drive a
brougham. He never came to my house, except for orders, and once when
he helped to wait at dinner, so clumsily that it was agreed we would
dispense with his further efforts. The (job) brougham horse used to
look dreadfully lean and tired, and the livery-stable keeper complained
that we worked him too hard. Now, it turned out that there was a
neighbouring butcher's lady who liked to ride in a brougham; and
Tomkins lent her ours, drove her cheerfully to Richmond and Putney,
and, I suppose, took out a payment in mutton-chops. We gave this good
Tomkins wine and medicine for his family when sick--we supplied him
with little comforts and extras which need not now be remembered--and
the grateful creature rewarded us by informing some of our tradesmen
whom he honoured with his custom, "Mr. Roundabout? Lor' bless you! I
carry him up to bed drunk every night in the week". He, Tomkins, being
a man of seven stone weight and five feet high; whereas his employer
was--but here modesty interferes, and I decline to enter into the
avoirdupois question.

Now, what was Tomkin's motive for the utterance and dissemination of
these lies? They could further no conceivable end or interest of his
own. Had they been true stories, Tomkin's master would, and reasonably,
have been still more angry than at the fables. It was but suicidal
slander on the part of Tomkins--must come to a discovery--must end in a
punishment. The poor wretch had got his place under, as it turned out,
a fictitious character. He might have stayed in it, for of course
Tomkins had a wife and poor innocent children. He might have had bread,
beer, bed, character, coats, coals. He might have nestled in our little
island, comfortably sheltered from the storms of life; but we were
compelled to cast him out, and send him driving, lonely, perishing,
tossing, starving, to sea--to drown. To drown? There be other modes of
death whereby rogues die. Good-bye, Tomkins. And so the night-cap is
put on, and the bolt is drawn for poor T.

Suppose we were to invite volunteers amongst our respected readers to
send in little statements of the lies which they know have been told
about themselves: what a heap of correspondence, what an exaggeration
of malignities, what a crackling bonfire of incendiary falsehoods,
might we not gather together! And a lie once set going, having the
breath of life breathed into it by the father of lying, and ordered to
run its diabolical little course, lives