ham. He had done well in London. 'You know, sir,' he
said, 'how poor our family was. Well, I had enough of poverty, and I
made up my mind to come to London and be either a man or a mouse.'

In the London of to-day the heads of some of our greatest establishments
are Suffolk men. We all know the stately pile in Holborn, once
Meekings', now Wallis's, where all the world and his wife go to buy. Mr.
Wallis hails from Stowmarket, and the man who fits up London shops in the
most tasty style, Mr. Sage, of Gray's Inn Road, was a Suffolk carpenter,
who, when out of work, with his last guinea got some cards printed, one
of which got him a job, which ultimately led on to fame and fortune.

No, Suffolk has long ceased to be silly. It must have deserved the title
in the days which I can remember when a Conservative M.P., amidst
enthusiastic cheering, at Ipswich, intimated that it was quite as well
the sun and moon were placed high up in the heavens, else

'Some reforming ass
Would soon propose to pluck them down
And light the world with gas.'

One of the oddest, most attractive, and most original women of the last
century was Elizabeth Simpson, a Suffolk girl, who ran away from her
home, where she was never taught anything, at the age of sixteen, to make
her fortune, and to win fame. In both cases she succeeded, though not so
soon as she could have wished. Failing to touch the hard heart of the
manager of the Norwich Theatre, a Welshman of the name of Griffiths, she
packed up her things in a bandbox, and, good-looking and audacious,
landed herself on the Holborn pavement. 'By the time you receive this,'
she wrote to her mother, 'I shall leave Standingfield perhaps for ever.
You are surprised, but be not uneasy; believe the step I have undertaken
is indiscreet, but by no means criminal, unless I sin by not acquainting
you with it. I now endure every pang, am not lost to every feeling, on
thus quitting the tenderest and best of parents, I would say most
beloved, too, but cannot prove my affection, yet time may. To that I
must submit my hope of retaining your regard. The censures of the world
I despise, as the most worthy incur the reproaches of that. Should I
ever think you will wish to hear from me I will write.' A pretty,
unprotected, unknown girl of sixteen, in London, had, we can well
believe, no easy time of it. Strangers followed her in the street,
people insulted her in the theatre, suspicious l