That gentleman did not clearly understand for what Mr. Mule was thanking him; but as it procured him a footing in the family, a large share of Mr. Mule’s favour, and, finally, the hand of his lovely sylph;—he asked no questions, but was thankful that in any way he had overcome the mulishness of Mr. Mule.
In conclusion, we add the following as the latest intelligence we have received, on the present condition of our principal characters.
Mr. Mule, now that he is supported by the close proximity of the arm of flesh in the person of a young officer, makes a stouter resistance than heretofore to the world of ghosts; though he still occasionally retreats to Mr. Addison’s “post of honour.”
Mrs. Tabitha, it gives us pleasure to say, continues to display a very superior description of virtue in all her—dreams: night after night she sets the vile Turk at defiance; shews him clearly that she sees through all his designs upon her virtue; and sometimes the length of scratching his whiskers.
The young Mrs. Lawler is so thoroughly cured of her somnambulism, that she has never, since that first attack, got as far even as the garden wall on her road to the church-steeple.
Mr. Ferdinand continues to make the most shocking discoveries throughout Mr. Mule’s library respecting his own youthful atrocities. Every book, on its blank pages, exhibits so many memoranda of his offences [all beginning—“Furcifer iste Ferdinandus Lawler”], that his own hair stands on end with wonder that Mr. M. did not live to see him hanged.
Finally, for our main hero—wicked Dick, witty Dick, dear Dick, Sixteen-string Dick, Slippery Dick,—in his old age he has forsaken all sorts of downright rogueries. But, as the doctors think that his health suffers by such severe abstinence from stimu lants, they advise him to hoax—as a pleasant and wholesome substitute for knavery. Hoaxing, therefore, he now practises in all its branches: and he has recently sent us a most excellent hoax with which we design to hoax all our dear brother contri butors to the Quarterly Magazine.
[The basis of this story is to be found in the ‘Seifenblasen’ of Dr Schulz: Tübingen, 1810].
