MARTHA MITES, "WHO CARED FOR HERSELF."

GREAT truths need few words! and we will content ourselves with laying before our readers (should any be found rash enough) one of 66 woman is a riddle!" So the greatest truths in the fewest syllables, thought Simon Plumb, as, disappointed in his hopes of a wife, he returned to his shop, sagely impressed with the line of Congreve, that "woman is the reflection of heaven in a pond, and he that leaps at her is sunk." Now, although Simon Plumb had, in the days of his youth, jumped at and caught cherries, he knew not how impossible it was to catch a woman twenty-four hours in the same mind; Simon slapped himself into a chair, and vowed never to think again of Martha Mites!

Martha was an only child; her father lived by what killed others -physic. He was an apothecary in one of our ancient cities; and, as the people in that partieular city had faith in an apothecary, John Mites became a man of money: truly it might be said of him, his pills were gilt.

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Martha was a fortunate child, for her father left her fifteen thousand pounds with this sum she might have lived a life of plenty, but plenty was to her one of the seven deadly sins; and as in her childhood she had picked and pilfered from her school-fellows cakes and pence, so now she, on a larger scale, lived upon her neighbors. The teas she drank, the dinners she ate, at the expense of others, were innumerable; and, as it was observed by her opposite neighbors that not a crumb was ever seen to enter her doors, it was wisely specu elsegot lated that the gentle Martha Mites lived upon the crumbs she where.

Martha received an invitation to London, which she accepted. The wagon conveyed this exemplary young woman by easy stages to her favored friend; and luxuriating on two or three hard eggs, and bits of bread, Miss Mites, whose drink was water, lived like a princess. Arrived at her destination, and being worth fifteen thousand pounds, and the mistress of the house having a son without as many pence, Martha was the diamond of the dwelling, and, as the lady justly observed, Miss Mites was worth gold to any man!

sence.

of It is now nearly a century ago, when Simon Plumb, a grocer no mean wealth, and luxuriating in the title of Captain in one of the City Train-Bands, those brave defenders of our country's peace,— honored the company at a Lord Mayor's ball with the light of his preThe lady Martha was visiting was known to Grocer Plumb,she had her sugar from him,-and Simon was introduced to Martha Mites used as he was to sweets, and up to his eyes in barley-sugar, Simon looked and longed for the apothecary's daughter,-nay, he even went so far as to make her an offer of marriage upon the spot; but Martha, who had open eyes to her own interest, had no wish to marry a man of figs!

Simon was constant in his visits, and, as he brought her presents, Martha was anything but shy,-for, as long as she could get any thing, Martha was always civil; and thus for months she kept him at bay, receiving his presents, but refusing, though often pressed, to name the day of marriage; for she wisely thought, that if she married,

the money would not be, as it were, under her own immediate thumb.

On the day that Simon Plumb entered his shop, disappointed and in wrath, Martha had undergone an abduction. She fed him with hopes so long, that hopes had ceased to nourish; and, with true military ardor, Simon resolved upon a forcible carrying-off. He enticed her into a coach under pretence of a jaunt, and, accompanied by a brother officer-not a sheriff's-drove to the Fleet, where marriages were then legally performed. Martha, as soon as she saw the " cross hands" over the door-way, shouted at the pitch of her voice ten thousand murders; but Captain Plumb was not a man to be daunted by a woman, whatever he might be by one of his own sex, and carried her kicking in his arms before the man of marriages. Martha broke windows, screamed, and hallooed; the parson, with his book in hand, began mumbling words, simple in themselves, but deadly in their effects; and in a few minutes more, he would have added another sin to his soul, and a marriage to his list,-for marriages are only pardonable when they are made in heaven! When Martha's screams became louder, some butchers who were passing, finding what was going on, and being themselves married men, burst open the doors, and rescued the pair from the jaws of matrimony. They could have killed sheep with pleasure, but they had more charity than to let a marriage be performed; and yet 'tis said butchers have no feeling!

Had Simon breakfasted upon pod pepper, he couldn't have looked redder in the face. But Martha, like an injured excellence, returned weeping home, shut herself in her bed room, and for an hour and a half was absorbed in looking at the presents she had received from Simon Plumb, who, for the next month had no tongue for treacle, or taste for tea, but sat wrapped in sentiment and Martha Mites.

Martha, "who cared for herself," learned a golden lesson from the page of Simon's courtship,-that a lover is worth something! and, to do her justice, she was not slow in profiting by it. Baited with fifteen thousand pounds, Martha hooked more gudgeons and more presents than we have space to enumerate; and on her return to her native city, she spread her nets so well as to cheat one to whom cheating was second nature, to wit, a lawyer, who delighted in the name of Octavius Lizard.

