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                        WISE SAWS
                          AND
                    MODERN INSTANCES.
                       VOL. II.

                        LONDON:
               Printed by A. SPOTTISWOODE,
                    New-Street-Square.

                       WISE SAWS
                          AND
                   MODERN INSTANCES.
                          BY
                     THOMAS COOPER,
                     THE CHARTIST,

                       AUTHOR OF
              "THE PURGATORY OF SUICIDES."


                     IN TWO VOLUMES.
                        VOL. II.


                        LONDON:
               PRINTED FOR JEREMIAH HOW,
                    209. PICCADILLY.
                         1845.




                       CONTENTS
                          OF
                   THE SECOND VOLUME.


                                                            PAGE

  THE OLD CORPORATION                                          7

  NED WILCOM; A STORY OF A FATHER'S SACRIFICE OF HIS
  CHILD AT THE SHRINE OF MAMMON                               25

  LONDON 'VENTURE; OR, THE OLD STORY OVER AGAIN               42

  THE LAD WHO FELT LIKE A FISH OUT OF WATER                   60

  THE INTELLECTUAL LEVER THAT LACKED A FULCRUM                84

  NICHOLAS NIXON, "GENTLEMAN," WHO COULD NOT UNDERSTAND
  WHY, BUT WHO KNEW "IT WAS SO"                              111

  SIGNS OF THE TIMES; OR, ONE PARSON AND TWO CLERKS          123

  DAME DEBORAH THRUMPKINSON, AND HER ORPHAN APPRENTICE,
  JOE                                                        150

  TOBY LACKPENNY THE PHILOSOPHICAL: A DEVOTEE OF
  THE MARVELLOUS                                             204




                         THE OLD CORPORATION.


Those words "odd," and "singular," and "eccentric," what odd, singular,
eccentric sort of words they are, reader! How often they mean
nothing,--being thrown out, as descriptions of character, by drivelling
Ignorance, who scrapes them up as the dregs,--the mere siftings left at
the bottom of his vocabulary, when he has expended his scant collection
of more definite images-in-syllables. And how much more often are they
affixed to the memories of the living or dead, who have been real
brothers among men, and have thus earned these epithets from jaundiced
envy, or guilty selfishness, or heartless pride and tyranny. How little
it commends to us, either our common nature, or such corrupt fashioning
as ages of wrong have given it, that, if we would become acquainted with
a truly good man,--a being to love and to knit the heart unto,--we must
seek for him among the class of character which the world--woe worth
it!--calls "odd," or "singular," or "eccentric!"

Yet so it is, the best of mankind, those, most veritably, "of whom the
world was not worthy," have been, in their day, either the butt for the
sneers of silliness, or the object of envy's relentless hate, or they
have toiled and toiled, perhaps unto martyrdom, beneath the withering,
blasting frown of pride and oppression. Ay, and let us be honest with
ourselves, and confess, that though years or hard experience may have
bettered our own natures,--for we are all too much like that kind of
fruit which takes long days and many weathers to ripen it, so as to
bring forth its most wholesome flavour,--let us be honest, I say, with
ourselves, and confess, that we were as foolishly willing as others, in
our youth, to laugh at what the varlet world calls oddness, and
singularity, and eccentricity. Some of us, however, now see matters in a
somewhat different light. We have discovered that there is some marrow
of meaning in many of those old saws we once thought so tiresome and
dry,--such as, "All is not gold that glitters," and, "Judge not a nut by
the shell," and the like; and we say, within ourselves, when we are in a
moralising mood, (as you and I are now, reader,) that, if we were young
again, we would not join the world in laughing as we used to laugh with
it, at certain queer folk who dwell in our memories,--for we begin to
have a shrewd suspicion that they were among the true "diamonds in the
rough" of human character.

And, to be truly candid with ourselves, reader, have not