Transcriber’s Note Italic text displayed as: _italic_ [Illustration: A MAN MADE OF MONEY. BY DOUGLAS JERROLD. WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS ON STEEL BY JOHN LEECH. LONDON: PUBLISHED AT THE PUNCH OFFICE, 85, FLEET STREET. 1849. ] LONDON: BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. [Illustration: _Mr. Jericho when can you let me have some Money?_] A MAN MADE OF MONEY. CHAPTER I. “Mr. Jericho, when can you let me have some money?” This curious question was coldly put by a gentlewoman in morning undress to a man in gown and slippers. The reader, who is always permitted to wear the old cloak of the old stage mystery—the cloak that maketh invisible—must at once perceive the tender relation that lives and flourishes between the interesting person who puts this familiar interrogative, and the being who suffers it. They are man and wife. The marriage certificate is legible in every line of Mrs. Jericho’s face. She asks for money with a placid sense of right; it may be, strengthened by the assurance that her debtor cannot escape her. For it is a social truth the reader may not have overlooked, that if a man be under his own roof, he must be at home to his own wife. “I ask again, Mr. Jericho, when can you let me have some money?” Mr. Jericho made no answer. He could not precisely name the time; and he knew that whatever promise he made, its performance would be sternly exacted of him by the female then demanding. Whereupon, Mr. Jericho laid down his pen, and resignedly upturned his eyeballs to the ceiling. “When—can—you—let—me—have—some—money?” There is a terrible sort of torture, the manner of which is to let fall cold water drop by drop upon the shaven head of the sufferer. We think Mrs. Jericho had never heard of this cruelty; and we are almost prepared to be bound for her, that she would have suffered herself to be cut into little diamond pieces ere, knowing the mode of torment, she would in any way have imitated it. And upon her incorporate self too—her beloved husband! Impossible. Nevertheless love, in its very idleness—like a giddy and rejoicing kitten—will sometimes wound when most playful. The tiny, tender claws _will_ now and then transgress the fur.