many well-informed and discriminating organs of literary intelligence,
as the work of a man evidently well acquainted with the regions he
professes to describe.

Where the Happy Jacks are at this moment no one can tell. They have
become invisible since the last clean out. A deprecatory legend has
indeed been in circulation, which professed that Jack was dead, and
that this was the manner in which, on his deathbed, he provided for
his family:--

'Mrs Happy Jack,' said the departing man, 'I'm not afraid of you. You
have got on some way or other for nearly forty years, and I don't see
why you shouldn't get on some way or other for forty more. Therefore,
so far as you are concerned, my mind is easy. But, then, you
girls--you poor little inexperienced poppets, who know nothing of the
world. There's Jane; but then she's pretty--really beautiful. Why, her
face is a fortune: she will of course captivate a rich man; and what
more can a father wish? As for Emily--I fear Emily, my dear,
you're rather plain than otherwise; but what, I would ask, is
beauty?--fleeting, transitory, skin-deep. The happiest marriages are
those of mutual affection--not one-sided admiration: so, on the whole,
I should say that my mind is easier about Emily than Jane. As for
Maria, she's so clever, she can't but get on. As a musician, an
artist, an authoress, what bright careers are open for her! While as
for you, stupid little Clara, who never could be taught anything--I
very much doubt whether the dunces of this world are not the very
happiest people in it--Yes, Clara; leave to others the vain and empty
distinctions of literary renown, which is but a bubble, and be happy
in the homely path of obscure but virtuous duty!'