Page:Tom Brown's School Days.djvu/37

 Yet why should I after all abuse the gadabout propensities of my countrymen? We are a vagabond nation now, that's certain, for better for worse. I am a vagabond; I have been away from home no less than five distinct times in the last year. The Queen sets us the example—we are moving on from top to bottom. Little dirty Jack, who abides in Clement's Inn gateway, and blacks my boots for a penny, takes his month's hop-picking every year as a matter of course. Why shouldn't he? I'm delighted at it. I love vagabonds, only I prefer poor to rich ones;—couriers and ladies' maids, imperials and travelling carriages, are an abomination unto me—I cannot away with them. But for dirty Jack, and every good fellow who, in the words of the capital French song, moves about,

on his own back, why, good luck to them, and many a merry road-side adventure, and steaming supper in the chimney corners of road-side inns, Swiss châlets, Hottentot kraals, or wherever else they like to go. So having succeeded in contradicting myself in my first chapter, (which gives me great hopes that you will all go on, and think me a good fellow notwithstanding my crotchets,) I shall here shut up for the present, and consider my ways; having resolved to "sar' it out," as we say in the Vale, "holus-bolus" just as it comes, and then you'll probably get the truth out of me.