Little Travels and Roadside Sketches by William Makepeace Thackeray
page 10 of 48 (20%)
page 10 of 48 (20%)
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nursery-maids, and are taken down to roost below. Balmy sleep seals
the eyes of many tired wayfarers, as you see in the case of the Russian nobleman asleep among the portmanteaus; and Titmarsh, who has been walking the deck for some time with a great mattress on his shoulders, knowing full well that were he to relinquish it for an instant, some other person would seize on it, now stretches his bed upon the deck, wraps his cloak about his knees, draws his white cotton nightcap tight over his head and ears; and, as the smoke of his cigar rises calmly upwards to the deep sky and the cheerful twinkling stars, he feels himself exquisitely happy, and thinks of thee, my Juliana! ***** Why people, because they are in a steamboat, should get up so deucedly early I cannot understand. Gentlemen have been walking over my legs ever since three o'clock this morning, and, no doubt, have been indulging in personalities (which I hate) regarding my appearance and manner of sleeping, lying, snoring. Let the wags laugh on; but a far pleasanter occupation is to sleep until breakfast-time, or near it. The tea, and ham and eggs, which, with a beefsteak or two, and three or four rounds of toast, form the component parts of the above-named elegant meal, are taken in the River Scheldt. Little neat, plump-looking churches and villages are rising here and there among tufts of trees and pastures that are wonderfully green. To the right, as the "Guide-book" says, is Walcheren; and on the left Cadsand, memorable for the English expedition of 1809, when Lord Chatham, Sir Walter Manny, and Henry Earl of Derby, at the head of the English, gained a great victory over the Flemish mercenaries in the pay of Philippe of Valois. The cloth-yard shafts of the English archers did great execution. Flushing was taken, |
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