He had seen the most _magnificent prawns_ he ever ate in his life.
And when I asked another young gentleman, who was speaking of "_the most tremendous screw_ ever made in the world," to which of our great ironclads he referred, he smiled upon me with a benign and courteous pity, as he said that he "was alluding to a screw into the middle pocket, which he had recently seen during a game at billiards between Cook and the younger Roberts."
When you hear one lady informing another that she had just seen simply the most _exquisite_, the most _lovely_, the most _perfect_ thing in existence, is she referring to something wonderful in nature, or to something beautiful in art, or can it be only a bonnet? Has she just come home from the glaciers of Switzerland, the lakes of Italy, the mountains of Connemara, or the castles of the Rhine, or can it be that she has been no farther than Marshall and Snelgrove"s shop?
Then there"s that awful "_awful_!" Why, if a thousandth part of things which are commonly affirmed to be aweful were aweful, we should go about with our faces blanched, like his who drew Priam"s curtain in the dead of night, our teeth chattering, and our hair on end. Everything is _aweful_--awefully good or awefully bad.
Only last week I handed a plate to a young lady at luncheon, and, looking sweetly upon me, as though I had brought a reprieve from the gallows, she sighed, "Oh thanks! how _awfully_ kind!"
And years ago, I went with John Leech to admire Robson in _The Porter"s Knot_, and when that pathetic little drama was over, and the actor had stirred our souls with pity, an undergraduate in the stalls before us turned to his companion, as the curtain fell, and said, tremulously, with an emotion which did him honour, although his diction was queer, "Awefully jolly! awefully jolly!"
Yes, it amuses, but it pains us more, this reckless abuse and confusion of words, because it tends to lower the dignity and to pervert the meaning of our language; it dishonours the best member that we have. If we use the most startling and impressive words which we can find, when we do not really require them, when the crisis comes in which they are appropriate, they seem feeble and commonplace. We are as persons who, wearing their best clothes daily, are but dingy guests at a feast.
Then comes retribution. They who cry "Wolf!" whenever they see a leveret are not believed when Lupus comes. They who suffer "excruciating agony"
whenever a thorn p.r.i.c.ks, can say no more under exquisite pain, and their familiar words are powerless to evoke the sympathy which they have repelled so long. They are more likely to receive the severe rebuke administered by a gruff old gentleman to his maudlin, moribund neighbour, who was ever exaggerating his ailments, and who, upon his doleful declaration that "between three and four o"clock that morning he had been at Death"s door!" was abruptly but anxiously asked--"Oh, why didn"t you go in?"
I protest, in the next place, against the use of long, large words for the gratification of that conceit or covetousness which seeks to obtain, from mere grandiloquence, reputations and rewards to which it is not ent.i.tled. Being a gardener, I like to call a spade as spelt; and if any one terms it an horticultural implement, or a mattock, I do not expect him to dig much. I have used the monosyllable "shop," and I will not recall it, though a thousand pairs of gleaming scissors were pointed at my breast, and I was told by an angry army of apprentices to talk shop no more--the word was vulgar, or rather obsolete, superseded by the more graceful terms of mart, emporium, warehouse, repository, bazaar, and lounge.
Plain folk, who sold drugs when I was a boy, were not ashamed to be called druggists, but now they are pharmaceutical chymists, and a.n.a.lytical h.o.m.oeopathists; and one is tempted to quote Canning"s paraphrase, which he made when Dr. Addington had been complimenting the country party, "I do remember an apothecary, gulling of simples."
Persons who cut hair were known as hair-cutters, and they who attended to the feet were called corn-cutters; but now the former are artists in hair, and the latter are chiropodists.
No long time ago I consulted with an intelligent tradesman as to the best way of protecting from frost a long line of standard rose-trees, growing near a wall in my garden, and shortly afterwards I received from him the drawing of a clever design, with a letter informing me that he had now the pleasure of submitting to my inspection his idea of a _Cheimoboethus_. When I rallied from my swoon, and was staggering towards my lexicon, I remembered that, as [Greek: cheimon] was the Greek for winter, and [Greek: boaethos] for a friend in need, the word was not without appropriate meaning; but I never took heart to order the invention, because I felt convinced that, if I were to inform my gardener that we were going to have a Cheimoboethus, he would say that he would rather leave.
