The Expedition of Humphry ClinkerSmollett, T. (Tobias)
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The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
Smollett, T. (Tobias)
Epistolary fiction; Great Britain -- Fiction; Travelers -- Fiction
In crossing these treacherous Syrtes with a guide, we perceived a
drowned horse, which Humphry Clinker, after due inspection, declared to
be the very identical beast which Mr Lismahago rode when he parted with
us at Feltonbridge in Northumberland. This information, which seemed
to intimate that our friend the lieutenant had shared the fate of his
horse, affected us all, and above all our aunt Tabitha, who shed salt
tears, and obliged Clinker to pull a few hairs out of the dead horse’s
tail, to be worn in a ring as a remembrance of his master: but her grief
and ours was not of long duration; for one of the first persons we saw
in Carlisle, was the lieutenant in propria persona, bargaining with
a horse-dealer for another steed, in the yard of the inn where we
alighted.--Mrs Bramble was the first that perceived him, and screamed
as if she had seen a ghost; and, truly, at a proper time and place, he
might very well have passed for an inhabitant of another world; for
he was more meagre and grim than before.--We received him the more
cordially for having supposed he had been drowned; and he was not
deficient in expressions of satisfaction at this meeting. He told us,
he had enquired for us at Dumfries, and been informed by a travelling
merchant from Glasgow, that we had resolved to return by the way of
Coldstream. He said, that in passing the sands without a guide, his
horse had knocked up, and he himself must have perished, if he had not
been providentially relieved by a return post-chaise.--He moreover gave
us to understand, that his scheme of settling in his own country having
miscarried, he was so far on his way to London, with a view to embark
for North-America, where he intended to pass the rest of his days among
his old friends the Miamis, and amuse himself in finishing the education
of the son he had by his beloved Squinkinacoosta.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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