HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY #28. MARY B. RICE MAY 23, 1922 3 INTRODUCTION. BY THE EDITOR. To say that my deceased friend had always been an eccentric creature, a humorist, an oddity, will scarcely be received as a sufficient explanation of the quaint title which he has thought proper to affix to his work, and for which, therefore, I feel it my first duty as an Editor, to account. After the death of his wife, and, subsequently, of his only child, to both of whom he had been most tenderly attached, Dr. Chatfield sought relief from sorrow by frequent changes of scene, and found such alleviation of mind in wandering over the wilder and least frequented districts of the north of England, as well as such an expanded field for the exercise of his philanthropy, the ruling passion of his soul, that he formed the Quixotic resolution of abandoning his regular professional pursuits, then highly profitable, and of exercising them gratuitously for the benefit of such remote and forlorn objects, as he might encounter in that erratic life which he had now determined on adopting. Born in Yorkshire, and well acquainted with its loneliest recesses, experience had convinced him that there were many remote hamlets, as well as solitary hovels of wood and turf-cutters, charcoal burners, and other peasants, where much sickness and suffering were endured, either from local difficulties, or from pecuniary inability to employ even a village practitioner. To this class of indigent and obscure sufferers, whom he visited in regular periodical excursions, he devoted, for several years, his eminent professional skill, his time, his cheerful powers of consolation, and no small portion of his fortune, (which, since his retirement from productive practice, was restricted to rather less than five hundred a-year,) with a zeal, perseverance, and success, utterly unparalleled, as I verily believe, except in the wonders of charity, accomplished with a similar income, by the celebrated Man of Ross. For the sake of his own health, which was now occasionally impaired, as well as for the purpose of meeting a circle of cherished friends, who usually betook themselves to Harrowgate during the season, the Doctor made that place his headquarters for a portion of every summer. Upon one of these visits he established a little society, which met weekly at his lodgings, under the name of "The Tea Party," to participate in his favourite beverage, and to pass a few hours in rational conversation. From everything in the nature of a club, as the reader will perceive, on a reference to that word in the present work, my friend recoiled with an insurmountable aversion, only consenting to be named President of the Tea Party, on condition that it should consist of both sexes, and be governed by the rules that he had drawn up for its regulation. These exhibited, in several instances, their author's characteristic whimsicality. To avoid the use of a hammer, which was associated, in his mind, with the chairman of a club, it was his good pleasure to suspend from his neck a small Tin Trumpet, by sounding an alarum upon which he procured order, when there was the smallest irregularity or deviation from a punctilious courtesy on the part of any member. The same Tin Trumpet, with a transferable steel-pen affixed to its narrow end, served to register the proceedings of the society in a book kept for that purpose; as well as to write on a slip of paper, for the information of the associates, the subjects upon which they were to converse at their next meeting. Not in any degree, however, could this friendly party be assimilated to a debating society, though its founder was anxious to avoid the common trivialities of chitchat, by devoting an hour and a half of their meeting to the consideration of some specific objects, of which several were sometimes proposed for a single night. The remaining hour and a half, for they met at seven, and parted at ten, was given to tea, and such passing topics as might be spontaneously suggested, and which generally assumed a greater latitude, and more playful character, from the previous limitation and partial restraint upon the general volubility. In the presence of the Doctor, indeed, it was almost impossible not to sympathise with his remarkably cheerful temperament. It was the founder's custom to note down in a common-place book, such brief heads, or extracts, or allusions as might bear upon the subject next to be considered; for it will readily be conjectured that he himself was the principal speaker. Loving truth better even than my late friend, I am bound to confess that apophthegms, epigrammatical turns, terse sayings, antithetical phrases, and even puerile conceits, were his hobbyhorse, and one which he occasionally rode even to a tiresome excess. Whatever of this sort was elicited at the meetings, or subsequently presented itself in his superficial reading, for he did not affect profound literature, was transferred to his common-place book, under different alphabetical heads, a process in which he invariably employed the writing instrument to which we have already alluded. This will explain the title of "The Tin Trumpet"-given to his book, as well as the first part of its second appellation—“ HEADS and TALES." In elucidation of this latter word we must state that the most important personage of the party, after its president, was one Timothy Harrison, an independent Yorkshire yeoman, and not a less singular character, though in a different way than his bosom friend, and latterly his almost inseparable companion-the doctor. Honest Tim, who was the installed punster and wag, or, as the reader may rather think, the Merry Andrew of the party, made it his business to cap every grave remark or rather serious discussion with some foolery, either in the shape of quibble, joke, anecdote, or appropriate |