sort of foreign singing play-house there,
where I was grieved to the heart to see young women painted and
dizened out, and capering away just as you have been doing. I
thought it bad enough in them, and wondered the quality could be
entertained with such indecent mummery. But little did I think to
meet with the same paint, finery, and posturing tricks in a
farm-house. I will never marry a woman who despises me, nor the
station in which I should place her, and so I take my leave.' Poor
girl, how she _was_ provoked! to be publicly refused, and turned
off, as it were, by a grazier! But it was of use to some of the
other girls, who have not held up their heads quite so high since,
nor painted quite so red, but have condescended to speak to their
equals.

"But how I run on! I forget it is Saturday night, and that I ought
to be paying my workmen, who are all waiting for me without."

SATURDAY NIGHT, OR THE WORKMEN'S WAGES.

As soon as Mr. Bragwell had done paying his men, Mr. Worthy, who was
always ready to extract something useful from accidental
circumstances, said to him, "I have made it a habit, and I hope not
an unprofitable one, of trying to turn to some moral use, not only
all the events of daily life, but all the employments of it, too.
And though it occurs so often, I hardly know one that sets me
thinking more seriously than the ordinary business you have been
discharging." "Ay," said Bragwell, "it sets me thinking too, and
seriously, as you say, when I observe how much the price of wages is
increased." "Yes, yes, you are ready enough to think of that," said
Worthy, "but you say not a word of how much the value of your land
is increased, and that the more you pay, the more you can afford to
pay. But the thoughts I spoke of are quite of another cast.

"When I call in my laborers, on a Saturday night, to pay them, it
often brings to my mind the great and general day of account, when
I, and you, and all of us, shall be called to our grand and awful
reckoning, when we shall go to receive _our_ wages, master and
servants, farmer and laborer. When I see that one of my men has
failed of the wages he should have received, because he has been
idling at a fair; another has lost a day by a drinking-bout, a third
confesses that, though he had task-work, and might have earned still
more, yet he has been careless, and has not his full pay to receive;
this, I say, sometimes sets me on thinking whether I also have made
the