1851; Or, The adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and family, who came up to London to enjoy themselves, and to see the Great Exhibition.Mayhew, Henry
General
1851; Or, The adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys and family, who came up to London to enjoy themselves, and to see the Great Exhibition.
Mayhew, Henry
Great Exhibition (1851 : London, England) -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
Scarcely had Elcy petitioned her brother for the gentle treatment of her
pet “piggy,” than, crack! Jobby, who held the whip at the gate, while
his father adjusted the reins, sent a flanker on the animal’s
hind-quarters. Away went “piggy,” and we regret to say, away went the
innocent Sandboys, not after, but with him—and precisely in the opposite
direction to what he had intended. “Cwoley,” the dog, who had been
dancing round the pig at the gate, no sooner saw the animal start off at
score, than entering into the spirit of the scene, he gave full chase,
yelping, and jumping, and snapping at him, so that the terrified porker
fetched sharp round upon Sandboys, and bolted straight up the mountain
side.
Now, to the stranger it should be made known, that climbing the fells of
Cumberland is no slight task—even when the traveller is allowed to pick
his steps; but, with a pig to lead, no choice but to follow, and a dog
behind to urge the porker on, the operation becomes one of considerable
hardship, if not peril. Moreover, the mountain over which Mr. Sandboys’
pig had chosen to make his course, was called “the Moss,” or “Morass,”
from its peculiar swampy character. Up went the pig, through bracken,
and furze, and holly-bush, and up by the stunted oaks, and short-cut
stumps, and straight on, up through the larches, over the rugged clump
above Hassness; and up went Mr. Sandboys, over and through every one of
the same obstacles, making a fresh rent in his trousers at every
“whin-bush”—scratched, torn, panting, slipping, and—if we must confess
it—swearing; now tumbling, now up again, but still holding on to the
pig, or the pig holding on to him, for grim death.
But if it were difficult to ascend a Cumberland fell with a pig in
front, how much more trying the descent! No sooner had “Cwoley” turned
the pig at the top, than Sandboys, as he looked down the precipitous
mountain up which his porker had dragged him, “saw his work before him.”
It required but a slight momentum to start him; then, away they all
three went together—in racing technology “you might have covered them
with a sheet”—-the dog barking, and the pig squeaking, and dragging Mr.
Sandboys down the hill at a rate that promised to bring him to the
bottom with more celerity than safety. Unfortunately, too, the pig took
his course towards the beck formed by the torrent at the “Goat’s Gills;”
and no sooner did it reach the ravine, than, worried by the dog, it
precipitated itself and Mr. Sandboys right down into the foaming, but
luckily not very deep, waters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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