Jack with a lantern.
--We do not subscribe to the assertion of
Dr. Samuel Johnson, that ‘"the man who killed fat beeves should be fat himself,"’ but we do hold to the partially analogous doctrine that the lady who washes clothes should herself be clean — yet the appearance of
Mrs. Nelly McNell, laundress by profession, who came before the
Assistant Provost Marshal on Sunday morning, was strikingly at variance with this maxim,--for
Nelly was ‘"one cake of mud "’ from the peak of her bonnet to the sole of her slipper.
Mrs. McNell had, in the hours of repose on Saturday night, been picked out from a clay-pit in a brick-yard on the south side of Main street, in the Eastern District--the guard, with unpardonable lack of courtesy to the sex, mistaking her at first for a hog, but attempting to rouse her with the exclamation--‘"
Sue"’ and a touch of his foot, he was made aware that it was a rational and reflective being, by being desired to ‘"go to h--,"’ and offered certain humorous advice respecting his conduct in that region, so well described by
Milton and
Dante.
The guard, beginning to suspect that it was a lady, and not a porker, who addressed him, assisted her to rise, and conveyed her to a place very similar in some respects to that whither she had just before wished to send him
Mrs. McNell, at the request of the
Assistant Prevent Marshal gave a very lucid and circumstantial account of her last night's mishap — which account we are compelled to abbreviate and change some what in phraseology.
She was bringing over a batch of clothes from the eastern suburbs, where she dwells, to the residence of a family living on upper Main street, for which she washes.
As a precaution against contagion she brought with her a flask of whiskey, which she tasted ‘"several times"’ on her solitary way, Seeing a light before her, which she took to be a city lamp, she followed it, and couldn't leave off following it, though she knew it was making a fool of her, ‘"by raison that her head was all in a buzz, and whin she came to herself she found herself lying insensible in the bog."’ The reason she spoke in such sharp terms to the guard was ‘"because she had a consist that he was the devil, believing that she was haunted entirely by spirits of avail, and she thought it no more than decent to tell the ould boy to go the place where he belonged"’
It seemed likely that
Nelly had been misled by a Jack with a lantern — at least the
Assistant Provost Marshal, with amiable sympathy for her weakness, was disposed to put this construction on the matter.
She was therefore discharged, without verbal rebuke or pecuniary penalty.
