he led a 

 wandering pleasant sort of life, sometimes in one public-house, some- 

 times in another tolerated, as Hester said, for his bad example, until 

 he had run up a score that became intolerable, at which times he was 

 turned out, with the work-house to go to, for a pis alter, and a com- 

 fortable prospect that his good-humour, his good fellowship, and his 

 fiddle, would in process of time be missed and wanted, and that he 

 might return to his old haunts and run up a fresh score. When half 

 tipsy, which happened nearly every day in the week, and at all hours, 

 he would ramble up and down the village, playing snatches of tunes at 

 every corner, and collecting about him a never-failing audience of eight 

 and ten-year-old urchins of either sex, amongst which small mob old 

 Timothy, with his jokes, his songs, and his antics, was incredibly popular. 

 Against Justice and Constable, treadmill and stocks, the sabre-cut was 

 a protection, although, I must candidly confess, that I do not think the 

 crack in the crown ever made itself visible in his demeanour until a 

 sufficient quantity of ale had gone down his throat, to account for any 

 aberration of conduct, supposing the broadsword in question never to 

 have approached his skull. That weapon served, however, as a most 

 useful shield to our modern Timotheus, who, when detected in any out- 

 rageous fit of drunkenness, would immediately summon sufficient recol- 

 lection to sigh and look pitiful, and put his poor, shaking, withered hand 

 to the seam which the wound had left, with an air of appeal, which even 

 I, with all my scepticism, felt to be irresistible. 



In short, old Timothy was a privileged person ; and terrible sot though 

 he were, he almost deserved to be so, for his good-humour, his content- 

 edness, his constant festivity of temper, and his good-will towards every 

 living thing a good-will which met with its usual reward in being 

 heartily and universally returned. Every body liked old Timothy, with 

 the solitary exception of the hostess of the Bell, who, having once had 

 him as an inmate during three weeks, had been so scandalized by his 

 disorderly habits, that, after having with some difficulty turned him out of 

 her house, she had never admitted him into it again, having actually 

 resorted to the expedient of buying off her intended customer, even 

 when he presented himself pence in hand, by the gift of a pint of home- 

 brewed at the door, rather than suffer him to effect a lodgment in her 

 tap-room a mode of dismissal so much to Timothy's taste, that his 

 incursions had become more and more frequent, insomuch that " to get 

 rid of the fiddler and other scape-graces, who vrere apt to put upon a 

 lone woman," formed a main article in the catalogue of reasons assigned 

 by Hester to herself and the world, for her marriage with Jacob Frost. 

 Accordingly, the moment she heard that Timothy's irregularities and ill 

 example were likely to prove altogether unprofitable, she revived her old 

 objection to the poor fiddler's morals, rescinded her consent to his adiuis- 



