Warming his tails at the fire stood a guest of the house, a tall man in pumps, seedy black tights, a frayed blue coat brass-buttoned, a black satin choker, and his head so large and of such effulgent baldness that he would have shone out remarkable in any company. He was a Mr. Wilkins wanted by the magistrates for stealing pocket handkerchiefs, and now awaiting a wherry which would convey him presently to a coal boat, bound for Newcastle.
Of the company in the sanded bar parlor, perhaps only one other person need be mentioned, Mr. Brown, valet to Isaac Disraeli, Esquire, upon Adelphi Terrace.
The emigrant spoke feelingly of dogsnose as about to become, if he might venture to say so, one of the tenderest and most endearing of those beverages which the forlorn and desolate exile would have to—ahem—go without, a reminder to the banished heart of that sacred homeland whose blessed liberties and hard-won—ahem. The remainder of the sentiment was confided with tears to a large red bandanna handkerchief.
"Which liberties," said the publican sternly, crossing his bare forearms on the bar, "ain't what they're cracked up to be. Liberties! Liberties of the Fleet, the Marshalsea, and Newgate!
"It's terventy-one year since me and my brother James there, what's sitting drunk in the winder, fought at Waterloo. It's nineteen year come Lammas I been 'ere. Nineteen year—so to speak—I been the Fox under the Hill which sees plentiful, 'ears much, smells a good deal, but doesn't have nothing votever to talk abart. Vile I keeps my mask shut, gennelmen, I saves my brush."
He paused for a reply, but there was none.
"You mark my vords. 'Ere of a Sunday, so to speak, vith my doors closed during church, and none of you gennelmen being peelers, spies, nor warmints, speaking to friends I says we's had a durned sight too many Georges, and too many Villiams reigning over we—the same being a pack of Germans."
The company seemed to be startled by such frankness.
"A durned sight too many lawyers, too many parsons, too many lords and landlords, too many masters altogether, vich is a pack o' willians, 'umbugs, and sponges eating of our wittles wot we earns. The Prayer Book says as they'd ought to get their own living in that state of life, whereas they gets most of my living in tithes, rent, rates, taxes, and plundering of me on every cask of beer."
"Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!" cried a voice from the corner by the clock. "Hoff vith their bleedin' 'eads!"