SOLOMON AND DESDEMONA.
An elderly man, brown as a fresh-roasted coffee-berry, a poll that bespoke him of the race of wandering gipsies, and "the darkness of whose Oriental eye accorded with his gipsy origin," advanced towards the table, bowing at every step, and said, "May it please your vorship's honour, I'm Mister Lovell, your vorship (another bow), knife-grinder and chair-bottomer, your vorship." Having so said, he smiled and bowed again; and then, shading the lower part of his brown shining visage with his rusty hat, he stood smiling and bowing, and bowing and smiling; but whatever else he had to say, refused to be said.
At length, seemingly to his great relief, the magistrate asked him what he wanted.
"Your vorship, I am Mister Lovell, the knife-grinder, your vorship, and I vantz you to give me a little bit of 'sistance to get me back my vife, vot I vere lawfully married to last Monday vere a veek, at Soreditch Church:—that's vot I vantz, your vorship."
"Yours is a very unusual application, indeed, friend," said the magistrate; "I am frequently requested to part man and wife, but I do not recollect that I was ever once asked to bring them together."
"Vell, your vorship," replied Mr. Lovell, "but mine's a werry hard case—a werry hard case, indeed! Here's the certifykit, your vorship."
His worship told Mr. Lovell he wanted no voucher in proof of what he said. He opened the certificate, however, and found it fairly set forth therein, that on a certain day specified, "Solomon Lovell, bachelor, and Desdemona Cocks, spinster," were duly married by banns in Shoreditch Church.
"And pray, what is become of the 'gentle Desdemona?'" asked his worship, as he returned the certificate to Mr. Lovell, who instantly crammed it back again into the sow-skin purse from which he had taken it; and then having deposited it safely in the very bottom of his left-hand breast-pocket, he proceeded to lay open his entire grievance. It was a lengthy, and rather unconnected narrative, but we gathered from it that Mr. Solomon Lovell absolutely loved the gentle Desdemona; and but for that, "he would not his unhoused free condition have put into circumscription and confine,"—"not on no account whatever." But the friends of Desdemona, who were in the costermongering line, thought the match too low for her; and they had not been united more than three happy days, when those friends cruelly contrived to inwiggle her away from his arms, and shut her up in a garret in Charles Street, Drury Lane, where they still continued to detain her, in spite of her unceasing tears, and his most earnest remonstrances.
"Of what age is the lady?" asked the magistrate.