The washerwoman is doubtless a hard-working and deserving old body, who perhaps has sunk her whole week’s earnings in a Christmas turkey, that her children’s hearts may be made glad and their stomachs full; and it would be a great pity if it should be spoiled i’ the cooking for the want of fuel. I waive the crime, and speak of the facts from a disinterested stand-point. I have been such a diligent scholar in the severe school of experience, that I have learned to look upon my own misfortunes lightly, and certainly can behold—with an unmoistened eye—my neighbor’s choicest sticks noiselessly slipping into an adjoining yard. Besides, my neighbor can afford to lose a few. To make my position good, I entrench myself behind the following fact: To be in the fashion, he pays the price of a good-sized farm for seats at the opera, where the language is as foreign to his understanding as South Sea Island gibberish. While he indifferently beholds such a wasteful running at the bung, why should I assume the busybody’s _rôle_ and clap my finger on the dripping spigot? Besides, I saw his wife last evening with fully four yards of expensive satin trailing in the dust. It was my misfortune to be walking directly behind her. As the crowd was pressing me onward, I was obliged to dance a sailor’s hornpipe around the hall, in order to keep from treading upon her skirts. It needed not the grins of lookers-on to assure me that I was cutting a ridiculous figure. I am now enjoying my revenge! Indirectly though it comes, it is none the less sweet or acceptable. On the contrary, it is rather more gratifying, as it calls for no action on my part, but simply to keep my mouth hermetically sealed. The poet truly sings:— “Time at last sets all things even.” It has been in this case much quicker than I expected. As the skinny white arm stretches up out of the gloom of the washerwoman’s yard, and another billet shoots from the pile and disappears like a star from the firmament of heaven, I feel that a load is lifted from my heart, and I am reaping revenge. Stay! what is this? a note, that all the evening escaped my notice. Lo! an aroma issues from it, sweet as Cytherea’s breath! It is an invitation, as I live, to help dissect a Christmas turkey! Sound the timbrel, beat the tom-tom. I am not forgotten yet! [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES 1. P. 319, changed “shovin’ of it” to “shovin’ all of it”. 2. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 3. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 4. Footnotes were re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the chapter. 5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.