offered Mrs. Wilson a pair of scissors to crop
the obnoxious tangle while her spouse slept.
But the little wife said, with tears in her eyes,
that it would be as much as her ringlets were
worth to touch it, and it grew and grew until
it aggravated many others to try what they
could do in the same line, for the way in which
the little man vaunted himself of his beard
was quite insufferable. He thought himself
wiser with it; talked about patriarchs and
other obsolete topics, and elevated his chin in
the air until it was a sore temptation to all
beholders to pluck him by the beard. After
a period of various degrees of stubbliness,
light gentlemen of Milverston came forth
decked with more or less hair; some with
only moustache and imperial, others all over
except the nose and forehead—it was pure
contradiction in them and emulation—which
of them ever thought of coveting the locks
on his friend's head? but many, many longed
for the hair off Mr. Matthew Wilson's chin.
It became quite a mania. The shop-boys all
began to cultivate their faces, and Miss
Wolsey got some stuff with a long name
which was warranted to give the moustache
a superlatively elegant curl. She told me it
sold admirably; Mrs. Matthew Wilson withdrew
her custom from the bun-shop on that
very account; Miss Wolsey was false to her
sex. By degrees the mania decreased; first
one countenance lost its superfluous adornment,
then another, and finally at a general
réunion in Mrs. Briskett's show-room, the first
offender's wife exhibited his moustache triumphantly;
she had gummed and twirled it
into a true-love knot, and put it in a locket
appended to her watch-chain. After that
incident there were no more non-professional
beards.

Milverston owns two Latter-day Saints of
the real kind; the one a gigantic blacksmith,
the other a small man with the aspect of a
Skye terrier crossed in its affections. The
former always looms large at the doorway of
his forge, which is in a wide thoroughfare,
waiting for equine customers; whilst his myrmidons
in the background are blowing the
furnace, welding bits of metal, and performing
other labours of the craft. His beard is
dingy grey and yellow, and is scattered over
his broad chest, while his hair is plaited behind
in several little tails, and then clubbed
up into a single twist. The other man is a
basket-maker, and every market-day he sits
just before our house, with his wares for
sale; his nature, from what I have observed,
is as kindly as his countenance is cross-
grained.

Amongst others whose peculiarities have
caught my attention is the Quixotic gentleman
who almost lives at the subscription library,
with his hat at the back of his head, and his
eyes always looking vaguely about for adventures;
also the Falstaffian auctioneer, who
eclipses completely the light of a bay window
in passing and the multitude of young
clerks (most of them of singularly short stature),
emulous of such fame as wonderfully
lacquered boots, ingenious ties, and immaculate
all-round collars can afford them.

And then the mendicants, who may be
likened to fragments of battered old wall,
such as we see sometimes shouldering respectable
bricks and mortar—the Irishman—that
animate bundle of rags, that scarecrow, that
compound of dirt, roguery, and wit, who
evades the policeman, and sings ballads in a
cracked voice, interspersed with dancing: the
man with laces who infests the bridge and
hangs his hands like a begging poodle; the
sturdy fellow on one crutch who demands
alms with a your-money-or-your-life air:
crazy Betty, who bows graciously to all young
people, and collects fragments of stick and
coal; the cripple girl with beautiful blue
eyes, and the old match-woman, who whines
so cleverly, and smells so odiously of gin.
Besides these there is that eternal woman
with the babies, or who is just going to have
babies, and has nothing to dress them in
when they come, and the people without
arms or legs, or with odd ones, who crawl
about on market-day, and harrow up everybody's
feeling, nine times out of ten unnecessarily.
These are as much features of Milverston
streets as the church steeple or the
inn doorways.

Some persons have foolishly regretted that
I do not inherit my mother's prettiness
rather than my father's high, aristocratic,
Roman features; but it is needless to say
that such weakness is unshared by me. I am
proud that I bear the stamp of my descent
upon my face, and would not exchange it for
the charms of the Three Graces combined.
For what is beauty to expression? What
indeed? Beauty is but a passing monthly
rose; expression is a crisp everlasting!
Beauty fades at the touch of time; expression
gains in intensity by every added year!
Beauty gratifies the eye, but expression delights
the heart, engages the understanding,
and abides within the memory so long as it
holds its sway.

My life is what might be expected from a
Cleverboots—a not unworthy Cleverboots.
My tastes are literary, my manners firm but
unobtrusive, my principles of the strongest
character. From my youth up I have been
an observer—may I, without trenching on
the domains of the more lordly sex, say, a
critical observer of human nature. I have
shot folly as she flew by, and transfixed
frivolity with a glance, throwing, from time
to time, a few remarks on paper to that
effect, with a view to holding the mirror up
to art and nature both. From grave to gay,
I have passed with the airy versatility of a
true Cleverboots; and if my portraits be not
always flattering, lay not the fault to me, but
to the figures that flit before my magic glass,
which but reflects them faithfully, and never
condescends to exaggerate or distort.