A "NICE" ARTICLE. one. BY EDWIN GOADBY. My young friend, Tom Brown, is a thorough and original study. He moves in the most eccentric, erratic fashion. You can never calculate beforehand how he will be affected by any news, how he will act in any crisis, or what part he will take in any of our friendly meetings; but one thing you may safely and invariably reckon on, and that is his opposition to anything and everything. He is the most perfect embodiment of the word anti to be found in the two hemispheres, but with qualities, in spite of his being such a bundle of negatives, which entitle him to be called a nice fellow, in more senses than We have tried to get him into Parliament, persuaded that he would shine in one part of the House, but he doesn't believe in Parliament at all: and as for being a representative of other people's opinion, why, he says, one half of the honourable and learned members don't know their own. We have tried to get him into other public offices, where an appropriate sphere might be found for his antagonistic bias, but in vain. He frets, fumes, and spins long yarns, and take off his friends' personalities in the most uncompromising manner. He took a prominent part in the late anti-smoking controversy, and made his affidavit to the effect that tobacco was the cause of so many modern pates assimilating to the condition of Uncle Ned's, of immortal negro memory. He rushes across the road, like one frantic, when he sees an ample crinoline or hoop looming in the distance, and shows the absurdity of the opening line in the "Pleasures of Hope," by calming down as they approach, and growing ironically admiring. He cackles and runs like a turkey at red stockings, and striped petticoats discompose his spirits for hours. When a lady lisps, he often rudely repeats, in a good round style, the imperfect sentence, jerking it out at intervals for the length of a street, with divers masculine anathemas in sotto voce. Peg-tops are his abhorrence, and he will carefully shun any friend who adopts an extravagant costume. And yet he is, as I have said before, really a "nice" fellow. Latterly, he has become so plethoric in denunciatory language, that he has been obliged of himself to open a sphere for the radiations of his pugilism, or noble art of hitting everybody. There have been several meetings at our Club of this "Society for the Reduction of Conventional Habiliments, for the Liberation of Legs, Arms, and Tongues from Despotic Enthralment, and for the promotion of Uniformity and Home-fashions." Our meetings have been fortnightly, and the following subjects have been dilated upon, in a manner which has often ruffled the placidity of our worthy Tom, and sent him home with the most melancholy views of the world's present condition and destiny. Here they are: Striped Petticoats, trimmed by a Friendly Hand. Red-Embroidered Collars. Are they of Fejee origin? The Beard Movement, by a wag. We had all assembled for our last meeting, and were impatiently waiting the lecturer's arrival, and our friend Smoothchin was in tremulons agitation lest he should be again pounced upon by us, and called to recant for having grossly altered a celebrated passage in Shakspeare, which intimates that a certain "nothing" has given it through imaginative powers-"a loca habitation and a name," and adopting it as the motto of his last lecture. Brown was unusually grim and taciturn, when, by-and-bye, our friend we were waiting for arrived, and the starched waiter showed us in our room. Hang that fellow," said Brown, for at least the hundredth time, "I wonder for what earthly purpose he was born. Can't we get a room elsewhere-some garrulous old woman to attend us? I'll have a fillip at that gentleman yet, though." Mr. Brown cooled and seated in the presidential chair, the members all silent and attentive, the lecturer, Mr. Badger, rose as high as his small stature allowed him, drank a small quantity of water, hemmed three times, adjusted his hair, smoothened his manuscript, pulled down the gas, elevated the stand, and then commenced in a gruff and husky voice: Gentlemen,-Called upon by our respected President to advance in some way the interests of our novel and thoroughly English society, I hesitated from a consciousness of my inability to say anything at all calculated to have weight with you, or in the least to operate in promoting the broader extension of our original principles. I was again and again pressed to do so, until, finding neither denials nor apologies of any use, I consented to read you a brief paper on a topic which I feel sure many honourable members now present could have handled more ably than I. My subject, then, is the diminutive word "nice," and my object, to deprecate its so general and indiscriminate use. Go where you will, you may find this word used descriptively, and with a frequency which is painful to our feelings, and subversive of the purity of our mother-tongue. By high-born and lowly, in clubs and taverns, in ball-rooms, cosy parlours, and places of public resort, it is used by persons of all sects, creeds, and altitudes, uttered by the roughest of men and the fairest of women, emitted from moustached mouths and from between the prettiest coral and kissable lips that ever drove guardsman frantic, and applied to everything, from the most fantastic miniature mortal that ever graced a perambulator, to the most delicate dish, the newest novel, or volume of sermons just issued by the Rev. Unctious Blazes. There is a perfect rage for the word; so much so, that what were formerly fine days become "nice days;" things admirably adapted for a special