MY UNCLE BUCKET.
The Buckets are a large family! I am one of them—my uncle Job Bucket is another. We, the Buckets, are atoms of creation; yet we, the Buckets, are living types of the immensity of the world’s inhabitants. We illustrate their ups and downs—their fulness and their emptiness—their risings and their falling—and all the several goods and ills, the world’s denizens in general, and Buckets in particular, are undoubted heirs to.
It hath ever been the fate of the fulness of one Bucket to guarantee the emptiness of another; and (mark the moral!) the rising Bucket is the richly-stored one; its sinking brother’s attributes, like Gratiano’s wit, being “an infinite deal of nothing.” Hence the adoption of our name for the wooden utensils that have so aptly fished up this fact from the deep well of truth.
There be certain rods that attract the lightning. We are inclined to think there be certain Buckets that invite kicking, and our uncle Job was one of them. He was birched at school for everybody but himself, for he never deserved it! He was plucked at college—because some practical joker placed a utensil, bearing his name, outside the door of the examining master, and our uncle Job Bucket being unfortunately present, laughed at the consequent abrasion of his, the examining master’s, shins. He was called to the bar. His first case was, “Jane Smith versus James Smith” (no relations). His client was the female. She had been violently assaulted. He mistook the initial—pleaded warmly for the opposing Smith, and glowingly described the disgraceful conduct of the veriest virago a legal adviser ever had the pain of speaking of. The verdict was, as he thought, on his side. The lady favoured him with a living evidence of all the attributes he was pleased to invent for her benefit, and left him with a proof impression of her nails upon his face, carrying with her, by way of souvenir, an ample portion of the skin thereof. Had the condensed heels of all the horses whose subscription hairs were wrought into his wig, with one united effort presented him with a kick in his abdominals, he could not have been more completely “knocked out of time” than he was by the mistake of those cursed initials. “What about Smith?” sent him out of court! At length he
“Cursed the bar, and declined.”
He next turned his attention to building. Things went on swimmingly during the erection—so did the houses when built. The proprietorship of the ground was disputed—our uncle Job had paid the wrong person. The buildings were knocked down (by Mr. Robins), and the individual who had benefited by the suppositionary ownership of the acres let on the building lease “bought the lot,” and sent uncle Job a peculiarly well-worded legal notice, intimating, “his respectable presence would, for the future, approximate to a nuisance and trespass, and he (Job) would be proceeded against as the statutes directed, if guilty of the same.”
It is impossible to follow him through all his various strivings to do well: he commenced a small-beer brewery, and the thunder turned it all into vinegar; he tried vinegar, and nothing on earth could make it sour; he opened a milk-walk, and the parish pump failed; he invented a waterproof composition—there was fourteen weeks of drought; he sold his patent for two-and-sixpence, and had the satisfaction of walking home for the next three months wet through, from his gossamer to his ci-devant Wellingtons, now literally, from their hydraulic powers, “pumps.”
He lost everything but his heart! And uncle Bucket was all heart! a red cabbage couldn’t exceed it in size, and, like that, it seemed naturally predestined to be everlastingly in a pickle! Still it was a heart! You were welcomed to his venison when he had it—his present saveloy was equally at your service. He must have been remarkably attached to facetious elderly poultry of the masculine gender, as his invariable salute to the tenants of his “heart’s core” was, “How are you, my jolly old cock?” Coats became threadbare, and defunct trousers vanished; waistcoats were never replaced; gossamers floated down the tide of Time; boots, deprived of all hope of future renovation by the loss of their soles, mouldered in obscurity; but the clear voice and chuckling salute were changeless as the statutes of the Medes and Persians, the price and size of penny tarts, or the accumulating six-and-eightpences gracing a lawyer’s bill.
Poor uncle Job Bucket’s fortune had driven “him down the rough tide of power,” when first and last we met; all was blighted save the royal heart; and yet, with shame we own the truth, we blushed to meet him. Why? ay, why? We own the weakness!—the heart, the goodly heart, was almost cased in rags!
“Puppy!”
Right, reader, right; we were a puppy. Lash on, we richly deserve it! but, consider the fearful influence of worn-out cloth! Can a long series of unchanging kindness balance patched elbows? are not cracked boots receipts in full for hours of anxious love and care? does not the kindness of a life fade “like the baseless fabric of a vision” before the withering touch of poverty’s stern stamp? Have you ever felt—
“Eh? what? No—stuff! Yes, yes—go on, go on.”
We will!—we blushed for our uncle’s coat! His heart, God bless it, never caused a blush on the cheek of man, woman, child, or even angel, to rise for that. We will confess. Let’s see, we are sixty now (we don’t look so much, but we are sixty). Well, be it so. We were handsome once—is this vanity at sixty? if so, our grey hairs are a hatchment for the past. We were “swells once!—hurrah!—we were!” Stop, this is indecent—let us be calm—our action was like the proceeding of the denuder of well-sustained and thriving pigs, he who deprives them of their extreme obesive selvage—vulgo, “we cut it fat.” Bond-street was cherished by our smile, and Ranelagh was rendered happy by the exhibition of our symmetry. Behold us hessianed in our haunts, touching the tips of well-gloved fingers to our passing friends; then fancy the opening and shutting of our back, just as Lord Adolphus Nutmeg claimed the affinity of “kid to kid,” to find our other hand close prisoner made by our uncle Bucket.
