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
Monday, mid-day. Races not to begin until to-morrow, but all the
mob-Lunatics out, crowding the pavements of the one main street of pretty
and pleasant Doncaster, crowding the road, particularly crowding the
outside of the Betting Rooms, whooping and shouting loudly after all
passing vehicles. Frightened lunatic horses occasionally running away,
with infinite clatter. All degrees of men, from peers to paupers,
betting incessantly. Keepers very watchful, and taking all good chances.
An awful family likeness among the Keepers, to Mr. Palmer and Mr.
Thurtell. With some knowledge of expression and some acquaintance with
heads (thus writes Mr. Goodchild), I never have seen anywhere, so many
repetitions of one class of countenance and one character of head (both
evil) as in this street at this time. Cunning, covetousness, secrecy,
cold calculation, hard callousness and dire insensibility, are the
uniform Keeper characteristics. Mr. Palmer passes me five times in five
minutes, and, so I go down the street, the back of Mr. Thurtell’s skull
is always going on before me.
Monday evening. Town lighted up; more Lunatics out than ever; a complete
choke and stoppage of the thoroughfare outside the Betting Rooms.
Keepers, having dined, pervade the Betting Rooms, and sharply snap at the
moneyed Lunatics. Some Keepers flushed with drink, and some not, but all
close and calculating. A vague echoing roar of ‘t’harses’ and ‘t’races’
always rising in the air, until midnight, at about which period it dies
away in occasional drunken songs and straggling yells. But, all night,
some unmannerly drinking-house in the neighbourhood opens its mouth at
intervals and spits out a man too drunk to be retained: who thereupon
makes what uproarious protest may be left in him, and either falls asleep
where he tumbles, or is carried off in custody.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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