Japhet, in Search of a Father

e my patient-The feud equal to that of the Montagues and

he now seldom called unless it was early in the morning; I made repeated visits to her house to receive money, but no longer to make love. One day I requested permission to be present at their meeting, and to this she gave immediate consent; indeed we were on the most intimate terms

f this arrangement, as he seldom brought her

at the rival prophetess had marched up at the head of her proselytes the evening before, had obtained entrance, and that a desperate contention had been the result. That the police had been called in, and all parties had been lodged in the watch-house; that the whole affair was being investigated by the magistrates, and that it was said that

n one subject-my parentage, and the mystery hanging over it. My eternal reveries became at last so painful, that I had recourse to reading to drive them away, and subscribing to a good circulating library, I was seld

gle-fronted; there, at least, we had the ascendancy over them. Upon other points, our advantages were more equally balanced. Mr Pleggit had two large coloured bottles in his windows more than we had; but then we had two horses, and he had only one. He tied over the corks of his bottles with red-coloured paper; we covered up the lips of our vials with delicate blue. It certainly was the case-for though an enemy, I'll do him justice-that, after Mr Brookes had left us, Mr Pleggit had two shopmen, and Mr Cophagus only one; but then that one was Mr Japhet Newland; besides, one of his assistants had only one eye, and the other squinted horribly, so if we measured by eyes, I think t

et, the former immediately began to spit as if he had swallowed some of his own vile adulterated drugs; and in rejoinder, Mr Cophagus immediately raised the cane from his nose hi

eadly feud; and this feud was even more deadly between the boys who carried out the medicines, and whose baskets might, in some measure,

l up with empty bottles below, rather than that the credit of the house should be suspected, and his deficiencies create a smile of scorn in the mouth of his red-haired antagonist, when they happened to meet

has as yet been sung; and it requires a greater genius than was to be found in those who portrayed the conflicts of heroes, demigods, gods, angels, or books, to do adequate justice t

he opposing baskets, dire was the crash of many of the vials, and dreadful was the mingled odour of the abominations which escaped, and poured through the wicker interstices. Two ladies from Billingsgate, who were near, indulging their rhetorical powers, stopped short. Two tom cats, who were on an adjacent roof, just fixing their eyes of enmity, and about to fix their claws, turned their eyes to the scene below. Two political antagonists stopped their noisy arguments. Two dustmen ceased to ring their bells; and two little urchins eating cherries from the crowns of their hats, lost sight of their fruit, and stood ag

at!" cried he, with a rancorous yell. This missile, well directed as the spears of Homer's heroes, came full upon the bridge of Timothy's nose, and the fragile glass shivering, inflicted divers wounds upon his physiognomy, and at the same time poured forth a dark burnt-sienna coloured balsam, to heal them, giving p

ter, while acids and alkalies hissed, as they neutralised each other's power, with all the venom of expiring snakes, "Bravo! white apron!" "Red-head for ever!" resounded on every side as the conflict continued with unabated vigour. The ammunition was fast expending on both sides, when Mr Ebenezer Pleggit, hearing the noise, and perhaps smelling his own drugs, was so unfortunately rash and so unwisely foolhardy, as to break through the sacred ring, advancing from behind with uplifted

his basket the only weapons which remained, one single vial, and one single box of pills. As he sat upon his prostrate foe, first he forced the box of pills into his gasping mouth, and then with the lower end of the vial he drove it down his throat, as a gunner rams home the wad and shot into a thirty-two pound carronade. Choked with the box, the fallen knight held up his hands for quarter; but Timothy continued until the end of the

to be wroth at the loss of so much medicine; but when he heard the story, and the finale, he was so pleased at Tim's do

tion for assault and battery, and all the neighbourhood did nothing but talk about the affray wh

nsupportable. I had but one idea, which performed an everlasting cycle in my brain-Who was my father? And I should have abandoned the profession to search the world in the hope of finding my progenitor, had it not been that I was without the means. Latterly, I had hoarded up