on a corner-house, or a sign-post, means, ‘I went this way;’ or ‘Go on in this direction.’
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on a corner-house, or sign-post, means ‘Stop—don’t go any further in this direction.’
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as before explained, means ‘danger.’
“Like many other young men, I had lived above my income, and, too proud to crave parental forgiveness, had thrown off the bonds of authority for a life of adventure. I was now homeless upon the world. With a body capable of either exertion or fatigue, and a heart not easily terrified by danger, I endured rather than enjoyed my itinerant position. I sold small articles of Tunbridge ware, perfumery, &c., &c., and by ‘munging’ (begging) over them—sometimes in Latin—got a better living than I expected, or probably deserved. I was always of temperate and rather abstemious habits, but ignorant of the haunts of other wanderers, (whom I saw in dozens every day upon every road, and every conceivable pursuit) I took up my nightly quarters at a sort of third-rate public-houses, and supposed that my contemporaries did the same. How long my ignorance might have continued (if left to myself) I can hardly determine; an adventure at a road-side inn, however, removed the veil from my eyes, and I became gradually and speedily ‘awake’ to ‘every move on the board.’ It was a lovely evening in July, the air was serene and the scenery romantic; my own feelings were in unison with both, and enhanced perhaps by the fact that I had beguiled the last two miles of my deliberate walk with a page out of my pocket-companion, ‘Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful.’ I was now smoking my pipe and quaffing a pint of real ‘Yorkshire stingo’ in the ‘keeping room’ (a term which combines parlour and kitchen in one word) of a real ‘Yorkshire village,’ Dranfield, near Sheffield. A young person of the other sex was my only and accidental companion; she had been driven into the house by the over-officiousness of a vigilant village constable, who finding that she sold lace without a license, and—infinitely worse—refused to listen to his advances, had warned her to ‘make herself scarce’ at her ‘earliest possible convenience.’
“Having elicited what I did for a living, she popped the startling question to me, ‘Where do you “hang out” in Sheffield?’ I told her that I had never been in Sheffield, and did not ‘hang out’ my little wares, but used my persuasive art to induce the purchase of them. The lady said, ‘Well, you are “green.” I mean, where do you dos?’ This was no better, it seemed something like Greek,—‘delta, omicron, sigma,’ (I retain the “patterer’s” own words to show the education of the class)—but the etymology was no relief to the perplexity. ‘Where do you mean to sleep?’ she inquired. I referred to my usual practice of adjourning to an humble public-house. My companion at once threw off all manner of disguise, and said, ‘Well, sir, you are a young man that I have taken a liking to, and if you think you should like my company, I will take you to a lodging where there is plenty of travellers, and you will see “all sorts of life.”’ I liked the girl’s company, and our mutual acquiescence made us companions on the road. We had not got far before we met the aforesaid constable in company with an unmistakeable member of the Rural Police. They made some inquiries of me, which I thought exceeded their commission. I replied to them with a mutilated Ode of Horace, when they both determined that I was a Frenchman, and allowed us to ‘go on our way rejoicing.’