DINNER COMPANY TO LET.-A.CARD. MESSRS. Clack and Caterer respectfully invite the attention of the dinner-giving department of the metropolis, to the following candid statement of facts. It happens in London, every day, that gentlemen mount to sudden wealth by Spanish bonds, fluctuations of English stock, death of distant relations, and what not. When this event occurs, a carriage is bespoken, the ladies go to the Soho Bazaar, the father takes a house in Baker-street or Connaught-place, and the sons get blackballed at all the new clubs in the environs of the Haymarket. Yet still something is wanting. Like the Greek or Persian king (Messrs. Clack and Caterer will not be precise as to the nation) who pined to death in the midst of plenty, gentlemen thus jumping into high-life, from the abysses of Lower Thames-street and Saint Mary Axe, lament the lack of good dinner company. If they rely upon coffee-house society, their silver spoons are in jeopardy; and if they invite their own relations, they are ruined nobody will come twice to such society. An uncle with an unpowdered pigtail, who prates of pepper and pimento: an aunt in a brown silk gown, who drinks every body's health; a son from Stockwell, who is silent when he ought to talk, accompanied by a wife, who talks when she ought to be silent, compose a species of society which may do very well at Kensington or Camden-town, but which, Messrs. Clack and Caterer confidently predict, can never take root west of Temple-bar. The consequence is that gentlemen thus circumstanced must "cut" their own relations, or nobody else will 66 come again." Singers may be hired at so much a-head: every body knows, to an odd sixpence, the price of "Non nobis, Domine," "Hail, Star of Brunswick," Glorious Apollo," and "Scots wha ha." Good set speakers for charity dinners may also be obtained, by inquiry at the bar of the tavern. These latter go through the routine of duty with a vast deal of decorum. They call the attention of the company in a particular manner to the present charity, leaving a blank for its name. They ascribe half of its success to the worthy treasurer, and the other half to the noble chairman, whose health they conclude with proposing, with three times three and the accuracy of their ear enables them to cry "hip, hip, hip," nine times, interlarded at the third and sixth close with a hurrah! aided by a sharp yell which Messrs. Clack and Caterer have never been able to distinguish from the yelp of a trodden lapdog. All this is very well in its way, and it is not the wish of the advertisers to disparage such doings. Far from it'; " live and let live" is their maxim. Many gentlemen by practice qualify themselves for public speakers; but good private-dinner company is still a desideratum. Impressed with this truth, Messrs. Clack and Caterer, at a considerable expense, have provided, at their manufactory in Leicester-square, a choice assortment of good diners out, of various prices, who, in clean white waistcoats, and at the shortest notice, will attend to enliven any dull gentleman's dull dinner-table. Messrs. Clack and Caterer are possessed of three silver-toned young barristers, who have their way to make in Lincoln's Inn. These gentlemen respectively and anxiously enquire after the health of any married lady's little Charlotte; ask when she last heard from Hastings; think they never saw curtains better hung in the whole course of their lives; tenderly caress the poodle that occupies the hearth-rug; and should its front teeth meet in their forefinger, will, for an additional trifle, exclaim, "Pretty little fellow! I don't wonder he's such a favourite." Messrs. Clack and Caterer are also provided with two unbeneficed clergymen, who have guaranteed a short grace, and undertake not to eat of the second course. These gentlemen tell a choice collection of good jokes, with a rigid abstinence from Joe Miller. They have various common-places at hand, which they can throw in when conversation flags. The one of them remarks that London begins to look dull in September, and that Waterloo-place is a great improvement; and the other observes, that Elliston has much beautified Drury-lane, and that Kean's voice is apt to fail him in the fifth act. This kind of talk is not brilliant, but it wears well, and never provokes animosity. Messrs. Clack and Caterer beg also to acquaint the nobility and gentry, that they have laid in a couple of quadrillers and three pair of parasites; who take children upon their knees in spite of tamarinds and Guava jelly; cut turbot into choice parallelograms; pat plain children on the head, and assure their mamma that their hair is not red but auburn; never meddle with the two long-necked bottles on the table; address