Fly Leaves by Charles Stuart Calverley — Free Audiobook

1 01 - Morning 1:20

2 02 - Evening 1:18

3 03 - Shelter 1:27

4 04 - In the Gloaming 2:40

In the gloaming to be roaming where the crested waves are foaming, and the shy mermaidens combing locks that ripple to their feet. When the gloaming is, I never made the ghost of an endeavor to discover, but whatever were the hour, it would be sweet. To their feet, I say, For Leach's sketch indisputably teaches that the mermaids of our beaches do not end in ugly tales, nor have homes among the corals, but are shod with neat balmorals, an arrangement no one quarrels with, as many might with scales. Sweet to roam beneath a shady cliff, of course with some young lady, Lelage, Nera, Hady, or Elaine, or Mary Anne. Love, you dear, delusive dream you, very sweet your victims deem you, when, hurt only by the seamew, they talk all the stuff one can.

Sweet to haste, a licensed lover to Miss Pinkerton the Glover, having managed to discover what his dear nearest sighs, perhaps to touch that wrist so slender as your tiny gift you tender, and to read your no offender in those laughing hazel eyes. Then to hear her call you Harry, when she makes you fetch and carry. O young men about to marry, what a blessed thing it is! To be photographed, together, cased in pretty Russia leather, hear her gravely doubting whether they have spoiled your honest fizz. Then to bring your plighted fair one first a ring, a rich and rare one, next a bracelet, if she'll wear one, and a heap of things beside, and serenely bending o'er her, To inquire if it would bore her to say when her own adorer may aspire to call her bride.

Then the days of courtship over, with your wife, to start for Dover or Dieppe, and live in clover evermore, whatever befalls. For I've read in many a novel that, unless they've souls that grovel, folks prefer, in fact, to hovel to your dreary marble halls, to sit, happy married lovers. Phyllis trifling with a plover's egg, while Corridan uncovers with a grace the sally lun, or dissects the lucky pheasant. That, I think, were passing pleasant, as I sit alone at present, dreaming darkly of a dun.

5 05 - The Palace 3:21

The Palace by Charles Stewart Calverley. They come, they come, with fife and drum, and gleaming pikes and glancing banners. Though the eyes flash, the lips are dumb, to talk in rank would not be manners. Onward they stride, as Britons can, the ladies following in the van, who, Who be these that tramp in threes through sumptuous Piccadilly, through the roaring Strand, and stand at ease at last neath shadowy Waterloo? Some gallant guild I wean are they, taking their annual holiday. To catch the destined train, to pay their willing fares and plunge within it, is, as in old Romand, they say, with them the work of half a minute. Then off their world, with songs and shouting, to cedar'd Sydenham for their outing.

I marked them light, with faces bright, as pansies or a new coined florin, and up the sunless stair take flight. Clothes-packed as rabbits in a warren. Honor the brave, who in that stress still trod not upon beauty's dress. Kerchief in hand I saw them stand. In every kerchief lurked a lunch. When they unfurled them, it was grand to watch bronzed men and maidens crunch the sounding celery stick, or ram the knife into the blushing ham. Dashed the bold fork through pies of pork, O'er hard-boiled eggs a salt spoon shook, Leapt from its lair the playful cork. Yet some there were, to whom the brook seemed sweet as beverage, And for meat they chose the red root of the beet. Then many a song, some rather long, Came quivering up from girlish throats, And one young man he came out strong.

And gave the wolf without his notes, while they who knew not song or ballad still munched approvingly their salad. But ah, what bard could sing how hard the artless banquet o'er? They ran down the soft slope with daisies starred in king-cups. Onward, made with man, they flew to scale the breezy swing, or court frank kisses in the ring. Such are the sylvan scenes that thrill this heart, the lawns, the happy shade, where matrons, whom the sunbeams grill, stir with slow spoon their lemonade, and maidens flirt, no extra charge, in comfort at the fountain's march. Others may praise the grand displays, where fiery arch, cascade, and comet set the whole garden in a blaze. Far, at such times, may I be from it, though then the public may be lost in wonder at a trifling cost.

Fanned by the breeze, to puff at ease, my faithful pipe is all I crave, and if folks rave about the trees lit up by fireworks, let them rave. Your monster fates, I like not these, though they bring grist to the lessees.

6 06 - Peace 1:35

7 07 - The Arab 2:30

8 08 - Lines on Hearing the Organ 5:09

Till thou ultimately findest pence in thy unwashed palm. Grinder, jocund-hearted grinder, near whom Barbary's nimble sun Poised with skill upon his hinder, pause, accepts the proffered bun. Dearly do I love thy grinding, joy to meet thee on thy road, where thou prowlest through the blinding dust with that stupendous load. Neath the baleful star of Sirius, when the postman slowly a-jog, and the ox becomes delirious, and the muzzle decks the dog. Tell me, by what art thou bindest on thy feet those ancient shoon. Tell me, grinder, if thou grindest always, always out of tune. Tell me if, as thou art buckling on thy straps with eager claws, thou forecastest inly chuckling all the rage that thou wilt cause.

