Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1874 — A FRIEND “UP TOWN.” [ARTICLE]

A FRIEND “UP TOWN.”

Nurse Maycock was sitting in a disconsolate attitude, her cap ribbons hanging limply about, her under lip almost in contact with her nose. My youngestborn, sprawling idly on her lap, found hardly holding room there, and was sliding down the inclined plane of her knees all unheeded. Nurse, like her master, has occasional fits of gloom and depression, and her sadness, as his, generally proceeds from the same cause, that is, lack of money. “Well, Maycock,” I said, glancing round the nursery, “how are you getting on here? Children all right?” “Yes, sir; there ain’t nothing the matter with them," with a sigh. “ I don’t feel just right myself.” “ Spasms again?” “ A vi’lent pain in the small of the back-~just there, you know, sir,” said' Mrs. Maycock, giving herself a sharp blow withthe fist-on the part affected. “Liver, no doubt,” I said. “Take a pill.” “I’ve took ’em till I’m tired of’em, sir. Not but what I should feel better, I dare say, if I was more comfortable in my mind.” “ What’s your secret grief, Mrs. Maycock?”

“ Money, sir—money. I don’t know where it goes to, really; and children, sir, they’re always dunning of you. Here’s my daughter Mary going out to service, and money wanted to get her things, and where it’s coming from I don’t know!” “ I wish I knew where money would come from when it’s wanted.” “ Ah,” said Mrs. Maycock, resignedly, “ you can’t get blood out of stone. Well, thank goodness! I’ve got a friend up there,” she said, with a backward jerk of the head. “A happy frame of mind, nurse,” I said. “I wish I had such confidence in the powers above.” “ Bless you, sir, he’s the same to one as another, as long as you’ve got anything for him." “ Your meaning, Maycock? I don’t exactly understand your doctrine.” “My friend up town, sir—Mr. Gedge, the pawnbroker.” Mrs. Maycock knew that I could not be shocked at this allusion; nor was I. Still I felt bound to offer up a moral maxim or two. “ It’s a wasteful way of getting money,” I said. “You pay about 30 per cent.” “ Ab, but it’s better than borrowing, after all, sir. There’s no remarks made, and he don’t ask you for your money back again. Not but what there’s some people sets their faces against it, and my sister-in-law was one as ’ad never go nigh such places, till at last she was drove to it, and made her fortune by it the very first time she went.”

“Made her fortune,” I cried, my curiosity excited, “out of a visit to a pawnbroker?” “Yes, sir, her fortune. He’s a master builder, sir, now, her husband, and they live in a height-roomed house as he built hisself, and was having parish relief no longer ago than that.” “ Tell me the story, nurse. I should like to know how it’s done." Mrs. Maycock vigorously stirred the nursery fire, hitched her young charge into a more easy position, adjusted her cap, and began: “My sister-in-law Emma, as was formerly a Maycock, was in service for a many years with Admiral Brown, living at Witherfleld Lodge, Kingston, till she met with Rogers, being a carpenter, a journeyman, bat a very good hand, as kept company with her for a good while and then married. The Admiral’s family was very kind to them. They give her her wedding-clothes and a breakfast the day they was married, and the young ladies presented her with a beautiful silver teapot. And as they was going off —a fly and a pair of ’orses and everything grand—the Admiral comes down the steps and says he, ‘ Good luck to you, Mrs. Rogers,’ he says. 4 My daughters have found you a teapot and I’ve found the tea, and 1 hope it’ll do yon good.’ “Well, sir, Emma was crying a good deal, through having been in her [place

ever since she was a little bit of a girlfifteen years in one place; and, ‘ Thank you kindly, sir,’ she says, ‘ for all your goodness to me—you and the young ladies;’ and nothing did she think about the tea except that the Admiral meant as it was the breakfast, where they’d had tea, for to be sure, with sherry wine and everything first-rate. “ Emma had saved a bit of money, and with that her husband went into business. He were a hard-working man, but unfortunate through speculating in buying timber. And then he was taken ill with rheumatic fever, and little better than a cripple for years; and Emma had a lot of children, seven in as many years, and had her hands full with them, as you may judge. And by degrees they was brought very low. Nothing in the cupboard and seven children tugging at your apron-strings ain’t no child’s play, is it, sir?”

“ I can sympathize with Mrs. Rogers. How did she manage?” “ Well, sir, she went to the parish. She’d got some friends among them as was on the boord, and she told ’em as how she’d struggled hard to keep her heme together, and would the gentlemen kindly give her relief till such times as her husband could get into work again. Well, sir, they bum’d and ha’d; it was against their rules, they said, and so on; but the end of it was as they gave her a shilling a week for each of the children, and three and six for her husband and her. And with that and what she made going out washing they kept body and soul together. “ They’d always managed to keep a decent house about them, for that was her pride, poor thing; as I should have been too proud for to go to the parish, and would have sold every stick and stock I had sooner than d® it. But them wasn’t her feelings. ‘ We’ve paid rates ourselves,’ she says, ‘ as long as we could, and now let them pay for us.’ says she. And there was reason in that.

