Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 422 | Page 2

weak. So she's gone for the present to her sisters; and as for the girls,
why, Emily is with her mother, and Jane is at the Joneses. Very decent
people the Joneses. I put Jones up to a thing which would have made
his fortune the week before last; but he wouldn't have it. Jones is slow,
and--well---- And Clara is with the Hopkinses: I believe so, at least;
and Maria is---- Confound me if I know where Maria is; but I suppose
she's somewhere. Her mother managed it all: I didn't interfere. And so
now, as you know the best and the worst, let's come to dinner.'
An empty house is a dismal thing--almost as dismal as a dead body.
The echo, as you walk, is dismal; the blank, stripped walls, shewing the
places where the pictures and the mirrors have been, are dismal; the bits
of straw and the odds and ends of cord are dismal; the coldness, the
stillness, the blankness, are dismal. It is no longer a habitation, but a
shell.
In the dining-room stood a small deal-table, covered with a scanty cloth,
like an enlarged towel; and a baked joint, with the potatoes under it,
smoked before us. The foaming pewter-can stood beside it, with a
couple of plates, and knives and steel forks. Two Windsor chairs, of
evident public-house mould, completed the festive preparations and the
furniture of the room. The whole thing looked very dreary; and as I
gazed, I felt my appetite fade under the sense of desolation. Not so
Happy Jack. 'Come, sit down, sit down. I don't admire baked meat as a
rule, but you know, as somebody says--
"When spits and jacks are gone and spent, Then ovens are most
excellent," And also most con-ven-i-ent.
The people at the Chequers managed it all. Excellent people they are. I
owe them some money, which I shall have great pleasure in paying as
soon as possible. No man can pay it sooner.'
The dinner, however, went off with the greatest success. Happy Jack

was happier than ever, and consequently irresistible. Every two or three
minutes he lugged in something about his household gods and the
desolation of his hearth, evidently enjoying the sentiment highly. Then
he talked of his plans of taking a new and more expensive house, in a
fashionable locality, and furnishing it on a far handsomer scale than the
old one. In fact, he seemed rather obliged to the brokers than otherwise
for taking the quondam furniture off his hands. It was quite behind the
present taste--much of it positively ugly. He had been ashamed to see
his wife sitting in that atrocious old easy-chair, but he hoped that he
had taken a step which would change all for the better. Warming with
his dinner and the liquor, Happy Jack got more and more eloquent and
sentimental. He declaimed upon the virtues of Mrs J., and the beauties
of the girls. He proposed all their healths seriatim. He regretted the
little incident which had prevented their appearance at the festive board;
but though absent in person, he was sure that they were present in spirit;
and with this impression, he would beg permission to favour them with
a song--a song of the social affections--a song of hearth and home--a
song which had cheered, and warmed, and softened many a kindly and
honest heart: and with this Happy Jack sang--and exceedingly well too,
but with a sort of dreadfully ludicrous sentiment--the highly
appropriate ditty of My Ain Fireside.
Happy Jack was of no particular profession: he was a bit of a
_littérateur_, a bit of a journalist, a bit of a man of business, a bit of an
agent, a bit of a projector, a bit of a City man, and a bit of a West-end
man. His business, he said, was of a general nature. He was usually to
be heard of in connection with apocryphal companies and misty
speculations. He was always great as an agitator. As soon as a League
was formed, Happy Jack flew to its head-quarters as a vulture to a
battle-field. Was it a league for the promotion of vegetarianism?--or a
league for the lowering of the price of meat?--a league for reforming
the national costume?--or a league for repealing the laws still existing
upon the Statute-book against witches?--Happy Jack was ever in the
thickest of the fray, lecturing, expounding, arguing, getting up
extempore meetings of the frequenters of public-houses, of which he
sent reports to the morning papers, announcing the 'numerous, highly
respectable, and influential' nature of the assembly, and modestly

hinting, that Mr Happy Jack, 'who was received with enthusiastic
applause, moved, in a long and argumentative address, a series of
resolutions pledging the meeting to,' &c. Jack, in fact, fully believed
that