A bird-stuffer is now a pluma.s.sier and taxidermist; and when I asked a waiter the meaning of "Phusitechnicon," which I read over a shop opposite his hotel, he told me it meant old china. And he bowed respectfully, as one who knew how to treat a great scholar, when he met him, as I remarked gravely, "Ah yes, I see: no doubt from _phusi_--the ancients, and _technicon_--cups and saucers."
Nor can I leave these long Greek words without noticing another objectionable abuse of them, whereby, upon the principle that "what in the captain"s but a choleric word, is in the soldier flat blasphemy," a distinction is made between vice in the rich and vice in the poor, and that which in the latter is obstinate depravity, to be handled only by the police, becomes in the former a pitiable weakness or an irresistible impulse to be gently nursed by the physician. If a poor man steals, he is a desperate thief; but if a rich man fancies that which does not belong to him he is a Kleptomaniac, and "the spoons will be returned."
If a poor man is addicted to alcohol he is a drunken sot; but if a rich man is oft intoxicated, he is afflicted with Dipsomania! Interesting patient! I should like to prescribe for him. I feel sure I could do him good with my medicines--the crank and water-gruel!
Leaving him at it, I pa.s.s on to another mania, which rather provokes amus.e.m.e.nt than anger--the mania to be called "Esquire." Forty years ago, the t.i.tle was restricted to those who carried arms. The armiger, no longer toiling after his knight with heavy helmet and shield, bore his own arms, as he drove along, proudly and pleasantly upon his carriage door. People who became rich, and found themselves shut out from "genteel society" because they had only letters upon their spoons, instead of birds and beasts, arms with daggers, and legs with spurs, were delighted to discover, on application at the Heralds" Office, that one of their ancestors had undoubtedly exercised the functions of a groom in the establishment of William the Conqueror, and that they were consequently ent.i.tled to bear upon their arms a stable-bucket _azure_, between two horses current, and to wear as their crest a curry-comb in base argent, between two wisps of hay proper, they and their descendants, according to the law of arms. But the luxury was expensive: a lump sum to the Heralds, and two pound two to the King"s taxes; and so, as time went on, men of large ambition, but of limited means, began to crave for some more economical process by which they might become esquires. They met together, and they solved the difficulty. They conferred the t.i.tle upon each other, and they charged no fee. And now the postal authorities will tell you that the number of the "esquires"
not carrying arms, not having so much as a leg to stand on (in the matter of legal claims), is something "awful!" But the process is so charmingly cheap and easy that we may expect a further development. Why should we not all be baronets? Why should we not raise ourselves, every man of us, on his own private hoist, to the Peerage?
We have all been ladies and gentlemen so long that a little n.o.bility, with its attendant t.i.tles, cannot fail to make a pleasant change. Bessie Black, who cleans the fire-irons, has for some years been Miss Cinderella, with a chignon and a lover on Sundays; and Bill, who weeds in the garden, is Mr. Groundsell with a betting-book and a bad cigar. A quotation from the newspapers will exemplify the comprehensiveness of those terms "ladies and gentlemen," which had once such definite and narrow restrictions. A witness, giving evidence at a trial, says: "When I see that gentleman in the hand-cuffs a-shinning and a-punching that lady with the black eye, I says to my missus, "Them"s ways," I says, "as I don"t hold to"; and she makes answer to me, "You better hadn"t.""
Let me not be misunderstood to mean that none are ladies and gentlemen who do not eat with silver forks, or that all persons that go about in carriages deserve those gracious names. I have met with persons calling themselves gentlemen, who evidently thought it manly and high-spirited to swear at their servants, and who were incapable of appreciating any anecdote which was not profane or coa.r.s.e; and I have met, as all who go amongst the poor have met, men who well deserved that n.o.ble epithet in cottages and corduroy. Who has not seen ill.u.s.trious sn.o.bs in satin, and sweet, modest gentlewomen in homely print and serge? A gentleman!
