Pencil Sketches; or, Outlines of Character and Manners

by Eliza Leslie

Things were in this state when election day came; and on the following morning Mr. Dodcomb came over to look at Mr. Jones's newspaper, and see the returns of the city and county; complaining that ever since he had lived in the neighbourhood, his own paper had been shamefully purloined from the handle of the door so early as before the shop was open. To steal a newspaper appeared to honest Peter the very climax of felony, for, as he said, it was stealing a man's sense and knowledge; and, being himself the earliest riser in the neighbourhood, he volunteered to watch for the offender. This he did by rising with the first blush of dawn, and promenading the pavement, stick in hand. It was not long before he discovered the abstractor in the person of an ever-briefless lawyerling, belonging to the only family in the neighbourhood who professed aristocracy, and discountenanced Peter Jones. And our indignant old hero saw "the young gentleman of rank" issue scarcely half dressed from his own door, pounce rapidly upon the newspaper, and carry it off. "Stop thief!—stop thief!" was loudly vociferated by Peter, who, brandishing his stick, made directly across the street, and the astonished culprit immediately dropped the paper, and took refuge in his own patrician mansion.

As soon as the Dodcomb house was opened, Peter Jones went over with the trophy of his success. Mr. Dodcomb was profuse of thanks, making some remarkably handsome speeches on the occasion, and Peter went home and assured his wife that, though a barber, their new neighbour was a very clever man and well worth knowing. Mrs. Jones immediately saw things in their proper light, did not perceive that the Dodcombs were at all queerer than other people, concluded that they had a right to look as they pleased, and imputed their indifference to hair and cosmetics to the probability that they were surfeited with the sight of both; as confectioners never eat cakes, and shoemakers' families are said to go barefoot.

The same evening, Mrs. Jones accompanied her husband to make a neighbourly visit to the Dodcombs, whom, to their great surprise, they found to be extremely au-fait of the theatre; Mr. Dodcomb being barber to that establishment, and his sister-in-law, Miss Sarah Ann Flimbrey, one of the dressmakers.

The progress of the intimacy between the Jones and Dodcomb families now increased rapidly, making prodigious strides every day. By the next week, which was the beginning of January, they had made up a party to go together to the theatre on New Year's night; Peter Jones having been actually and wonderfully over-persuaded to break through his time-honoured custom of going but once a twelvemonth. The Dodcombs had an irregular way of seeing the plays from between the scenes, from the flies over the stage, and from all other inconvenient and uncomfortable places where they could slip in "by virtue of their office;" but on New Year's night they always went in form, taking a front box up stairs, that their children might have an uninterrupted view of the whole show; Mr. Dodcomb on that evening employing a deputy to arrange the heads of the performers.

Early on New Year's morning, Peter Jones put into the hands of his neighbour two dollars, to pay for the tickets of himself and wife; and during the remainder of the day (which, fortunately for him, was at this season a very short one) he had his usual difficulty in getting through the time.

It was in vain that the Joneses were dressed at an early hour and had their usual early tea. The Dodcombs (to whom the theatre was no novelty) did not hurry with their preparations, and on Peter going over to see if they were ready, he found them all in their usual dishabille, and their maid just beginning to set the tea-table. That people (under any circumstances) could be so dilatory with a play in prospect, presented to the mind of the astonished Peter a new view of the varieties of the human species. But as all things must have an end, so at last had the tea-drinking of the Dodcombs; and luckily their toilets did not occupy much time, for they only put themselves in full dress from their waist upward; to the great surprise of Mrs. Jones, who was somewhat scandalized at their oldish shoes and dirtyish stockings.

To the utter dismay of the Joneses, the curtain, for the first time in their lives, was up when they arrived; and to this misfortune the Dodcombs did not seem to attach the least consequence, assuring them that in losing the first scene of a play they lost nothing.

The five children were ranged in front, each of the three girls wearing a rose-bud on one side of her closely trimmed head, which rose-bud, as Mrs. Jones afterwards averred to her husband, must have been stuck there and held in its place by some hocus pocus, which no one but a play-house barber could contrive or execute. During the progress of the play, which was a melo-drama of what is called "thrilling interest," Peter Jones, who always himself paid the most exemplary attention to the scene before him, was annoyed to find that his wife was continually drawn in to talk, by the example of Mrs. Dodcomb and Miss Flimbrey, one of whom sat on each side of her, and who both kept up a running fire of questions, answers, and remarks during the whole of the performance—plays, as they said, being mere drugs to them.

"How do you like that scarlet and gold dress?" said Mrs. Dodcomb.

"Oh! it's beautiful!" replied Mrs. Jones, "and he's a beautiful man that wears it! What handsome legs he has?—and what a white neck for a man!—and such fine curly hair—"