purpose are not very appropriate, but very "nice;" and one's scruples as to receipts for all imaginable maladies treasured up in families for generations, are removed by an intimation that so-and-so is a very "nice" remedy, and forthwith our submission is secured. Those terms of ravishment and delight which erst sentimental young ladies employed, descriptive of muslins, silks, satins, and millinery in general, such as duck, dear, love, and sweet, have all merged into the common term "nice; and the highest encomiums that they can pass upon the poems that lie so grandly ensconsced in green-and-gold on their drawing-room tables, or upon the original effu sions some young Sappho or meditative life-flying Alcæus has contributed to their albums, are comprised in these same four letters. Gone are all the after-raptures of the ball, the opera, and the soiree, upon magnificent dresses and fairy flowers; gone the thrilling descriptions of bride and bridesmaids, rehearsed to motherly dames, home-confined sisters, or absent friends, all summed up in the cold, formal, unpoetic, and undemonstrative word "nice." The freshman gets through his little-go without any such expressions as jolly, first-rate; he does it" nicely." The same word depicts, in the letter he may receive from home, the condition of family affairs; how his young friend Tearaway managed the partings ere he left the cosy hall for the windswept deck of a Bellerophon or Hector; and how the last party came off in the charade, quadrille, and polka line. No more expressive word can be sound in Johnson, Walker, Webster, or Richardson, and hence, if anything has been effected, or is in process, it is only necessary to say "nicely," and the whole event passes before the tutored eye like a huge diorama. Here Mr. Brown, turning towards his nearest neighbour, whispered-" It's a fib!" and evinced by shuffling his feet, twirling his thumbs, and violently rubbing his hand down his forehead and face, that the lecturer didn't know what he was about, but that he did, and that he didn't half give it such smatterers. Slightly noticing the President's excited state, and raising his voice, the lecturer continued more gruffly than before: "Even in trade, the use of this word is daily becoming more extensive, and more of a nuisance to educated ears. The ubiquitous counter-skipper doesn't guarantee his article to be first-rate, or constructed of the most approved and durable materials, but assures one that it is really a "nice" article, and if it appertains to dress, will smilingly add, "I'm sure you would look quite nice' in it;" and so with smooth bland looks, and nice expressions, the coins that might otherwise have reposed in the quiet bliss of our purses or portmonnaies, are brought out to a bustling and dinning life. I wonder some satirist does not enter the field, this word opens for him, as the "sesame" of an Ali Baba, and cull the materials for a gallery of "nice' portraits, since persons of the oddest and most diversified qualities are all nice people in these mincing times. There is your brick, trump, and spark, transformed into a "nice" boy, or a "nice" fellow, and your paterfamilias who wheels out his own perambulator, or escorts ('scorches, here put in Mr. Brown, to the amazement of the meeting) his wife to family parties, carrying her cap-basket the while, is dubbed a "nice" man. Then there are the fairer portions of the community; here I must be very short, considering so wide a field, in suggestive sources. There is the bustling dame, who keeps Amelia and Flora in such admirable discipline, takes care to treat the latter as much like a child as possible for obvious reasons, and requires of all suitors, for the hand of Flora of course, if they would be heard dispassionately, that they should at least enter with clean shoes-a "nice" woman, truly! Again, there is the "nice" old maid. She is the confidante of some dozen giddy girls, knits warm things for the poor, but is as fond of a romp as any forest stag. I now come, blushingly, to the "nice" young lady. She may not be handsome, pretty, fine-looking, or decidedly plain, she may not be either, with somewhat of an inclination, however, to the two last named classes; she plays on the piano charmingly, perhaps the harp, is au fait in Tupperian philosophy, learned in novels, and chatty and condescending in the extreme. Now, isn't she a "nice" girl? Let me not forget the "nice" young clergyman. He wears the most immaculate neckerchiefs, admirably setting off a pale and thoughtful countenance, preaches short and tremulous discourses, and argues, oh, so lovingly, against all forms of worldly entertainment, not excepting charades, and loto. These are a few of the "nice" people all waiting to have their portraits taken, if some Hogarth or other illustrious etcher would but dawn upon these benighted times, with some huge thumb-nails. Such, gentlemen, are a few of the indiscriminate uses of this common word. I will not take it upon myself, in the presence of so many learned and able expounders of social abuses, to say that in every case, this word is used wrongly, and conveys at best but a dubious meaning, but thus much I will say, that the iteration of this word is painful in the extreme, as you must have felt it to be already this evening, and it is too wide-spread not to have been noticed by all of us, and especially by our learned and correct President (Mr. Brown is observed to dip his head majestically), not to call forth from a society like ours, the most emphatic and powerful protest. Johnson states the meaning of this word to