But we must proceed with the story.
CHAP. X.[ToC]
THE GLASS OF GIN.
Soon after breakfast was over that morning, Samuel and his companion strolled out into the village. None but those who are kept constantly at work in a close room, almost every day in the year, except Sunday, can imagine with what light hearts these two boys walked the streets of that factory village, on the morning of that memorable holiday. I say memorable. It proved to be a day which neither of these boys could well forget.
As they passed along through the village in the course of the forenoon, they saw a great many sights, which to their young eyes, were worth going a great way to see. There were tents erected on the square in front of the meeting house—tents in which there were scores of eatable and drinkable things to sell. In one of these tents, there was a boy, who seemed very much at home, dealing out candies, and filberts, and raisins, and gingerbread, and liquors of different kinds. There were a dozen different bottles and decanters in his tent, each with some sort of liquor in it.
"Hurrah!" said he, as soon as the two friends came up to the tent; "why, Fred, is that you?" And he wrung Frederick's hand much as a farmer is accustomed to wring the necks of fat chickens, a day or two before Christmas or Thanksgiving.
It turned out that the youth who was so glad to see Frederick, was Peter Pippin, a son of the butcher in the place where Frederick's father lived. Peter was a rude, untutored boy, rough as a nutmeg grater, or a chestnut bur. He and Frederick had been to school together; and though they had never been very intimate, because their tastes were so different, they had been sufficiently acquainted to be really glad to see each other again, after a separation of more than a year.