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LADIES' MUSEUM,

NEW AND IMPROVED SERIES.

UNDER

THE ESPECIAL PATRONAGE OF

Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent,

FOR THE YEAR MDCCCXXXI.

VOL. II.

JULY TO DECEMBER.

London:

SIMPKIN AND MARSHALL, STATIONERS' COURT;

AND

G. G. BENNIS, PARIS,

1831.

LADIES' MUSEUM.

New and Improved Series.

JULY, 1831.

SKETCHES FROM LIFE.

No. II.

BY MRS. HOFLAND.

"PLASE yer reverence, I made bould to call jist to forbid the bans o' Terence O'Reilly, if so be as how it is true they were asked yesterday by yer reverence."

"And why do you forbid them, good

woman?"

"Oh! for no rason on earth, but jist that he has got a wife in Ireland; an being my own brother, I am not the woman to stand by and see him make sich a fool of himself-barring the sin, yer reverence."

"You are right, but you must bring me proofs of this marriage in Ireland: come again to-morrow.

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The curate to whom this was addressed officiated in one of the busiest parishes of busy London; he, however, passed on, for the dead were waiting for him-the living claiming him. The appearance of the woman who had arrested him at the threshold of his house, for a purpose very uncommon, was prepossessing, and she had been less circumlocutory than usual; but yet it struck him that she had either not spoken the truth, or the whole truth, and he determined (as in duty bound) to examine the affair thoroughly, at his earliest leisure. The woman did not return, and the matter (amidst the multiplied engagements demanded by the sick who sought for consolation, the young who wanted instruction, the poor who wanted every thing, and the regular routine of sacred offices) had slipped from his memory, when on the Saturday following a young and pretty girl, evidently dressed for the occasion, made her appearance in his parlour, and bobbed a courtesy, in silence, before him.

JULY, 1831.

"You are come to be examined previous to confirmation?"

"Oh! no, your reverence, that's not the matter I'm about at all, at all. If ye plase, I'm jist Nelly Allen, as Terence O'Reilly was axed with last Sunday."

"But your bans are forbidden."

Nelly had, in the first place, spoken with great difficulty, cast down her eyes, and blushed like a country maiden, albeit her unpastoral dwelling was on Saffron Hill, but having once heard the sound of her own voice she gained courage; and on this information (of which she had been already aware) she broke out into an oration alike voluble and eloquent against all who would oppose her marriage, more especially by the utterance of a base falsehood, which of all things on earth was her aversion." The curate, either moved by her intreaties, or astounded by her "pleaded reasons," promised in half an hour to visit her abode, and examine into the affair.

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How true is the saying, that "one half of the world little thinks how the other half lives." The young clergyman was intimately familiar with the abodes of poverty; nevertheless, he was a little startled on entering that of our love-sick damsel, to find himself in the midst of sixteen or eighteen persons, composed of the finest pisintry under heaven," but in the present sample unquestionably the dirtiest; and exhibiting in various countenances every shade of the shrewd, the vivacious, the ferocious, the reckless, or the humourous, characteristics of their country. On one hand stood a beldame classically disarrayed, seeing that her only garment

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was fastened by a string over her left shoulder, after the manner of the Graces when they stoop to drapery; on the other, a group of urchins were fighting for the possession of a few smoking praties-the dark mass of men huddled near the fire-place being relieved by the trim figure of poor Nelly, who had not yet been disrobed of her holiday gear, and appeared with all the advantage of con

trast.

Advancing, with many thanks, to his reverence for the visit, she informed him that neither her "enemy, nor the husband of her, were in, but that on the other side he would catch Terence, for she had watched him."

To the other side of the street passed the mediator, and on inquiry for said Terence was answered by a strapping youth, whose handsome features and good-humoured countenance did credit to the Emerald Isle, "that it was maybe himself his reverence was a wanting."

The business was soon explained, and the question pressed as to "whether he had already committed matrimony?"

"Not at all, your honour, becase sich a thing never entered my head any how."

"Then your sister, Mrs. Sullivan, is guilty of a falsehood, as she forbids your bans on this plea."

"Why as to that, yer reverence, she's parfaitly the best cratur in the world, an if she told a bit of a lie 'twas jist to be the saving of me; for she says to me, says she, 'there's no marrying without money, an there's no money without work, an that's what you've not got,' says she."

"There is a great deal of truth in that, certainly; but you ought to have thought of it before you spoke to the young woman. Have you nothing beforehand?"

"Jist the clothes I'm standing in, yer reverence, and I needn't till ye their character."

Terence cast a look of whimsical ruefulness from knee to knee, and elbow to elbow, as he spoke, at the same time taking up what in times past had been a hat; and by his motion showed a willingness to follow his

interrogator not less than to adopt his advice-in another moment both stood in the presence of the afflicted and offended Nelly, who now was "quite sure his reverence had come to the bottom of the matter, and must see that forbidding the bans was the most wickedest thing on earth."

"I nevertheless think," said the curate, "that you had better delay your marriage until Terence has obtained work, and you have got a little matter beforehand. You are both very young, (and very poor it seems,) and there can be no harm, and may be much good, in delaying it a few months: the bans shall, nevertheless, go on if you desire it."

There was a portentous pause, though the audience had evidently increased, when Nelly burst into tears, which she yet controlled, as she cried, "An there you stand, Terence, fumbling the thing of a hat round an round, wid yer eyes on the floor, and nivir a word it is that you spake to his reverence, though many's the words ye could say to me, as ye know in yer heart; and yer sister that's turned aginst me now, many's the time she said, 'Ah, Nelly, my good girl, when Terence comes over he'll be the boy for you;' so that I was clane gone, in a manner, afore I'd sin the face of ye; and now ye can't say a word—no, not a word for me."

"But I can, and I will, or my name isn't Jack Sullivan," exclaimed one of the newly-entered, "for a better an a claner girl, nor a more industrious, can't be found no where. What ails my wife (God bless her! for a better no man has,) I don't know, yer honour; but this I'll say, any how, when we were married five years past, we were worse off than even they, (for Nelly's in good work,) and though we're poor enough now, neither of us ever repinted. We do somehow; and the three bit childer, why we keeps 'em, and love's 'em, an that's all I can say."

Terence during this time had looked up, and it may be presumed that the language of his large dark eyes was powerful, notwithstanding the failure of his tongue, for Nelly wiped away her tears, declared that "if the bans

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