Octavius Lizard was an attorney of no small practice; and it was the wonder of many how a lawyer, who knew so well what deceit was, could ever be deceived; but truth is sometimes strange, and the attorney was outwitted. Martha had fifteen thousand pounds; Lizard, a good practice, a large house, and was beside a bachelor.

Lizard was ardent in his suit, and Martha willing-to take anything she could get. One day Octavius-for the lawyer would show itself -obtained her consent, and a bond of forfeiture to the amount of five hundred pounds on the event of her after-refusal.

Let not Martha be censured as shallow in allowing Lizard so strong a hold upon her; it was the depth of cunning; the lawyer was to her a pocket glass, that she could see through without straining her eyesight, and she could squeeze him as she could a lemon. From that hour the house of the attorney became a house of call,” for she gave him not only her bond, but the sweets of her society;

she was subject to fits of jealousy, which fits came upon her regu larly three times a day. Never did Octavius sit down to breakfast, but Martha, seized with fit the first, came in for her share; his chops no longer were in couples, for Martha at his dinner-hour was jealous for the second time, and chopped with him; tea, that meal of slop and scandal, never passed but Martha came for the third time, and sipped the cups of comfort! Shylock's bond was a plaything to this-a pound of flesh! Lizard's was for a rib!

Now Octavius was a lawyer, and, as such, was in the habit of picking others; to be picked was contrary to practice. Still he knew not how to complain, as love was the occasion of this tender solicitude upon her part, and the cost upon his; but then 'twas odd her fits were ever hungry, and always came at meal-times. Should he deny himself to her? should he? no! fifteen thousand pounds were not to be offended, and Lizard gulped his chops and tea. He pressed her to name a day; Martha blushed, at least she said so; but Lizard, though he had often made black white, couldn't metamorphose a dull yellow into red. Martha, hopeless of living longer upon trust promised to become Mrs. Octavius Lizard that day month. The month was passed, as many other months had been, in fattening at his expense. The day was at hand, Lizard procured a license and a suit of clothes. The morning came: Martha was dressed; Lizard, even to his shoe-tie, looked the bridegroom. She called him "naughty man," and hinted at his want of confidence in having "asked her for a bond." He, all excuses, unlocked his iron chest, and selected from a heap of harmless papers her marriage promise. The lawyer made an effort to kneel; but, being stiff-knee'd, preferred shuffling,-as he often did, and presented her with her bond. He was despatched to the church to see that things were as they should be; she was to follow. The parson stood ready for his task of comfort, for his words were plums, and every one a mouthful. The guests-as guests always are-were open-mouthed, and Lizard open-eyed; he looked, and looked: Martha was dressed when he left her, and now two hours behind the time! Minute followed minute, and wonder came with wonder; but Martha never came at all: for months she had had three meals a day,-one was her usual fare, and Octavius was outwitted. He stood livid amid the jeers of the standers-by; his fifteen thousand pounds had vanished in a whiff; he had been liberal, and, what was worst of all, got nothing by it; he felt it as a professional affront; and Lizard never after named the name of Martha Mites.

Some thirty years had passed since the last-recorded period in the history of Martha Mites, when an object of some curiosity attracted the eyes and footsteps of the worthy inhabitants of the city of

The windows were full of eyes, and heads thrust forth in all directions; the streets were thronged, and many little boys stood yelping in the kennels, as little boys will do. An old broken coach, of some century and a half old, stood in the centre of the High-street. The paint of by-gone years was yet visible in blemished patches; the panels, worm-eaten and bare, bore here and there a trace of what had once been varnish, and a curious urchin counted no less than three different spots, which beyond question had once been gilt;-the mortal remains of a coat of arms. And there it creaked upon the wheels that now, alas! moved not, for the horse had dropped down dead!

And there it lay upon the ground, a curious study to the na

turalist that it should have breathed its last an hour since, when to all appearance it had been the anatomy of a horse for fifty years; profitless to all but the bone-burner, for the hide was worn into holes, and no dog had the vanity to imagine there was a dinner to be had from the whole carcass. An old man, dressed in a strange livery, sat motionless upon the box; the reins, two pieces of rope, hung in his hands, and he looked at the dead beast as though he saw the shillings it had been worth turned into lead! The only faculty left him was sight, and that he fastened upon the skin of bones before him, deaf and senseless!deaf he must have been not to have heard the accents addressed to him, and in no penny-whistle voice, by a head thrust out from what had once been a window of the coach. The head had a bonnet on it, said to have been found nineteen years before upon a dunghill; and the face looked

yes, it was that of Martha Mites, and in a voice of gentle admonition she shouted to the reverend phantom on the box, "Adam, you brute! why don't you go on?" Martha half tumbled from the coach,--steps there were none,—and with a shriek convinced the people how keenly she felt the loss of her favorite steed! Martha looked, and for the next ten minutes, like Adam, lived in alabaster!

