As blooming as May-day;
With carriages, house, and
Twice twenty thousand;
If it only were for Uncle Timothy's sake!
CHAPTER IX.
Gentle Reader! we promised thee at the outset of our journey pleasant companions by the way, and as an earnest of that promise, we have introduced Benjamin Bosky and Uncle Tim. We would now bespeak thy courtesy for others that are soon to follow. In passing happily through life, half the battle depends upon the persons with whom we may be associated. And shall we carry spleen into the closet?—grope for that daily plague in our books, when it elbows and stares us in the face at every turn? To chronicle the “Painful Peregrinations” of Uncle Timothy through this livelong day, would exhibit him, like “Patience,” not sitting “on a monument, smiling at grief,” but lolling in Mr. Bosky's britschka, laughing (in his sleeve!) at the strange peculiarities of the Muffs, and listening with mild endurance to the unaccountable antipathies of Mrs. Flumgarten. Now the Fubsys might be called, par excellence, a prudent family.
And Prudence is a nymph we much admire,