Tell me, if at all thou mindest, when folks flee as if on wings, from thee as at ease thou grindest, tell me fifty thousand things. Grinder, gentle-hearted grinder, ruffians who led evil lives, soothed by thy sweet strains, are kinder to their bullocks and their wives. Children, when they see thy supple form approach, are out like shots. Half a bar sets several couples balsing in convenient spots. Not with clumsy Jacks or Georges, unprofaned by grasp of man, maidens speed those simple orgies, Betsy Jane with Betsy Anne. As they love thee in St. Giles's, thou art loved in Grosvenor Square. None of those engaging smiles is unreciprocated there. Often, ere yet thou hast hammered through thy four delicious airs, coins are flung thee by enamoured housemaids upon area stairs.

In the ambrosial whiskered flunky, Eyes, thy boots, and thine unkempt beard and melancholy monkey, more in pity than contempt. Far from England, in the sunny south, where Anio leaps in foam, thou wast reared till lack of money drew thee from thy vine-clad home. And thy mate, the sinewy Jocko, from Brazil or Afric came, Land of Simoom and Sirocco, and he seems extremely tame. There he quaffed the undefiled, spring or hung with ape-like glee, By his teeth or tail or eyelid, to the slippery mango-tree. There he wooed, and one a dusky bride of instincts like his own, talked of love till he was husky in a tongue to us unknown. Side by side, t'was theirs to ravage the potato ground, or cut, down the unsuspecting savage with the well-aimed coconut.

Till the miscreant stranger tore him, screaming from his blue-faced fare, and they flung strange raiment o'er him, raiment which he could not bear. Severed from the pure embraces of his children and his spouse, he must ride fantastic races mounted on reluctant sows. But the heart of wistful Jocko still was with his ancient flame in the nut groves of Morocco, or if not, it's all the same. Grinder, winsome, grinsome grinder, they who see thee and whose soul melts not at thy charms are blinder than a trebly bandaged mole. They to whom thy curt, yet clever, talk thy music and thine ape Seem not to be joys forever, are but brutes in human shape. Tis not that thy mean is stately, Tis not that thy tones are soft, Tis not that I care so greatly, For the same thing played so oft.

But I've heard mankind abuse thee, And perhaps it's rather strange, But I thought that I would choose thee For encomium as a change.

9 09 - Changed 1:44

10 10 - First Love 2:55

First Love by Charles Stewart Calverley. Read for LibriVox.org by Thomas Peter.

O my earliest love, who, ere I numbered ten sweet summers, made my bosom thrill, will swallow, or swift, or some bird, fly to her and say, I love her still. Say my life's a desert drear and arid, to its one green spot I recur. Never, never, although three times married, have I cared a jot for aught but her. No, mine own, though early forced to leave you, still my heart was there where first we met, in those lodgings with an ample sea-view, which were, forty years ago, to let. There I saw her first, our landlord's oldest little daughter. On a thing so fair thou, O sun, Who, so they say, beholdest everything, hast gazed, I tell thee, ne'er. There she sat, so near me, yet remoter than a star, a blue-eyed bashful imp.

On her lap she held a happy bloater, twixt her lips the yet more happy shrimp. And I loved her, and our troth we plighted on the morrow by the shingly shore, in a fortnight to be disunited by a bitter fate for evermore. Oh, my own, my beautiful, my blue-eyed, to be young once more, and bite my thumb at the world and all its cares with you, I'd give no inconsiderable sum. Hand in hand we tramped the golden seaweed, soon as o'er the gray cliff peeped the dawn. Side by side, when came the hour for tea, we'd crunch the mottled shrimp and hairy prawn. Has she wedded some gigantic shrimper, that sweet mite with whom I love to play? Is she girt with babes that whine and whimper, that bright being who was always gay?

Yes, she has at least a dozen wee things. Yes, I see her darning corduroys, scouring floors, and setting out the tea-things for a howling herd of hungry boys, in a home that reeks of tar and sperm-oil. But at intervals she thinks, I know, Of those days which we, afar from turmoil, Spent together forty years ago. Oh, my earliest love, still unforgotten, With your downcast eyes of dreamy blue, Never, somehow, could I seem to cotton To another as I did to you.