There"s no t.i.tle shouted at a reception so grand in my idea as this; and yet, methinks, that any man may win and wear it who is brave, and truthful, and generous, and pure, and kind--who is, in one word, a Christian!
Some people think to make themselves gentlemen by tampering with their patronymics, and by altering their family name. Brown has added an _e_ to his; and greedy Green, though he had two already, has followed his example; and White spells his with a _y_; and Bob Smith calls his son and heir Augustus Charlemagne Sacheverel Smythe; and Tailor calls himself Tayleure. And one day Tailor went out a-hunting, and he worried a whipper-in, who had plenty of work on his hands, with a series of silly questions, until, upon his asking the name of a hound, he received an answer which put an end to the discourse: "Well, sir," said the Whip, "we used to call him Towler; but things has got so fine and fashionable we calls him _Tow-leure."_
Pa.s.sing from abuse to disuse, I would not refer to words which are gradually becoming obsolete, but which some of us, partly from admiration of the words themselves, and partly from old a.s.sociations, would not willingly let die. Beginning alphabetically, the adjective _ask_ is one of those grand old English monosyllables which convey the sense in the sound, It speaks to you of a day in March, when the wind is in the east, and all the clouds are of a dull slate colour, and the roads are white, and the hedges black, and the fallows are dry and hard as bricks, and a bitter, searching, piercing wind whistles at your sealskins and Ulsters, your Lindseys and Jerseys, your foot-warmers and m.u.f.fatees, and you feel, with Miggs, "as though water were flowing aperiently down your back," and sit shuddering--dithering (there"s another word rarely used, but with a sufficient amount of chilliness in it to ice a bottle of champagne) "dithering in the _ask_, ungenial day."
Then I like _abear_ (the penultimate _a_ p.r.o.nounced as _e_)--"I can"t abeer him"; _addled_--"Bill"s addled noat a three week"; _agate_--"I see you"ve agate on"t"; _among-hands_--"Tom schemed to do it among-hands"; _all along of_--"It was all along of them "osses"; etc.
Of B"s there is a swarm: _beleddy_ (a corruption, as most men know, of "by our lady"), and I can only notice a few of the Queens. _Botch_ is a word which, though found in Shakespeare and Dryden, and other authors, is rarely used by us; and yet, methinks, in these days, when the great object seems to be to get quant.i.ty in place of quality, and to make as much display as we can at the price--when so much is done by contract, and there is, in consequence, strong temptation to daub with untempered mortar, to use green timber, to put in bad material where it will not be seen, the verb _to botch_ is only too appropriate to all such scampish proceedings.
And what do you think of _bofen-yed_? I once heard a farmer, shouting from the garden fence, with the vocal powers of a Boanerges, to a labourer at work about a quarter of a mile away, "Yer gret bofen-yed, can ter ear noat?" (_Anglice_, "You ox-headed lout, are you stone deaf?"); and more frequently the terms, _pudding-yed_ and _noggen-yed_ have been addressed in my hearing to obtuse and stupid folk. The former requires no comment, and an explanation of the latter--_noggen_, hard, rough, coa.r.s.e--may be found in Johnson. "Nay, I did na say thee wor a noggen-yed; I said Lawyer said thee were a noggen-yed," was a poor apology, once spoken in Lancashire. And there also, in time-honoured Lancaster, was made the following ill.u.s.trative speech. A conceited young barrister, with a _nez retrousse_ and a new wig, had been bullying for some time a rough, honest Lancashire lad, who was giving evidence in a trial, and at last the lawyer, thinking that he saw his opportunity, turned sharply upon the witness and said, "Why, fellow, only a short time ago you stated so and so." To which came the indignant answer, "Why, yer powder-yedded monkey, I never said noat o" sort; I appeal to th" company!"
