must be old) whom they enshroud is facially
as unknown as the first Odalisque of the
Harem to Hassan the cobler, or as the Veiled
Prophet of Khorassan was to the meanest of
his adorers. No man hath seen Miss Tattyboys,
not even Mr. Barwise, her agent; nay,
nor old Mr. Fazzle, the immensely rich
bachelor of number thirteen; but many have
heard her stern demands for rent, and her
shrill denunciations of the " carryings on"
of her tenants. It is said that Miss Tattyboys
resides at Hoxton, and that she keeps
her own cows. Men say that she discounts
bills and is the proprietor of a weekly
newspaper. It is certain that she is in frequent
communication with Mr. Kemp, the officer of
the Sheriffs' Court; and many are the
proclamations of outlawry made against sprigs
of nobility, with tremendously long and
aristocratic names at the "suit of Bridget
Tattyboys."   Likewise, she arrested the
honourable Tom Scaleybridge, M.P., at the
close of the last session, but was compelled
to release him immediately afterwards, he
claiming his privilege. There are many
solicitors of my acquaintance, who, in their
mysteriously musty and monied private offices,
have battered tin boxes with half effaced
inscriptions relative to " Tattyboys Estate,
1829; " " Tattyboys Trust, 1832; " " Tattyboys
versus Patcherly; " and " Miss Bridget
Tattyboys."  She is mixed up with an infinity
of trusts, estates, and will cases. She is the
subject of dreary law-suits in which the nominal
plaintiff is the real defendant, and the
defendant ought not to be a party to the
suit at all. Time is always being given to
speak to her, or communicate with her, or
to summons her to produce papers, which
she never will produce. Law reports about
her cases begin with "So far back as eighteen
hundred and ten; " " it will be remembered
that; " " this part heard case; " and the
daily newspapers occasionally contain letters
denying that she made a proposition to A, or
sued B, or was indebted to C: signed by
Driver, Chizzle, and Wrench, solicitors for
Miss Tattyboys. She got as far as the House
of Lords once, in an appeal case against Coger
Alley Ram Cunder Loll, of Bombay; but
how this litigious old female managed to
get out, physically or literally, to Hindostan,
or into difficulties with a Parsee indigo
broker, passes my comprehension. A
mysterious old lady this.

Meanwhile, Miss Bridget Tattyboys is the
litigious landlady of Tattyboys Rents. There
is no dubiety about her existence there. Only
be a little behindhand with your rent, and
you will soon be favoured with one of Mr.
Barwise's "Sir, I am instructed by Miss
Tattyboys "; and close upon that will follow
Mr. S. Scrutor, Miss Tattyboys' broker, with
his distraint, and his levy, and his inventory,
and all the ceremonies of selling up. I should
opine that Miss Tattyboys is deaf, for she is
remarkable in cases of unpaid rent for not
listening to appeals for time, and not hearing
of a compromise, Gilks, the chandler's
shopkeeper of number  nine, whose wife is always
in the family way, and himself in difficulties,
once "bound himself by a curse" to seek
out Miss Tattyboys at Hoxton, to beard her
in her very den, and appeal to her  mercy,
her charity, her womanhood, in a matter of
two quarters owing. He started one morning,
with a determined shirt-collar, and fortified
by sundry small libations at the  Cape
of Good Hope. He returned at nightfall with
a haggard face, disordered apparel, and an
unsteady gait; was inarticulate and incoherent
in his speech; shortly afterwards went to bed;
and to this day cannot be prevailed upon by his
acquaintances, by the wife of his bosom even,
to give any account of his interview, if interview
he had, with the Megæra of Hoxton.
Mrs. Gilks, a wary woman,who has brought, and
is bringing, up a prodigious family, has
whispered to Mrs. Spileburg, of the Cape of Good
Hope, that, on the morning after Gilks's
expedition, examining his garments, as it is the
blessed conjugal custom to do, she found,
imprinted in chalky dust, on the back of his coat,
the mark of a human foot! What could this
portend? Did Gilks penetrate to Hoxton, and
was he indeed kicked by Miss Tattyboys? or
did he suffer the insulting infliction at the
foot of some pampered menial? Or, coming
home despairing, was he led to the
consumption (and the redundancy of coppers,
and the paucity of silver, in his pockets would
favour this view of the case) of more liquid
sustenance of a fermented nature than was
good for him? And was he in this state kicked
by outraged landlord or infuriated pot
companion? Gilks lives, and makes no sign.
Pressed on the subject of Miss Tattyboys,
he reluctantly grumbles that she is an "old
image," and this is all.

Dear reader (and the digression may be
less intolerable seeing that it takes place in
what is but a digression itself), I do wonder
what Miss Tattyboys is like. Is she really
the stern, harsh, uncompromising female that
her acts bespeak her? Does she sit in a rigid
cap, or still accoutred in the black bonnet
and veil in a dreary office-like parlour at
Hoxton, with all her documents docketed on
a table before her, or glaring from pigeon-
holes, shelves, and cupboards ? Or is she a
jolly, apple faced, little woman, in a cheery
room with birds and plants and flowers,
liking a cosy glass and a merry song: a
Lady Bountiful in the neighbourhood, a
Dorcas to the poor, the idol of all the dissenting
ministers around? Perhaps. Who
knows? Ah! how unlike we all are to
what we seem! How the roar of the lion
abroad softens into the bleating of the lamb
at home! How meekly the fierce potent
schoolmaster of the class-room holds out his
knuckles for the ruler in the study! He who
is the same in his own home of homes as he
is abroad, is a marvel.