MRS. CAUDLE'S CURTAIN LECTURES By “PUNCH.” With Illustrations by John Leech PHILADELPHIA: CAREY AND HART. 1845. [Illustration: 002] [Illustration:003] MRS. CAUDLE'S CURTAIN LECTURES. LECTURE I. MR. CAUDLE HAS LENT FIVE POUNDS TO A FRIEND. “You ought to be very rich, Mr. Caudle. I wonder who'd lend you five pounds? But so it is: a wife may work and may slave! Ha, dear! the many things that might have been done with five pounds! As if people picked up money in the street! But you always were a fool, Mr. Caudle! I 've wanted a black satin gown these three years, and that five pounds would have pretty well bought it. But it's no matter how I go,--not at all. Every body says I don't dress as becomes your wife--and I don't: but what's that to you, Mr. Caudle? Nothing. Oh no! you can have fine feelings for everybody but those belonging to you. I wish people knew you, as I do--that's all. You like to be called liberal--and your poor family pays for it. “All the girls want bonnets, and when they're to get 'em I can't tell. Half five pounds would have bought 'em--but now they must go without. Of course, _they_ belong to you; and anybody but your own flesh and blood, Mr. Caudle. “The man called for the water-rate, to-day; but I should like to know how people are to pay taxes, who throw away five pounds to every fellow that asks them. “Perhaps you don't know that Jack, this morning, knocked his shuttle-cock through his bed-room window. I was going to send for the glazier to mend it; but after you lent that five pounds I was sure we couldn't afford it. Oh, no! the window must go as it is; and pretty weather for a dear child to sleep with a broken window. He's got a cold already on his lungs, and I shouldn't at all wonder if that broken window settled him--if the dear boy dies, his death will be upon his father's head; for I'm sure we can't now pay to mend windows. We might though, and do a good many more things, if people didn't throw away their five pounds. “Next Tuesday the fire-insurance is due. I should like to know how it's to be paid! Why, it can't be paid at all. That five pounds would have just done it--and now, insurance is out of the question. And there never were so many fires as there are now. I shall never close my eyes all night,--but what's that to you, so people can call you liberal Mr. Caudle '? Your wife and children may all be burnt alive in their beds--as all of us to a certainty shall be, for the insurance _must_ drop. And after we've insured for so many years! But how, I should like to know, are people to insure who make ducks and drakes of their five pounds?