“ Yes, sir, she’d a nice little house, with a parlor as they never used that was as neat as a new pin. A little carpet on the floor, a little round table in the middle, two little cupboards, one on each side of the fire-place, and on one of ’em a mat in violin work, and atop of that the silver teapot.”

“Do you mean that it was the fiddle pattern, Mrs. Maycock?” “ I don’t know what pattern it was, but it was a beautiful teapot as always stood on that mat of violin wools. She’d never used it, bless you, never had made no tea in it; not when she’d company or nothing There it stood, just as she’d had it from the Admiral’s family, with the silver paper inside it and all! She cleaned it every week on Saturdays with whitning and brushed it over with an old toothbrush.

“ Well, air, Emma had just come home from a day’s washing and was lighting herself up the best way she could afore she sat down to mend the children’s things, when there was a knock at the door and Emma answered it; and, lo and behold! there stood a lady in a black silk dress with a drawn donnet, and says she, ‘Are you Mrs. Rogers?’ ‘l'es, ma’am, and what’s your pleasure?’ says Emma. Says she, 4 I’m ’ ” “ Not the district visitor again,” said I, laughing, as by Mrs. Maycock’s knitted brow and pursed-up lips I conjectured that she had conjured up before her mind’s eye an image of her bete noir. Mrs. Maycock shook her head in a way that implied a good deal. “Yes, the district visitor,” she went on; “ and so Emma says, 4 Indeed, ma’am!’ and shows her into the parlor, being a bit humbled in her mind through getting parish relief. So the lady looked here and there, and up and down, and axed Emma ever so many questions about this and that and the other; and in the middle of it all the baby cries, and away goes Emma to tend to it. Well, when she comes back the lady looks very cross and uppish, and she says: ‘Mrs. Rogers,’ says she, ‘may I ask if this here’s your teapot?’ 4 Why, yes, ma’am,’ says she, 4 as was gave me by Admiral Brown’s family.’ ‘Oh!’ says the visitor, in a towering rage, 4 and you receive parish relief, with a silver teapot, as I could never afford such a thing for myself!’ says she; and with that she flings away. “And what do you think she does? Writes a long letter to the head boord in London; and down comes a gent ready primed with everything a-purpose to make inquiries as to Emma’s teapot. And after a bit the gentlemen send for her, and say they, ‘We’re very sorry, Mrs. Rogers, but our masters say you ain’t to have no more relief,’ and struck her off the books. “ And then she was druv to it, as *ad never been to a pawnbroker’s in her life; but go she must with her silver teapot, as she cried over as she packed it away in her basket. And she shook and trembled that vi’lent as she went along, and was that pale, as people turned round to look at her. And she come to the pawnshop, and her heart failed her, and she walked en and on ever so far beyond, thinking as everybody was watching her; and at last she turned back, quite desperate, and went right in. And when she got inside the door she didn’t feel so bad, and she says to the man, 4 Being in a little bit of difficulties through want of money,’ says she, 4 would you kindly advance me as much as you can without inconveniencing yourself,’ says she, ‘on this piece of silver?’ and brings out her teapot. Weil, the man snatches it up, and he looks at it all round, and here and there, and rings it, and makes a little tiny scratch inside it, and then he fetches out his weights and scales. 4 Don’t want this, ma’am,’ says he, flinging out the paper as was inside; and Emma takes it

up to fold it out, as it might be a sort of remembrance to her of the teapot as was gone, and, lo and behold! there was a hangvelope in the middle of the silver paper, as must have been there ever since it was give her. ‘Mrs. Rogers’was outside it; ‘with Admiral Brown’s best wishes.’ * Oh, la!’ she says, ‘ I never see this,’ and opened it quite faint-like, and there was a fifty-pound note! And that was the Admiral’s tea, as flashed into her mind after all them years. ‘ Thank you, sir,’ she says; ‘l’ll not trouble you now,’ says she, and sets off hugging her silver teapot to her heart.

“ Ahd she spent five pounds of it in sending her husband to Margate; and he caine back quite another man, and got a contrack, and with having a bit of ready money he made a good thing of it, and never looked back afterward, but come to be the man I told you of, with houses of his own, and money laid out at interest, and all through her going to her friend up town, which must be my journey when I’ve seen the children to bed. La, there’s the postman’s knock!” The postman’s knock it was; and the children tumbled one over the other in their eagerness to bring me the letters. And there was a letter that inclosed one of those pleasant crisp - papers, yclept checks, which are so grateful to the empty itching palm. And for this time I was able to save Mrs. Maycock a journey “ up town.”