Our quill trembles as we proceed; it is unequal to the task.  Oh, that we could write with the whole goose upon the wondrous merits of the wondrous Peter!

We are better.  That bumper has restored our nerve.

Reader, fancy the gifted Peter seated in the dull dignity of civic magistracy:  the court is thronged—­a young delinquent blinks like an owl in sunshine ’neath the mighty flashing of his bench-lit eye.  His crime, ay, what’s his crime? it can’t be much—­so pale, so thin, so woe-begone! look, too, so tremulous of knee, and redolent of hair! what has he done?

Here Roe interprets—­“Please your worship, this young man, or tailor, has been assaulting several females with a blue bag and a pair of breeches.”

Sir Peter.—­“I don’t wonder at it; that man would do anything, I see it in his face, or rather in the back of his head, that’s where the expression lies—­look at his hair!”

The whole court becomes a Cyclops—­it has but one eye, and that is fixed upon the tailor’s locks.

“I say,” resumes our Peter, “a man with that head of hair would do anything—­pray, sir, do you wish to be taken for a German sausage, or a German student?—­they’re all the same, sir—­speak at once.”

The faltering fraction denies the student, and repudiates the sausage.

Sir Peter, still looking at the hair, from which external sign he evidently derived all his information—­“You were drunk, sir.”

“I was,” faltered the Samsonian schneider.

“I know it, sir—­you are fined five shillings, sir—­but if you choose to submit to the deprivation of that iniquitous hair, which has brought you here, and which, I repeat, will make you do anything, I will remit the fine.”

A sigh, fine-drawn as the accidental rent in an unfinished skirt, escaped the hirsute stitcher:  a melancholy reflection upon the infinite deal of nothing in his various pockets, and the slow revolving of the Brixton wheel in stern perspective, wrung from the quodded wretch a slow assent:  Sir Peter sent a City officer with his warrant to secure the nearest barber:  a few sharp clickings of the envious shears—­and all was over!  Crime fell from the shoulders of the quondam culprit, and the tonsorial innocent stood forth confessed!

Sir Peter was entranced.  That was his doing!  He gazed with pride upon the new absolved from sin.  He asked, “Are you not more comfortable?”

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.”