BARON THIMBLE.
A winter night, with a thick fog rising above the Sandridge marshes, and spreading itself over the city of Melbourne. People released from toil were hurrying home to tea and a pleasant fireside. Others, who neither toil nor spin, and had no home or fireside, glided slowly and noiselessly through the mist like ghosts, or stood shivering before the damp window-panes or lit-up shops and dining-rooms, feasting their hungry eyes on the good things within.
Business in the city was very dull, and money very scarce. Money is scarce at all times with a great many mortals, I am aware, but the present depression was felt everywhere throughout the colony.
Tom Brock, the barber, standing in his little [[49]]shop at the corner of Gertrude Street Fitzroy, felt the hardness of the times as keenly as any member of the community, inasmuch as Tom had a large family of growing children to provide for, and customers had been anything but numerous of late. Indeed, the poor shaver was beginning to think that the primeval fashion of suffering the hair and beard to grow in wild luxuriance on the heads and faces of his race had become the order of the day, and from henceforth he could exclaim with Shakespeare’s gallant Moor—“Othello’s occupation’s gone.”
On this winter night the barber was alone in his shop, busy stropping his razors for want of more lucrative employment. Like most of his craft, Tom Brock was a great talker. It was part and parcel of his stock-in-trade; and, by the way, it is wonderful to note upon what a variety of subjects barbers can talk. Our hero was no exception to the rule in this respect. Having no one in the place to engage in conversation, he ceased stropping, and gazing into the large mirror opposite, addressed himself to what he saw there with charming irony in his tone.
“You’re a handsome fellow, Tom Brock, a very pretty fellow indeed. Only I’m afraid looks won’t go for much in this case. Here you are from eight [[50]]o’clock this morning, and you’ve almost earned one and sixpence, according to the multiplication table. Just fancy this grand sum of eighteen pence per diem, sir, for the maintenance of eleven persons—father, mother, and nine young Brocks, whose appetites this cold weather are something to astonish Soyer the Frenchman. Don’t smile at me, sir; I’m in no humour for jesting. Humph! how foolish to try and quarrel with one’s shadow! Yet I’ve known men do that, before to-night.”
He settled himself down with a sigh in the easy chair, and crossed his legs one over the other. “I wonder if the portrait and the superscription of Her Majesty the Queen is still upon the coinage of this realm?” continued the barber, speaking at the image in the mirror. “It’s such a time since I handled a golden coin that, upon my life, I almost forget what they are like; perhaps that is the reason why I feel such an uncontrollable desire to look upon one at this moment. Nay, not one, but several—in short, several hundreds. Pooh, what rubbish you’re talking, Tom Brock, you penniless rascal!”
The poor barber smiled at the idea of the thing, and the fellow in the mirror smiled in company. “Ready cash is a very handy thing to have at one’s command, especially when it is urgently [[51]]needed, as in my case,” said Tom, looking sternly at his reflection. “I’ve often heard fellows sneer at money, and call it strange names; yet I’ve noted that these same revilers were always mighty eager to gather it in when they have had an opportunity. Moreover, I——”
“ ‘SHAVE, OR HAIR CUT, SIR?’ ASKED THE BARBER.”