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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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aspersed Miss Apsley" were uttered audibly , and raising her eyes to her husband , she exclaimed , " What can this mean ? When do we say anything of anybody ? "
Mr . Clackman merel y repeated the word " when ? " in an interrogatory tone of indescribable pathos , and certainly at that moment might have sat , if not for the picture , at least for the caricature of abused excellence , and injured innocence . The electrif ying double knock of the postman changed his interesting attitude and expression , and on his opening the second letter the awful hand-writing of an attorney-at-law affrighted
him more than any writing had affrighted man since the days of Belshazzar . A challenge may be contemned , or the challenger may be caught and bound over to keep the peace ; but an action at law , ( for defamation , with which he was threatened ) was like having one ' s house on fire in a high wind of a dark ni ght ; you are certain to be burned if you stay in the fire , and to be robbed of all that you snatch out of it .
If the Jirst letter , to Mr . Clackman ' s fertile imagination , conjured up the smell of gunpowder and the sound of whizzing bullets , what did not the second produce ? Odds triggers and trials ! as Bob Acres would say , what hundreds of the hungry harpies of the law grinned in his ghastly face—what plagues of the tortuous processes of the courts curvetted in his view He looked at the hot rolls and butter , as much as to say , " A ow it is impossible I can eat ve ! Shall I ever eat of ye
again : It may have been remarked that in all cases of trouble nothing affords such immediate relief as shifting the blame of misconduct or misfortune from ourselves to another . In an unadvised moment this expedient occurred to Mr . Clackman , who turning to his better half , who in at that moment , to judge by the expression of his face , he certainly considered his tvorse half , exclaimed , "I see how all this has happened — it is
your unhappy tongue ! I remember telling you something about Miss Apsley and forgot afterwards to inform you that I had unfortunately made a mistake , and that the guilty party was a Miss Mings . Hut if I h < id it would have been of no avail—off' you had instantly gone to that infernal No . 9 over the way—your telegraph , which spreads all that you report , and upon my authority !
The last words were lost in the groan with which they were given forth , for it was detection not delinquency—it was fear of punishment , no feeling of remorse , which made the gossip writhe . Mrs . Clackman was a portly dame ( some thanks to her sedentary habits ) , and of a disposition which , content with discomposing the peace of other * , rarely Miflered any discomposure of her own .
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Sketches of Domestic Life . 177
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No . 111 . N
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1836, page 177, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2655/page/49/
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