The Wards is a very clever fam'ly indeed.
I believe we are descendid from the Puritins, who nobly fled from
a land of despitism to a land of freedim, where they could not
only enjoy their own religion, but prevent everybody else from
enjoyin HIS.
As I said before, we are a very clever fam'ly.
I was strolling up Regent Street the other day, thinkin what a
clever fam'ly I come of, and looking at the gay shop-winders.
I've got some new close since you last saw me. I saw them others
wouldn't do. They carrid the observer too far back into the dim
vister of the past, and I gave 'em to a Orfun Asylum. The close
I wear now I bo't of Mr. Moses, in the Commercial Road. They was
expressly made, Mr. Moses inforemd me, for a nobleman, but as
they fitted him too muchly, partic'ly the trows'rs (which is
blue, with large red and white checks) he had said:
"My dear feller, make me some more, only mind--be sure you sell
these to some genteel old feller."
I like to saunter thro' Regent Street. The shops are pretty, and
it does the old man's hart good to see the troops of fine healthy
girls which one may always see there at certain hours in the
afternoon, who don't spile their beauty by devourin cakes and
sugar things, as too many of the American and French lasses do.
It's a mistake about everybody being out of town, I guess.
Regent Street is full. I'm here; and as I said before, I come of
a very clever fam'ly.
As I was walkin along, amoosin myself by stickin my penknife into
the calves of the footmen who stood waitin by the swell-coaches
(not one of whom howled with angwish), I was accosted by a man of
about thirty-five summers, who said, "I have seen that face
somewheres afore!"
He was a little shabby in his wearin apparil. His coat was one
of those black, shiny garments, which you can always tell have
been burnished by adversity; but he was very gentlemanly.
"Was it in the Crimea, comrade? Yes, it was. It was at the
stormin of Sebastopol, where I had a narrow escape from death,
that we met."
I said, "No, I wasn't at Sebastopol; I escaped a fatal wound by
not bein there. It was a healthy old fortress," I added.
"It was. But it fell. It came down with a crash."
"And plucky boys they was who brought her down," I added; "and
hurrah for 'em!"
The man graspt me warmly by the hand, and said he had been in
America, Upper Canada, Africa, Asia Minor, and other towns, and
he'd never met a man he liked as much as he did me.
"Let us," he added, "let us to the shrine of Bachus!"
And he dragged me into a public house. I was determined to pay,
so I said, "Mr. Bachus, giv this gen'l'man what he calls for."
We conversed there in a very pleasant manner till my dinner-time
arrove, when the agreeable gentleman insisted that I should dine
with him. "We'll have a banquet, Sir, fit for the gods!"
I told him good plain vittles would soot me. If the gods wanted
to have the dispepsy, they was welcome to it.
We had soop and fish, and a hot jint, and growsis, and wines of
rare and costly vintige. We had ices, and we had froots from
Greenland's icy mountins and Injy's coral strands; and when the
sumptoous reparst was over, the agree'ble man said he'd
unfortnitly left his pocket-book at home on the marble centre-
table.
"But, by Jove!" he said, "it was a feast fit for the gods!"
I said, "Oh, never mind," and drew out my puss; tho' I in'ardly
wished the gods, as the dinner was fit for 'em, was there to pay
for it.