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BRUSTLES’ BISHOP.

(BY A MUDDLED MORALIST.)

CHAPTER I.

BEN BRUSTLES was only a poor shoeblack-boy who cleaned boots—­ay, and even shoes, for his daily bread.  Such time as he could spare from his avocation he devoted to diligent study of the doctrine of chance, as exemplified in the practice of pitch-and-toss.  Often and often, after pitching and tossing in the cold wet streets for long weary hours, he would return home without a halfpenny.  Think of this, ye more fortunate youths, who sit at home at ease, and play Loto for nuts!  But through all his vicissitudes, BEN kept a stout heart, never losing his conviction that something—­he knew not what—­would eventually turn up.  Sometimes it was heads, at others tails:  and in either case the poor boy lost money by it—­but he persevered notwithstanding, confident that Fortune would favour him at last.  It is this spirit of undaunted enterprise that has made our England what it is!

[Illustration:  Brustles Blacking.]

And one day Fortune did favour him.  He observed, as he knelt before his box, a portly and venerable person close by, who was engrossed in studying, with apparent complacency, his own reflection in a plate-glass shop-front.  So naive a display of personal vanity, in one whose dress and demeanour denoted him a Bishop, not unnaturally excited BENJAMIN’s interest, nor was this lessened when the stranger, after shaking his head reproachfully at his reflected image, advanced to the shoe-black’s box as if in obedience to a sudden impulse.

“My lad,” he said, with a certain calm dignity, “will you be so good as to black both my legs for me—­at once?”

This unusual request, conceived as it was on a larger scale than the orders he habitually received, startled the youth, particularly as he noted that the symmetrical and well-turned limb which the Bishop extended consisted, like its fellow, of a rare and costly species of mahogany, and shone with the rich and glossy hue of a newly-fallen horse-chestnut, “I see,” commented the Bishop, with a melancholy smile, “that you have already discovered that my lower members are the product—­not of Nature, but of Art.  It was not always thus with me—­but in my younger days I was an ardent climber—­indeed, I am still an Honorary Member of the Hampstead Heath Alpine Club.  Many years since, whilst scaling Primrose Hill, I was compelled, by a sudden storm, to take refuge in a half-way hut, where I passed the night, exposed to all the rigours of an English Midsummer!  When I awoke I found, to my surprise, that both my legs had been bitten by the relentless frost short off immediately below the knee, and I had to continue the ascent next day in a basket.  On descending, I caused these substitutes to be fashioned, and on them I stumped my way to the exalted position I now fill, nor have I ever evinced