and executed; and certainly taking away a man's life is a dreadful
thing; but is there nothing as bad? Whitefeather will cut no person's
throat--I will not say who has cheated him, for, being a cheat himself,
he will take good care that nobody cheats him, but he'll do something
quite as bad; out of envy to a person who never injured him, and whom he
hates for being more clever and respected than himself, he will do all he
possibly can, by backbiting and every unfair means, to do that person a
mortal injury. But Jack is hanged, and my lord it not. Is that right?
My wife, Mary Fulcher--I beg her pardon, Mary Dale--who is a Methodist,
and has heard the mighty preacher, Peter Williams, says some people are
preserved from hanging by the grace of God. With her I differs, and says
it is from want of courage. This Whitefeather, with one particle of
Jack's courage, and with one tithe of his good qualities, would have been
hanged long ago, for he has ten times Jack's malignity. Jack was hanged
because, along with his bad qualities, he had courage and generosity;
this fellow is not, because with all Jack's bad qualities, and many more,
amongst which is cunning, he has neither courage nor generosity. Think
of a fellow like that putting down two hundred pounds to relieve a
distressed fellow-creature; why he would rob, but for the law and the
fear it fills him with, a workhouse child of its breakfast, as the saying
is--and has been heard to say that he would not trust his own father for
sixpence, and he can't imagine why such a thing as credit should be ever
given. I never heard a person give him a good word--stay, stay, yes! I
once heard an old parson, to whom I sold a Punch, say that he had the art
of receiving company gracefully and dismissing them without refreshment.
I don't wish to be too hard with him, and so let him make the most of
that compliment. Well! he manages to get on, whilst Jack is hanged; not
quite enviably, however; he has had his rubs, and pretty hard
ones--everybody knows he slunk from Waterloo, and occasionally checks him
with so doing; whilst he has been rejected by a woman--what a
mortification to the low pride of which the scoundrel has plenty! There's
a song about both circumstances, which may, perhaps, ring in his ears on
a dying bed. It's a funny kind of song, set to the old tune of the Lord-
Lieutenant or Deputy, and with it I will conclude my discourse, for I
really think it's past one." The j