“How are you, old cock?”
“Who’s that, eh?”
“A lunatic, my lord (what lies men tell!), and dangerous!”
“Good day! [Exit my lord]. This way.” We followed our uncle—the end of a blind alley gave us a resting-place.
“Bravo!” exclaimed our uncle Bucket, “this is rare! I live here—dine with me!”
A mob surrounded us—we acquiesced, in hopes to reach a place of shelter.
“All right!” exclaimed he of the maternal side, “stand three-halfpence for your feed.”
We shelled the necessary out—he dived into a baker’s shop—the mob increased—he hailed us from the door.
“Thank God, this is your house, then.”
“Only my kitchen. Lend a hand!”
A dish of steaming baked potatoes, surmounted by a fractional rib of consumptive beef, was deposited between the lemon-coloured receptacles of our thumbs and fingers—an outcry was raised at the court’s end—we were almost mad.
“Turn to the right—three-pair back—cut away while it’s warm, and make yourself at home! I’ll come with the beer!”
We wished our I had been in that bier! We rushed out—the gravy basted our pants, and greased our hessians! Lord Adolphus Nutmeg appeared at the entrance of the court. As we proceeded to our announced destination,—“Great God!” exclaimed his lordship, “the Bedlamite has bitten him!” A peal of laughter rang in our ears—we rushed into the wrong room, and our uncle Job Bucket picked us, the shattered dish, the reeking potatoes, and dislodged beef, from the inmost recesses of a wicker-cradle, where, spite the thumps and entreaties of a distracted parent, we were all engaged in overlaying a couple of remarkably promising twins! We can say no more on this frightful subject. But—
“Once again we met!”
Our pride wanted cutting, and fate appeared determined to perform the operation with a jagged saw!
Tom Racket died! His disease was infectious, and we had been the last person to call upon him, consequently we were mournful. Thick-coming fancies brooded in our brain—all things conspired against us; the day was damp and wretched—the church-bells emulated each other in announcing the mortalities of earth’s bipeds—each toll’d its tale of death. We thought upon our “absent friend.” A funeral approached. We were still more gloomy. Could it be his? if so, what were his thoughts? Could ghosts but speak, what would he say? The coffin was coeval with us—sheets were rubicund compared to our cheeks. A low deep voice sounded from its very bowels—the words were addressed to us—they were, “Take no notice; it’s the first time; it will soon be over!”
“Will it?” we groaned.
“Yes. I’m glad you know me. I’ll tell you more when I come back.”
“Gracious powers! do you expect to return?”
“Certainly! We’ll have a screw together yet! There’s room for us both in my place. I’ll make you comfortable.”
The cold perspiration streamed from us. Was there ever anything so awful! Here was an unhappy subject threatening to call and see us at night, and then screw us down and make us comfortable.
“Will you come?” exclaimed the dead again.
“Never!” we vociferated with fearful energy.
“Then let it alone; I didn’t think you’d have cut me now; but wait till I show you my face.”
Horror of horrors!—the pall moved—a long white face peered from it. We gasped for breath, and only felt new life when we recognised our uncle Job Bucket, as the author of the conversation, and one of the bearers of the coffin! He had turned mute!—but that was a failure—no one ever died in his parish after his adopting that profession!
He has been seen once since in the backwoods of America. His fate seemed still to follow him, and his good temper appeared immortal—his situation was more peculiar than pleasant. He was seated on a log, three hundred miles from any civilised habitation, smiling blandly at a broken axe (his only one), the half of which was tightly grasped in his right hand, pointing to the truant iron in the trunk of a huge tree, the first of a thriving forest of fifty acres he purposed felling; and, thus occupied, a solitary traveller passed our uncle Job Bucket, serene as the melting sunshine, and thoughtless as the wild insect that sported round the owner “of the lightest of light hearts.”—PEACE BE WITH HIM.
FUSBOS.
IMPORTANT DISCOVERY.
A gentleman of the name of Stuckey has discovered a new filtering process, by which “a stream from a most impure source may be rendered perfectly translucent and fit for all purposes.” In the name of our rights and liberties! in the name of Judy and our country! we call upon the proper authorities to have this invaluable apparatus erected in the lobby of the House of Commons, and so, by compelling every member to submit to the operation of filtration, cleanse the house from its present accumulation of corruption, though we defy Stuckey himself to give it brightness.
A THING UNFIT TO A(P)PEAR.
New honours heaped on roué Segrave’s name!
A cuckold’s horn is then the trump of fame.