11 11 - Wanderers 2:34

12 12 - Sad Memories 3:40

Sad Memories by Charles Stewart Calverley. They tell me I am beautiful. They praise my silken hair, my little feet that silently slip on from stair to stair. They praise my pretty trustful face and innocent gray eye. Fond hands caress me oftentimes, yet would that I might die. Why was I born to be abhorred of man and bird and beast? The bullfinch marks me stealing by, and straight his song hath ceased. The shrew-mouse eyes me shudderingly, then flees, and worse than that. The house-dog he flees after me. Why was I born a cat? Men prize the heartless hound who quits dry-eyed his native land, who wags a mercenary tail and licks a tyrant hand. The leal true cat they praise not, that if ear compelled to roam still flies.

When let out of the bag, precipitately home. They call me cruel. Do I know if mouse or songbird feels? I only know they make me light and salutary meals. And if, as tis my nature, too, ere I devour itesem, why should a low-bred gardener's boy pursue me with a besom? Should china fall or chandeliers, or anything but stocks? Nay, stalks when there in flower-pots. The cat expects hard knocks. Should ever anything be missed—milk, coals, umbrellas, brandy—the cat's pitched into with a boot or anything that's handy. I remember—I remember—how one night I fleeted by and gained the blessed tiles and gazed into the cold, clear sky. I remember—I remember—how my little lovers came. And there, beneath the crescent moon, played many a little game.

They fought, my good St. Catharine. Twas a fearsome sight to see the coal-black crest, the glowering orbs of one gigantic hee. Like, bowed by some tall bowman bent at Hastings's o'erpoitiers, his huge black curved, till none observed a vestige of his ears. He stood an ebon crest, flouting that ivory moon, Then raised the Pwibrock of his race, the song without a tune. Gleamed his white teeth, his mammoth tail waved darkly to and fro. As with one complex yell he burst, all claws upon the foe. It thrills me now, that final meow, that weird unearthly din. Lone maidens heard it far away and leaped out of their skin. A pot-boy from his din, or head, peeped with a scared wan face. Then sent a random brick back down, which knocked me into space.

Nine days I fell, or thereabouts, and, had we not nine lives, I wist I ne'er had seen again thy sausage-shop, St. Ives. Had I, as some cats have, nine tails, how gladly I would lick the hand and person generally of him who heaved that brick. For me they fill the milk bowl up. And call the choice sardine. But ah, I nevermore shall be the cat I once have been. The memories of that fatal night, they haunt me even now. In dreams I see that rampant he, and tremble at the me-ow.

13 13 - Companions 2:35

14 14 - Ballad 2:59

15 15 - Precious Stones 3:25

Precious Stones by Charles Stewart Calverley.

An Incident in Modern History. My cherry stones! I prize them, no tongue can tell how much. Each lady caller eyes them, and madly longs to touch. At eve I lift them down. I look upon them, and I cry, recalling how my prince partook, sweet word, of cherry-pie. To me, it was an era in life that dejeuner. They ate, they sipped Madeira much in the usual way. Many a soft item there would be, no doubt, upon the cart. But one made life a heaven to me. It was the cherry tart. Lightly the spoonfuls entered that mouth on which the gaze of ten fair girls was centered in rapturous amaze. Soon, that august assemblage cleared the dish, and as they ate, the stones, all coyly, reappeared on each illustrious plate.

And when His Royal Highness withdrew to take the air, waiving our natural shyness, we swooped upon his chair. Policemen at our garments clutched, we mocked those feeble powers. And soon the treasures that had touched exalted lips were ours. One large one, at the moment it seemed almost divine, was got by that Miss Beaumont. And three, oh, three are mine. Yes, the three stones that rest beneath glass on that plain, dear shelf, stranger, once dallied with the teeth of royalty itself. Let Parliament abolish churches and states and thrones. With reverent hands, I'll polish still, still my cherry stones. A clod, a piece of orange peel, an end of a cigar, Once trod on by a princely heel. How beautiful they are!

Years since, I climbed St. Michael's, his mount. You'll all go there, of course, and those who like'll sit in St. Michael's chair. For there I saw, within a frame, the pen. Oh, heavens, the pen, with which a duke had signed his name and other gentlemen. Great among geese, I faltered, is she who grew that quill. And deathless bird, unaltered is my opinion still. Yet sometimes, as I view my three stones with a thoughtful brow, I think there possibly might be e'en greater geese than thou.

16 16 - Disaster 1:59

17 17 - Contentment 2:01

18 18 - The Schoolmaster 2:22

19 19 - Arcades Ambo 2:03

20 20 - Waiting 1:36

21 21 - Play 2:11

22 22 - Love 2:04

23 23 - Thoughts at a Railway Station 2:00

24 24 - On the Brink 3:17

On the Brink by Charles Stewart Calvary. Read for the bubaks.org by Anusha Ayer.

I watched her as she stooped to pluck a wildflower in her hair to twine, and wished that it had been my luck to call her mine. Anon I heard her rate with mad, mad words, her babe within its cot, and felt particularly glad that it had not. I knew, such subtle brains have men, that she was uttering what she shouldn't, and thought that I would chide, and then I thought I wouldn't. Who could have gazed upon that face, those pouting coral lips, and chided? A radamanthus in my place had done as I did. For I, O wherewith our bosom's glow, is chained thereoft by beauty's spell, and, more than that, I did not know the widow well. So the harsh phrase passed unreproved, still mute. O brothers, was it sin?

