It is almost
      superfluous to add that the glasses of the instrument, as worn by
      the old lady, had been exchanged by her for a pair better adapted
      to my years. They suited me, in fact, to a T.

      The clergyman, who merely pretended to tie the fatal knot, was a
      boon companion of Talbot’s, and no priest. He was an excellent
      “whip,” however; and having doffed his cassock to put on a
      great-coat, he drove the hack which conveyed the “happy couple”
      out of town. Talbot took a seat at his side. The two scoundrels
      were thus “in at the death,” and through a half-open window of
      the back parlor of the inn, amused themselves in grinning at the
      _dénouement_ of the drama. I believe I shall be forced to call
      them both out. Nevertheless, I am _not_ the husband of my great, great,
      grandmother; and this is a reflection which affords me infinite
      relief;—but I _am_ the husband of Madame Lalande—of Madame
      Stéphanie Lalande—with whom my good old relative, besides making
      me her sole heir when she dies—if she ever does—has been at the
      trouble of concocting me a match. In conclusion: I am done
      forever with _billets doux_, and am never to be met without
      SPECTACLES. KING PEST


      A Tale Containing an Allegory. The gods do bear and will allow in kings
     The things which they abhor in rascal routes. —_Buckhurst’s Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex._

      About twelve o’clock, one night in the month of October, and
      during the chivalrous reign of the third Edward, two seamen
      belonging to the crew of the _>Free and Easy_, a trading schooner
      plying between Sluys and the Thames, and then at anchor in that
      river, were much astonished to find themselves seated in the
      tap-room of an ale-house in the parish of St. Andrews,
      London—which ale-house bore for sign the portraiture of a “Jolly
      Tar.”

      The room, although ill-contrived, smoke-blackened, low-pitched,
      and in every other respect agreeing with the general character of
      such places at the period—was, nevertheless, in the opinion of
      the grotesque groups scattered here and there within it,
      sufficiently well adapted to its purpose. Of these groups our two seamen formed, I think, the most
      interesting, if not the most conspicuous. The one who appeared to be the elder, and whom his companion
      addressed by the characteristic appellation of “Legs,” was at the
      same time much the taller of the two. He might have measured six
      feet and a half, and an habitual stoop in the shoulders seemed to
      have been the necessary consequence of an altitude so enormous. Superfluities in height were, however, more than accounted for by
      deficiencies in other respects. He was exceedingly thin; and
      might, as his associates asserted, have answered, when drunk, for
      a pennant at the mast-head, or, when sober, have served for a
      jib-boom. But these jests, and others of a similar nature, had
      evidently produced, at no time, any effect upon the cachinnatory
      muscles of the tar. With high cheek-bones, a large hawk-nose,
      retreating chin, fallen under-jaw, and huge protruding white
      eyes, the expression of his countenance, although tinged with a
      species of dogged indifference to matters and things in general,
      was not the less utterly solemn and serious beyond all attempts
      at imitation or description. The younger seaman was, in all outward appearance, the converse
      of his companion. His stature could not have exceeded four feet. A pair of stumpy bow-legs supported his squat, unwieldy figure,
      while his unusually short and thick arms, with no ordinary fists
      at their extremities, swung off dangling from his sides like the
      fins of a sea-turtle. Small eyes, of no particular color,
      twinkled far back in his head. His nose remained buried in the
      mass of flesh which enveloped his round, full, and purple face;
      and his thick upper-lip rested upon the still thicker one beneath
      with an air of complacent self-satisfaction, much heightened by
      the owner’s habit of licking them at intervals. He evidently
      regarded his tall shipmate with a feeling half-wondrous,
      half-quizzical; and stared up occasionally in his face as the red
      setting sun stares up at the crags of Ben Nevis. Various and eventful, however, had been the peregrinations of the
      worthy couple in and about the different tap-houses of the
      neighbourhood during the earlier hours of the night. Funds even
      the most ample, are not always everlasting: and it was with empty
      pockets our friends had ventured upon the present hostelrie. At the precise period, then, when this history properly
      commences, Legs, and his fellow Hugh Tarpaulin, sat, each with
      both elbows resting upon the large oaken table in the middle of
      the floor, and with a hand upon either cheek. They were eyeing,
      from behind a huge flagon of unpaid-for “humming-stuff,” the
      portentous words, “No Chalk,” which to their indignation and
      astonishment were scored over the doorway by means of that very
      mineral whose presence they purported to deny. Not that the gift
      of decyphering written characters—a gift among the commonalty of
      that day considered little less cabalistical than the art of
      inditing—could, in strict justice, have been laid to the charge
      of either disciple of the sea; but there was, to say the truth, a
      certain twist in the formation of the letters—an indescribable
      lee-lurch about the whole—which foreboded, in the opinion of both
      seamen, a long run of dirty weather; and determined them at once,
      in the allegorical words of Legs himself, to “pump ship, clew up
      all sail, and scud before the wind.”

      Having accordingly disposed of what remained of the ale, and
      looped up the points of their short doublets, they finally made a
      bolt for the street. Although Tarpaulin rolled twice into the
      fire-place, mistaking it for the door, yet their escape was at
      length happily effected—and half after twelve o’clock found our
      heroes ripe for mischief, and running for life down a dark alley
      in the direction of St. Andrew’s Stair, hotly pursued by the
      landlady of the “Jolly Tar.”

      At the epoch of this eventful tale, and periodically, for many
      years before and after, all England, but more especially the
      metropolis, resounded with the fearful cry of “Plague!” The city
      was in a great measure depopulated—and in those horrible regions,
      in the vicinity of the Thames, where amid the dark, narrow, and
      filthy lanes and alleys, the Demon of Disease was supposed to
      have had his nativity, Awe, Terror, and Superstition were alone
      to be found stalking abroad.