telling a Christian man, who had brought up
nine children for his country's benefit, to
betake himself to the food of brutes. Nay,
the very donkeys on the common shrank
from contact with the odious weed which a
Christian minister had not hesited to recommend
as a fit nourishment for the bodies of
his poor parishioners. Was the fleshy tenement
of an immortal spirit to be kept up
upon stinging nettles? We asked how the
Reverend Mr. Simmer would like to have his
tongue, and palate, and throat irritated to
inflammation by stinging nettles? and did
not care a pin for his answer, that he had
tried and found them very good. We know
how grandees, like the Reverend Mr. Simmer,
having made an appointment to taste the
workhouse soup, always found it excellent,
and talk lightly of the labours of bricklaying,
after setting first stones with a silver trowel.
We made observations on his conduct in a
loud voice when he happened to be near.
We stared so hard at him, when he
accidentally alluded to Nebuchadnezzar in his
sermon, that he drew out his delicate white
cambric handkerchief, and made such a long
pause, that everybody thought the sermon
was done. John Hitchman happened to be
there that day (he attended church regularly
during the excitement), sitting in one of the
free seats, wiping his forehead with a tattered,
blue, cotton rag; and everybody was struck
with the contrast, and made his own reflections.
Public opinion chalked itself upon
the walls of Mr. Simmer's house; till one day
the rector told him, that without any reference
whatever to the merits of the case, it
was unfortunately evident that he was not
popular in the parish, and that he must
therefore see the necessity of resigning. So
he went away; and his true character came
out afterwards, when he published a book on
population, which competent judges residing
in the parish have pronounced to be a disgrace
to him as a minister and a man.

Spry, the policeman, who lives up-stairs, at
the shoemaker's, is equally the object of our
contempt and detestation. It is nothing to
us that the mere presence of Spry makes our
property as safe as if it were under guard in
the Tower of London. We will grant you
that, under the protection of old Cumpton,
the late constable of the parish, the very
doors of our houses, and the gates of our
gardens, have been unhinged and carried
away for fire-wood; and nobody dared to go
down Guttlebury Lane after dark; for self-
interest does not blind us to what is mean
and unmanly.  We all hate Spry, and never
miss an opportunity of reviling him as a pitiful
fellow and a sneak.  He never looks you
in the face, like an honest man; and has a
nasty, shuffling, sidelong walk, which particularly
annoys Miss Bunbury, who always
speaks of him as that reptile Spry, and who,
though, did reluctantly call him in one
night, turned him out again the moment she
had discovered that there were no thieves in
her back kitchen, but only a stray bantam
from the next garden. We have seen him in
plain clothes peeping through the crevice of
the tap-room door of the Guy; and have
watched him standing in the sun, with his
back to a wall, lazily cutting a whistle out of
a bit of reed, and everybody knew that the
artful fellow had some business in hand. We
have come upon him in out-of-the-way places,
and have suddenly found him walking beside
us, in a manner that makes your blood run
cold. There is not a boy in our part that
would associate with Spry; but he does not
care for that. Since he managed to get noted
for promotion as an active and intelligent
officer, he calls us all civilians, and seems to
enjoy his own isolation.

But we have another quarrel with Spry,
which I will just mention, in further illustration
of our opinions. Spry was originally no
more a policeman than you are. He is by
trade (as we always express it) a cooper.
His father was a cooper; his grandfather
was a cooper; and the Sprys have all been
coopers (except one, who went to sea), ever
since they came into the village. But this
Spry actually deserted the calling of his
ancestors, and, on the shabby excuse that
coopering wasn't what it used to be, entered
the police force, and lost caste among us for
ever. Now, if Spry's father had been a
policeman—if he had been the son of Cumpton,
the late constable, who died childless, at
an advanced age; or if he could have shown
the slightest relationship with any person
whose business it had been to prowl about,
and take his neighbours into custody, we
might have endured it, and come to look
upon him as a necessary institution in a
corrupt state of society. But Spry had no
such excuse, or did not care to mention it, if
he had. He does not care a fig for the
example of the coaching interest, who are true
to their calling, to a boy. They hang about
the steps of the Guy, and loiter round its
moss-grown, broken-windowed outbuildings,
still clinging with a fanatical faith to the
hope of the final disappearance of railways,
and triumphant restoration of four-in-hands.
Their linen jackets are in tatters, and their
shoes are soleless; but there they lie, on
sunny days, basking under the red-brick wall,
or fast asleep in shady corners. But see them
if a cart or chaise should stop there!
Only a fortnight ago, there drove up to that
door a dusty four-wheeled vehicle, containing
one lean gentleman, who, to the wonderment
of all, desired to stay there for the night.
Then the coaching people sprang upon their
feet, and came about him; and four of them
unharnessed his rough, shaggy pony, and led
him tenderly in; and two held the traveller's
carpet-bag, and one his whip; while the
traveller himself went in, and was swallowed
up in the gloomy vastness of that ancient
hostelry. He must have been a strange man,