Thence I
walked with them to Charles Boroughbridge's, pork and sausage man, No.
29 Upper Theresa Road. Here, whilst I left the little girl innocently
eating a polony in the front shop, I and Boroughbridge retired with the
boy into the back parlour, where Mrs. Boroughbridge was playing
cribbage. She put up the cards and boxes, took out a chopper and a
napkin, and we cut the little boy's little throat (which he bore with
great pluck and resolution), and made him into sausage-meat by the aid
of Purkis's excellent sausage-machine. The little girl at first could
not understand her brother's absence, but, under the pretence of taking
her to see Mr. Fechter in _Hamlet_, I led her down to the New River at
Sadler's Wells, where a body of a child in a nankeen pelisse was
subsequently found, and has never been recognized to the present day.
And this Mrs. Lynx can aver, because she saw the whole transaction with
her own eyes, as she told Mr. Jucundus.
I have altered the little details of the anecdote somewhat. But this
story is, I vow and declare, as true as Mrs. Lynx's. Gracious goodness!
how do lies begin? What are the averages of lying? Is the same amount
of lies told about every man, and do we pretty much all tell the same
amount of lies? Is the average greater in Ireland than in Scotland, or
_vice versa_--among women than among men? Is this a lie I am telling
now? If I am talking about you, the odds are, perhaps, that it is. I
look back at some which have been told about me, and speculate on them
with thanks and wonder.
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