Mrs. Priscilla Williams is a bouncing buxom belle, of five-and-thirty or thereabouts, who, having occasion to raise the sum of eighteen-pence on some sudden emergency, was fain to carry her best black bombasine petticoat--or _bum-be-seen_ petticoat, as she called it--to Mr. Simmons, of Seven Dials, a diminutive elder, who gathereth profit unto himself daily, by lending to the poor: in common _parlance_, a pawnbroker; or, poetically speaking, "_My Uncle!_" This Mr. Simmons received the petticoat; held it up to the light; observed that "it might well be called a _bum-be-seen_ petticoat, for the moths had riddled[15] it sadly;" and finally, he lent the money required; but when she applied to redeem the petticoat, he told her it was lost, and refused to make her any compensation for it. Mr. Simmons, in his defence, admitted having received the petticoat, and also having lost it; but he declared Mrs. Priscilla Williams had deluged him with abominable abuse; and he humbly submitted that the said abuse ought to go as a set-off against the lost petticoat. Mrs. Priscilla Williams protested against any such settlement as that. She readily admitted having "blown Mr. Simmons up a bit," and she thought he richly deserved it; for he d----d her and her petticoat too, in the most _notoriousest_ way imaginable:--"I shouldn't have minded his d----g me," she added, "because it couldn't hurt me, but I thought it extremely _ongenteel_ in him to d----n my _petticoat_." The magistrate ordered that Mr. Simmons should pay the value of the petticoat, with full costs of suit. "INCHING IT BACKERT." Two apprentice boys in the service of a very respectable tradesman in Museum-street, together with a little _night-walker_ were charged by an Irish watchman with kicking up a great big row and clatter, at Charing-cross, at half-past twelve o'clock in the morning; and, what was still worse, with laughing _at_, and using bad words _to_ the said watchman, when he very civilly told them to "be off of his bate;" and "moreover and above, with _inching_ it _backert_ in the teeth of him." "And pray what is '_inching_ it _backert_?'" asked his worship. "Fait, your honour, an' this it is"--replied honest Mahoney, shuffling his feet backwards, inch by inch. His worship observed, that he had never heard the verb "_inching_" used before, and therefore he had asked for an explanation. "I suppose you conjugate it '_I inch--thou inchest--he inches_,' don't you, Mr. Mahoney?" "Your honour knows the rights of every thing," replied Mr. Mahoney; and the case proceeded.