I have a loving faith in children. Mixing with them daily--in church, in school, and at their play--I think that I know something about them; and I maintain that a disagreeable child is a sorrowful exception to the rule, and the result of mismanagement and foolish indulgences on the part of parents and teachers. But when this abnormal nuisance is found, a peevish, fretful child--a child who is always wanting to taste, a child who ignores the admirable purposes for which pocket-handkerchiefs were designed, such an _enfant terrible_ as he who told the kindly mother, offering to bring her "Gustus to join him in his play, that "if you bring your "Gustus here I shall make a slit in him with my new knife, and let out his sawdust"--when, I repeat, we come in contact with such an obnoxious precocity as this, what word can describe him so satisfactorily as the monosyllable--_brat_?
More detestable, because more powerful to do hurt, and with less excuse for doing it, is _the Blab_; the unctuous, tattling Blab, who creeps to your side with words softer than b.u.t.ter, but having war in his heart; he "always thought that Sam Smith was such a friend of yours, and" (hardly waiting for your "So he is") "was surprised and rather disgusted by his remarks at the Club last Thursday." And then he tells you something which, for a moment, and until principle prevails over pa.s.sion, suggests the removal by violence of several of Sam"s teeth, and he leaves you distressed and distrustful, until you discover, as you most probably will, that there has been cruel misrepresentation. Ah, if poor Jeannette"s desire were realised, and they who make the quarrels were the only men to fight, how nice it would be to sit upon an eminence and watch the Battle of the Blabs!
There was a battle once on a small scale, the only rational duel ever fought, in which a brace of Blabs were sweetly discomfited. They had succeeded in separating "very friends," and had arranged a hostile meeting; but, through the intervention of better men, and without their cognisance, the princ.i.p.als entered into explanation, and, finding that they had been misled, mutually agreed to fire at the seconds, who had made the mischief. One Blab received a bullet in the calf of his leg, and the other a _ping_ close to his whiskers; and then the combatants said that their honour was satisfied, and the party broke up.
Some years ago there lived in our village an individual who was known to us as _Brawnging_ Bill. Does not the epithet describe the man? As you p.r.o.nounce it, does not William"s photograph present itself to your mental eye? A large, obese, idle _hulk_ of a man (fine old Saxon word, that _hulc_!) lounging about with his hands in his pockets and a pipe in his mouth; a man who talks at the top of his voice, and laughs the loud laugh which tells the vacant mind, and lies with such volubility that you would think truth was a fool. Eloquent, didactic, imperious was he in the taproom and by the blacksmith"s forge, in the quoit-yard and in the alley of skittles, and yet, whene"er his tongue led him into trouble, and there was whisper of peril to that fat form of his, at the first utterance of a threat, the first sign of aggressive anger, there was a dissolving view of our Brawnging Bill.
From B to C.--Whenever the fairer s.e.x enter Parliament (breathes there a man with ears so deaf as to doubt their powers of parlance?) and we have a House of Ladies as well as a House of Lords, I antic.i.p.ate that among the first measures introduced will be a coercive Bill for Regulating in the Clay Districts the sc.r.a.ping, wiping, and cleaning of men"s boots on their return from the garden or the field. A sore provocation it must surely be to those who love order and brightness to find slabs of dirt upon their new oil-cloth, Indian mats, and bright encaustic tiles.
Justly may the gentlest spirit _chunter_ and complain while the guilty husband, from his dressing-room hard by, vainly essays to evade his shame by a quotation--"Would my darling have me come bootless home--home without boots, and in wet weather, too?" Better to give the real, the only excuse, and say that the soil is so--no, not adhesive, not sticky, not tenacious, but, to use a word ten thousand times more expressive than these, so _clarty_.
And do you not remember (on we go, voyaging among the C"s,) a time, a happy time, before you knew what digestion meant, when you delighted to _cranch_ the unripe gooseberry, until you heard the _clomp_ of the paternal tread on the _causey_, and crouched lest you should _catch it_, hid to escape a hiding; and how, nevertheless, swift retribution followed upon the track of crime, and you suffered those internal pains, which were vulgarly known as _colly-wobbles_, and were _coddled_, in consequence, upon your mother"s knee?