The chief merit of an historian is distinctness, and we fear we shall not be entitled to assume that credit to ourselves without explaining how Martha Mites, Adam Thornton, and the dead horse, happened to be in the High-street.

The termination of Octavius Lizard's courtship put an end to the like solicitations from others, and Martha now more than ever "cared for herself." Many are the tales told of her penurious habits, and the eyes of Simon Plumb would doubtless have been delighted to have seen the dress he gave her thirty years before, now hanging in tatters upon her person. So wretched was her appearance, that numberless were the pence offered by way of charity to the "poor woman;" but Martha had a soul above pity, and on one occasion only, was known to accept of it. In her journey to London in the waggon, the waggoner, a poor man with eight children, struck with her miserable look, refused his fare, and said, "Poor soul! you want it even more than I do ;" Martha left him, and an hour afterwards purchased five thousand pounds worth of stock.

Her avarice grew so much upon her, as to cause her to deny herself the necessaries of life. The streets supplied her with fuel, and Martha might be seen with an old rag in one hand and a stick in the other, searching up and down for bits of wood. The crumbs shaken from a table-cloth never feasted the sparrows when Martha saw them fall, and sparrows were not the only things she robbed; wherever she went, something was missed,-threads, needles, bits of tape, nothing was beneath the notice of her acquiring mind.

It was at this time that Martha fell in with old Adain Thornton, a prototype of herself, a wretched being; in fact a man Martha Mites! He had wealth; his money-bags, were to him, wife, friends, children! and with these he held communion as with a second self. His wife the great smiter had cut off but a few years back; and Adam was left a widower with an only child, a son,- -a noble, manly creature, in one word, the opposite of his sainted sire. His mother suddenly dead, and with her his means of subsistence, the pen became his refuge, and a garret, of course, his abode.

Martha Mites met with Adam Thornton; they had but one soul' though perhaps that is too large an allowance: one room will shelter two, one candle light two,-and should they, who knew so well what candles cost, burn two? No! from that hour they burnt but one. Adam Thornton had an old house in the outskirts of the town, and there they lived together. Here was a sop in the pan for scandal! but we beg to assure our readers the reports were unfounded. The house was in ruins; the doors were without hinges, the frames without glass, and, as Adam liked a free circulation of air, the roof remained unrepaired, but with a wise economy its uses were two-fold, for the well had no bucket, and buckets cost money! The boys who brought the water, asked a penny for a tubful. Adam was opposed to all extortions, and, like his predecessor of the same name, trusted to Heaven for his wants, the holes in the roof supplied them with water for drink; and it was evident they never applied it to any other purpose. The floors were rotted, the walls bare, and the whole dwelling-if dwelling it might be called-looked desolate and waste! And here they lived, but not in idleness; for they busied themselves in rearing cabbages, both for sale and home consumption. A patient slave, he trod the path she pointed out, for with all her faults Adam worshipped her; her footsteps seemed as very light, for she opened to his eyes the doors of many saving ways, and they loved each other, not perhaps for common virtues, but uncommon scantiness; and they lived wrapt in each other, delighting in the emulation which could live upon the least, but Martha always bore the palm. One day she kindled with a bright thought a thought to pave the way to easy riches. Adam had a coach, a relic of his grandfather; true, it was the worse for wear, but still on wheels; and wisely did Martha think that by purchasing a horse it could ply for hire as a fly. It was a gaining thought; and a horse, blind of both eyes, was purchased from a heighboring nacker's for the worth of as many pounds of dog's-meat. A coachman was only wanting to complete this gorgeous equipage, and Adam, dressed for the occasion, mounted the box; his upper man was squeezed into the faded trappings of a drummer-boy's coat, the trimmings hung in threads about him, and Adam looked as if he had been a drummer-boy all his life, with only one coat. His lower person, after making allowance for a century's change of fashion, wear, and moths, looked respectable, though in want! Adam mounted the box; but Martha had a jealous eye, for Adam as a coachman might, as other coachmen do, peculate in sixpences. Seated inside, Martha could tell to a fraction the coming in. Thus then they plied; but how ill is industry rewarded, not once did they obtain a job! Bob, the horse, was a little feeder, and so was Martha, and Bob's allowance was cabbage-stalks and weeds. A week passed in patient endurance of the jeers of the more fortunate fly-drivers, when, on going up the High-street, the horse, unmindful of what they had paid for him, had the ingratitude to drop down dead!

Bob again became the property of the nacker; and Martha returned with Adam thoughtfully home. They had lost shillings by their bargain, for the horse weighed pounds less than when the nacker sold it, and Martha justly lamented that so much good food had been thrown away. Adam's coat, too, had been purchased