“Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.”
In an instant the sportsman let fall his gun, and Sugarlips ran affrighted towards the stile. He found it really “vox et preterea nihil;” for a few feathers of the bird alone were visible: he had been blown to nothing; and, peeping cautiously round the angle of the wall, he beheld a portly gentleman in black running along with the unwieldy gait of a chased elephant.
“Old Flank'em, of the Finishing Academy, by jingo!” exclaimed Sugarlips. “It's a mercy we didn't finish him! Why, he must actually have been on the point of turning the corner. I think we had better be off; for, if the old dominie catches us, he will certainly liberate our sparrows, and—put us in the cage!”
But, where's the spoil?”
“Spoil, indeed!” cried Sugarlips; “you've spoiled him nicely. I've an idea, Tom, you were too near, as the spendthrift nephew said of his miserly uncle. If you can't get an aim at a greater distance, you'd never get a name as a long shot—that's my mind.”
PRECEPT.
Uncle Samson was a six-bottle man. His capacity was certainly great, whatever might be said of his intellect; for I have seen him rise without the least appearance of elevation, after having swallowed the customary half dozen. He laughed to scorn all modern potations of wishy-washy French and Rhine wines—deeming them unfit for the palate of a true-born Englishman. Port, Sherry, and Madeira were his only tipple—the rest, he would assert, were only fit for finger-glasses!
—He was of a bulky figure, indeed a perfect Magnum among men, with a very apoplectic brevity of neck, and a logwood complexion,—and though a staunch Church-of-England-man, he might have been mistaken, from his predilection for the Port, to be a true Mussulman. To hear him discourse upon the age of his wines—the 'pinhole,' the 'crust,' the 'bees'-wing,' etc., was perfectly edifying—and every man who could not imbibe the prescribed quantum, became his butt. To temperance and tea-total societies he attributed the rapid growth of radicalism and dissent.