purpose; nay, they must have
been in the pinfold all the time he had been laid up. But he would teach
the lazy rogues a different lesson as soon as he could get about."

And the next thing was to get about in his cart with his bed laid in it.
In this he rode over his farm; and it would have made a fine scene for
Fielding or Goldsmith, to have seen all his proceedings, and heard all
his exclamations and remarks, as he surveyed field after field.

"What ploughing! what sowing! Why, they must have had a crooked plough,
and a set of bandy-legged horses, to plough such ploughing. There was no
more straightness in their furrows than in a dog's hind leg. And then
where had the man flung the seed to? Here was a bit come up, and there
never a bit. It was his belief that they must go to Jericho to find half
of his corn that had been flung away. What! had they picked the windiest
day of all the year to scatter his corn on the air in? And then the
drains were all stopped; the land was drowning, was starving to death;
and where were the hedges all gone to? Hedges he left, but now he only
saw gaps!"

So he went round the farm, and for many a day did it furnish him with a
theme of scolding in the house.

Such was Johnny Darbyshire; and thus he lived for many years. We sketch
no imaginary character, we relate no invented story. Perhaps a more
perfect specimen of the shrewd and clever man converted into the local
and domestic tyrant, by having too much of his own humor, never was
beheld; but the genus to which Johnny Darbyshire belonged is far from
extinct. In the nooks of England there are not a few of them yet to be
found in all their froward glory; and in the most busy cities, though
the great prominences of their eccentricities are rubbed off by daily
concussion with men as hard-headed as themselves, we see glimpses
beneath the polished surface of what they would be in ruder and
custom-freer scenes. The Johnny Darbyshires may be said to be instances
of English independence run to seed.

THE GRIDIRON.

BY SAMUEL LOVER.

A certain old gentleman in the west of Ireland, whose love of the
ridiculous quite equalled his taste for claret and fox-hunting, was
wont, upon festive occasions, when opportunity offered, to amuse his
friends by _drawing out_ one of his servants, exceedingly fond of what
he termed his "thravels," and in whom, a good deal of whim, some queer
stories, and perhaps, more than all, long and faithful servi