第85章

Just picture to yourself everybody who does wrong being found out, and punished accordingly.Fancy all the boys in all the school being whipped; and then the assistants, and then the headmaster (Dr.Badford let us call him).Fancy the provost marshal being tied up, having previously superintended the correction of the whole army.After the young gentlemen have had their turn for the faulty exercises, fancy Dr.Lincolnsinn being taken up for certain faults in HIS Essay and Review.After the clergyman has cried his peccavi, suppose we hoist up a bishop, and give him a couple of dozen! (I see my Lord Bishop of Double-Gloucester sitting in a very uneasy posture on his right reverend bench.) After we have cast off the bishop, what are we to say to the Minister who appointed him? My Lord Cinqwarden, it is painful to have to use personal correction to a boy of your age; but really...Siste tandem carnifex! The butchery is too horrible.The hand drops powerless, appalled at the quantity of birch which it must cut and brandish.I am glad we are not all found out, I say again; and protest, my dear brethren, against our having our deserts.

To fancy all men found out and punished is bad enough; but imagine all the women found out in the distinguished social circle in which you and I have the honor to move.Is it not a mercy that a many of these fair criminals remain unpunished and undiscovered! There is Mrs.Longbow, who is forever practicing, and who shoots poisoned arrows, too; when you meet her you don't call her liar, and charge her with the wickedness she has done and is doing.There is Mrs.

Painter, who passes for a most respectable woman, and a model in society.There is no use in saying what you really know regarding her and her goings on.There is Diana Hunter--what a little haughty prude it is; and yet WE know stories about her which are not altogether edifying.I say it is best for the sake of the good, that the bad should not all be found out.You don't want your children to know the history of that lady in the next box, who is so handsome, and whom they admire so.Ah me, what would life be if we were all found out and punished for all our faults? Jack Ketch would be in permanence; and then who would hang Jack Ketch?

They talk of murderers being pretty certainly found out.Psha! Ihave heard an authority awfully competent vow and declare that scores and hundreds of murders are committed, and nobody is the wiser.That terrible man mentioned one or two ways of committing murder, which he maintained were quite common, and were scarcely ever found out.A man, for instance, comes home to his wife, and...but I pause--I know that this Magazine has a very large circulation.* Hundreds and hundreds of thousands--why not say a million of people at once?--well, say a million, read it.And among these countless readers, I might be teaching some monster how to make away with his wife without being found out, some fiend of a woman how to destroy her dear husband.I will NOT then tell this easy and simple way of murder, as communicated to me by a most respectable party in the confidence of private intercourse.

Suppose some gentle reader were to try this most simple and easy receipt--it seems to me almost infallible--and come to grief in consequence, and be found out and hanged? Should I ever pardon myself for having been the means of doing injury to a single one of our esteemed subscribers? The prescription whereof I speak--that is to say, whereof I DON'T speak--shall be buried in this bosom.

No, I am a humane man.I am not one of your Bluebeards to go and say to my wife, "My dear! I am going away for a few days to Brighton.Here are all the keys of the house.You may open every door and closet, except the one at the end of the oak room opposite the fireplace, with the little bronze Shakespeare on the mantelpiece (or what not)." I don't say this to a woman--unless, to be sure, I want to get rid of her--because, after such a caution, I know she'll peep into the closet.I say nothing about the closet at all.I keep the key in my pocket, and a being whom Ilove, but who, as I know, has many weaknesses, out of harm's way.

You toss up your head, dear angel, drub on the ground with your lovely little feet, on the table with your sweet rosy fingers, and cry, "Oh, sneerer! You don't know the depth of woman's feeling, the lofty scorn of all deceit, the entire absence of mean curiosity in the sex, or never, never would you libel us so!" Ah, Delia!

dear, dear Delia! It is because I fancy I DO know something about you (not all, mind--no, no; no man knows that).--Ah, my bride, my ringdove, my rose, my poppet--choose, in fact, whatever name you like--bulbul of my grove, fountain of my desert, sunshine of my darkling life, and joy of my dungeoned existence, it is because IDO know a little about you that I conclude to say nothing of that private closet, and keep my key in my pocket.You take away that closet key then, and the house key.You lock Delia in.You keep her out of harm's way and gadding, and so she never CAN be found out.

* The Cornhill.--editor.

And yet by little strange accidents and coincidents how we are being found out every day.You remember that old story of the Abbe Kakatoes, who told the company at supper one night how the first confession he ever received was--from a murderer, let us say.

Presently enters to supper the Marquis de Croquemitaine.

"Palsambleu, abbe!" says the brilliant marquis, taking a pinch of snuff, "are you here? Gentlemen and ladies! I was the abbe's first penitent, and I made him a confession, which I promise you astonished him."To be sure how queerly things are found out! Here is an instance.