The Lazy Tour of Two Idle ApprenticesDickens, Charles
General
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
Dickens, Charles
Apprentices -- Fiction; Cumbria (England) -- Description and travel -- Fiction; Walking -- England -- Cumbria -- Fiction
Carlisle! Idle and Goodchild had got to Carlisle. It looked congenially
and delightfully idle. Something in the way of public amusement had
happened last month, and something else was going to happen before
Christmas; and, in the meantime there was a lecture on India for those
who liked it—which Idle and Goodchild did not. Likewise, by those who
liked them, there were impressions to be bought of all the vapid prints,
going and gone, and of nearly all the vapid books. For those who wanted
to put anything in missionary boxes, here were the boxes. For those who
wanted the Reverend Mr. Podgers (artist’s proofs, thirty shillings), here
was Mr. Podgers to any amount. Not less gracious and abundant, Mr.
Codgers also of the vineyard, but opposed to Mr. Podgers, brotherly tooth
and nail. Here, were guide-books to the neighbouring antiquities, and
eke the Lake country, in several dry and husky sorts; here, many
physically and morally impossible heads of both sexes, for young ladies
to copy, in the exercise of the art of drawing; here, further, a large
impression of MR. SPURGEON, solid as to the flesh, not to say even
something gross. The working young men of Carlisle were drawn up, with
their hands in their pockets, across the pavements, four and six abreast,
and appeared (much to the satisfaction of Mr. Idle) to have nothing else
to do. The working and growing young women of Carlisle, from the age of
twelve upwards, promenaded the streets in the cool of the evening, and
rallied the said young men. Sometimes the young men rallied the young
women, as in the case of a group gathered round an accordion-player, from
among whom a young man advanced behind a young woman for whom he appeared
to have a tenderness, and hinted to her that he was there and playful, by
giving her (he wore clogs) a kick.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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