Note. Please send the proceeds as requested per letter; the bearer being directed not to give up the manuscript without.
BIDDY TIBS, WHO CARED FOR NOBODY.
"Marry in thy youth!" This golden truth is writ in one of the "gates," or articles of the "Sadder." We know not if the eyes of Jacob Tibs ever opened upon this questionable axiom; or whether the consciousness of his own weakness was the load-star which lighted him, "poor darkened traveller," to the blessed state. Be it as it might, Jacob, though no longer in youth, and in spite of my Uncle Toby's showing that "love is below a man,"—Jacob took unto himself a wife,—an unquestionable better half, seeing his share was so small in the economy of domestic life. But at how high a standard Jacob ought to have placed his happiness,—and marriage is with some supposed to be a good,—he held it a plague, a sickness long in killing! Jacob, as we have before stated, married, and from that seed his crops of evil sprung! The apple of his eye, like that of the East, was ashes to his taste. Alas! that Jacob ever married!
Biddy Tibs, "who cared for nobody," was, at the time we write, a small withered piece of stale old age. In her husband's days,—and they a bountiful Providence, or rather rope, had shortened; not that he was hanged, for Jacob was a modest-minded man!—she made up in temper what she lacked in size; which temper, in the opinion of many, was the personal property of the devil! And as the most difficult conquest of Mahomet was that of his wife, so it proved with Jacob, who vainly hoped that, "as with time and patience the leaf of the mulberry-tree becomes satin," so might his wife's temper from sour turn to sweet! How little did Jacob appreciate the constancy of woman!
Jacob Tibs was part owner of a Liverpool West India trader, and of which he was nominally the captain. But Mrs. T., in this as in all other instances, was the great "captain's captain:" her lungs—and never had a speaking-trumpet such lungs—were hurricane-proof! and the title of "boatswain" was not improperly a sobriquet of this fair cheapener of sugar, with which the vessel was ostensibly freighted, though upon occasions she had more slaves than her husband on board; so that, what with natural and human produce, Jacob climbed a golden ladder. Tired with a "life of storms," he changed his vessel for a house, the sea for a quiet town, and might have rested his old age in peace; but, alas for Jacob! he was married!
Argus is reported to have slept,—can we wonder that Mrs. Tibs's two eyes for once lost their vigilance, and left her husband the master of himself, and one day—for that she passed a short distance off; and Jacob resolved that this drop of comfort should prove a well; and in truth it did, as will be shown. Old Jacob had friends, as who has not that has anything to give?—and this day—the only one he could look forward to with a smile since he had been "blessed"—he determined should prove a golden one; and, spite of the servant-girl's warnings of "How missus would wop him!" Jacob held a levee,—some dozen sons of Eve, whose mouths sucked brandy like a sponge,—good old souls of a good old age, whose modest wants 'bacca and brandy could supply.
Jacob held his levee! but as he boasted no privy purse, no stocking with a foot of guineas, and no brandy but a bottle two-thirds full, left by strange accident in the cupboard, what was to be done? For the first time in his life Jacob was surprised into an act of rebellion; and with a death-doing hammer in one hand, and a screwdriver in the other, did Jacob invade the—to him—sanctity of the cellar. The lock was wrenched, lights were stuck in empty bottles, and Jacob, who in his young-going days had swilled it with the best, soon verified the sentiment of Le Sage, that "a reformed drunkard should never be left in a cellar." Now, whether joy or brandy had to answer for the sin, we know not; but, certain it is, Jacob got drunk, and measured his length—he was a tall man—upon the ground. Friends should be our brothers in affliction; his were true ones, and at happy intervals of time they sank beside him, completely overcome,—showing how little was their pride, how great their fellowship!
How long they might have continued in this undeniable state of bliss would be an useless guess, for the last of Jacob's friends—and he was no sudden faller-off—had scarcely deposited himself upon the ground in happy indifference for his clothes, when the cracked-bell voice of Mrs. Tibs, who had unexpectedly returned, roused the maid into a consciousness that missus had come home! Domestic contentions are at no time an interesting theme; and as most of our readers—we allude to the married portion—have doubtless experienced them in real life, romance would fall far short of the truth; the single we advise to marry, and experience will teach them what we here pass over. When Jacob's better half beheld her bottles empty, her casks upturned, and her husband, for the first time since he had enjoyed that felicity, deaf to the music of her voice, a bucket of water from the well refreshed Jacob to a truth he would willingly have slept in ignorance of,—that the wife of his bosom was alive, and he started as a thief would at an opening door. She seized him by the collar, and, showering the first-fruits of her passion upon him who could so well appreciate it, the "boatswain" rose within her, and, after bestowing sundry terms of approbation upon his boon companions, she turned them out of the house, as the vulgar saying hath it, "with their tails between their legs." Jacob would have slunk away, but Fortune willed it otherwise. His "rib" shouted the word of command, "Tack, you lubber, and be ---- to you!" Jacob recognised the voice,—how could he have mistaken it?—and waited for orders. Now it so fell out, as Mrs. Tibs ran for the bucket of water, her cap, in the press of business, caught by a twig, dropped into the well, and eighteen-pence had been that day expended in decoration. With the assistance of Nanny the maid, Jacob was to be wound down in the bucket; and, spite of his appeals to the contrary, with one foot in the tub, and both hands on the rope, he was lowered, and half soused in water, until he reached the ribbon treasure of his wife's head. The cap clutched in one hand, he was raised dripping by the windlass. Each twist brought him nearer to the top, when, sorrowful to relate, the rope gave way, and Jacob dropped like lead into the well; a hollow splash was heard in the water, and Mrs Tibs stood by in speechless agony. At length her grief found vent, and, pitching her voice to its shrillest note, she cried, "Oh, my cap!"
Alas for Jacob! his head struck with swingeing force against the bricks, where to this day the impression may be seen: he fell stunned into the water, and before aid could be obtained, which Mrs. Tibs did in less than two hours and a half, Jacob was dead!