than Mrs. Philadelphia Tyler. Many
a thriving tradesman might be found in Oriel Street, and many a blooming
damsel amongst the tradesmen's daughters; but if the town gossip might
be believed, the richest of all the rich shopkeepers was old John
Parsons, and the prettiest girl (even without reference to her father's
moneybags) was his fair daughter Harriet.

John Parsons was one of those loud, violent, blustering, boisterous
personages who always put me in mind of the description so often
appended to characters of that sort in the dramatis personae of Beaumont
and Fletcher's plays, where one constantly meets with Ernulpho
or Bertoldo, or some such Italianised appellation, "an old angry
gentleman." The "old angry gentleman" of the fine old dramatists
generally keeps the promise of the play-bill. He storms and rails during
the whole five acts, scolding those the most whom he loves the best,
making all around him uncomfortable, and yet meaning fully to do right,
and firmly convinced that he is himself the injured party; and after
quarrelling with cause or without to the end of the comedy, makes
friends all round at the conclusion;--a sort of person whose good
intentions everybody appreciates, but from whose violence everybody that
can is sure to get away.

Now such men are just as common in the real workaday world as in the old
drama; and precisely such a man was John Parsons.

His daughter was exactly the sort of creature that such training was
calculated to produce; gentle, timid, shrinking, fond of her father, who
indeed doated upon her, and would have sacrificed his whole substance,
his right arm, his life, anything except his will or his humour, to give
her a moment's pleasure; gratefully fond of her father, but yet more
afraid than fond.

The youngest and only surviving child of a large family, and brought
up without a mother's care, since Mrs. Parsons had died in her
infancy, there was a delicacy and fragility, a slenderness of form and
transparency of complexion, which, added to her gentleness and modesty,
gave an unexpected elegance to the tinman's daughter. A soft appealing
voice, dove-like eyes, a smile rather sweet than gay, a constant desire
to please, and a total unconsciousness of her own attractions, were
amongst her chief characteristics. Some persons hold the theory that
dissimilarity answers best in matrimony, and such persons would have
found a most satisfactory contrast of appearance, mind, and man