e
had been pressed to take another plate of the viand, which I have
already mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his visits. He
had refused with a resistance amounting to rigour--when my aunt, an
old Lincolnian, but who had something of this in common with my cousin
Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility out of
season--uttered the following memorable application--"Do take another
slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding every day." The old
gentleman said nothing at the time--but he took occasion in the course
of the evening, when some argument had intervened between them, to
utter with an emphasis which chilled the company, and which chills me
now as I write it--"Woman, you are superannuated." John Billet did not
survive long, after the digesting of this affront; but he survived
long enough to assure me that peace was actually restored! and, if I
remember aright, another pudding was discreetly substituted in the
place of that which had occasioned the offence. He died at the Mint
(anno 1781) where he had long held, what he accounted, a comfortable
independence; and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny,
which were found in his escrutoire after his decease, left the world,
blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never
been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was--a Poor Relation.

_Lamb._

THE CHILD ANGEL

A DREAM

I chanced upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical thing of a dream the
other night, that you shall hear of. I had been reading the "Loves of
the Angels," and went to bed with my head full of speculations,
suggested by that extraordinary legend. It had given birth to
innumerable conjectures; and, I remember, the last waking thought,
which I gave expression to on my pillow, was a sort of wonder "what
could come of it."

I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could scarcely make
out--but to some celestial region. It was not the real heavens
neither--not the downright Bible heaven--but a kind of fairyland
heaven, about which a poor human fancy may have leave to sport and air
itself, I will hope, without presumption.

Methought--what wild things dreams are!--I was present--at what would
you imagine?--at an angel's gossiping.

Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, or whether it came
purely of its own head, neither you nor I know--but there lay, sure
enough, wrapt in its little cloudy swaddling bands--a Child Angel.