Caricatures and cartoons -- Great Britain; English wit and humor; English wit and humor, Pictorial
"Yes, sir, forty pounds. Let me see, forty-four pounds exactly. Now, sir,
is that money to be forthcoming?--in one word, sir--there is no time to
lose. If I miss the coach, I post all the way to town at your expense, as
soon as I have procured something to put on. The house of Baring can't
go to town in its shirt--the house of Baring will be revenged, sir--your
treatment is past bearing, and--I give you five minutes to decide."
The landlord did decide. The buckskins had disappeared--the credit of
his house was at stake--the house of Baring was his enemy--there was no
help for it. The double-milled and £45 were handed over--the wrath of
our gentleman was appeased--he even, before he slipped into the coach,
promised to patronise the hotel.
The coach had been on the road about six hours, when the waiter stepped
over to his chum, the waiter of the hotel opposite, to tell him what
a shindy there had been about a pair of buckskins; the other waiter
produced the buckskins left in pledge; and on their description of our
gentleman, no doubt was left but that, although not probable, it was
very possible that a gentleman could come into an hotel _without his
inexpressibles_.
The landlord was almost frantic at having been so imposed upon; but,
as usual in all such cases, he soon made up the loss incurred by our
gentleman's visit to the hotel, by charging it upon those who came there,
not only with buckskins, but with money in their buckskins-pockets; and
thus ends my story of "How to raise the Wind; or, the Buckskins."
A PEEP AT BARTHOLOMEW FAIR.
"Out, out, brief candle!"--MACBETH.
Something whispers us that we should here commence moralising, that
we should first expatiate on the nothingness of worldly gaud and
greatness--enlarge on the changefulness of human prospects, and discover
to our readers' view the myriads of blanks with which that fraudulent
jade Fortune dilutes the few prizes she dispenses from her wheel. But
then again, another something whispers us, we had far better get on with
our subject, and we think we had.
Be it known then, that ever since a certain morning, (Anno Domini
something,) when our nursery-maid walked us through Bartholomew Fair,
and showed us _all_ the pretty things, and treated our little palate
to one or two of the nice ones, we have felt a remarkable passion for
fairs--Bartholomew fair in particular. We will adventure to measure our
love for it against that of its tutelar saint--but alas! we forget--it
has no tutelar saint now; he has long since turned his back upon it.
Yes, when prosperity went hand in hand with it, when joy, mirth, and
splendour, were its friends, _then_ could that faithless guardian--but,
we must commence again, this is too moral--too moral by half. Once more
then.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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