hish, whish! Let us cut into each other all round.

A favorite liar and servant of mine was a man I once had to 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 neighboring
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 honored 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 Tomkins'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, Tomkins's master would still, and
reasonably, have been 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-by, Tomkins. And so the nightcap 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 br