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KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



" household-gods" at night. All this is 

 traceable to the ridiculous rage for " cheap • 

 ness," which is naturally associated with 

 11 meanness." But to return. 



Mrs. Mowbray, though ashamed, and self- 

 convicted, returned home, pleased with her 

 novel tour ; and frequently afterwards accom- 

 panied her husband on such occasions. " Bar- 

 gain-hunting" had been, in her individual case, 

 the result of thoughtlessness, rather than of 

 an unfeeling disposition. Would this were 

 generally the case ! but it is far, very far, 

 otherwise. From this moment, she was 

 more liberal in her views, and more liberal 

 in her purchases. Nor did she, while deal- 

 ing with an honest tradesman, ever feel dis- 

 posed to depreciate the value of his goods. 

 " The Cap" would rush into her mind, when 

 she wavered ! 



Let us now wind up this graphic sketch, 

 by remarking that Mrs. Mowbray became 

 quite a changed woman. Her idea of " cheap- 

 ness" van'shed ; nor could she ever be brought 

 to believe that a bad article, at any price, 

 could be " cheap." " My love," said she, one 

 evening, to her husband, " You are right ; 

 A good article is always worth a fair 



PRICE." 



From this day forward, cheap ticketed 

 articles became her aversion. She associated 

 them with unfairly depreciated wages, 

 and wretchedness of the poor. Too well 

 knew she, that by " grinding their faces," 

 could " cheapness" be alone attained. 



May each one of our married readers be a 

 Mrs. Mowbray ; and may each one of those 

 who are at present " single," make a despe- 

 rate " set" at a " Mr." Mowbray, wherever 

 they can rind him. We would not grudge 

 even a " cheap" pretty cap, for the purpose 

 of securing the conquest. 



Postscript. — We cannot resist the oppor- 

 tunity that offers, for printing in this place 

 poor Tom Hood's " Thoughts on the mean- 

 ness of our nobility and gentry." They are 

 a pendant to his popular " Song of the Shirt," 

 and have, just now, a voice that should 

 awaken even " the Seven Sleepers." 



Some time since, says Hood (for he is 

 "speaking" still), a strong inward impulse 

 moved me to paint the destitution of an 

 overtasked class of females, who work, work, 

 work, for wages almost nominal. But de- 

 plorable as is their condition, in the low 

 deep, there is, it seems, a lower still. 

 Beneath that Purgatory, a Hell. Resound- 

 ing with more doleful wailings and a sharper 

 outcry, the voice of famishing wretches, 

 pleading vainly for work ! work ! work ! 

 imploring as a blessing what was laid upon 

 Man as a curse — the labor that wrings 

 sweat from the brow, and bread from the 

 soil! 



As a matter of conscience, that wail 

 touches me not. As my works testify, 1 am 

 of the working class myself; and in my 

 humble sphere furnish employment for many 

 hands, including paper-makers, draughtsmen, 

 engravers, compositors, pressmen, binders, 

 folders, and stitchers — and critics ; all re- 

 ceiving a fair day's wages for a fair day's 

 work. My gains, consequently, are limited 

 — not nearly so enormous as have been 

 realised upon shirts, slops, shawls, &c. — 

 curiously illustrating how a man or woman 

 might be " clothed with curses as with a 

 garment." 



My fortune may be expressed without a 

 long row of those ciphers —those O's, at once 

 significant of hundreds of thousands of pounds 

 and as many ejaculations of pain and sorrow 

 from dependent slaves. My wealth might all 

 be hoarded, if I were miserly, in a gallipot or 

 a tin snuff box. My guineas, placed edge to 

 edge, instead of extending from the Minories 

 to Golden Square, would barely reach from 

 home to Bread Street. My riches would 

 hardly allow me a roll in them, even if 

 turned into the new copper mites. But then, 

 thank God ! no reproach clings to my coin. 

 No tears of blood clog the meshes — no hair, 

 plucked in desperation, is knitted with the 

 silk of my lean purse. 



No consumptive sempstress can point at 

 me her lean forefinger, and say, " For thee, 

 sewing in forma pauperis, I am become this 

 Living Skeleton !" or hold up to me her fatal 

 needle, as one through the eye of which the 

 scriptural camel must pass, ere I may hope to 

 enter heaven. No withered work-woman, 

 shaking at me her dripping suicidal locks, 

 can cry, in a piercing voice, "For thee and 

 for six poor pence, I embroidered eighty flow- 

 ers on this veil" — literally a veil of tears. 



No famishing laborer, his joints racked 

 with toil, holds out to me in the palm of his 

 broad, hard hand, seven miserable shillings, 

 and mutters, " For these and a parish loaf, 

 for six long days, from dawn till dusk, through 

 hot and cold, through wet and dry, I tilled 

 thy land !" My short sleeps are peaceful ; 

 my dreams untroubled. No ghastly phan- 

 toms with reproachful faces, and silence 

 more terrible than speech, haunt my quiet pil- 

 low. No victims of Slow Murder, ushered in 

 by the Avenging Fiends, beset my couch, and 

 make awful appointments with me to meet at 

 the Divine bar on the Day of Judgment. No 

 deformed human creatures — men, women, 

 children, smirched black as Negroes, trans- 

 figured suddenly, as Demons of the Pit, clutch 

 at my heels to drag me down, down, down an 

 unfathomable shaft, into a gaping Tartarus. 



And if sometimes in w r aking visions I see 

 throngs of little faces, with features preterna- 

 turally sharp, and wrinkled brows ; and dull, 

 seared orbs — grouped with pitying clusters 



