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
Consoled by this intelligence, she waved her lily hand, and our pious
friend went to attend a meeting of shareholders of the Anglo-Mexican
Mining Company, where he paid up his instalments, without taking the
precaution of considering what class of labourers must necessarily
be employed in working the mines. He proceeded thence to the sale of
East India produce, where he made several purchases, not troubling
himself to inquire how indigo flourished, or rice grew; and, meeting
on his way a director of the opulent Leadenhall monopoly, accepted an
invitation to dine with him at the City of London Tavern.
Here he of course found an excellent dinner spread upon a table of
mahogany; his chair was of the same material. He was helped to turtle
and ate it with a silver spoon. To gratify his palate he drank ever
and anon iced punch, sweetened he asked not how, and strengthened
with rum. Over his turbot he sprinkled Cayenne pepper, and flavoured
his cucumber with Chili vinegar. With a curry he called for hot
pickles, and having in the dessert refreshed himself with some
excellent preserved ginger, took a cup of coffee, and concluding with
a small glass of noyeau, stepped again into his dennett, and reached
his villa in safety, blessing the names of Buxton, Wilberforce, and
Macaulay, and receiving the tender compliments of his affectionate
wife upon the virtue of drinking nothing but free sugar.
And this is what five hundred persons do, under the guidance of the
Liverpool speculators, and the leaders of apes and asses in this
metropolis. Let us merely point out to such of our readers who like
the followers of cant, and will not take the trouble of thinking for
themselves, those inconsistencies which one day's adventures of our
pious "saint" develop.
Had he acted upon principle instead of policy, this exemplary old
body would have remembered that rum and coffee, as well as sugar,
are the produce of slave-labour,--that his morning's chocolate and
his afternoon's liqueur have the same origin; he would neither
have ventured to trust to his lance-wood springs, nor have dared
to blow his nose with his cotton handkerchief; neither would he
in the morning after his hearty dinner, have been prevailed upon
to take a little tamarind drink to cool his constitution, nor have
allowed his apothecary to suggest an exhibition of castor-oil
if his indigestion continued; but even if he had overcome these
scruples, how would he have summoned sufficient fortitude to put into
circulation his sovereigns and shillings, which, although our only
circulating medium, are furnished by the labour of slaves, chained
to their horrid work, lest they should risk the punishment of death
by endeavouring to escape the toil and climate to which they are
consigned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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