THE BROOKRUDDER BOOK-CLUB.

IT was an agreeable neighbourhood, doubtless;
no reasonable person could gainsay it.
Albeit that it was to be reached by coaching
process only; an effete vehicle of that order,
which had once proudly taken the royal
mail upon its back, and been tooled (such, I
is the appropriate expression) rampant
into the little market-town, now
performing bi-weekly journeys, and degraded
into a pair-horse stage, altogether a most
inglorious show ! Albeit, also, that the dwellings
of the inhabitants (alluding, of course, to
the persons of quality of the place) are
shaken down in a loose, scattered fashion ;
much as are the dwellings of near and dear
neighbours in the backwoods, whose squattings
are within an easy morning's run of
say from twenty to forty miles. Thus all
our Brookrudder high-life, when purposing
visit to brother swells, might fairly think of
getting out the heavy waggon and yoking to
the oxen, and regularly victualling the great
machine, just as squatting brethren must
do. Thus, The Roost, residence of Major
Whilkers and the Lady Diana Whilkers his
wife, lay a good eight miles away from
Berrystown; abode of the unmarried ladies
Timbles; who, by a pleasing turn of speech,
are supposed to devote their lives to the
occupation of spinning. These abodes, with
Tibblesbarn, which, as all the parish knows, is
the residence of the Reverend Henry Caiphas,
Vicar, as also of Mrs. Caiphas, who boils
down annually whole caldrons of preserves,
in the most surprising manner, and of the
Misses Caiphas (3), who sing so ravishingly,
form but the three apices of a triangle,
distant each from the other, say from six to ten
miles. Again, this sacerdotal homestead,
taken with that of Galenio Smith, F.R.C.S.L.,
and the cottage, well-known sanctuary of
a sprig of nobility, the Honourable Miss
Begley, made up another triangle. In this
fashion were the houses sprinkled over
Brookrudder, very much after the procedure of the
Honourable the Board of Ordnance. On the
whole, therefore, this trigonometrical position
necessitated a prodigious deal of Bush travelling.
The family coach, by the way, which
took about the Begley sprig on occasions of
sumptuous banqueting, was indeed, with
propriety to be likened to those very Bush
waggons, groaning unmusically at every
motion, and needing strong beeves to draw
it. Why the great Berline, which that poor
Louis lumbered off in, was to this a
perambulator.

There was a town, to be sure, called
market, much by the same title as Miss
Begley wears her Honourable prefix, that is,
by courtesy. It was customary to delude
one's self with such pleasing figments as sending
into the market-town—-going for it to
the market-town, without reaping substantial
profit from such excursions. It was often
bootless, the pure sending for meat even;
that article being supplied in a fitful,
spasmodic fashion, there being at one time a glut,
at another quite a famine. But Brookrudder
quality believed heartily in their market-
town.

At periodic intervals there was spread at
the apex of one of the triangles, a sad and
solemn banquet, cold and buckram-like, akin
to those awful refections spread for guests
who have journeyed from a distance to assist
at an interment. Starch seemed to overlay
these dread solemnities plentifully; those
furnished by Major and the Lady Diana
Whilkers especially; the games of these noble
persons being distinguished by a sadder
flavour. The bier was garnished with a
melancholy state; and men, attached to the
waiting interest, with countenances composed
to an expression of poignant grief, did their
part of the ceremonial in a manner highly
impressive. No wonder; for those mourners
were brought down special, as it were, from
a remote manufacturing city, at enormous
charge; whence, too, came the monster
turbot and the baked meats. At which
distinguished board met together all the
triangular apices, once in the year usually,
excepting only some new settlers, whose
papers were not properly countersigned, and
who were justly suspected to be of the lees—
the sediment, you understand, of society.
There was a talk of drawing a line somewhere;
and it passed right under the nose of
the new settlers: of which line the Lady
Diana Whilkers, as was indeed only fitting,
held one end, and the Honourable Miss
Begley the other; contriving between them
to give it a gentle, vibratory motion to