"To the CONDUCTOR of the TIMES.
"Sir,—Leaving a shop in the City a few days ago, I fell into a reverie with the thoughts of what trade would come to next century: how it would be conducted, and by what description of persons: as in the shop I had just left, one servant said to another, 'Do you know were Master S—— is gone'? Another answers, Mr. R—— (which was an apprentice) knows: ask him. Presently came down stairs a maid servant, to enquire whether all the gentlemen (meaning the shopmen) would come to dinner. Half these gentlemen were booted, as if going to take a morning's ride. O tempore! O mores!"—(Times, Sept. 30, 1794.)
"The Glove Manufacturers in the different counties, will no doubt make the most of the Princess of Wales's delicate hand: but there is something more than ordinarily ludicrous in the extravagant anticipation of a Shopkeeper, at the West End of the Town, who puts up in Roman characters, "Wedding-ring maker to the Princess Caroline of Brunswick."—(Times, Nov. 15, 1794.)
The Lady Lade, here mentioned, once rode a race on horseback at New Market—but lost it:—
"Lady Lade and Mrs. Hodges are to have a curricle race at Newmarket, at the next Spring Meeting, and the horses are now in training. It is to be a five mile course, and great sport is expected. The construction of the traces is to be on a plan similar to that by which Lord March, now Duke of Queensbury, won his famous match against time. The odds, at present, are in favour of Lady Lade. She runs a grey mare, which is said to be the best horse in the Baronet's stables."—(Times, Dec. 20, 1794.)
"The following circumstance is extraordinary beyond parallel:—On Tuesday se'nnight died, on her return from Bath, Miss Henrietta Dickenson, the fourteenth daughter of the late John Dickenson, Esq. of East Place, in Yorkshire, having attained precisely that age at which each of her 13 sisters died."—(Times, Dec. 22, 1794.)
"Crosthwaite Church, in the Vale of Keswick, Cumberland, hath five chapels belonging to it. The Minister's stipend is five pounds per annum, and goose grass, or the right of commoning his geese: a whittle gate, or the valuable privilege of using his knife for a week at any time, at any table in the parish; and lastly, a hardened sark, or a shirt of coarse linen: whereas the Rectory of Winweck, a small village in Lancashire, is the richest living in England. The Rector is Lord of the Manor, and has a glebe of £1400 annual rent. The whole living is worth £3000 a year."—(Times, Dec. 26, 1794.)
"At Hanworth Booths, a public-house near to Lincoln, a few days ago, a man dropped a Boston Bank Bill, value five guineas, which momentarily disappeared, and a strict search was made without producing any favourable effect. At length a woman present recollected a playful whelp chewing something apparently white. This observation consigned the life of the poor dog to an immediate sentence and he was instantly hanged, and his thorax opened, wherein the lost bill was found in a mangled state: but nevertheless the purport of the paper was evidently discoverable, and cash to the amount was got for it at the Boston Bank."—(Times, Jan. 14, 1795.)
"In the various researches made throughout the house of Langleys, the seat of John Jolliffe Tuffnell, Esq. in Essex, two caskets of family Jewels have been found concealed amongst old linen, and near £150,000 in specie, behind the books in the library, the chief part of which sum he is supposed to have sold out of the funds, with a view of purchasing some advertised estates in that county."
"It is worthy of remark, that the number of deaths in this metropolis, within the last few months past, amounts to double what it ever has been, within the same space of time, since the plague, which desolated London in the last century."—(Times, Feb. 20, 1795.)