All vice had gone, save one—­the young man answered “Yes,” and lied.

“Then, sir, go home.”

“The barber,” muttered “soft Roe” in as soft a voice.

“What of him?”

“Wants a shillin’.”

“There it is,” exclaimed the Augustine Peter, “there, from my own pocket, paid with pleasure to preserve that youth from the evil influence of too much hair—­I’ll pay for all the City if they like—­and banished suicide, and I’ll pretty soon see if I can’t settle all the City crops.  Prisoner, you are discharged.”

The young man lost his hair, the Queen five shillings, and Sir Peter one; but then he gained his end,—­and docking must henceforth be looked upon as the treadmill’s antidote, and young man’s fines’ best friend.  We therefore say, should the iniquity of your long locks, gentle reader, take you to the station (for, remember, Sir Peter says, Long hair will do anything), if you can’t find bail, secure a barber, and command your liberation.  We have been speculating of these externally-illustrated grades of crime; we think the following nearly correct:—­

The long and lank indicates larceny (petty and otherwise).

The bushy and bountiful—­burglary.

The full and flowing—­felony.

The magnificent and mysterious—­murder.

And, for aught we know, pigtails—­polygamy.

For the future, a thinking man’s motto will be, not to mind “his own eye,” but everybody else’s hair.

P.S.  We have just received the following horrifying communication which establishes Sir Peter’s opinion, “that a man with such hair would do anything,” but unfortunately disproves the remedy, as those atrocities have been committed when he was without.

Indignant at the loss of his head’s glory, the evil-minded tailor, immediately upon leaving the court, sent for counsel’s opinion as to whether he couldn’t proceed against Sir Peter, under the act for “cutting and maiming, with intent to do him some grievous bodily harm.”  This, it appears he cannot do, inasmuch as these very learned gentlemen at the bar have decided, “the head” from which the hair was cut, and which, if any, is consequently the injured part, is not included in the meaning of the word bodily, as &c. &c.  Foiled in this attempt, the monster, for the brutal gratification of his burning revenge, hit upon a scheme the most diabolical that human hair could conceive.  He actually applied to the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Animals; and they, upon inspecting a portion of the dissevered locks, immediately took up the case, and are about to indict Sir Peter, Roe, and the barber, under one of the clauses of that tremendous act.  If they proceed for penalties in individual cases, they must be immense, as the killed and wounded are beyond calculation,—­not to mention all that the process has left homeless, foodless, and destitute.

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