Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities by Robert Smith Surtees
page 69 of 276 (25%)
page 69 of 276 (25%)
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be 'just before I am generous.'" "Oh, but ten pounds is nothing in your
way, you know, Jorrocks--adulterate a chest of tea. Old----here will give you all the leaves off his ash-trees." "No," said Jorrocks, "I really cannot--ten pounds is ten pounds, and I must cut my coat according to my cloth." "By Jove, but you must have had plenty of cloth when you cut that coat you've got on, old boy. Why there's as much cloth in the laps as would make a pair of horse-sheets." "Never mind," said Jorrocks, "I wear it, and not you." "Now," said Jorrocks in an undertone to the Yorkshireman, "you see what an unconscionable set of dogs these stag-'unters are. They're at every man for a subscription, and talk about guineas as if they grew upon gooseberry-bushes. Besides, they are such a rubbishing set--all drafts from the fox'ounds.--Now there's a chap on a piebald just by the trees--he goes into the _Gazette_ reglarly once in three years, and yet to see him out, you'd fancy all the country round belonged to him. And there's a buck with his bearing-rein so tight that he can hardly move his neck," pointing to a gentleman in scarlet, with a tremendous stiff blue cravat--"he lives by keeping a mad-house and being werry high, consequential sort of a cock, they calls him the 'Lord High Keeper!'--I'll tell ye a joke about that fellow," said he, pointing to a man alighting from a red-wheeled buggy--"he's a werry shabby screw, and is always trying to save a penny.--Well, he hires a young half-witted hawbuck for a servant, who didn't clean his boots to his liking, so he began reading the Riot Act one day, and concluded by saying, 'I'm blowed if I couldn't clean them better myself with a little pump-water.'--The next day, up came the boots duller than ever.--'Bless my soul,' exclaimed he, 'why, they are worse than before, how's this, sir?'--'Please, sir, you said you could clean them better with a little pump-water, so I tried it, and I do think they are worse!' Haw! haw! haw!--Yon chap in the black plush breeches and Hessians, standing by the ginger-pop tray, is the only man what ever got the better of me in the |
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