The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 01 (of 11): Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original IllustrationsHood, Thomas
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The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 01 (of 11): Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original Illustrations
Hood, Thomas
English poetry -- 19th century; English wit and humor; Humorous poetry, English
Your old friend and schoolfellow,
RICHARD PUGSLEY.
No. II.--_From the Same to the Same._
DEAR BOB,
When you come, bring us a ’bacco-pipe to load the gun with. If you
don’t come, it can come by the waggon. Our Public House is three mile
off, and when you’ve walked there it’s out of everything. Yours, &c.,
RICH. PUGSLEY.
No. III.--_From Miss_ ANASTASIA PUGSLEY, _to Miss_ JEMIMA MOGGRIDGE,
_at Gregory House Establishment for Young Ladies, Mile End_.
MY DEAR JEMIMA,
Deeply solicitous to gratify sensibility, by sympathising with our
fortuitous elevation, I seize the epistolary implements to inform
you, that, by the testamentary disposition of a remote branch of
consanguinity, our tutelary residence is removed from the metropolitan
horizon to a pastoral district and its congenial pursuits. In futurity
I shall be more pertinaciously superstitious in the astrological
revelations of human destiny. You remember the mysterious gipsy at
Hornsey Wood?--Well, the eventful fortune she obscurely intimated,
though couched in vague terms, has come to pass in minutest
particulars; for I perceive perspicuously, that it predicted that
papa should sell off his boot and shoe business at 133, Barbican, to
Clack and Son, of 144, Hatton Garden, and that we should retire, in a
station of affluence, to Middlefen Hall, in Lincolnshire, by bequest of
our great-great maternal uncle, Pollexfen Goldsworthy Wrigglesworth,
Esq., who deceased suddenly of apoplexy at Wisbeach Market, in the
ninety-third year of his venerable and lamented age.
At the risk of tedium, I will attempt a cursory delineation of our
rural paradise, altho’ I feel it would be morally arduous, to give any
idea of the romantic scenery of the Lincolnshire Fens. Conceive, as far
as the visual organ expands, an immense sequestered level, abundantly
irrigated with minute rivulets, and studded with tufted oaks, whilst
more than a hundred windmills diversify the prospect and give a
revolving animation to the scene. As for our own gardens and grounds,
they are a perfect Vauxhall--excepting, of course, the rotunda, the
orchestra, the company, the variegated lamps, the fire-works, and those
very lofty trees. But I trust my dear Jemima will supersede topography
by ocular inspection; and in the interim I send for acceptance a
graphical view of the locality, shaded in Indian ink, which will
suffice to convey an idea of the terrestrial verdure and celestial
azure we enjoy, in lieu of the sable exhalations and architectural
nigritude of the metropolis.
[Illustration: CINDERELLA.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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