"I have got a cold, and can't sing," replied the woman.
"Well, then, Tony," said the Buffer, "tell us some of your adventures. They'll amuse us till Moll comes back."
"I am quite tired of telling the same things over and over again," answered the Resurrection Man. "We've never heard you practise in that line yet; so the sooner you begin the better. Come, tell us your history."
"There isn't much to tell," said the Buffer, refilling his pipe; "but such as it is, you're welcome to it."
With this preface, the Buffer commenced his autobiography, in the record of which we have taken the liberty of correcting the grammatical solecisms that invariably characterised this individual's discourse; and we have also improved the language in which the narrative was originally clothed.
CHAPTER XCIX.
THE BUFFER'S HISTORY.
"You are well aware that my name is really John Wicks, although very few of my pals know me by any other title than the Buffer.
"My father and mother kept a coal and potatoe shed in Great Suffolk Street, Borough. I was their only child; and as they were very fond of me, they would not let me be bothered and annoyed with learning. For decency's sake, however, they made me go to the Sunday-school, and there I just learnt to read, and that's all.
"When I was twelve years old, I began to carry out small quantities of coals and potatoes to the customers. We used to supply a great many of the prisoners in the Bench; and whenever I went into that place, I generally managed to have a game of marbles, and sometimes rackets, with the young blackguards that lurked about the prison to pick up the racket balls, run on messages, and so on. At length I got to play for money; and as I generally lost, I had to take the money which I received from the customers to pay my little gambling debts. I was obliged to tell my father and mother all kinds of falsehoods to account for the disappearance of the money. Sometimes I said that I had lost a few halfpence; then I declared that a beggar in the street had snatched a sixpence out of my hand, and ran away; or else I swore that the customers had not paid me. This last excuse led to serious misunderstandings; for sometimes my father went himself to collect the debts owing to him; and then, when the prisoners declared they had paid me, I stuck out that it was false; and my father called them rogues and swindlers. At length, he began seriously to suspect that his son was robbing him; and one day he found it out in a manner which I could not deny. I was then fourteen, and was pretty well hardened, I can tell you. So I turned round, and told my father that he had brought it all on himself, because he had instructed me how to cheat the customers in weight and measure, and had therefore brought me up in wrong principles.
"You must understand that the usual mode of doing business in coal-sheds is this: all the weights only weigh one half of what they are represented to weigh. For instance, the one which is used as the fifty pound weight is hollow, and is, therefore, made as large in outward appearance as the real fifty pound weight; whereas, in consequence of being hollow, it actually only weighs twenty-five pounds. This is the case with all the weights; the pound weight really weighs only half a pound, and so on. You may ask why the weights are thus exactly one half less than they are represented to be,—neither more nor less than one half. I will tell you: when the leet jury comes round and points, for instance, to the weight used for fifty pounds, the answer is, 'Oh, that is the twenty-five pound weight;' and, upon being tested, the assertion is found to be correct. So there is never any danger of being hauled over the coals by the leet jury; but if the weights were each an odd number of ounces or pounds short, they could not be passed off to the jury as weights of a particular standard, and then the warehouseman would get into a scrape. It is just the same with the measures. The bushel contains a false bottom, and is really half a bushel; and when the leet jury calls, it is stated to be the half bushel measure, whereas to customers it is passed off as the bushel. This will also account to you for the way in which costermongers in the streets are able to sell fruit (cherries particularly) and peas, in the season, for just one half of the price at which they can be bought at respectable dealers. The poor dupe who gives twopence for a pound of cherries of a costermonger in the street, only obtains half a pound; and the housewife who thinks that she can save a hundred per cent. by buying her peas in the same way, only gets half a peck instead of a peck.