Jorrocks' Jaunts and JollitiesSurtees, Robert Smith
General
Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities
Surtees, Robert Smith
England -- Fiction; Fox hunting -- Fiction; Hunting stories
always said that 'want of decency is want of sense,' and see how I
am rewarded! Oh dear! oh dear! that I should ever have trusted my
pantaloons out of my sight." While all this, which was the work of a
moment, was going forward, the mob, which had been shut out at the side
door on Jorrocks's entry, had got round to the coffee-room window,
and were all wedging their faces in to have a sight of him. It was
principally composed of children, who kept up the most discordant yells,
mingled with shouts of "there's old cutty shirt!"--"who's got your
breeches, old cock?"--"make a scramble!"--"turn him out for another
hunt!"--"turn him again!"--until, fearing for the respectability of his
house, the landlord persuaded Mr. Jorrocks to retire into the bar to
state his grievances. It then appeared that having travelled along the
coast, as far as the first preventive stationhouse on the Ramsgate side
of Margate, the grocer had thought it a convenient place for performing
his intended ablutions, and, accordingly, proceeded to do what all
people of either sex agree upon in such cases--namely to divest himself
of his garments; but before he completed the ceremony, observing some
females on the cliffs above, and not being (as he said) a man "to raise
a blush on the cheek of modesty," he advanced to the water's edge in his
aforesaid unmentionables, and forgetting that it was not yet high tide,
he left them there, when they were speedily covered, and the pockets
being full of silver and copper, of course they were "swamped." After
dabbling about in the water and amusing himself with picking up sea-weed
for about ten minutes, Mr. Jorrocks was horrified, on returning to the
spot where he thought he had left his stocking-net pantaloons, to find
that they had disappeared; and after a long fruitless search, the
unfortunate gentleman was compelled to abandon the pursuit, and render
himself an object of chase to all the little boys and girls who chose to
follow him into Margate on his return without them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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