So far was Mr. Marchant's statement of the affair; and, he having concluded, John Saunders was called upon for his defence.
John Saunders, as we have already stated, was a remarkably mild, quiet young man; and he told a story—or rather a story was drawn out of him bit by bit, of which the following is the substance:—He resided with his mama at Clapham—was himself "brought up in the glass line," (and truly he seemed as transparent as glass,) but was then out of business. On the afternoon preceding the night on which he met with Mr. Marchant and his wicked horse, his mama sent him to her milliner's, at Kensington, to bring home a bonnet and feathers which she had sent there to be "done up." He went to Kensington—called upon a friend, who gave him some Scotch ale—went to the milliner, who put the bonnet and feathers in a large white band-box, and he was quietly returning home to Clapham with it, when he fell in with the gentleman, and his horse with a pebble in his foot: but he wished he never had fallen in with them; for he had been made very miserable by it. He offered his services to get the pebble out, and spoiled his umbrella; he undertook to hold the horse while the gentleman looked for a stone, and the Scotch ale, having got into his head, as he supposed, induced him to get on the horse's back—quite contrary to his intention. The horse ran away with him directly—directly contrary to the way he wished to go—he was hurried along, in a dreadful manner, he knew not whither, till the horse stopped at Brompton; and then he found that the large white band-box was worn almost to tatters by its excessive agitation on horseback, and that one of the feathers of his mother's bonnet was sadly broken. He then considered within himself that it would be impossible to find the gentleman to whom the horse belonged that night; and, having bought a new band-box for his mother's bonnet, he rode home to Clapham, put the horse in a butcher's stable, gave it some corn, had his own supper, and went to bed dreadfully tired. In the morning he got up early, wrote an advertisement about the horse, and was coming to town to put it in the papers, when he met the gentleman, who was very angry with him, and gave him into custody.
Mr. Marchant, in reply, said he was inclined to believe his story, but he thought it right he should be told authoritatively that he was not to play such pranks with impunity.
The magistrate, therefore, gave John Saunders a suitable admonition, and dismissed him.
'PON MY HONOUR IT'S TRUE.
A German mechanic having laid information at this office that a countryman of his, named Schultz, residing in Green Street, Leicester Square, was kept in a state of durance, in his own house, by an Englishwoman, who, he verily believed, had a design both upon his life and property, the magistrate sent some officers to bring the parties before him.
They accordingly proceeded to the house, but the English lady peremptorily refused them admission, and it was several hours before they were able to effect an entrance. At length, however, they brought the parties to the office in a hackney coach—for the lady was too magnificent to walk, and the poor old German was so afflicted with paralysis, that he was carried before the magistrate on the back of one of his countrymen.
He was indeed a miserable object—his limbs utterly useless—his eyes dull and unnaturally protruding—his beard unshaved—his hair matted with feathers—and his whole person disgustingly filthy.
The lady, on the contrary, was a fine bouncing woman, of rather handsome countenance, gaily dressed in a fashionable bonnet and plume, and her fat white fingers covered with glittering rings. Nevertheless she bodily professed that she loved the poor emaciated, dirty, paralytic old man; and she affirmed that all her attentions to him were purely disinterested. He was exactly in the same state, she said, when she first became acquainted with him, five years ago—not worth a single sixpence, over head and ears in debt, half crazy, of filthy habits, lame, old, and impotent—and yet she loved him—loved him for himself alone. ("Oh! who doth know the bent of woman's phantasy?" as Master Spenser saith.)