ter she has. Lady Thrum would die
sooner than speak to that unhappy young woman; and, in fact, the Thrums
have a new pupil, who is a siren without the dangerous qualities of one,
who has the person of Venus, and the mind of a Muse, and who is coming
out at one of the theatres immediately. Baroski says, "De liddle
Rafenschwing is just as font of me as effer!" People are very shy about
receiving her in society; and when she goes to sing at a concert, Miss
Prim starts up and skurries off in a state of the greatest alarm, lest
"that person" should speak to her.
Walker is voted a good, easy, rattling, gentlemanly fellow, and nobody's
enemy but his own. His wife, they say, is dreadfully extravagant: and,
indeed, since his marriage, and in spite of his wife's large income,
he has been in the Bench several times; but she signs some bills and
he comes out again, and is as gay and genial as ever. All mercantile
speculations he has wisely long since given up; he likes to throw a
main of an evening, as I have said, and to take his couple of bottles at
dinner. On Friday he attends at the theatre for his wife's salary, and
transacts no other business during the week. He grows exceedingly stout,
dyes his hair, and has a bloated purple look about the nose and cheeks,
very different from that which first charmed the heart of Morgiana.
By the way, Eglantine has been turned out of the Bower of Bloom, and now
keeps a shop at Tunbridge Wells. Going down thither last year without a
razor, I asked a fat seedy man lolling in a faded nankeen jacket at the
door of a tawdry little shop in the Pantiles, to shave me. He said in
reply, "Sir, I do not practise in that branch of the profession!" and
turned back into the little shop. It was Archibald Eglantine. But in the
wreck of his fortunes he still has his captain's uniform, and his grand
cross of the order of the Castle and Falcon of Panama.
*****
POSTSCRIPT.
G. Fitz-Boodle, Esq., to O. Yorke, Esq.
ZUM TRIERISCHEN HOP, COBLENZ: July 10, 1843.
MY DEAR YORKE,--The story of the Ravenswing was written a long time
since, and I never could account for the bad taste of the publishers of
the metropolis who refused it an insertion in their various magazines.
This fact would never have been alluded to but for the following
circumstance:--
Only yesterday, as I was dining at this excellent hotel, I remarked a
bald-headed gentleman in a blue coat and brass buttons, who look
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