Mr. Snivel winks the vote-cribber into a corner, and commences
interrogating him concerning Mag Munday. The implacable face of the
vote-cribber reddens, he contorts his brows, frets his jagged beard
with the fingers of his left hand, runs his right over the crown of his
head, and stammers: “I know’d her, lived with her-she used to run sort
of wild, and was twice flogged. She got crazed at last!” He shrugs his
stalworth shoulders and pauses. “Being a politician, you see, a body
can’t divest their minds of State affairs sufficiently to keep up on
women matters,” he pursues: “She got into the poor-house, that I
knows—”
“She is dead then?” interposes Mr. Snivel.
“As like as not. The poor relatives of our ‘first families’ rot and die
there without much being said about it. Just look in at that
institution-it’s a terrible place to kill folks off!—and if she be not
there then come to me. Don’t let the keepers put you off. Pass through
the outer gate, into and through the main building, then turn sharp to
the left, and advance some twenty feet up a filthy passage, then enter
a passage on the right, (have a light with you,) that leads to a dozen
or fourteen steps, wet and slippery. Then you must descend into a sort
of grotto, or sickly vault, which you will cross and find yourself in a
spacious passage, crawling with beetles and lizards. Don’t be
frightened, sir; keep on till you hear moanings and clankings of
chains. Then you will come upon a row of horrid cells, only suited for
dog kennels. In these cells our crazy folks are chained and left to
die. Give Glentworthy few shillings for liquor, sir, and he, having
these poor devils in charge, will put you through. It’s a terrible
place, sir, but our authorities never look into it, and few of our
people know of its existence.”
Mr. Snivel thanks the vote-cribber, who pledges his honor he would
accompany him, but for the reason that he opens crib to-morrow, and has
in his eye a dozen voters he intends to look up. He has also a few
recently-arrived sons of the Emerald Isle he purposes turning into
citizens.
CHAPTER XXII.
MRS. SWIGGS FALLS UPON A MODERN HEATHEN WORLD.
Purged of all the ill-humors of her mind, Mrs. Swiggs finds herself, on
the morning following the excellent little gathering at Sister
Scudder’s, restored to the happiest of tempers. The flattery
administered by Brother Spyke, and so charmingly sprinkled with his
pious designs on the heathen world, has had the desired effect. This
sort of drug has, indeed, a wonderful efficacy in setting disordered
constitutions to rights. It would not become us to question the
innocence, or the right to indulge in such correctives; it is enough
that our venerable friend finds herself in a happy vein, and is
resolved to spend the day for the benefit of that heathen world, the
darkness of which Brother Spyke pictured in colors so terrible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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