Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 011.djvu/381

You tell me, my dear Mr. Pinchbeck, that you have never yet explored the country beyond Stratford-le-Bow on the East, Hammersmith on the West, Holloway Turnpike on the North, and the Windmill upon Clapham Common on the South: you add, that you can now well afford to look a little about you, and you call upon the devil to fetch you if you will take it as you have done: you conclude with intimating an intention of spending a fortnight "somewhere or another" a hundred miles from town, and with doing me the honour of asking my advice as to the spot to be fixed upon for your rural sojourn. Feeling as I do in my own mind a laudable impartiality upon that subject, all parts of the country being to me pretty much upon a par, let me advise you to pack your portmanteau, and mounting a hackney-coach, to desire the driver to convey you either to the Elephant and Castle in Saint George's Fields, or to the White Horse Cellar in Piccadilly, whichsoever the said driver pleaseth. As the distance from your residence in Guildford-street to the former of these houses of call is greater than to the latter, and consequently the coach-fare higher, I assume it as an admitted proposition that you will have been conveyed to the Elephant and Castle. A variety of importunate messengers, commonly called cads, will here have surrounded you, and will have been very urgent in their inquiries as to the coach by which you are going to quit London. If you possess the equitable feeling upon that subject which appertains to the writer of this letter, you will have told one of them to pitch your portmanteau into the first on the stand: "Where-ever fate shall lead me," as John Kemble used to say in the Stranger. The old man in green spectacles and pepper and salt whole gaiters, who faces you on the coach, will have informed you that the present wet weather, if it continues, will thin the watering-places; and the young woman with the little hand-basket on your left, will have been eyed by the young man her brother on the roof, at every change of horses, to ascertain that she has not, like Harlequin Lun, leaped through the coach-window. I omit dwelling, at any length, upon the sage in a grey stubble beard, who proffered you pears to sell at the end of the second stage, or upon the cleanly middle-aged woman in a mob cap, who asked you, at the close of the third, if you wanted any nice ducks, protruding, while speaking, a basket containing half a dozen defunct waddlers. A stage passenger, however hungry, cannot well make a luncheon upon a raw duck, and therefore the thing may appear strange, but I will make affidavit of its having occurred to you once, if not oftener, before the close of your journey.

You have now, my dear Joshua Pinchbeck, alighted at the Roe-{{rh|VOL. XI. NO. XLVI.