IMPROVING A BULL.

The highly respectable old lady who addressed us on a former occasion, has obliged us with another communication, on a most important subject:—

“Sir,—You would have heard before, but the cause was a mad bull, which being tossed might at my age be very ill-convenient. But that’s nothing to what I’m going to tell you. Only to think of the power of horns! Bulls tosses very high, I’ve heard, but did you ever hear, Mr. Conductor, of a mad bull tossing a widow and six children across the sea, half over the side of the round world, from our Borough to Australia? Well you may stare, but it’s a fact!

“The bull run right at me, full butt, and so I grasped my umbrella with both hands and ran to where the shops was—drat the boys, how they did screech about one!—and it was cold water, which I doesn’t often drink, by which means I came to in a pastry-cook’s. The name was Bezzle, I see it on a bag while she was putting in gingerbread nuts for Mrs. Jenks’s baby, which I bought not to be under obligation for stepping in.

“‘Gracious mussy, Mrs. Bezzle,’ says I, ‘why wasn’t I killed? What ever is the reason of them bulls?’

“Says she, ‘It’s market day.’

“‘Smithfield!’ says I.

“Says Mrs. Bezzle, ‘Mum, all the abuse and outcry against Smithfield is very narrow-minded.’

“Says I, ‘How so?’

“Says she, ‘It don’t consider shop-keepers. When a bull takes a line of street, it drives the people into the shops on either side, and they make purchases for fear of being gored.’

“‘Heighty teighty, mum,’ I says, ‘you are alluding to my gingerbread.’

“Says she, ‘I scorn allusions. It’s a rule. Whether it’s bulls or thunderstorms, or what it is we look to, we respects whatever sends us customers.’

“Says I, ‘Mrs. Bezzle, you astonish me. Where’s your family trade?’

“Says she, ‘There are too many traders. Where one of us earns meat, three of us only earn potatoes.’

“‘Emigrate,’ says I.

“Says she, ‘That’s very well, but then,’ says she, ‘in such a move it’s hard to know which way to put one’s foot, and when a step’s made, if it’s a wrong one, it’s not easy to retrace it.’

“‘Spirited trading—’ says I.

“‘Ah!’ says she, cutting me short rudely; but I forgive her, owing to her feelings. ‘Take Chandlery, within seven minutes of this door, mum. One man sells soap under cost price, and other things at profit, hoping to bring people to his shop for soap, and then get them to buy other articles. But his neighbour sells cheap herrings in the same way; another sacrifices pickles, and another makes light of the candle business. What’s the result? Folks buy in the cheapest market; go for soap to the man who sells that at the ruin prices, go for herrings to his neighbour, go down the other street for pickles, and get candles over the way.’

“‘Well,’ says I, ‘that’s an Illustration of 451Cheapness, but,’ says I, ‘it’s dishonest. A fair trader has no right to sell an article at less than its first cost.’

“‘No right!’ says she. ‘And I dessay he thinks he has no right to starve. It’s very hard to judge. The young tradesman, with his little capital and knowledge of a trade, has got his sweetheart and his ambition. He must wedge into society somehow, and he begins with the sharp end.’

“‘But,’ says I, ‘it isn’t sharp, Mrs. Bezzle.’

“So she shakes her head; says she, ‘I’ll give you an example which is true, and one out of a many.’

“‘I once knew an excellent young man who died of cholera. He left a widow and three little children. After deducting all expenses for her husband’s burial, the widow found that she possessed a hundred pounds. With fear and trembling, she embarked this money, in an effort to support herself. With it she fitted up a little shop, and had begun to earn a livelihood, when——’

“‘Well, Mrs. Bezzle, what prevented her?’

——“‘An empty house close by was taken by another person following her trade. Immediately her receipts diminished. One cannot live except by bread that can be got out of a neighbour’s cupboard. The widow and the children have already lost eighty pounds, have only twenty left; their house is taken by the year, and so they still are in it; and the poor lost woman cannot be comforted. Her hope is gone.’

“‘Heigh, dear,’ says I, ‘it wasn’t so in my young days. I believe this is owing to overpopulation,’ says I.

“‘Well,’ says Mrs. Bezzle, perking up. ‘It’s cruel to blame us for our struggles. What if I have got nine, and six on ’em dependant on penny tarts and gingerbread for meat, drink, washing, and lodging, are they to be thrown in my teeth?’

“‘Emigrate,’ says I, six times more pointedly than before.

“‘Where to?’ says she, ‘and how? Who can tell me that?’

“‘Go and lay your case before Parson Pullaway; he knows our M.P., and he knows all about colonial places. Hasn’t his brother’s wife’s first cousin got one of them? He is Sub-under-Secretary to Lord Oxfordmixture, who has all the emigration settlements under his thumb.’

“‘I’ll think about it,’ says Mrs. Bezzle, quite struck-like,—for down came the scales on the counter like a shot, and the whole ounce of sugar-candy jumped into the little boy’s apron of its own accord. He had come for two penn’orth on pretence of a cough. ‘Besides, didn’t Mr. Pullaway christen seven out of my nine children, and not a penny of the fees owing for?’

“The last word as ever I spoke to Mrs. Bezzle was, ‘Emigrate!’

“Well, who would have thought it? Next week Mrs. Bezzle’s business was to sell. The week after, it was sold. The week after that, Mrs. Bezzle and her son Tom, and Tom’s wife, and Tom’s brother Sam, and Mrs. Bezzle’s eldest daughter, and little James, and Sarah, and Mary Ann, and the two little urchins, were on board a ship, at Liverpool, bound for Port Philip. That’s a year, come Michaelmas, ago.

“But, drat ’em, why didn’t they pay the postage? Two-and-two is a consideration when butter (best fresh) is a rising a penny a pound every week. Not but what I was glad to hear from Mrs. Bezzle. Tom and his wife, and his brother Sam, are settled in a ‘run;’ and though there was some words I couldn’t make out, I dare say they didn’t explain how a ‘run’ could be a settlement. ‘Quite the reverse!’ as Mrs. Jenks said—(I have made it up with her, though she did insinuate the gingerbread nuts the mad bull made me buy gave her babby the cholera; and, bless it! it was only the teeth after all). Mrs. Bezzle has settled herself in the mutton-pie and cheesecake line, and has no fear of opposition; and as in Port Philip there is good digestions and plenty of ’em, pies is popular. Prices, too, is better,—penny pies being tuppence. James is on the ‘run,’ along with his eldest brother. Sarah an’t married yet,—for out of six offers, a young gal of seventeen has a right to be puzzled for six months or so, and more dropping in every week. Mary Anne is family governess to a rich copper-man, with plenty of stock—I suppose by that he is in the soup line. However, all is doing well.

“Well, Mr. Conductor, it was all owing to that bull, wasn’t it? If I hadn’t improved that solemn occasion, where would Mrs. Bezzle, and four out of six of her helpless offspring have been by this time?—why, in the workhus.”