The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 389, September 12, 1829

Sighmon sighed for the seclusion of number three, Burying Ground Buildings, Paddington Road.

One morning his landlady announced, with broader grin than usual, that a gentleman desired to speak with him; he grumbled, but submitted, and the gentleman was announced.

"My name, sir, is Opie," said the stranger; "I am quite delighted to see you here. You intend gratifying the good people of Tewksbury of course?"

"Gratifying! what can you mean?"

"If your name is announced, there'll not be a box to be had."

"I always look after my own boxes, I can tell you," replied Dumps.

"By all means, you will come out here of course?"

"Come out? to be sure, I sha'n't stay within doors always."

"What do you mean to come out in?"

"Why, what I've got on will do very well."

"Oh, that's so like you," said Opie, shaking his sides with laughter, "you really are inimitable!—What character do you select here?"

"Character!" said Dumps, "the stranger."

"The Stranger! you?"

"Yes, I."

"And you really mean to come out here as the Stranger?" said Opie.

"Why, yes to be sure—I'm but just come."

"Then I shall put your name in large letters immediately, we will open this evening; and as to terms, you shall have half the receipts of the house."

Off ran Mr. Opie, who was no less a personage than the manager of the theatre, leaving Dumps fully persuaded that he had been closeted with a lunatic.

Shortly afterwards he saw a man very busy pasting bills against a wall opposite his window, and so large were the letters that he easily deciphered, "THE CELEBRATED MR. LISTON IN TRAGEDY. This evening THE STRANGER, the Part of THE STRANGER BY MR. LISTON." Dumps had never seen the inimitable Liston, indeed comedy was quite out of his way. But now that the star was to shine forth in tragedy, the announcement was congenial to the serious turn of his mind, and he resolved to go.

He ate an early dinner, went by times to the theatre, and established himself in a snug corner of the stage box. The house filled, the hour of commencement arrived, the fiddlers paused and looked towards the curtain, but hearing no signal they fiddled another strain. The audience became impatient; they hissed, they hooted, and they called for the manager: another pause, another yell of disapprobation, and the manager pale and trembling appeared, and walked hat in hand to the front of the stage. To Dumps's great surprise it was the very man who visited him in the morning. Mr. Opie cleared his throat, bowed repeatedly, moved his lips, but was inaudible amid the shouts of "hear him." At length silence was obtained, and he spoke as follows:—

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

"I appear before you to entreat your kind and considerate forbearance; I lament as much, nay more than you, the absence of Mr. Liston; but, in the anguish of the moment, one thought supports me, the consciousness of having done my duty. (Applause.) I had an interview with your deservedly favourite performer this morning, and every necessary arrangement was made between us. I have sent to his hotel, and he is not to be found. (Disapprobation.) I have been informed that he dined early, and left the house, saying that he was going to the theatre; what accident can have prevented his arrival I am utterly unable to—"

Mr. Opie now happened to glance towards the stage box, surprise! doubt! anger! certainty! were the alternate expressions of his pale face, and widely opened eyes; and at length pointing to Dumps he exclaimed—

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is my painful duty to inform you that Mr. Liston is now before you; there he sits at the back of the stage box, and I trust I may be permitted to call upon him for an explanation of his very singular conduct."

Every eye turned towards Dumps, every voice was uplifted against him; the man who could not endure the scrutiny of one pair of eyes, now beheld a house full of them glaring at him with angry indignation. His head became confused, he had a slight consciousness of being elbowed through the lobby, of a riot in the crowded street, and of being protected by the civil authorities against the uncivil attacks of the populace. He was conveyed to bed, and awoke the next morning with a very considerable accession of nervous malady.

He soon heard that the whole town vowed vengeance against the infamous and unprincipled impostor who had so impudently played off a practical joke on the public, and at dead of night did he escape from the town of Tewksbury, in a return mourning coach, with which he was accommodated by his tender hearted landlady.

