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Mentioning my poor Lirriper brings into my head his own youngest
brother the Doctor though Doctor of what I am sure it would be hard
to say unless Liquor, for neither Physic nor Music nor yet Law does
Joshua Lirriper know a morsel of except continually being summoned
to the County Court and having orders made upon him which he runs
away from, and once was taken in the passage of this very house with
an umbrella up and the Major's hat on, giving his name with the
door-mat round him as Sir Johnson Jones, K.C.B. in spectacles
residing at the Horse Guards. On which occasion he had got into the
house not a minute before, through the girl letting him on the mat
when he sent in a piece of paper twisted more like one of those
spills for lighting candles than a note, offering me the choice
between thirty shillings in hand and his brains on the premises
marked immediate and waiting for an answer. My dear it gave me such
a dreadful turn to think of the brains of my poor dear Lirriper's
own flesh and blood flying about the new oilcloth however unworthy
to be so assisted, that I went out of my room here to ask him what
he would take once for all not to do it for life when I found him in
the custody of two gentlemen that I should have judged to be in the
feather-bed trade if they had not announced the law, so fluffy were
their personal appearance. "Bring your chains, sir," says Joshua to
the littlest of the two in the biggest hat, "rivet on my fetters!"
Imagine my feelings when I pictered him clanking up Norfolk Street
in irons and Miss Wozenham looking out of window! "Gentlemen," I
says all of a tremble and ready to drop "please to bring him into
Major Jackman's apartments." So they brought him into the Parlours,
and when the Major spies his own curly-brimmed hat on him which
Joshua Lirriper had whipped off its peg in the passage for a
military disguise he goes into such a tearing passion that he tips
it off his head with his hand and kicks it up to the ceiling with
his foot where it grazed long afterwards. "Major" I says "be cool
and advise me what to do with Joshua my dead and gone Lirriper's own
youngest brother." "Madam" says the Major "my advice is that you
board and lodge him in a Powder Mill, with a handsome gratuity to
the proprietor when exploded." "Major" I says "as a Christian you
cannot mean your words." "Madam" says the Major "by the Lord I do!"
and indeed the Major besides being with all his merits a very
passionate man for his size had a bad opinion of Joshua on account
of former troubles even unattended by liberties taken with his
apparel. When Joshua Lirriper hears this conversation betwixt us he
turns upon the littlest one with the biggest hat and says "Come sir!
Remove me to my vile dungeon. Where is my mouldy straw?" My dear
at the picter of him rising in my mind dressed almost entirely in
padlocks like Baron Trenck in Jemmy's book I was so overcome that I
burst into tears and I says to the Major, "Major take my keys and
settle with these gentlemen or I shall never know a happy minute
more," which was done several times both before and since, but still
I must remember that Joshua Lirriper has his good feelings and shows
them in being always so troubled in his mind when he cannot wear
mourning for his brother. Many a long year have I left off my
widow's mourning not being wishful to intrude, but the tender point
in Joshua that I cannot help a little yielding to is when he writes
"One single sovereign would enable me to wear a decent suit of
mourning for my much-loved brother. I vowed at the time of his
lamented death that I would ever wear sables in memory of him but
Alas how short-sighted is man, How keep that vow when penniless!"
It says a good deal for the strength of his feelings that he
couldn't have been seven year old when my poor Lirriper died and to
have kept to it ever since is highly creditable. But we know
there's good in all of us,--if we only knew where it was in some of
us,--and though it was far from delicate in Joshua to work upon the
dear child's feelings when first sent to school and write down into
Lincolnshire for his pocket-money by return of post and got it,
still he is my poor Lirriper's own youngest brother and mightn't
have meant not paying his bill at the Salisbury Arms when his
affection took him down to stay a fortnight at Hatfield churchyard
and might have meant to keep sober but for bad company.
Consequently if the Major HAD played on him with the garden-engine
which he got privately into his room without my knowing of it, I
think that much as I should have regretted it there would have been
words betwixt the Major and me. Therefore my dear though he played
on Mr. Buffle by mistake being hot in his head, and though it might
have been misrepresented down at Wozenham's into not being ready for
Mr. Buffle in other respects he being the Assessed Taxes, still I do
not so much regret it as perhaps I ought. And whether Joshua
Lirriper will yet do well in life I cannot say, but I did hear of
his coming, out at a Private Theatre in the character of a Bandit
without receiving any offers afterwards from the regular managers.
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