Going on to D--d.i.c.kens, in a description of a street row, represents one of the lady disputants as saying to her adversary, "You go home, and, when you are quite sober, mend your stockings"; and he adds that these allusions, not only to her intemperate habits but to the state of her wardrobe, were so exasperating to the accused party that she proceeded to comply, not with the suggestion of her accuser, but with the request of the bystanders, and to "pitch in" with considerable alacrity.
a.s.suming that her hose was as reported, let us hope that she had the worst of the combat, for there is something in the idea of a _dowdy_ which is hateful to the manly mind. How life-like the portrait which the word paints for us! a coa.r.s.e, fat female, her dingy cap, with its faded ribbons, awry upon her unkempt hair; eyes hookless, holes b.u.t.tonless, upon her shabby gown; a boot-lace trailing on the ground. When we clergy visit Mrs. Dowdy"s home, or the residence of her sister, Mrs. Slattern, and find that, though it is towards evening, they have not tidied either self or house, we know why the children are unhealthy and untaught, and why the husband prefers the warmth and cleanliness of "The Manor Arms"
to his own miserable hut. As a house-keeper, Mrs. Dowdy could only "please the pigs"; and this reminds me what an apt word we have in _dunky_ for a rotund, obese, little porket. I do not find the latter in Johnson, but dowdy in Shakespeare, and _slattern_ is from the Swedish.
No word suggests itself as I stand at E"s, and I therefore proceed with a sonata in F, composed, not by Beethoven, but by a horse-breaker, with certain amplifications of my own: "The young horse was in famous _fettle_, and _framed_ splendidly over the _flakes_; but he seemed all of a _flabber-gaster_ when he caught sight of the water, put himself into a regular _fandango_, and the more I _flanked_ him the more he _funked,_ till in he went with a _flop._"
I come now to a gem of purest ray serene. To me the monosyllable _gorp_ is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. Take a youth, who has pa.s.sed his life as an underling on some secluded farm, to an exhibition of wax figures, gorgeously attired, rolling their eyes and lifting up their arms to slow music, and you shall see him _gorp_. Or go with that young man to a display of fireworks, and when the first asteroid rocket sends out its glowing stars you shall see that wide-mouthed, wobbling agriculturist so gorp as to make it almost impossible for the descending stick to go anywhere save down his throat.
But we are all of us naturally fond of gorping. We abstain in our sensitive days, because somebody said it was vulgar; but, as we grow older and wiser, and that bell-wether Fashion tinkles vainly in our ears, we flatten our happy noses upon the shop-windows once again, and thoroughly enjoy our _gorp_.
At Oxford, I remember, it was considered very low indeed to gorp. In fact, we did not allow ourselves to be astonished at anything, unless it was the audacity of trades-people with reference to the payment of their little bills. Wherefore I the more honour the conduct and courage of a college friend who, honest himself, and as free from humbug as any man I know, was bored, especially in London, by the society of an affected c.o.xcomb, who persisted in attaching himself whenever they met, giving himself all sorts of silly airs, enlarging upon his intimacy with t.i.tled folks, and a.s.serting himself to be, like Mrs. Jarley"s show, the delight of the n.o.bility and gentry of the day. "Gradually," said my friend to me, "I discovered a process by which I might execute a deed of separation. First, I rattled my stick against the area railings, and I saw him wince; then I whistled an Ethiopian serenade, and "o"er his face a tablet of unutterable thoughts was traced"; but when I set my hat well on the back of my head, and _gorped_ with open mouth at six legs of pork in a butcher"s shop, he fled, and I saw him no more."
