Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/620

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ever lived ; and my uncle in thoroughly good cue : the consequence of which was, that the young ladies tittered and giggled, and the old lady laughed out loud, and the baillie and the other old fellows roared till they were red in the face, the whole mortal time. I don't quite recol- lect how many tumblers of whiskey toddy each man drank after supper, but this I know, that about one o'clock in the morning, the baillie's grown-up son became insensible while attempting the first verse of • Willie brewed a peck o' maut ; ' and he having been, for half an hour before, the only other man visible above the mahogany, it occurred to my uncle that it was almost time to think about going, especially as drinking had set in at seven o'clock in order that he might get home at a decent hour. But thinking it might not be quite polite to go just then, my uncle voted himself into the chair, mixed another glass, rose to propose his own health, addressed himself in a neat and compli- mentary speech, and drank the toast with great enthusiasm. Still nobody woke ; so my uncle took a little drop more — neat this time, to prevent the toddy disagreeing with him, and laying violent hands on his hat sallied forth into the street.

and settling his hat firmly on his head to prevent the wind from taking it, thrust his hands into his pockets, and looking upwards, took a short survey of the state of the weather. The clouds were drifting over the moon at their giddiest speed, at one time whoUv obscuring her, at another, suffering her to burst forth in full splendour and shed her light on all the objects around ; anon, driving over her again with increased velocity, and shrouding everything in darkness. * Really, this won't do,' said my uncle, addressing himself to the weather, as if he felt himself personally offended. * This is not at all the kind of thing for my voyage. It will not do at any price,' said my uncle, very im- pressively. And having repeated this, several times, he recovered his balance with some difficulty — for he was rather giddy with looking up into the sky so long — and walked merrily on.
 * ' It was a wild gusty night when my uncle closed the baillie's door ;

" The baillie's house was in the Canongate, and my uncle was going to the other end of Leith Walk, rather better than a mile's journey. On either side of him, there shot up against the dark sky, tall, gaunt, straggling houses, with time-stained fronts, and windows that seemed to have shared the lot of eyes in mortals, and to have grown dim and sunken with age. Six, seven, eight stories high were the houses; story piled above story, as children build with cards — throwing their dark shadows over the roughly paved road, and making the night darker. A few oil lamps were scattered, at long distances, but they only served to mark the dirty entrance to some narrow close, or to show where a common stair communicated, by steep and intricate windings with the various flats above. Glancing at all these things with the air of a man who had seen them too often before, to think them worthy of much notice now, my uncle walked up the middle of the street with a thumb in each waistcoat pocket, indulging from time to time in various snatches of song, chaunted forth with such good will and spirit, that the quiet honest folk started from their first sleep and lay trembling in bed till the sound died away in the

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