half of their conversation to the lady of the house, and the other half to any deaf gentleman on their other side, who tilts his ear in the hollow of his hand. Should either of these personages be so far forgetful of his duty as to contradict a county member, introduce agricultural distress, or prove the cause of the present low prices; wonder what happened at Verona, or who wrote the Scotch novels; gentlemen are requested to write "bore" upon his back with a piece of chalk (which the butler had better be provided with), and then to return the offender to the advertisers, when the money will be paid back, deducting coachhire. Cheap goods rarely turn out well. Some dinner-giving gentlemen have hired diners out at an inferior price; and what was lately the consequence at a Baronet's in Portland-place ?-A Birmingham ar ticle of this sort entered the drawing-room with a hackney straw adhering to one stocking, and a pedicular ladder ascending the other. He drank twice of champagne; called for beer; had never heard that the opera opened without Angrisani; wondered why Miss Paton and Braham did not sing together (forgetting that all Great Russell-street and a part of the Piazza yawned between them); spilt red wine on the tablecloth, and tried to rectify the error by a smear of salt and Madeira; left the fish-cruets as bare as the pitchers of the Belides; and committed various other errors, which Messrs. Clack and Caterer scorn to enumerate. All this proceeds from not going to the best shops and paying accordingly. Messrs. Clack and Caterer beg likewise to acquaint a liberal and candid public, that they have an unexceptionable assortment of threeday visitors, who go by the stage to villas from Saturday to Monday. These out-of-towners know all about Webb Hall and the drill-plough: take a hand at whist; never beat their host at billiards; have no objection to go to church; and are ready to look at improvements on being provided with thick shoes. If up hill, or through a copse of the party's own planting, a small additional sum will be required. For further particulars enquire at the warehouse in Leicester-square. If Messrs. Clack and Caterer give satisfaction, it is all they require; money is no object. Letters, post-paid, will be duly attended to. ON MORELLI*. He was the first that for fair Italy They will'd it not, and the enchainers came Leaning upon a rush-a king's-slave's oath— They chain'd him first upon their dungeon-floor, Slave of the slaves, who, down into thy land * Ce jeune homme, Morelli, osait aspirer à une grande renommé. Il osa seul avec cent vingt cheveaux de son régiment commencer cette révolution qui donna pour peu de temps la liberté à sa patrie." ** "Quand tout fût perdu, Morelli tacha de se retrancher dans les défiles de Monteforte, où la révolution avait éclaté. Mais le gouvernement avait déjà tout cédé à l'ennemi."** "Ce jeune sous-lieutenant fut le seul officier qui osa tenter par lui-même une résistance nationale quand les officiers supérieurs quittaient le pays de tout côté." MR. and Mrs. Pitman would have been the best assorted and happiest couple in all Leighton-Buzzard,-in fact, they might have successfully claimed the Dunmow flitch of bacon,-but for certain natural differences of temper, habits, and pursuits; and their perpetual squabbles on the subject of dress, housekeeping, amusements, and all that regarded pecuniary disbursements. He stoutly determined not to die a beggar, she as sturdily declared that she would not live like one, and both kept their words. It certainly did not become a thriving tanner's wife, as she very justly observed, to go draggling about in rags and rubbish; but then it was equally unseemly, as he very pertinently rejoined, to flaunt through the town in scarlet velvet pelisses that set all the place in a blaze, and wear such a variety of plumecrowned bonnets, that more people went to church to look at her single head, than to mark the three into which the clergyman regularly divided his Cerberus sermons. Whether this was the fault of the lady, the congregation, or the Reverend Mr. Snuffleton, he did not presume to decide, but all those who were poorer than Mr. Pitman joined in condemning his wife's extravagance, while all those who were richer contented themselves with laughing at it. Certain it is, that she introduced unheard-of luxuries among the good tradespeople of Leighton-Buzzard. She it was who first put a livery upon one of the apprentices, and made him wait at table when there was company, to the great clamour of the whole town and tan-yard; and she it was who first placed before her guests gooseberry wine ennobled with the title of Champagne, which being in lank narrow-shouldered bottles, well sealed down and