第273章

CONTAINING THE STORY OF THE BEGMAN'S UNCLE"M Y uncle, gentlemen," said the bagman, "was one of the merriest, pleasantest, cleverest fellows that ever lived.I wish you had known him, gentlemen.On second thoughts, gentlemen, I don't wish you had known him, for if you had, you would have been all, by this time, in the ordinary course of nature, if not dead, at all events so near it, as to have taken to stopping at home and giving up company: which would have deprived me of the inestimable pleasure of addressing you at this moment.Gentlemen, I wish your fathers and mothers had known my uncle.

They would have been amazingly fond of him, especially your respectable mothers; I know they would.If any two of his numerous virtues predominated over the many that adorned his character, I should say they were his mixed punch and his after supper song.Excuse my dwelling on these melancholy recollections of departed worth; you won't see a man like my uncle every day in the week.

"I have always considered it a great point in my uncle's character, gentlemen, that he was the intimate friend and companion of Tom Smart, of the great house of Bilson and Slum, Cateaton Street, City.My uncle collected for Tiggin and Welps, but for a long time he went pretty near the same journey as Tom; and the very first night they met, my uncle took a fancy for Tom, and Tom took a fancy for my uncle.They made a bet of a new hat before they had known each other half an hour, who should brew the best quart of punch and drink it the quickest.My uncle was judged to have won the making, but Tom Smart beat him in the drinking by about half a salt-spoon-full.They took another quart a-piece to drink each other's health in, and were staunch friends ever afterwards.There's a destiny in these things, gentlemen; we can't help it.

"In personal appearance, my uncle was a trifle shorter than the middle size; he was a thought stouter too, than the ordinary run of people, and perhaps his face might be a shade redder.He had the jolliest face you ever saw, gentlemen: something like Punch, with a handsomer nose and chin;his eyes were always twinkling and sparkling with good humour; and a smile--not one of your unmeaning wooden grins, but a real, merry, hearty, good-tempered smile--was perpetually on his countenance.He was pitched out of his gig once, and knocked, head first, against a mile-stone.There he lay, stunned, and so cut about the face with some gravel which had been heaped up alongside it, that, to use my uncle's own strong expression, if his mother could have revisited the earth, she wouldn't have known him.Indeed, when I come to think of the matter, gentlemen, I feel pretty sure she wouldn't, for she died when my uncle was two years and seven months old, and I think it's very likely that, even without the gravel, his top-boots would have puzzled the good lady not a little: to say nothing of his jolly red face.

However, there he lay, and I have heard my uncle say, many a time, that the man said who picked him up that he was smiling as merrily as if he had tumbled out for a treat, and that after they had bled him, the first faint glimmerings of returning animation, were, his jumping up in bed, bursting out into a loud laugh, kissing the young woman who held the basin, and demanding a mutton chop and a pickled walnut.He was very fond of pickled walnuts, gentlemen.He said he always found that, taken without vinegar, they relished the beer.

"My uncle's great journey was in the fall of the leaf, at which time he collected debts, and took orders, in the north: going from London to Edinburgh, from Edinburgh to Glasgow, from Glasgow back to Edinburgh, and thence to London by the smack.You are to understand that his second visit to Edinburgh was for his own pleasure.He used to go back for a week, just to look up his old friends; and what with breakfasting with this one, lunching with that, dining with a third, and supping with another, a pretty tight week he used to make of it.I don't know whether any of you, gentlemen, ever partook of a real substantial hospitable Scotch breakfast, and then went out to a slight lunch of a bushel of oysters, a dozen or so of bottled ale, and a noggin or two of whiskey to close up with.If you ever did, you will agree with me that it requires a pretty strong head to go out to dinner and supper afterwards.

"But, bless your hearts and eye-brows, all this sort of thing was nothing to my uncle! He was so well seasoned, that it was mere child's play.Ihave heard him say that he could see the Dundee people out, any day, and walk home afterwards without staggering; and yet the Dundee people have as strong heads and as strong punch, gentlemen, as you are likely to meet with, between the poles.I have heard of a Glasgow man and a Dundee man drinking against each other for fifteen hours at a sitting.They were both suffocated, as nearly as could be ascertained, at the same moment, but with this trifling exception, gentlemen, they were not a bit the worse for it.