93 NOtaS OP THS MONTH. 



Curious BfiQUEST.— A Scottish provincial paper mentions that a gen- 

 tleman who lately died in India, has left the whole of his fortune to the 

 old maids, daughters of " respectable parents," of his native place. The 

 fact is pregnant with meaning ; there is more in it than meets the eye. 

 There can be no question that the deceased must have, in early life, 

 been a great gallant, and trifled with the feelings of more than one of 

 the then " young ladies," now the " old maids," of his native place, 

 and that he has bequeathed his property to them simply for the purpose 

 of administering an opiate to a troubled conscience. We are always 

 happy to see, under any circumstances, symptoms of a sense of past 

 cjrors, but we are specially so, when such a sense of them is accompa- 

 nied by an earnest desire to render atonement as far as practicable. It 

 must be admitted on all hands, that the gentleman in question, in 

 making his bequest, gave the most convincing evidence in his power, of 

 his anxiety to make reparation for an injury done the contemporary sex 

 of his native place ; but we wish he had been a little more particular 

 and definite in the terms of his will. "We are informed by the same 

 provincial print, that the introduction of the terms, " daughters of 

 respectable parents," is likely to lead to endless annoyance and difficulty 

 to those who are to be the executors of the will, in deciding as to the 

 eligible claimants, — every old maid, as might have been expected, 

 stoutly maintaining, whatever her parents may have been, that they 

 were " respectable." It is much to be regretted, as all our lexicogra- 

 phers difier as to the import of the word " respectable," and as the ma- 

 "•isterial luminaries of our metropolitan offices are equally at variance on 

 the subject, — that the deceased, out of pity to his executors, had taken 

 the trouble to give his own notion of what constitutes respectability. 

 Another inconvenience has arisen from his not being sufficiently precise 

 and definite in his phraseology. He gives no data by which one can 

 judge of what he considered the time of life at which a virgin may be 

 said to cross the threshold of old maidship, and consequently become 

 entitled to the benefit of the bequest. The only hope the executors have 

 that they will not appropriate the money improperly, by giving it to 

 persons not entitled to it, arises from the well-known abhorrence of the 

 sex, especially of the " daughters of respectable parents," to be included 

 in the hateful categorv. Nothing but dire necessity will induce a 

 female, the daughter of " respectable parents," to confess herself an 

 old maid. 



The King and the Informer. — Some days ago, Mr. Perring, the ce- 

 lebrated hat-manufacturer, of the Strand, appeared at Bow-Street Office, 

 to answer an information laid against him by Carter, the notorious 

 informer. Mr. Pcrring, who has the merit of having invented the 

 much-admired light hats, has, it seems, lately, by a further exercise of 

 his inventive powers, hit on a truly singular mode of advertising. He 

 has caused a beautiful cabriolet to be made, in the form of a hat, which 

 is betwixt four and five feet in height, and ten or twelve in circum- 

 ference. This " standing " advertisement — to use a printer's term — is 

 drawn by a horse, and makes the daily tour of the town. Carter, with 

 the lynx eye of his profession, soon made the discovery, that, however 



