Punch (18.1850)

134

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

NOOKS AND CORNERS OF CHARACTER.-THE SICK BACHELOR.

H e rings the bell, but no one comes.

He turns restless in bed, looks at his watch, discovers it is time to
take his medicine, but there is no one lo give it him.

Persons run up and down stairs. The noise frets him, and, as it
increases, he complains audibly, but there is no one to hear him.
He dozes, and forgets his fretfulness. But the next moment a heavy

received from servants, from every one, when he was ill at home, and the
Sick Bachelor closes his eyes to gaze upon the happy picture.

What a snug room! Every comfort is there that can nmke the
heavy wheels of time roll on as softly as possible. What a nest of
abed! and at the head of it he sees his mother, leaning over him,
parting his hair, kissing his forehead, and every minute askinj

sound, as if some one-------, him in a voice through

was playing at skittles
over head, makes him
start up, and again he
rings the bell, and again
no one answers it.

He listens, and listens,
till listening becomes a
pain, added to his other
pains. He longs to read,
but all his books are in
tlid next room. He longs
to see the paper: he longs
to know if there are any
letters; if any one has
called; and he groans and
rolls about, for all these
longings, not one of them
gra'ifPd, seem to fill his
bed with nettles,

When will the Doctor
call ? He follows every
carriage that rattles
through the street, and
clings to the hope that it
will stop at his door, till
its wheels have turned
the corner. Pie is sure
he is much worse. He
should like to look at
himself to see how many
notches illness has scored
upon his face since yes-
terday ; but there is no
looking-glass in sight which he can consult
as an umpire to tell him the state of the
game.

He hears footsteps in the next room. A
ray of thankfulness shoots like sunshine
through him—it is the Doctor ! He waits,
and a loud rumbling of chairs, and opening
and shutting of windows is all that rewards
his patience. He ca'P, and the fall of broken
glass breaks to him the painful truth that it
is his Laundress !—the tender jailer of his
sick-room !

" Mary ! Mary ! " but Mary is old and
deaf, and has quite forgotten that there is
such a thing as a poor Bachelor who is wait-
ing for his medicine. He calls as loud as
ho pan, and the heavy sound of hoofs,—but
which he knows are f-el—is the only echo
that falls upon his night-capped ear. Mary
slams the door more violently than ever, bo-
cause he is ill—and the unhappy prisoner,
whose crime is single blessedness, is left
alone in his condemn d cell.

How he invokes blessings upon the false
front of Mary ! He only wishes that some
day she may be ill—as ill as he is—and that
it may be his lucky fate to wait upon her !
Instead of medicine to do her good, he will
pour out to her the vials of his wrath, made
as bitter as her own ill-humour: instead of
soft, gentle words, to smooth her pillow,
she shall have nothing but sneers and snarls
to ruffle her sweet temper: instead of broths,
and j dlies, and " slops," and nice delicacies,
to strengthen her, he will give her oysters,
sausages, lobsters, pork-chops, tradesmen's
bills, and the loudest postmen's knocks, and
the noisiest Italian boys,—everything, in short, that can worry and
hurt and torture an invalid.

In his helpless state he almost cries over the unkindness, the tyranny
of woman, and is convinced that Draco's laws were written in milk
compared to a Laundress's, and yet he recollects the kindness he

which the affection
gushes like tears, " if lie
feels any better?"—he
sees his sister, nature's
kindest nurse, sitting up
with him all night, moving
if he moves, anticipating
every one of his wants,
gazing into his face for
hope, and smiling at him.
sometimes in spite of it.
coaxing him, like a child,
to go to sleep, and hold-
ing his hand between
hers till he falls into a
gentle slumber again—
he sees his tather coming
into the room the first
thing in the morning, and
treading on tipoe lest
he shall awake him—he
recollects what a mo-
rn ?nt of anxiety it was
when the Doctor paid his
daily visit, and how ev.-ry
one waited in silence
round the curtained bed,
to hear what he said, and
then rushed to cheer him
and kiss him full of hope
—he recollects all these,
and many more little in-
cidents of love and ten-
derness, for they hang round his childhood,
like immortelles, which his memory loves to
" keep green."

How different his present illness ! There
is no one to comfort him, to make him
forget by kindness the prison-house he is
confined in. His loneliness chills him. It
throws a frost round everything, and he
thinks, as Adam thought when he was a Ba-
chelor (the Bachelor days of Adam would
make a most curious book) and prayed for a
wife, that—

" To die must be to live alone,
Unloved, uncherished, and unknown."

The Bachelor is moved ; the rock of his
egotism is softened, and it is very strange,
but tears—real tears—bubble up from his
heart, like water from adried-up well in the
Desert.

He rings again, and by some accident the
Laundress hears him. The Sick Bachelor
has his medicine, and lays down his head
grateful for it.

If he is grateful for a spoonful of medicine,
what would he be for a kind word or a
good dinner!

The Mercantile Press.

The resignation of the Chairmanship of
Lloyd's has caused the question to be asked
in literary circles whether any change will
occur in the editorship of Lloyd's List, or

---- wnether the arrangements will continue

the same for the management of that racy periodical. We are happy
to announce, from our own peculiar sources of information, that the
only change in this spicy—and occasionally all-spicy—journal will be
the assumption of the motto of "List! List!! Oh! Lloyd's List!!!"
from Hamlet.