eighbours
would begin to think better of him, and give him credit for having
become an honester and more trustworthy man." But with regard to myself
it was a different thing. I should require "a character" at some time or
another, and there was a body of men primed and ready to vilify and
crush me. He advised me, whilst he acknowledged it was a hard thing to
say, and "it went agin him to do it," to apply once more respectfully
for my dismission. "It won't do," he pertinently said, "to bite your
nose off to be revenged on your tongue." I was certainly in a mess, and
must get out of it in the best way that I could. Buster and Tomkins had
great power in _the Church_, and if I represented my case to either or
both of them, he did hope they might be brought to consent not to injure
me, or stand in the way of my getting bread. "In a quarrel," he said, in
conclusion, "some one must give in. I was a young man, and had my way to
make, and though he should despise his-self if he recommended me to do
any thing mean and dirty in the business, yet, he thought, as the father
of a numerous family, he ought to advise me to be civil, and to do the
best for myself in this unfortunate dilemmy."

I accepted his advice, and determined to wait upon the dapper deacon. I
was physically afraid to encounter Buster, not so much on account of
what I had seen of his spiritual pretension, as of what I had heard of
his domestic behaviour. It was not a very difficult task to obtain from
Mrs Thompson the secret history of many of her highly privileged
acquaintances and brethren. She enjoyed, in a powerful degree, the
peculiar virtue of her amiable sex, and to communicate secrets,
delivered to her in strictest confidence, and imparted by her again with
equal caution and provisory care, was the choicest recreation of her
well employed and useful life. It was through this lady that I was
favoured with a glance into the natural heart of Mr Buster; or into what
he would himself have called, with a most unfilial disgust, "HIS OLD
MAN." It appeared that, like most great _actors_, he was a very
different personage before and behind the curtain. Kings, who are
miserable and gloomy through the five acts of a dismal tragedy, and who
must needs die at the end of it, are your merriest knaves over a tankard
at the Shakspeare's Head. Your stage fool shall be the dullest dog that
ever spoiled mirth with sour and discontented looks. Jabez Buster, his
employment being o