Thus did my friend successfully a.s.sume the lineaments of a _gawk_, and the deportment of a _gorby_, that he might evade the oppressive attentions of a companion given to _gawster_. The enemy whom he so adroitly dispersed bore a strong family likeness to a fraternal nuisance, whom we recently inspected, being, in fact, a new edition, on toned paper and elegantly bound, of the braggart, "Brawnging Bill," and exhibiting the same feeble powers of resistance when his silly conceits were thwarted. Honest men, hoping reformation, rejoice to see him slink away, rejoice to see the _gawsterer_ subdued, as when Theodore Hook rushed across Fleet Street to one, who was walking as proudly down it as though the Bank of England was his counting-house and St. Paul"s his private Chapel, and, almost breathless with admiring awe, gasped his anxious question--"O sir, O pray sir, may I ask, sir--are you anybody in particular?" Certainly it is either a great amus.e.m.e.nt or a great irritation (as the weather, or disposition, or digestion may influence), to meet with persons in parks, promenades, esplanades, and spas who ostensibly expect you to look at them in an ecstasy of wonder, as though they were a sunset on Mont Blanc or the Balaklava Charge.
Only in three exceptional cases is it permissible, as I think, to _gawster_. I like to see a drum-major, with my grandmother"s carriage-m.u.f.f on his head, and a baton in his hand as long as a bean-rod, swaggering at the head of his regiment, as though he had only to knock at the gates of a besieged city and the governor would instantly send the keys. Secondly, I was disappointed the other day at the stolid behaviour of a sheep, who went on grazing with a sublime indifference when a peac.o.c.k, having marched some distance for the purpose, wheeled round within a yard of his nose, displaying his brilliant charms in vain; and all the eyes of Argus seemed to pale their ineffectual fire, as when Mercury, with his delightful music, in accordance with the command of Jupiter, and with Lempriere"s dictionary, made them wink in a delicious drowse. And, thirdly, in the case of a game bantam, once my property, who flew up every morning to the top of a tall pump, and challenged Nottinghamshire to fight, I could not but admire the gawstering spirit, because he so thoroughly meant all that he said, and would have gladly matched himself against a mad elephant, or would have crowed defiance, midway between the rails, as the express rushed on at speed.
But in other animals I would pitilessly suppress proclivities to gawster. I would ask power from Parliament to whip, when mild persuasion failed, the precocious prig, "neither man nor boy," who struts about on Sundays, scoffing at religion, and polluting the air with bad tobacco and worse talk; and I would authorise the police to supervise, and to send home at their discretion, those small giggling girls who, having lost the shame which is a glory and a grace, and coveting every adornment but one, the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, are seen in our streets, with nearly half a year"s wage upon their backs, and the change on their faces--in bra.s.s.
To gawster, in fine, is a sure indication of moral and physical debility. He who gawsters is like a show, which has enormous pictures and clanging cymbals, and gongs, and drums, and an obese showman, in his shirt-sleeves, lying through a speaking-trumpet at the top of his voice, _outside_, and little more than a three-headed puppy, or a seven-legged lamb (not in vigorous life, as shown upon the canvas, but in gla.s.s and spirits of wine) _within_. When, for example, you hear a man gawster about his horsemanship, you may be sure that he will never be first over a fence, unless it be some wee obstacle, which you could almost arrange on a rocking-horse, and then he will rush wildly at it, as though he had made up his mind to die; or, if his boasting be of cricket, you may expect next morning to see him miss the first easy catch which comes.
I need hardly ask whether you have known, my reader, what it is to feel yourself _gloppened_, as when in boyhood (if feminine, please ask your brother), you had just finished your first pipe of the herb called s.h.a.g, and on your face a tablet of unutterable thoughts was traced, as represented in that marvellous sketch by John Leech, "Old Bagshawe under the influence of tobacco"; when you went forth with your mother for an innings, as you hoped, at the confectioner"s, and a second ditto at the toyshop, and saw her ringing the dentist"s bell; when you had carefully adjusted that cracker to Mr. Nabal"s knocker, and were lighting the lucifer within the quiet seclusion of your cap, and suddenly the knuckles of Mr. Nabal"s left pressed rudely on your nape, and the thumb and finger of his right essayed to meet each other through the lobe of your ear; when your dearest friend, in the strictest confidence, and having sworn you to secrecy, showed you a lock of gleaming hair, given to him by the girl whom you adored.
And it was you, my Thomas, you, The friend in whom my soul confided, Who dared to gaze on her--to do, I may say, much the same as I did.
