A
MAN MADE OF MONEY.
BY
DOUGLAS JERROLD.
WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS ON STEEL
BY JOHN LEECH.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED AT THE
PUNCH OFFICE,
85, FLEET STREET.
1849.
LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
Mr. Jericho when can you let me have some Money?
[Pg 1]
A MAN MADE OF MONEY.
CHAPTER I.
“Mr. Jericho, when can you let me have some money?”
This curious question was coldly put by a gentlewoman inmorning undress to a man in gown and slippers. The reader,who is always permitted to wear the old cloak of the old stagemystery—the cloak that maketh invisible—must at once perceivethe tender relation that lives and flourishes between the interestingperson who puts this familiar interrogative, and the beingwho suffers it. They are man and wife. The marriage certificateis legible in every line of Mrs. Jericho’s face. She asks formoney with a placid sense of right; it may be, strengthened bythe assurance that her debtor cannot escape her. For it is asocial truth the reader may not have overlooked, that if a manbe under his own roof, he must be at home to his own wife.
“I ask again, Mr. Jericho, when can you let me have somemoney?”
Mr. Jericho made no answer. He could not precisely namethe time; and he knew that whatever promise he made, its performancewould be sternly exacted of him by the female thendemanding. Whereupon, Mr. Jericho laid down his pen, andresignedly upturned his eyeballs to the ceiling.
“When—can—you—let—me—have—some—money?”
There is a terrible sort of torture, the manner of which isto let fall cold water drop by drop upon the shaven head of[Pg 2]the sufferer. We think Mrs. Jericho had never heard of thiscruelty; and we are almost prepared to be bound for her, thatshe would have suffered herself to be cut into little diamondpieces ere, knowing the mode of torment, she would in any wayhave imitated it. And upon her incorporate self too—herbeloved husband! Impossible. Nevertheless love, in its veryidleness—like a giddy and rejoicing kitten—will sometimeswound when most playful. The tiny, tender claws will now andthen transgress the fur.
Mrs. Jericho, without at all meaning it, distille