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
Our readers have probably had enough of the prince. On the political
portion of his highness's book we cannot enter, because his politics
are universally mixed up with impiety. As to personal adventure,
his closing chapters on Ireland contain little of that, except his
being invited to drink wine at a radical meeting, and a visit to the
Catholic Association. The rest is a mere tissue of commonplaces,
evidently gleaned from the female attendants of the small inns which
his highness was in the habit of frequenting, while his "carriage
and people" were absent. He quits Ireland, and starts from Holyhead
by the mail; he arrives at Shrewsbury, and, although the mail very
rarely stops for anybody, perambulates the whole town,--sketches
the horses,--examines the castle, and the tread-mill,--and yet is
in time to pursue his journey, which he does on the outside of the
mail, with four outside passengers! At Monmouth he pauses,--goes into
a bookseller's shop to "buy a Guide,"--and "unexpectedly" makes the
acquaintance of the bookseller's "very amiable family," particularly
two "pretty daughters,"--of whom his highness observes, as a Lyell or
Murchison would of lumps of nickel or tungsten, "they were the most
perfect specimens of innocent country girls I ever met with." They
were at tea when his highness dropped in; and the father, "unusually
loquacious for an Englishman, took him absolutely and formally
prisoner, and began to ask him the strangest questions about the
Continent and about politics."
"The daughters," said his highness, "obviously pitied
me--probably from experience--and tried to restrain him; but
I let him go on, and surrendered myself for half an hour _de
bonne grace_, by which I won the good-will of the whole family
to such a degree, that they all pressed me most warmly to stay
some days in this beautiful country, and to take up my abode
with them. When I rose at length to go, they positively refused
to take anything for the book; '_bongré, malgré_,' I was forced
to keep it as a present. Such conquests please me; because their
manifestations can come only from the heart."
The reader will presently find the sequel to this double shot, by
which two perfect specimens of innocence were killed dead; but he
must first be told that his highness, the next morning, charges the
landlord of his inn, the waiters, or the chambermaids, or somebody,
with stealing his purse and pocket-book. They indignantly deny the
charge, and repel the imputation, which his highness appears to have
been anxious to cast equally upon gentlemen and innkeepers, and offer
to submit to instant search, adding, however, that his highness must
undergo a similar operation. This his highness declines; he thinks
it best to put up with the loss of ten pounds, and depart; and what
will the reader think he therefore did? "Why," says the prince, "I
therefore took some more bank-notes out of my travelling-bag, paid
the reckoning, and so departed."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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