Or when, in after-years, unequally mated, you groaned, with Parolles, under the subjection of a stronger will, "a man that"s married is a man that"s marred"; and it might be said of you, as once it was said by a labourer of one of his neighbours (so have I read in a book about roses, a charming volume, which should be on every table), "Bill has been and married his mestur, and she has _gloppened_ him a goodish bit."
I remember an occasion when a gawsterer was gloppened sorely. There was an ancient mansion, wainscoted and floored with shining oak, _glib_--I have not heard that apposite, terse little monosyllable since I went _slurring_ with the village boys--glib as gla.s.s; and in that ancient mansion there was a banquet; and to that banquet came, with other guests, "a fop in a gay coat," a c.o.xcomb wearing the bright vestment of the hunter, albeit in the hour of chase he only hunted gates and gaps; and upon the white satin lining of his "pink" there was a tiny b.u.t.ton-hole bouquet, such as Mab might have held with her fairy fingers at the time of her coronation; and in collar, if in nothing else, he resembled the immortal Shakespeare; and his bosom was broad and snowy as the swan"s; and his pumps were glossy as the raven"s wing; and he was going dinnerward, with a winsome damsel on his arm and a complacent smile of self-conceit upon his countenance, when the smooth soles of these new and shining shoes suddenly performed a rapid evolution, as though they were skates upon ice; and there was a little shriek from the winsome damsel in particular, and a large "Oh!" from the procession in general, and a flash of horizontal scarlet, as when a soldier falls in battle; and then the bruised and bewildered dandy picked himself up, as best he could, to perform a part for which his qualifications were small--the personification of a man who had a relish for pain; and I sympathised with, though I did not love him--not so much because his feelings, as because his raiment was torn, and he, who was generally the most lively and locomotive of all, was now depressed and sedentary, like the lover of Constance, brooding upon his silent grief, as on its nest the dove, while we remained at the dinner-table, and finally backing out of the drawing-room at an early hour, as though our hostess were the queen.
And his involuntary gymnastics remind me, as I pa.s.s on to that "terrible thoroughbred" letter H (I have heard men speak of others who ignored it in conversation as though they must be capable of any crime), of a stout old lady in the manufacturing districts, whose husband had been very successful in business, and had purchased a fine old country residence from some dilapidated squire. She was complaining to a visitor of the difficulty which she had in walking upon the polished floors.
"First I s.l.u.ther," she said, "and then I hutch; and then I s.l.u.ther, and then I hutch; and the more I hutch the more I s.l.u.ther."
Only one other specimen (for I must hurry on helter-skelter and harum-scarum) from words beginning with H--to be, or cause others to be, on the _hig_, that is, to go about, or cause others to go about, in a fume, angrily excited, menacing revenge. "Betty," I asked one of my parishioners, "why do you make these ill-natured, irritating speeches to your next-door neighbour?" "Oh, bless yer," was the reply I received, "I only said "em just to set old Sally on the _hig_." She knew that not to many was it given to hear resignedly the bitter word, that not to many was given in its reality the resignation affected by another of my old women, who (one of those wretched combinations of religion and rancour, "who think they"re pious when they"re only bilious") accosted me with the startling intelligence--"Oh, Mestur "Ole, I"ve got another lift towards "eaven. Bowc.o.c.ks" (tenants of the cottage adjoining her own), "Bowc.o.c.ks has been telling more lies; blessed are the pa.r.s.ecuted!"
Better open war than this dismal affectation of peace! Better to confess ourselves _hity-t.i.ty_, and to raise a _hullabaloo_, than such _humbug_ as this!
I, the egotist, has for once nothing to say; but J recalls to me an extract from a conversation which took place during one of my parochial visitations.
_Pastor_.--"Did I not see old Nanny Smith talking with you at your door just now?"
_Parishioner_.--"Oh yes, she wor" here not three minutes sin", and _jabbering_, as usual, like a clamm"d [famished] jay in a wood; but when she see your reverence coming up th" lane, th" old la.s.s wor" gone in a _jiffey_."