University of Virginia Library

Supplementary Chapter.
Tony Fudge takes his Leave.

Translation, by Tony Fudge.

IT is now about two years since I completed the
foregoing record, and commenced its publication
in that respectable old journal, the Knickerbocker
Magazine. I have only a few observations to add.
My health remains good, and I am, I fear, as susceptible
to the influences of pretty women as I ever
was in my life. I do not think that I appear any
older.

The Count Salle lives, I scarce know where;
but it must be in a retired quarter; and there are
hints that he maintains himself and wife by improper

practices; gambling is spoken of. I know nothing
of it. I should say he was not a man for a family
to boast of.

Mr. Pinkerton has failed, but occupies his old
house. His wife is understood to be rich.

Mr. Jenkins, to whom I have casually alluded,
continues to give suppers at his house in Paris,
where he has decoyed a large number of the reduced
French gentry. There was a report that he had
succeeded in making an engagement of his daughter
to a Count somebody, who was in straitened circumstances,
but of one of the very first old families in
France. I hope it is true.

Mr. Quid, senior, through the influence of Brazitt,
has now a cheerful place in the “Customs,” though
I fear that, being a “soft,” he may lose it.

Mr. Blimmer, still retaining his old interest and
enthusiasm for Blimmersville, has I learn, made proposals
to Mehitabel Bivins, and been accepted.

How oddly, to be sure, her long nose will look
under a bridal-hat! I hope when she comes to
have children of her own—if she ever has any—
that she will show a little more charity to those of
other people.

As for my aunt Solomon, she frets in her
extravagant way still; frets about the Pinkertons
living upon money which they owe; frets about the

Count Salle, who is undutiful, and does not show
her as much attention as a son-in-law should. She
frets about Wilhelmina, who dresses shabbily, and
makes no effort to avail herself of the distinguished
connection she has formed. She lays the blame of
her own failure upon the drivelling old man, whose
mind is now beyond the reach of her gibes. “If
she could have managed the property, as she
managed her household,” she is accustomed to
say, “things would have been different.”

Perhaps they would.

As for the old gentleman himself, his cravat is
not so tidy as it used to be when he sat over his
office-table in the Wall street bank, turning his gold-bowed
spectacles end for end.

He sometimes mumbles out an observation or two
about the “Dauphin stock” and the “dips,” but
less often than formerly. He is grown much quieter.
The physician says he is failing. I see him sometimes
hobbling about the street on my drives into
that neighborhood, dragging his paralytic limb after
him, and looking very vacantly upon the faces he
meets. Nobody stands in awe of him now.

He insists upon going every Sunday to the parish
church, though aunt Phœbe objects to the noise he
makes in clattering up the aisle. I am told, too,
that he makes stammering efforts to say after the

clergyman, “We have left undone those things which
we ought to have done, and we have done those things
which we ought not to have done, and there is no health
in us.” His feeble mind cannot follow any further,
but he bows his head reverentially to the end. Mrs.
Fudge, too, repeats this portion of the service very
emphatically, to prevent listeners from catching the
stammering voice of the old man.

There are people who think she might have a better
reason.

Washington holds some position in connection with
one of the down-town theatres, and has generously,
on one or two occasions, favored me with tickets on
nights of benefit. I cannot learn that he visits now
either the Spindles or the Joneses. He is, however,
still unmarried.

It is doubtful, I sometimes think, if I ever marry
myself. If not, the Fudge name will very likely
expire with this generation. But I am happy in
being able to state with confidence, that a vigorous
branch of our connection (though remote) is growing
up in the country.

Flint is the name.

Mrs. Flint is as pretty a mother as you will often
see. She looks something older, to be sure, than she
did two years since; but I do not object to a look

of that sort when there are young people in the
house.

As for Harry—I call him Harry in a cousinly
way—he is a lad in all his feelings still.

I sometimes go out to take tea at his cottage. I
cannot deny that it makes me melancholy to see his
bright, cheerful face over against the blooming one
of Kitty. I scarce know why.

Then there is a little fellow with a bib around his
throat, who sits in a high chair over opposite to me,
and who seems to shake a warning at me every time
he lifts his dimpled fist. They call him Truman;
and judging from the attentions they show him, he
seems as much a visitor as myself. However, I am
not jealous.

They have promised to name their next boy after
me. I hope he will make his appearance upon the
theatre of the world sooner than the Blimmersville
church. Indeed, I think he will.

I have promised to leave him my estate, consisting
mainly of a share in the Society Library, a
copy of Smollett's novels, and a pair of silver-mounted
razors.

I wish I could leave the little fellow the cool
philosophy with which I have witnessed these
changes, and seen the vain pursuit of fashion recoil

upon itself, and steady-working honesty prove its
own reward.

This last, by the by, is the best American legacy
a man can inherit. At least, that is my opinion.