M. J.
MARTHA BROWN.
By an Ancient Contributor.
TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.
Sir,—It is twenty years since I first contributed to your Magazine;—it was rather a brief article, and was not inserted in the early part of the work. In short, it consisted of a few lines in the Obituary at the end of the Number, and was as follows:—"Died at Bunderjumm, in the East Indies, Thomas Sneezum, Esq., much and justly regretted by a numerous circle of friends and acquaintances." He was my uncle, sir, and I was his heir,—a highly respectable man, and a remarkable judge of bullocks. He was in the Commissariat, and died worth forty thousand pounds. If you saw his monument, on the wall of our parish church, and read his character, you would know what a beautiful sympathy exists between a dead uncle and a grateful nephew. I took the name of Sneezum in addition to my own—bought an estate, and an immense number of books—and cultivated my land and literature with the greatest care. I planted trees—I drained meadows—and wrote books. The trees grew—the meadows flourished—but the books never came to an end. Something always interfered. I never could get the people in my novels disposed of. When they began talking, they talked for ever; when they fought duels, they were always killed; and, by the time I had got them into the middle of a scrape, I always forgot how I had intended to get them out of it. In history, it was very nearly the same. Centuries jostled against each other like a railway collision. I confused Charlemagne with Frederick Barbarossa, and the Cardinal Richelieu with M. Thiers. So, with the exception of the article I alluded to, in your Magazine, and a few letters on the present potato disease in the Gardener's Guide, I am a Great Unpublished—in the same way as I understand there are a number of extraordinary geniuses in the dramatic line, who have called themselves the Great Unacted. I can only hope that advancing civilization will bring better days to us both—types for me—actors for them.
At the time of the lamented death of my uncle, I was about thirty years of age, and for ten years before that, had been sleeping partner in a house in Liverpool; and I can honestly say I did my part of the duty to the perfect satisfaction of all concerned. I slept incessantly—not exactly in a house in Liverpool but in a very comfortable one—the drawing-room floor, near the Regent's Park. Twice a-year a balance-sheet came in, and a little ready money. I put the money carefully away in a drawer, and threw the balance-sheet in the fire. It was a very happy life, for I subscribed to a circulating library, and wrote the beginnings of books continually.
One day, about six months after I was in possession of the fortune, I heard a ring at the bell. There was something in the ring different from any I had ever heard before—a sort of sweet, modest tingling kind of a ring. I felt as if somebody was shaking my hand all the time; and, on looking back on the event, I think there must be something in mesmerism and every thing else—homœopathy and the water cure included; for it was certainly quite unaccountable on ordinary principles—but so it was. The maid was very slow in answering the bell. There was another pull. The same mysterious effects—a sort of jump—a tremor as it were, not at all unpleasant, but very odd—so I went to the door myself; and there fixed on me, in the most extraordinary manner, were two of the blackest eyes I ever saw—illuminating cheeks of a dark yellow colour, and increasing the whiteness of the most snowy teeth—the brightest, glistenest, shiningest, teeth that can possibly be imagined. She wore—for I may as well tell you it was a woman—she wore a flowing white veil upon her head, the queerest petticoats, and funniest shoes—at that time I had not seen the Chinese Collection and thought it was Desdemona (whom I had seen Mr Kean put to death a few nights before) "walking" in some of Othello's clothes. What she said, or if she said any thing, I was too much astonished to make out; but she walked into my room, smiling with her wonderful teeth, and curtsying with the extraordinary petticoats down to the very floor—and calling me "Massa Sib."
"My good woman," I said, "I am afraid you make a mistake. I don't know any one of the name of Sib;" but I checked myself, for I thought she perhaps mistook me—I wore prodigious whiskers at that time—for a gallant colonel, whose name begins with that euphonious syllable.