Sir, there's your pint and chop, and if
you wish for anything else you can ring. Envious, indeed, of such
- Marry come up!" and with a toss of her head, higher than any she
had hitherto given, she bounced out of the room.
Here was a pretty affair! I had entered the house and ordered the
chop and pint in the belief that by so doing I was patronising the
poet, and lo, I was not in the poet's house, and my order would
benefit a person for whom, however respectable and religious, I
cared not one rush. Moreover, the pint which I had ordered
appeared in the guise not of ale, which I am fond of, but of
sherry, for which I have always entertained a sovereign contempt,
as a silly, sickly compound, the use of which will transform a
nation, however bold and warlike by nature, into a race of
sketchers, scribblers, and punsters, in fact into what Englishmen
are at the present day. But who was to blame? Why, who but the
poet and myself? The poet ought to have told me that there were
two houses in L- bearing the sign of the - Arms, and that I must
fight shy of the hotel and steer for the pot-house, and when I gave
the order I certainly ought to have been a little more explicit;
when I said a pint I ought to have added - of ale. Sententiousness
is a fine thing sometimes, but not always.
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