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Untitled Article
materials , ahd he never fails when he draws exclusively upon them . There is considerable humour as well as beauty and pathos in these volumes . The adventure of . the stage coach where Mr . Slingsby met with " Mrs . Captain Thompson " is a good specimen . He left Saratoga Springs on the " , dusty , and
faint last day of August , the thermometer at 100 ° of Fahrenheit , inside the " Dilly " carrying nine passengers on three seats , and not being intended for outside passengers , having a thin porous . black top which " just suffices to collect the sun ' rays with an incredible power and sultriness , and exclude the air that makes it sufFerable to the beasts of the field . " Of the
nine places in this accommodation " he says " it is sometimes bitterly called , " he filled the very centre , " with no support for his back , and buried to the chin in men , women , and children , at the ninth and lowest degree of human . suffering . "
" I was dressed in a white roundabout and trowsers of the same , a straw hat , thread stockings , and pumps , and was so far a blessing to my neighbours that I looked cool . Directly behind me , occupying the middle of the back seat , sat a young woman with a gratis passenger in her lap ( who of course did not count among the nine , ) in the shape of a fat , and a very hot child of three years of age , wham
she called John , Jackey , Johnny , Jocket , Jacket , and the other endearing diminutives of the namesakes of the great apostle . Like the saint who had been selected for his patron , he was a ' voice crying in the wilderness . ' This little gentleman was exceedingly unpopular with his two neighbours at the windows , and his incursions upon their legs and shoulders in his occasional forage for fresh air , ended in his
being focbidden to look out at either window , and plied largely with gingerbread to content him with the warm lap of his mother . Though 1 had no eyes in the back of my straw hat , I conceived very well the state in which a compost of soft gingerbread , tears , and perspiration would soon leave the two unscrupulous hands behind me , and as the
jolts of the coach frequently threw me back vipon the knees of his mother , I could not consistently complain of the familiar use made of my roundabout and shoulders in Master John ' s constant changes of position . I vowed my jacket to the first river , the moment I could make sure that the soft gingerbread was exhausted—but I kept my temper .
Mr . Slingsby travelled thirty miles in this enviable position , and then as he was going eastward by another coach , having changed his bedaubed jacket for a clean one , eaten a salad for his dinner , and drank a bottle of iced claret , he freely forgave little Pickle for his freedoms , hoping never to set eyes on him again during his natural life .
•• I got up the § teps of the coach with as much olacrity at the state of the thermometer would permit , and was about drawing my legs after me upon the forward teat , when a clammy hand caught me
Untitled Article
860 Inklings qf Adveiytutt *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1836, page 360, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2658/page/32/
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