secured at the mouth, and very sparkling, frothy and vapid, when it found vent, might well have passed off, even with travellers, as a genuine native of France. The neighbours who came eagerly to taste this rarity, were quite as eager when they went away to abuse the donor; and Mr. Pitman, anxious for his double credit as a manufacturer of gooseberry-wine and a frugal tanner, burnt with impatience to reveal the secret; but his wife having sworn that she would order a new velvet pelisse from Bond-street the moment he divulged, he kept his tongue between his teeth and his money in his pocket. To do this the more effectually, he had repeatedly declared to the tradespeople that he would not pay one farthing of his wife's extravagant debts; and he was a man of such firmness and decision of character that Mrs. Pitman was constantly obliged to go to him, and insist upon having the money immediately that she might discharge them herself. The gravedigger in Hamlet assures us that a tanner will considerably outlast others under ground: though they should not therefore outlive their fellows upon earth, they may consider themselves gainers in the long run. There is no quarrelling about tastes, but for my own part I would rather be a lively young man, than a mummy, however old. Mr. Pitman might have made the same decision, had a choice been afforded him, but it was not. He quitted us all without notice, evaporating as it were, without any visible motive for becoming invisible; and when I enquired the particulars of my friend the schoolmaster at Leighton-Buzzard, he could only exclaim in the words of Cicero," Abiit-evasit-excessit-erupit !" ་ Mrs. Pitman was as inconsolable as bombazeen could make her ;her cap was a perfect pattern of grief, and nobody could have suspected her of laughing in her sleeve when they saw the depth of its weepers. And yet as a lover of expense, and not of her husband, she might well have been justified in some ebullition of pleasant surprise, when she found that owing to a prize in the Lottery, which he had kept a secret, and certain usurious transactions which he had no great temptation to reveal, he had left her one of the richest widows in the whole neighbourhood. Her acquaintance, with their usual determination to make others share their own envy, or at all events to excite astonishment, instantly doubled the amount of her fortune, which rumour soon tripled and quadrupled, until, upon the authority of some friends and connexions who "happened to know the fact," it was finally and accurately set down at only three times the real amount. "Now we shall have fine doings," cried the good gossips of Leighton-Buzzard a rare dashing coach, and liveries of light blue and scarlet, I warrant me, with as many plumes in the head as her husband had at his funeral, (which was, after all, a scandalous shabby one,) and as fine rings upon her finger as if she were a lady mayoress. Ay, ay, Madam Pitman is a proper one to make the money fly." Now with all proper deference to these good gossips I am inclined to think that a sudden accession of unexpected wealth is just as likely to make a niggard as a spendthrift. C'est le premier pas qui coute in hoarding; the difficulty is to make a beginning worthy of your future efforts to increase it. What can a person do with a few pounds? It is too little to put in the stocks, or buy a house; it is even dangerous to keep in your house; you must spend it in your own defence. Such is our treatment of small sums, large ones seldom pay us a visit, and the consequence is that few people in common life save money. Let a foundation be once laid, and we feel such a pride and pleasure in building up our fortune that we rarely abandon the enterprise. Few who have felt the difficulty of acquiring, and the gratification of possessing property, ever fall into extravagance. This is the great merit of the Saving Banks; they form a nucleus for the humblest ambition, and are sure to become powerful stimulants of frugal and moral habits. Whether they were not rather meant as political engines for attaching the lower orders to existing establishments, in which way they may involve the maintenance of all existing abuses, is a point, which, if it were ever so learnedly argued, would not, I apprehend, help us very forward with our story of the Tanner's Widow. The fact is, that Mrs. Pitman no sooner felt the dignity of wealth, the consequence of possession, and the pleasure of the homage which they procure, than she very naturally concluded, that her dignity, consequence, and pleasure, would increase with the accumulation of her riches; and began economizing with great vigour and perseverance. No more fine pelisses and bonnets; these were very well to procure |