The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures, Bons Mots, Puns, and Hoaxes of Theodore HookHook, Theodore Edward
General
The Choice Humorous Works, Ludicrous Adventures, Bons Mots, Puns, and Hoaxes of Theodore Hook
Hook, Theodore Edward
English wit and humor
The shouts of delight which rent the air were music to the ears of
greatness--it was quite a genial morning, and one of those days "when
we seem to draw in delight with the very air we breathe, and to feel
happy we can scarcely tell why." So writes the reverend author, with
more taste than judgment; for a man, placed as he was in the society
of Lord Wenables and his Court, not to know why he felt happy, shows,
we fear, a want of perception equally lamentable with the want of
tact displayed in confessing it.
The reverend author laments that the eagerness of the party to
do honour to the delicacies of the Lord Mayor's breakfast-table,
prevented their seeing the beauties of Nuneham.
At ten o'clock they made Abingdon--and at Clifton the water shoaled
suddenly from eighteen inches to fourteen and a half, so that his
Lordship's yacht, which drew nearly two feet, could be drawn no
farther, and they remained hard and fast till a fresh supply of the
element could be procured.
The following passage is in the author's happiest style:--
"The crowds of people--men, women, and children--who had
accompanied the barge from Oxford, were continually succeeded by
fresh reinforcements from every town and village that is skirted
by the river. Distant shouts of acclamation perpetually re-echoed
from field to field, as the various rustic parties, with their
fresh and blooming faces, were seen hurrying forth from their
cottages and gardens; climbing trees, struggling through copses,
and traversing thickets, to make their shortest way to the
water-side. Handfuls of halfpence were scattered to the children
as they kept pace in running along the banks with the City Barge;
and Mr. Alderman Atkins, who assisted the Lord Mayor in the
distribution, seemed to enter with more than common pleasure into
the enjoyment of the little children. It was gratifying to see
the absence of selfish feeling manifested by some of the elder
boys, who, forgetful of themselves, collected for the younger
girls."
It will be remembered that the voyage now under detail was undertaken
in the dreadful year of panic--but we confess we had no idea of
the desperate state of affairs in the country which could induce
so severe a run on the banks for a few halfpence, such as is here
described. It may not be uninteresting to trace the source of the
Lord Wenables's munificence. The halfpence in question were those
which we mentioned his Lordship to have taken in change at the
turnpike-gates during his Lordship's over-land journey to Oxford, and
were now distributed with that liberality and grace for which his
Lordship and Mr. Alderman Atkins will never cease to be remembered.
The reverend writer, indeed, says:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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