One of the stereotyped cocks is, the “Married Man Caught in a Trap.” One man had known it sold “for years and years,” and it served, he said, when there was any police report in the papers about sweethearts in coal-cellars, &c. The illustration embraces two compartments. In one a severe-looking female is assaulting a man, whose hat has been knocked off by the contents of a water-jug, which a very stout woman is pouring on his head from a window. In the other compartment, as if from an adjoining room, two women look on encouragingly. The subject matter, however, is in no accordance with the title or the embellishment. It is a love-letter from John S—n to his most “adorable Mary.” He expresses the ardour of his passion, and then twits his adored with something beyond a flirtation with Robert E—, a “decoyer of female innocence.” Placably overlooking this, however, John S—n continues:—
“My dearest angel consent to my request, and keep me no longer in suspense—nothing, on my part, shall ever be wanting to make you happy and comfortable. My apprenticeship will expire in four months from hence, when I intend to open a shop in the small ware line, and your abilities in dress-making and self-adjusting stay-maker, and the assistance of a few female mechanics, we shall be able to realize an independency.”
“Many a turn in seductions talked about in the papers and not talked about nowhere,” said one man, “has that slum served for, besides other things, such as love-letters, and confessions of a certain lady in this neighbourhood.”
Another old cock is headed, “Extraordinary and Funny Doings in this Neighbourhood.” The illustration is a young lady, in an evening dress, sitting with an open letter in her hand, on a sort of garden-seat, in what appears to be a churchyard. After a smart song, enforcing the ever-neglected advice that people should “look at home and mind their own business,” are two letters, the first from R. G.; the answer from S. H. M. The gentleman’s epistle commences:—
“Madam,
“The love and tenderness I have hitherto expressed for
you is false, and I now feel that my indifference towards
you increases every day, and the more I see you the more
you appear ridiculous in my eyes and contemptible—
I feel inclined & in every respect disposed & determined
to hate you. Believe me, I never had any inclination
to offer you my hand.”
The lady responds in a similar strain, and the twain appear very angry, until a foot-note offers an explanation: “By reading every other line of the above letters the true meaning will be found.”
Of this class of cocks I need cite no other specimens, but pass on to one of another species—the “Cruel and Inhuman Murder Committed on the Body of Capt. Lawson.” The illustration is a lady, wearing a coronet, stabbing a gentleman, in full dress, through the top button of his waistcoat. The narrative commences:—
“WITH surprise we have learned that this neighbourhood for a length of time was amazingly alarmed this day by a crowd of people carrying the body of Mr. James Lawless, to a doctor while streams of blood besmeared the way in such a manner that the cries of Murder re-echoed the sound of numerous voices. It appears that the cause of alarm, originated through a court-ship attended with a solemn promise of marriage between him and miss Lucy Guard, a handsome young Lady of refined feelings with the intercourse of a superior enlightened mind she lived with her aunt who spared neither pain nor cost to improve the talents of miss G. those seven years past, since the death of her mother in Ludgate Hill, London, and bore a most excellent character until she got entangled by the delumps alcurement of Mr. L.”
The writer then deplores Miss Guard’s fall from virtue, and her desertion by her betrayer, “on account of her fortune being small.” Capt. Lawson, or Mr. James Lawless, next woos a wealthy City maiden, and the banns are published. What follows seems to me to be a rather intricate detail:—
“We find that the intended bride learned that Miss Guard, held certain promissory letters of his, and that she was determined to enter an action against him for a breach of promise, which moved clouded Eclipse over the extacy of the variable miss Lawless who knew that Miss G had Letters of his sufficient to substantiate her claims in a court.”