Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
This village is 7 miles from Horsham, and I got here to breakfast about
seven o'clock. A very pretty village, and a very nice breakfast in a
very neat little parlour of a very decent public-house. The landlady
sent her son to get me some cream, and he was just such a chap as I was
at his age, and dressed just in the same sort of way, his main garment
being a blue smock-frock, faded from wear, and mended with pieces of new
stuff, and, of course, not faded. The sight of this smock-frock brought
to my recollection many things very dear to me. This boy will, I dare
say, perform his part at Billingshurst, or at some place not far from
it. If accident had not taken me from a similar scene, how many villains
and fools, who have been well teazed and tormented, would have slept in
peace at night, and have fearlessly swaggered about by day! When I look
at this little chap; at his smock-frock, his nailed shoes, and his
clean, plain, and coarse shirt, I ask myself, will anything, I wonder,
ever send this chap across the ocean to tackle the base, corrupt,
perjured Republican Judges of Pennsylvania? Will this little, lively,
but, at the same time, simple boy, ever become the terror of villains
and hypocrites across the Atlantic? What a chain of strange
circumstances there must be to lead this boy to thwart a miscreant
tyrant like Mackeen, the Chief Justice and afterwards Governor of
Pennsylvania, and to expose the corruptions of the band of rascals,
called a "Senate and a House of Representatives," at Harrisburgh, in
that state!
I was afraid of rain, and got on as fast as I could: that is to say, as
fast as my own diligence could help me on; for, as to my horse, he is to
go only _so fast_. However, I had no rain; and got to Petworth, nine
miles further, by about ten o'clock.
_Petworth (Sussex), Friday Evening, 1 Aug._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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