Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 1Wilson, John
General
Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 1
Wilson, John
Essays
We know of few events so restorative as the arrival of a coachful of
one's friends, if the house be roomy. But if everything there be on a
small scale, how tremendous a sudden importation of live cattle! The
children are all trundled away out of the Cottage, and their room given
up to the young ladies, with all its enigmatical and emblematical
wall-tracery. The captain is billeted in the boudoir, on a shake-down.
My lady's maid must positively pass the night in the butler's pantry,
and the valet makes a dormitory of the store-room. Where the old
gentleman and his spouse have been disposed of, remains as controversial
a point as the authorship of Junius; but next morning at the
breakfast-table, it appears that all have survived the night, and the
hospitable hostess remarks, with a self-complacent smile, that small as
the Cottage appears, it has wonderful accommodation, and could have
easily admitted half-a-dozen more patients. The visitors politely
request to be favoured with a plan of so very commodious a Cottage, but
silently swear never again to sleep in a house of one story, till life's
brief tale be told.
But not one half the comforts of a Cottage have yet been enumerated--nor
shall they be by us at the present juncture. Suffice it to add, that the
strange coachman had been persuaded to put up his horses in the
outhouses, instead of taking them to an excellent inn about two miles
off. The old black long-tailed steeds, that had dragged the vehicle for
nearly twenty years, had been lodged in what was called the Stable, and
the horse behind had been introduced into the byre. As bad luck would
have it, a small, sick, and surly shelty was in his stall; and without
the slightest provocation, he had, during the night-watches, so handled
his heels against Mr Fox, that he had not left the senior a leg to stand
upon, while he had bit a lump out of the buttocks of Mr Pitt little less
than an orange. A cow, afraid of her calf, had committed an assault on
the roadster, and tore up his flank with her crooked horn as clean as if
it had been a ripping chisel. The party had to proceed with post-horses;
and although Mr Dick be at once one of the most skilful and most
moderate of veterinary surgeons, his bill at the end of autumn was
necessarily as long as that of a proctor. Mr Fox gave up the ghost--Mr
Pitt was put on the superannuated list--and Joseph Hume, the hack, was
sent to the dogs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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