The Every-day Book and Table Book. v. 2 (of 3): or Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs and Events, Incident to Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days, in past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Month, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the AlmanacHone, William
History
The Every-day Book and Table Book. v. 2 (of 3): or Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Manners, Customs and Events, Incident to Each of the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Days, in past and Present Times; Forming a Complete History of the Year, Month, and Seasons, and a Perpetual Key to the Almanac
Hone, William
Days; Great Britain -- Social life and customs
He has fiddles and a dance
at the Ship, with oceans of flip and grog; and gives the blind fiddler
tobacco for sweetmeats, and half a crown for treading on his toe. He
asks the landlady with a sigh, after her daughter Nance who first fired
his heart with her silk stockings; and finding that she is married and
in trouble, leaves five crowns for her; which the old lady appropriates
as part payment for a shilling in advance. He goes to the port playhouse
with Bet Monson, and a great red handkerchief full of apples,
gingerbread nuts, and fresh beef; calls out for the fiddlers and Rule
Britannia; pelts Tom Sikes in the pit; and compares Othello to the black
ship’s cook in his white night-cap. When he comes to London, he and some
messmates take a hackney-coach, full of Bet Monsons and tobacco pipes,
and go through the streets smoking and lolling out of window. He has
ever been cautious of venturing on horseback; and among his other sights
in foreign parts, relates with unfeigned astonishment how he has seen
the Turks ride,--“Only,” says he, guarding against the hearer’s
incredulity, “they have saddle-boxes to hold ’em in, fore and aft; and
shovels like for stirrups.” He will tell you how the Chinese drink, and
the NEGURS dance, and the monkies pelt you with cocoa-nuts; and how
king Domy would have built him a mud hut and made him a peer of the
realm, if he would have stopped with him and taught him to make
trowsers. He has a sister at a “school for young ladies,” who blushes
with a mixture of pleasure and shame at his appearance; and whose
confusion he completes, by slipping fourpence into her hand, and saying
out loud that he has “no more copper” about him. His mother and elder
sisters at home doat on all he says and does, telling him however that
he is a great sea-fellow, and was always wild ever since he was a
hop-o’-my-thumb no higher than the window-locker. He tells his mother
she would be a duchess in Paranaboo; at which the good old portly dame
laughs and looks proud. When his sisters complain of his romping, he
says that they are only sorry it is not the baker. He frightens them
with a mask made after the New Zealand fashion, and is forgiven for his
learning. Their mantle-piece is filled by him with shells and shark’s
teeth; and when he goes to sea again, there is no end of tears, and
God-bless you, and home-made gingerbread.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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