TOM HYNES. 185 



Lady Bab and Lady Charlotte received justice at the hands of 

 Mesdames Ilorsman and Stamford : they also dressed the cha- 

 racters very appropriately. Miss Jarman, as Kitty, sang " Nice 

 young maidens," '* Come here fellow servants," and " Au^ay, 

 away, to the mountain's brow " with her usual feeling and taste. 

 The chorus and mock quadrille proved a source of much merri- 

 ment to the audience. 



PUBLIC CHARACTERS, No. 1. 

 THE LIFE OF TOM HYNES. 



FROM HIS OWN NARRATION. 



"I RECOLLECT vcry well," said Tom, "for it was one day when 

 I was n't very swipey, that somebody told me a very curous 

 story about a king in old times, I think it was a king of the 

 Scilly Islands, who, somehow or other, got up into Heaven ; and 

 the gods and goddesses were very good to him, and gave him 

 plenty of beer and tobacco, and a new suit of clothes, and every 

 thing else that he wanted. Well, sir, this king had murdered 

 somebody in the world before he got into Heaven, and he was 

 so pleased with the gods and goddesses, and himself, that he 

 wrote in a book belonging to one of them — 



* Adventures are to the adventurous.' 



Now this is very true, sir, for nobody has been more adventurous 

 than myself and nobody has had more adventures in one particular 

 line." 



'^ixty-one years since, Tom, for the first time, found himself 

 " wide awake" to the world, in the village of Rattery, about two 

 miles from Totnes ; he was one of four brothers. His father was 

 an agricultural labourer, and his mother earned an honest penny 

 by thinning turnip crops, weeding, gleaning, (or, in the vernacular, 

 ear-picking) digging potatoes, or any other light work suited to 

 her sex and constitution. Before Tom was eight years old he 

 had been initiated in the mysteries of using a mattock, wielding a 

 spade, pig-feeding, and cow-driving; indeed he became so pro- 

 ficient in these several crafts, that at the age of seven years and 

 a half, he was apprenticed to a farmer, one Master Ford, of South 

 Brent parish. 



There Tom remained till he had attained his eighteenth year, 

 he became lusty and handsome: the barley bread was unadulter- 

 ated with the chalk, ground bones, alum, bad potatoes, and 

 sawdust which find their way into town made loaves: the pigs 

 were not fed with the offal of butcher's slaughter houses, so that 

 the pork on which Tom luxuriated was rich, juicy, and so fiit 

 that it slipped down his throat without needing the process of 

 VOL. v.~1835. z 