Our persecuted hero next occupied private apartments at a boarding-house at Malvern. Privacy was refreshing, but, alas! its duration was doomed to be short. A young officer who had witnessed the embarrassment of "the stranger" at Tewksbury, recognised the sufferer at Malvern, and knowing his nervous antipathy to being noticed, he wickedly resolved to make him the lion of the place.

He dined at the public table, spoke of the gentleman who occupied the private apartments, wondered that no one appeared to be aware who he was, and then in confidence informed the assembled party that the recluse was the celebrated author of the "Pleasures of Memory," now engaged in illustrating "HIS ITALY" with splendid embellishments from the pencils of Stothard and Turner.

Dumps again found himself an object of universal curiosity, every body became officiously attentive to him, he was waylaid in his walks, and intentionally intruded upon by accident in his private apartments; a travelling artist requested to be permitted to take his portrait for the exhibition, a lady requested him to peruse her manuscript romance and to give his unbiassed opinion, and the master of the boarding-house waited upon him by desire of his guests to request that he would honour the public table with his company. Several ladies solicited his autograph for their albums, and several gentlemen called a meeting of the inhabitants, and resolved to give him a public dinner; a craniologist requested to be permitted to take a cast of his head, and as a climax to his misery, when he was sitting in his bedchamber thinking himself at least secure for the present, the door being bolted; he looked towards the Malvern Hills, which rise abruptly immediately at the back of the boarding-house, and there he discovered a party of ladies eagerly gazing at him with long telescopes through the open windows!

He left Malvern the next morning, and went to a secluded village on the Welsh coast, not far from Swansea.

The events of the last few weeks had rendered poor Sighmon Dumps more sensitively nervous than ever. His seclusion became perpetual, his blind always down, and he took his solitary walks in the dusk of the evening. He had been told that sea sickness was sometimes beneficial in cases resembling his own; he, therefore, bargained with some boatmen, who engaged to take him out into the channel, on a little experimental medicinal trip. At a very early hour in the morning he went down to the beach, and prepared to embark. He had observed two persons who appeared to be watching him, he felt certain they were dogging him, and just as he was stepping into the boat they seized him, saying, "Sir, we know you to be the great defaulter who has been so long concealed on this coast; we know you are trying to escape to America, but you must come with us."

Sighmon's heart was broken. He felt it would be useless to endeavour to explain or to expostulate; he spoke not, but was passively hurried to a carriage in which he was borne to the metropolis as fast as four horses could carry him, without rest or refreshment. Of course, after a minute examination, he was declared innocent, and was released; but justice smiled too late, the bloom of Sighmon's happiness had been prematurely nipped.

He called in the aid of the first medical advice, grew a little better; and when the doctor left him he prescribed a medicine which he said he had no doubt would restore the patient to health. The medicine came, the bottle was shaken, the contents taken—Sighmon died!

It was afterwards discovered that a mistake had occasioned his premature departure; a healing liquid had been prescribed for him, but the careless dispenser of the medicine had dispensed with caution on the occasion, and Dumps died of a severe oxalic acidity of the stomach! By his own desire he was interred in the churchyard opposite to Burying Ground Buildings, Paddington Road. His funeral was conducted with almost as much decorum as if his late father the mute had been present, and he was left with—

"At his head a green grass turf,
And at his heels a stone."

But even there he could not rest! The next morning it was discovered that the body of Sighmon Dumps had been stolen by resurrection men!—Sharpe's Mag.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

MARIA GRAY.—A SONG

BY THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD

Who says that Maria Gray is dead,
And that I in this world can see her never?
Who says she is laid in her cold death-bed,
The prey of the grave and of death for ever?
Ah! they know little of my dear maid,
Or kindness of her spirit's giver!
For every night she is by my side,
By the morning bower, or the moonlight river.

Maria was bonny when she was here,
When flesh and blood was her mortal dwelling;
Her smile was sweet, and her mind was clear,
And her form all human forms excelling.
But O! if they saw Maria now,
With her looks of pathos and of feeling,
They would see a cherub's radiant brow,
To ravish'd mortal eyes unveiling.

The rose is the fairest of earthly flowers—
It is all of beauty and of sweetness—
So my dear maid, in the heavenly bowers,