1827.] The Tax-Gatherer. 61 



foreign policy after duly touching on the price of sugars, the imperial 

 measure, and Catholic Emancipation, she startles him with this subtle 

 question " when does he think the window-lights will come off?" This 

 is a query of some weight, and our Tax-gatherer begs leave to defer his 

 solution until the next meeting. Our officer does not, however, quit the 

 widow, without first gallantly acquiescing in her acute deduction, that 

 " if tobaccos fall, snuff must come down." 



Yet, what are these few blissful moments of relaxation compared to 

 the many days of hard enduring of our Tax-gatherer ! What, if for a 

 brief alas ! how brief space his mental eye reposes, on what Mr. 

 Burke calls " the soft green of the soul," displayed by meek and pla- 

 cable woman, what " antries vast " he meets with in the ruder sex I 

 How his loyalty is shocked and jarred by base and disaffected compari- 

 sons ! One customer, whose knocker our Tax-gatherer could swear to, 

 even to the minutest scratch or perforation, having many a time surveyed 

 it for fifteen minutes in a shower, shocks, beyond expression, the patrio- 

 tism of his official visitor. He declares, whilst bringing forth his rate 

 by sixpences, that, " for his part, he is always paying he knows not 

 where the money goes to :" he then, with a groan and much physical 

 determination, thrusts the receipt into his fob ; and then concludes his 

 homily, by declaring that " he hears America is very prettily governed 

 for five hundred a year, and potatoes are just as dear there as in Eng- 

 land." These, and a thousand like these, are what our man of the 

 little book is doomed to suffer. 



It may be urged, that we have endowed our Tax-gatherer with too 

 much meekness that he is a collector for a romantic tale and that our 

 real, mundane, gaitered (he mostly wears gaiters) Tax-gatherer, is 

 of a more repelling and dogmatic kind. Is it to be wondered at if, in 

 the end, he really become so ? Let the above narrated exigencies account 

 for the transition. If a man's heart be soft as the back of a glow-worm, 

 there are buffettings and affronts which will render it repulsive as the 

 mail of the armadillo ; if the features of the young Tax-gatherer display 

 candour and good-nature, can we wonder if the cheeks of the more 

 experienced collector be wholly official ; be, in fact, like the royal arms, 

 adorned with a Dieu et mon Droit ? Verily, Tax-gatherers are not the 

 folks that carry away the enviable posts of this world. 



We trust we have done some little service to the Tax-gatherer. And 

 yet, perhaps, we may not be altogether considered a candid advocate, 

 being a housekeeper of twenty years' standing, and the parent of ten 

 small children. 



We will conclude by repeating, that a Tax-gatherer is to be compas- 

 sionated. In the metropolis, indeed, and in large cities, his fate may be 

 more endurable ; but, in a provincial district, where he calls on every 

 inhabitant, it is an employment not befiting mere mortal bones and 

 sinews. We have said, that a Tax-gatherer is shunned, and, in a man- 

 ner, generally maltreated ; so rooted in us is this opinion, that we should 

 hold the man to afford a splendid instance of magnanimity and absence 

 from vulgar prejudice, who could have it indisputably authenticated,, 

 that he ever, during his official visit, invited the Tax-gatherer to take 

 wine and cake. J* 



