the strange crypts and vaults of the silent
cellar would Miss Rudd roam noiselessly,
gloomily. Mr. Tallboys will, after she has
served him for a year, have the highest
respect for her. " She is a person," he will
write to his friend Colonel Vertebra, judge
advocate of the colony of Kensalgrenia, " of
singular discretion and reticence." When he
dies he will leave her a considerable sum in
those mortuary securities, South Sea annuities.
Then, perhaps, she will espouse the
grim Mr. Trestles, and conduct a dreary
lodging-house in some dreary street adjoining
an obsolete square; or, adhering to celibacy,
will retire to a neat sarcophagus cottage in
the Mile-end Road, or the vicinity of Dalston.

It is a mistake to suppose that a single
gentleman's housekeeper proceeds uniformly
to her end—which is naturally connected
with the probate duty—by means of coaxing,
complaisance, and general sycophancy. Such
means may be employed in certain cases,
where the patient—like a man who has been
addicted to opium-eating—cannot be kept up
to the mark without doses of his habitual
medicine, flattery. But, in nine cases out of
ten, the successful treatment is tyranny and
intimidation. A proper impression once
implanted in the mind of the single gentleman
that his housekeeper is indispensable to his
health and comfort, and she is safe. Her knees
need be no longer hinged, her neck corrigible,
her tongue oiled. The little finger of the
domestic becomes a rod of iron, with which
the celibatarian may be scourged, or round
which he may be twisted at will. How
many fierce major-generals there are, once
the martinets of garrisons, who are now the
submissive Helots of cross old women who
cannot spell! How many Uncle Toms crouch
beneath the lash of a female Legree, whom
they feed and pay wages to! This is human
nature. We know that we can turn Legree
out of doors, and break her cowskin over her
back, to-morrow; but we don't do anything
of the sort.

There are many other housekeepers who
want places just now. There is Mrs.
Muggeridge, who is not too proud to seek a
domestic appointment, in which the high art
of the housekeeper is joined to the more
homely avocations of the cook. As cook and
housekeeper, Mrs. Muggeridge will suit
genteel families in Bloomsbury and Russell
Squares, Gower Street, Mornington Crescent,
or Cadogan Place. She would be just the
person for the upper end of Sloane Street.
She has a neat hand in cutting vegetable
bouquets, for garnishing, out of carrots,
turnips, and parsnips; also for the decorated
frills of paper round the shankbones of
legs of mutton and the tops of candle-sticks.
She can make gooseberry fools,
custards, and jellies; but, if trifles or
Chantilly baskets are in question, they must be
referred to the pastrycook; for Mrs
Muggeridge is genteel, but not fashionable. She
is a stout, buxom woman, very clean and
neat; and, to see her going round to her
various tradespeople in the morning with her
capacious basket and store of red account-books,
is a very cheerful and edifying spectacle.
Mrs. Muggeridge has a husband—a meek
little man with a grey head and a limp white
neckcloth—who is head waiter at a large
hotel; but he is seldom seen at home, and is
not of much account there when he is.

Then there is Mrs. Compott, who is desirous
of obtaining a situation as housekeeper
in a school or public establishment, and who
would not object to look after the linen
department. Mrs. Compott is a very hard,
angular, inflexible woman, with a decidedly
strong mind. She is not exactly unfeeling,
but her sensibilities are blunted—not to say
deadened—by the wear and tear of many
boys; and such a tough integument has been
formed over her finer feelings as might be
supposed to be possessed by a Scotch assistant
surgeon in the navy after a sharp sequence of
cock-pit practice. At Mr. Gripforth's academy
for young gentlemen, Hammersmith, she would
be an invaluable scholastic housekeeper and
matron. The little maladies to which
school-boys are liable;—such as chicken-pox,
hooping-cough, chilblains, ringworm, boils,
chapped hands and cuts—all of which
ailments she classes under the generic term of
"rubbage "—she treats with sudden remedies,
generally efficacious, but occasionally objected
to by the patient. Mr. Patarr, the visiting
apothecary—a fawn-coloured young man in a
shiny macintosh, very harmless, and reputed
to sustain nature by the consumption of his own
stock of cough lozenges, humected with rose
water—has a high opinion of Mrs. Compott.
"I will send Tumfey," he says to the principal,
"another bottle of the mixture; and that,
with Mrs. Compott's good care, will soon
bring him round." Have you never known a
Mrs. Compott? In your young days, at Mr.
Gripforth's academy, at Miss Whalebone's
preparatory establishment, or Doctor Rubasore's
collegiate school; where it was so
essential that the pupils should be sons of
gentlemen, and where you had that great
fight with Andy Spring the pork-butcher's
son? Can't you remember your sycophancy
to that majestic woman for jam and late
bread and butter? You could not crawl
lower, now, for a Garter or a tide-waiter's
place. Don't you yet feel a sort of shudder at
the remembrance of Mrs. Compott's Saturday
night's gymnastics with the towel, the
yellow soap, the hard water, and—horror of
horrors the small tooth comb?

Mrs. Compott is always a widow. Mr.
Compott was " unfortunate," and had " a house
of his own, once; " but what his misfortunes
or his house were is as mysterious as a cuneiform
inscription. Mrs. Compott very often
contracts a second marriage, and becomes
Mrs. Gripforth or Mrs. Rubasore, the more
so as otherwise it is inexplicable to me what