At this the whole company of disputants forgot their quicksets, lifted their heads and cried—“Well done Septimus Scallop! That’s a good ’un. If the gentleman can swallow that, he can anything.”
“O!” said I, “I don’t doubt it.”
“Don’t doubt it!” they shouted all at once—“don’t doubt it? Why, do you think any man ever could get to where the sky was so low as he couldn’t get in sixpence between his head and it?”
“Yes he could, and often has done—make yourself sure of that. If a man has not a sixpence he cannot put it between his head and the sky; and he is pretty near the world’s end too, I think.”
Here they all burst into a shout of laughter, in the midst of which open flew the door, and a tall figure rushed into the middle of the house, wrapped in a shaggy coat of many capes, dripping with wet, and holding up a huge horn lantern. A face of wonderful length and of a ghastly aspect glared from behind the lantern, and a voice of the most ludicrous lamentation bawled out—“For God’s sake, lads, come and help me to find my wagon and horses! I’ve lost my wagon! I’ve lost my wagon!” Up jumped the whole knot of disputants, and demanded where he had lost it. The man said that while he went to deliver a parcel in the village, the wagon had gone on. That he heard it at a distance, and cried, “woa! woa!” but the harder he cried, and the farther he went, the faster it went too. At this intelligence away marched every one of the good-natured crew excepting the wit. “And why don’t you go?” I asked.—“Go! pugh! It’s only that soft brother of mine, Tim Scallop, the Doncaster carrier. I’ll be bound now that the wagon hasn’t moved an inch from the spot he left it in. He has heard the wind roaring, and doesn’t know it from his own wagon wheels. Here these poor simpletons will go running their hearts out for some miles, and then they will come back and find the horses where he left them. I could go and lay my hand on them in five minutes. But they are just as well employed as in griming Mrs. Tappit’s hearthstone. Never mind;—I was telling you of what the hostler said to Ben Jonson when Ben was reeling home early one morning from a carouse, and Ben declared that he was never so pricked with a horsenail-stump in his life—
Ben.— Thou silly groom
Take away thy broom,
And let Ben Jonson pass:
Groom.— O! rare Ben!
Turn back again,
And take another glass!”
Septimus Scallop laughed at the hostler’s repartee, and I laughed too, but my amusement had a different source from his. There was something irresistibly ludicrous in the generous rushing forth of the whole company to the aid of the poor carrier, except the witty brother! But he was quite right: in about an hour, in came the good-natured men, streaming with rain like drowned rats, and declaring that after running three miles and finding no wagon, they bethought themselves of turning back to where the carrier said it was lost; and there they had nearly run their noses against it, standing exactly where he left it.
So much for the village inn. Every traveller must have seen in such a place many a similar piece of country life. A new class of alehouses has sprung up under the New Beer Act, which being generally kept by people without capital, often without character; their liquor supplied by the public brewers, and adulterated by themselves; have done more to demoralize the population of both town and country, than any other legislative measure within the last century. In these low, dirty, fuddling places, you may look in vain for
The whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnished clock that clicked behind the door.