Mrs. and Miss Tag-rag were sitting in the front parlor, intending to take tea as soon as Mr. Tag-rag should have arrived. It was not a large room, but sweetly furnished, according to the taste of the owners. There was only one window, and it had a flaunting white summer curtain. The walls were ornamented with three pictures, in ponderous gilt frames, being portraits of Mr., Mrs., and Miss Tag-rag; and I do not feel disposed to say more concerning these pictures, than that in each of them the dress was done with elaborate exactness—the faces seeming to have been painted in, for the purpose of setting off and completing the picture of the dress. The skinny little Miss Tag-rag sat at the worn-out, jingling pianoforte, causing it to utter—oh, horrid and doleful sound!—"The Battle of Prague." Mrs. Tag-rag, a fat, showily dressed woman of about fifty, her cap having a prodigious number of artificial flowers in it, sat reading a profitable volume, entitled "Groans from the Bottomless Pit to Awaken Sleeping Sinners," by (as he was pleased to dignify himself) the Rev. Dismal Horror—a very rousing young dissenting preacher lately come into that neighborhood, and who had almost frightened into fits half the women and children, and one or two old men, of his congregation; giving out, among several similarly cheering intimations, that they must all necessarily be damned unless they immediately set about making themselves as miserable as possible in this world. Only the Sunday before, he had pointed out, with awful force and distinctness, how cards and novels were the devil's traps to catch souls; and balls and theatres short and easy cuts to——!
He had proved to his trembling female hearers, in effect, that there was only one way to heaven, i. e. through his chapel; that the only safe mode of spending their time on earth was reading such blessed works as that which he had just published, and going daily to prayer-meetings. When, however, a Sunday or two before, he had the assurance to preach a funeral sermon, to "improve the death"—such being his impressive phrase—of a Miss Snooks, (who had kept a circulating library in the neighborhood, but had not been a member of his congregation;) and who, having been to the theatre on the Thursday night, was taken ill of a bowel attack on the Friday, and was a "lifeless corpse when the next Sabbath dawned"—you might have heard a beetle sneeze within any of the walls, all over the crowded chapel. Two-thirds of the women present, struck with the awful judgment upon the deceased Miss Snooks, inwardly made solemn vows never again to enter the accursed walls of a theatre or concert-room;[[11]] many determined no longer to subscribe to the circulating library, ruining their precious souls with light and amusing reading; and almost all resolved forthwith to become active members of a sort of religious tract society, which "dear Mr. Horror" had just established in the neighborhood, for the purpose of giving the sick and starving poor spiritual food, in the shape of tracts, (chiefly written by himself,) which might "wean their affections away from this vain world," and "fix them on better things," rejoicing, in the meanwhile, in the bitter pangs of destitution—and able to bear them! All this sort of thing Mr. Horror possibly imagined to be calculated to advance the cause of real religion! In short, he had created a sort of spiritual fever about the place which was then just at its height in worthy Mrs. Tag-rag.
"Well, Dolly, how are you to-night?" inquired Tag-rag, with unusual briskness, on entering the room.
"Tolerable, thank you, Tag," replied Mrs. Tag-rag, mournfully, with a sigh, closing the cheerful volume she had been perusing—it having been recommended the preceding Sunday from the pulpit by its pious and gifted author, to be read and prayed over every day by every member of his congregation!
"And how are you, Tabby?" said Tag-rag, addressing his daughter. "Come and kiss me, you little slut—come!"
"No, I sha'n't, pa! Do let me go on with my practising," said Miss Tag-rag—and twang! twang! went those infernal keys.
"D' ye hear, Tab? Come and kiss me, you little minx"——
"Really, pa, how provoking—just as I am in the middle of the Cries of the Wounded! I sha'n't—that's flat."
The doting parent could not, however, be denied; so he stepped to the piano, put his arm around his dutiful daughter's neck, kissed her fondly, and then stood for a moment behind her, admiring her brilliant execution of The Trumpet of Victory. Having changed his coat, and put on an old pair of shoes, Mr. Tag-rag was comfortable for the evening.
"Tabby plays wonderful well, Dolly, don't she?" said Tag-rag, as the tea-things were being brought in, by way of beginning a conversation, while he drew his chair nearer to his wife.