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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
increase his stock of experience.
Should YOU? Well then, Ill tell it. No, I wont. I know you
wont believe it, said the man with the roguish eye, making that
organ look more roguish than ever.
If you say its true, of course I shall, said Mr. Tupman.
Well, upon that understanding Ill tell you, replied the
traveller. Did you ever hear of the great commercial house of
Bilson & Slum? But it doesnt matter though, whether you did or
not, because they retired from business long since. Its eighty
years ago, since the circumstance happened to a traveller for
that house, but he was a particular friend of my uncles; and
my uncle told the story to me. Its a queer name; but he used to
call it
THE BAGMANS STORY
and he used to tell it, something in this way.
One winters evening, about five oclock, just as it began to
grow dusk, a man in a gig might have been seen urging his tired
horse along the road which leads across Marlborough Downs, in
the direction of Bristol. I say he might have been seen, and I have
no doubt he would have been, if anybody but a blind man had
happened to pass that way; but the weather was so bad, and the
night so cold and wet, that nothing was out but the water, and
so the traveller jogged along in the middle of the road, lonesome
and dreary enough. If any bagman of that day could have caught
sight of the little neck-or-nothing sort of gig, with a clay-
coloured body and red wheels, and the vixenish, ill tempered,
fast-going bay mare, that looked like a cross between a butchers
horse and a twopenny post-office pony, he would have known at
once, that this traveller could have been no other than Tom
Smart, of the great house of Bilson and Slum, Cateaton Street,
City. However, as there was no bagman to look on, nobody
knew anything at all about the matter; and so Tom Smart and
his clay-coloured gig with the red wheels, and the vixenish mare
with the fast pace, went on together, keeping the secret among
them, and nobody was a bit the wiser.
There are many pleasanter places even in this dreary world,
than Marlborough Downs when it blows hard; and if you throw
in beside, a gloomy winters evening, a miry and sloppy road, and
a pelting fall of heavy rain, and try the effect, by way of experiment,
in your own proper person, you will experience the full
force of this observation.
The wind blew--not up the road or down it, though thats
bad enough, but sheer across it, sending the rain slanting down
like the lines they used to rule in the copy-books at school, to
make the boys slope well. For a moment it would die away, and
the traveller would begin to delude himself into the belief that,
exhausted with its previous fury, it had quietly laid itself down
to rest, when, whoo! he could hear it growling and whistling in
the distance, and on it would come rushing over the hill-tops, and
sweeping along the plain, gathering sound and strength as it
drew nearer, until it dashed with a heavy gust against horse and
man, driving the sharp rain into their ears, and its cold damp
breath into their very bones; and past them it would scour, far,
far away, with a stunning roar, as if in ridicule of their weakness,
and triumphant in the consciousness of its own strength and power.
The bay mare splashed away, through the mud and water,
with drooping ears; now and then tossing her head as if to
express her disgust at this very ungentlemanly behaviour of the
elements, but keeping a good pace notwithstanding, until a gust
of wind, more furious than any that had yet assailed them,
caused her to stop suddenly and plant her four feet firmly against
the ground, to prevent her being blown over. Its a special mercy
that she did this, for if she HAD been blown over, the vixenish
mare was so light, and the gig was so light, and Tom Smart such
a light weight into the bargain, that they must infallibly have all
gone rolling over and over together, until they reached the
confines of earth, or until the wind fell; and in either case the
probability is, that neither the vixenish mare, nor the clay-
coloured gig with the red wheels, nor Tom The Pickwick Papers page 86 The Pickwick Papers page 88 |