Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/619

519 THE PICKWICK CLUB. 519

she died when my nncle 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 mer- rily as if he had tumbled out for a treat, and that after they had bled him, the tirst faint glimmerings of returning animation were, his jump- ing 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 instantly. He was very fond of pickled walnuts, gentlemen. He said he always found that, taken without vinegar, they relished the beer.

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 under- stand that this 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, and lunching with that, and 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 Blight 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.
 * ' My uncle's great journey was in the fall of the leaf, at which time

" But, bless your hearts and eyebrows, all this sort of thing was nothing to my uncle. He was so well seasoned that it was mere child's play. I have 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, gentle- men, 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 excep- tion, gentlemen, they were not a bit the worse for it.

" One night, within four-and-twenty hours of the time when he had settled to take shipping for London, my uncle supped at the house of a very old friend of his, a Baillie Mac something, and four syllables after it, who lived in the old town of Edinburgh. There were the baillie's wife, and the baillie's three daughters, and the baillie's grown-up son, and three or four stout, bushy-eye browed, canty old Scotch fellows that the baillie had got together to do honour to my uncle, and help to make merry. It was a glorious supper. There was kippered salmon, and Finnan haddocks, and a lamb's head, and a haggis ; a celebrated Scotch dish, gentleman, which my uncle used to say always looked to him, when it came to table, very much like a cupid's stomach ; and a great many other things besides, that I forget the names of, but very good things notwithstanding. The lassies were pretty and agreeable ; the baillie's wife one of the best creatures that

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