be, "accurate, exact, scrupulous, delicate, refined," and other lexicographers agree with him in the main. It is of Ango-Saxon origin, and from the word nesc or neshe, meaning soft and tender, and it is the same, although differently written and articulated, as the now almost obsolete word, nesh. One or two quotations from Chaucer and Gower will give both words, and the very trifling distinction between them. First for nesh : Mine herte for joy doth bete It seemeth for love his herte is tender and nesh. He was to nesshe and she to harde. Court of Love. Confessio Amantis. In the word nice, as used by these old poets, you will find hidden a reproach which might shock the good breeding of many who use it constantly, and have it applied to them : Gentlemen, I do not think I need enlarge my remarks. You will observe how ridicously it is used, and what a spirit of misapprehension and uncertainty it must spread abroad. Let me intreat you, in conclusion, to use all your influence in brow-beating such a word out of your common talk, hunting after it as an intruder, and agitating in your several circles of society until we have banished so barbarous and dubious a word; and then, perhaps, the fame of our humble society shall spread, and we shall exert an influence in reforming similar abuses which shall cover our founder with glory. There was no discussion. Mr. Brown tapped the choky speaker on the back with a patronizing air, and a "Bravo! old Boy!" and after the usual formalities the meeting broke up. The President exchanged his previous saturnity and irritability for vivacity and geniality, as a knot of us went from our Club, and made all sorts of execrable puns on the word which had been the subject of Mr. Badger's lecture. He waxed eloquent upon the prospects of our society, accepted, contrary to all precedent, a proffered cigar, and retired to his own bachelor's retreat, musing upon this same word "nice," which he heard uttered around him half a dozen times to express the character and mildness of the evening. LEAVES FROM THE DIARY OF A RELIEVING OFFICER. I AM one of those public servants everywhere spoken against, whose duty it is to relieve the necessitous poor of this realm. Yes, I am one of those whom a late member of the medical profession designated "the lying Relieving Officer;" and whilst I refuse to accept the designation as applicable to my case, I cannot but acknowledge that a wide-spread opinion prevails amongst the public generally, that we, as a body, are "tyrants' as well as liars; that we are robbers of the public funds; that, at the expense of the poor, we fare sumptuously every day; and that, in short, we are, as a body, a sort of bloated sinecurists, devouring the vitals of the community, and oppressing God's poor. Far be it from me to say that all Relieving Officers are men of strict probity and of humanity. It would be a far more quixotical task than I should like to undertake, to defend my "order" against all comers; but being inclined to believe that much of the prejudice against us is merely the result of ignorance on the part of the public, and is therefore simple prejudice, I have thought that I might be instrumental in doing some good, if I were to afford some information as to the duties appertaining to our office, and the manner in which they are performed. I have under my charge a large district of a very important town, and with several years' experience of my own, I have every opportunity of getting at the results of the experience of those whose term of service exceeds mine threefold. As I proceed with my task, I doubt not I shall be able to depict many a scene of thrilling interest witnessed in my peregrinations, by night and day, amongst the stinking courts and stifling cellars of this great hive of industry from which I write. My only fear is that my pen will fail me in the narration, for my materials are abundant to overflowing of a character most startling and dramatic. How many of the dwellers in our towns turn aside from the wide and smoothly flagged streets of shops and warehouses, teeming with the wealth of a nation, into the narrow allies which give admittance to the abodes of the poor? Alas! few, I fear, ever think that the architectural displays which met their view, as they proceeded on their daily journey of business or pleasure, form but a crust, a very thin crust, which hides the heaving and writhing mass of poverty, disease, and dirt, amongst which such as I am, day by day and year by year plunge and work. Aye, gentle lady, in your butterfly plumes, driving in your fairy chariot, with the prince of fairy-land your accepted lover, through the magic groves of wedding silks and ribbons, little you think that within a distance that your elegantly rounded arm could throw your cameo brooch, live sisters of yours by dozens, whose mode of life you never heard of, the name of whose profession would make you shudder if whispered in your ear. Yet believe me, lady, I know such is the truth, and so does my friend the parish doctor, and so does the respectable policeman A, whose "beat embraceth that which is above the crust as well as that which lies below. Little thinkest thou, respectable matron, most exemplary wife, comfortably smiling thy unctuous, complacent smile, as thou gazest on thy good and healthy children round thy well-plenished board, that but a distance that Freddy, thy youngest, could shoot an arrow from the steps of thy mansion, are scores and scores of children whose only education is that of crime; many whose only home is the street, and whose only friend is He who marketh the sparrow's fall! Yes, the history of the poor is |