1829. | PIODgeen] 
THE PIMENTO FAMILY; OR, SPOILED CHILDREN. 
Sir Perer Pimento is an eminent West-India merchant, remarkable 
for coolness of temper both as merchant and husband; Lady P. (ere- 
while Miss Penelope Harpoon, and daughter of a Greenland trader) is, 
on the contrary, remarkable for a sort of pepperiness of temper, which 
acquired her the reputation of a vixen whilst yet a mere minx, a virago 
when a virgin, and a Xantippe now she is a wife. Her absolute “ shall” 
was a fiat not to be contravened in Lothbury during her maidenage, 
nor in Finsbury-square, in her wifeage; at least by beings bearing as 
little gall about them as the humble and peace-loving Sir Peter. If 
clerk or cook, house-maid or nurse-maid, exhibited the slightest spice 
of opposition to the home-administration, the house was dissolved sine 
die, and the malcontents expeiled, to find new constituents, if they 
could. 
Sir Peter, in the three preparatory years of his wedded infelicity, was, 
on three several occasions, made happy, though exceedingly incom- 
moded, by the production of two sons and a daughter, to be the olive- 
branches of his table. A hundred humble names were, with all proper 
submission, suggested by Sir Peter, as cognomens for the crude Pimen- 
tos, but were all and severally over-ruled by the absolute ‘ it shall not 
be” of his lady; and, accordingly, young Pimento, No. 1, was chris- 
tened Alfred; No. 2, Augustus; and No. 3, Amarantha, because she 
had been pronounced by Mrs. Deputy Dogrove (who was cultivating 
botany) to be the flower of the Pimentos. Sir Peter would have preferred 
the plain English triumvirate of John, George, and Betty ; but;when he 
muttered, rather than audibly expressed, his “ three wishes” on that 
important head, a toss of another head. a dilatation of the nostrils, and 
a frown, put down the ineffectual opposition; and the quiet-loving 
merchant succumbed away from the pertinaciousness of his spouse to the 
price-current, and the averages of rums, sugars, gingers, and arrow- 
root. 
Twelve years passed, and the young Pimentos really began to grow 
“very interesting” at the dinner-parties with which the hospitable merchant 
entertained his friends during school vacations, that the juveniles might 
see something of the world, and the world see something of the juveniles. 
Master Alfred could rant the soliloquies in Douglas, and, to shew the 
versatility of his genius, perform “ Little Pickle,’ with an additional 
scene (got up by Lady Pimento herself, who began to betray symptoms 
of bleu-ism), in which he set fire to a chintz curtain, broke some china 
chimney-ornaments, upset a dumb-waiter, and fired a cracker under the 
chair of his indulgent papa. The several parties who were made audi- 
ences of his pranks, pronounced him to be a prodigy in mischief ; Lady 
P. was delighted ; while the “ judicious” Sir Peter grieved. 
Master Augustus was also a prodigy, but in another line. He could 
hit the house-cat on the nose with a blunt arrow five times out of ten, 
and strike an egg out of a breakfast-cup once out of twice, if he did not 
break both cup and egg at the first five. It was, indeed, prophesied by 
the sporting part of the city, that he must ultimately become the first 
shot of his day. ’ 
Miss Amarantha was the third prodigy—a musical and metrical’ pros 
_ MM, New Series —Vou. VU. No, 42. 4K 
