But here the Hungarian, also getting up, interposed his tall form and pipe between us, saying in English, scarcely intelligible, ‘Let there be no dispute! As for myself, I am very much obliged to the young man of Horncastle for his interruption, though he has told me that one of his dirty townsmen called me “Long-stockings.” By Isten! there is more learning in what he has just said, than in all the verdammt English histories of Thor and Tzernebock I ever read.’
‘I care nothing for his learning,’ said the jockey. ‘I consider myself as good a man as he, for all his learning; so stand out of the way, Mr. Sixfoot-eleven, or—’
‘I shall do no such thing,’ said the Hungarian. ‘I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself. You ask young man to drink champagne with you, you make him dronk, he interrupt you with very good sense; he ask your pardon, yet you not—’
‘Well,’ said the jockey, ‘I am satisfied. I am rather a short-tempered person, but I bear no malice. He is, as you say, drinking my wine, and has perhaps taken a drop too much, not being used to such high liquor; but one doesn’t like to be put out of one’s tale, more especially when one was about to moralize, do you see, oneself, and to show off what little learning one has. However, I bears no malice. Here is a hand to each of you: we’ll take another glass each, and think no more about it.’
The jockey having shaken both of our hands, and filled
our glasses and his own with what champagne remained in the bottle, put on his coat, sat down, and resumed his pipe and story.
‘Where was I? Oh, roaming about the country with Hopping Ned and Biting Giles. Those were happy days, and a merry and prosperous life we led. However, nothing continues under the sun in the same state in which it begins, and our firm was soon destined to undergo a change. We came to a village where there was a very high church steeple, and in a little time my comrades induced a crowd of people to go and see me display my gift by flinging stones above the heads of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who stood at the four corners on the top, carved in stone. The parson, seeing the crowd, came waddling out of his rectory to see what was going on. After I had flung up the stones, letting them fall just were I liked—and one, I remember, fell on the head of Mark, where I dare say it remains to the present day—the parson, who was one of the description of people called philosophers, held up his hand, and asked me to let the next stone I flung up fall into it. He wished, do you see, to know with what weight the stone would fall down, and talked something about gravitation—a word which I could never understand to the present day, save that it turned out a grave matter to me. I, like a silly fellow myself, must needs consent, and, flinging the stone up to a vast height, contrived so that it fell into the parson’s hand, which it cut dreadfully. The parson flew into a great rage, more particularly as everybody laughed at him, and, being a magistrate, ordered his clerk, who was likewise constable, to conduct me to prison as a rogue and a vagabond, telling my comrades that if they did not take themselves off, he would serve them in the same manner. So Ned hopped off, and Giles ran after him, without making any gathering, and I was led to Bridewell, my mittimus following at the end of a week, the parson’s hand not permitting him to write before that time. In the Bridewell I remained a month, when, being dismissed, I went in quest of my companions, whom, after some time, I found up, but they refused to keep my company any longer; telling me that I was a dangerous character, likely to bring them more trouble than profit; they had, moreover, filled up my place. Going into a cottage to ask for a drink of water, they saw a country fellow making faces
to amuse his children; the faces were so wonderful that Hopping Ned and Biting Giles at once proposed taking him into partnership, and the man—who was a fellow not very fond of work—after a little entreaty, went away with them. I saw him exhibit his gift, and couldn’t blame the others for preferring him to me; he was a proper ugly fellow at all times, but when he made faces his countenance was like nothing human. He was called Ugly Moses. I was so amazed at his faces, that though poor myself I gave him sixpence, which I have never grudged to this day, for I never saw anything like them. The firm throve wonderfully after he had been admitted into it. He died some little time ago, keeper of a public-house, which he had been enabled to take from the profits of his faces. A son of his, one of the children he was making faces to when my comrades entered his door, is at present a barrister, and a very rising one. He has his gift—he has not, it is true, the gift of the gab, but he has something better, he was born with a grin on his face, a quiet grin; he would not have done to grin through a collar like his father, and would never have been taken up by Hopping Ned and Biting Giles, but that grin of his caused him to be noticed by a much greater person than either; an attorney observing it took a liking to the lad, and prophesied that he would some day be heard of in the world; and in order to give him the first lift, took him into his office, at first to light fires and do such kind of work, and after a little time taught him to write, then promoted him to a desk, articled him afterwards, and being unmarried and without children, left him what he had when he died. The young fellow, after practising at the law some time, went to the bar, where, in a few years, helped on by his grin, for he had nothing else to recommend him, he became, as I said before, a rising barrister. He comes our circuit, and I occasionally employ him, when I am obliged to go to law about such a thing as an unsound horse. He generally brings me through—or rather that grin of his does—and yet I don’t like the fellow, confound him, but I’m an oddity; no, the one I like, and whom I generally employ, is a fellow quite different, a bluff sturdy dog, with no grin on his face, but with a look which seems to say I am an honest man, and what cares I for anyone. And an honest man he is, and something more. I have known coves with a better gift of the gab,
though not many, but he always speaks to the purpose, and understands law thoroughly; and that’s not all. When at college, for he has been at college, he carried off everything before him as a Latiner, and was first-rate at a game they called matthew mattocks. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I have heard that he who is first-rate at matthew mattocks [271] is thought more of than if he were first-rate Latiner.
‘Well, the chap that I’m talking about, not only came out first-rate Latiner, but first-rate at matthew mattocks too; doing, in fact, as I am told by those who knows, for I was never at college myself, what no one had ever done before. Well, he makes his appearance at our circuit, does very well, of course, but he has a somewhat high front, as becomes an honest man, and one who has beat every one at Latin and matthew mattocks; and who can speak first-rate law and sense;—but see now, the cove with the grin, who has like myself never been at college; knows nothing of Latin, or matthew mattocks, and has no particular gift of the gab, has two briefs for his one, and I suppose very properly, for that grin of his curries favour with the juries; and mark me, that grin of his will enable him to beat the other in the long run. We all know what all barrister coves looks forward to—a seat on the hop sack. Well, I’ll bet a bull to fivepence, that the grinner gets upon it, and the snarler doesn’t; at any rate, that he gets there first. I calls my cove—for he is my cove—a snarler; because your first-rates at matthew mattocks are called snarlers, and for no other reason; for the chap, though with a high front, is a good chap, and once drank a glass of ale with me, after buying an animal out of my stable. I have often thought it a pity that he wasn’t born with a grin on his face, like the son of Ugly Moses. It is true he would scarcely then have been an out and outer at Latin and matthew mattocks, but what need of either to a chap born with a grin? Talk of being born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth; give me a cove born with a grin on his face—a much better endowment.