I drank, unutterably moved, her beauty in.

And to myself I murmured low, as on her upturned face and dress the moonlight fell. Would she say no, by chance, or yes? She stood so calm, so like a ghost, betwixt me and that magic moon, that I already was almost a finished coon. But when she caught adroitly up, and soothed with smiles her little daughter, And gave it, if I'm right, a sup of barley water. And, crooning still the strange sweet lore, which only mother's tongues can utter, snowed with deft hand the sugar o'er its bread and butter, and kissed it clingingly. Ah! Why don't women do these things in private? I felt that if I lost her, I should not survive it. And from my mouth the words nigh flew, the past, the future, I forgot him.

Oh, if you'd kiss me as you do that thankless atom. But this thought came ere yet I spake, and froze the sentence on my lips. They, er, who marry wives that make those little slips. It came like some familiar rhyme, some copy to my boyhood set. And that's perhaps the reason I am unmarried yet. Would she have owned how pleased she was, and told her love with widow's pride? I never found out that, because I never tried. Be kind to babes and beasts and birds. Hearts may be hard, though lips are coral. And angry words are angry words, and that's the moral.

25 25 - 'Forever' 2:17

26 26 - Under the Trees 2:59

Under the trees, who but agrees that there is magic in words such as these? Promptly one sees, shake in the breeze, stately lime avenues haunted of bees, where, looking far over buttercuped lees, Lads and fair she's, that is Byron, and he's an authority, lie very much at their ease, taking their teas or their duck and green peas, or, if they prefer it, their plain bread and cheese, not objecting at all, though it's rather a squeeze, and the glass is, I dare say, at eighty degrees. Some get up lees, and are mad about trees, and Satan and Tambalix thrilling high seas. Or if painters hold forth about Hunt and Maclees, and the tone and the breadth of that landscape of lees. Or if learned, are nodes and the moon's apogees.

Or, if serious, on something of AKHBs. Or the latest attempt to convert the Chaldees. Or, in short, about all things, from earthquakes to fleas. Some sit in twos, or less frequently threes, with their innocent lamb's wool or book on their knees. And talk, and enact, any nonsense you please, as they gaze into eyes that are blue as the seas. And you hear an occasional, Harry, don't tease, from the sweetest of lips in the softest of keys, and other remarks which to me are Chinese. And fast the time flees, till a ladylike sneeze, or a portly papa's more elaborate wheeze, makes Miss Tabitha seize on her brown muffetees, and announce as a fact that it's going to freeze, and that young people ought to attend to their P's and their Q's, and not court every form of disease.

Then Tommy eats up the three last rataphies, and pretty Louise wraps her robe de cerise round her bosom as tender as widow Macri's, and, in spite of the pleas of her lawn vis-a-vis, goes to wrap up her uncle, a patient of skis, who is prone to catch chills like all old Bengalis. But at bedtime I trust he'll remember to grease the bridge of his nose and preserve his rupees from the premature clutch of his fawn legatees, or at least have no fees to pay any M.D.'s, for the cold his niece caught sitting under the trees.

27 27 - Motherhood 2:41

28 28 - Mystery 3:25

29 29 - Flight 4:04

Flight by Charles Stewart Calverley. O memory, that which I gave thee to guard in thy garner, yestreen, little deeming though ere couldst behave thee thus basely, hath gone from thee clean. Gone, fled, as ere autumn is ended, the yellow leaves flee from the oak. I have lost it forever, my splendid original joke. What was it? I know I was brushing my hair when the notion occurred. I know that I have felt myself blushing as I thought. How supremely absurd! How they'll hammer on floor and on table as its drawlery dawns on them. How they will quote it. I wish I were able to quote it just now. I had thought to lead up conversation to the subject. It's easily done. Then let off, as an airy creation of the moment, that masterly pun.

Let it off with a flash like a rocket's, in the midst of a dazzled conclave, where I sat, with my hands in my pockets, the only one grave. I had fancied young Titterton's chuckles and old Bottleby's hearty guffaws, as he drove at my ribs with his knuckles, his mode of expressing applause, while Jean Bottleby, queenly Miss Janet, drew her handkerchief hastily out, in fits at my slyness. What Can it have all been about? I know it was the happiest, quaintest combination of pathos and fun, but I've got no idea, the faintest, of what was the actual pun. I think it was somehow connected with something I'd recently read, or heard, or perhaps recollected on going to bed. What had I been reading? The standard, double bigamy, speech of the mayor.

And later, eh, yes, I meandered through some chapters of Vanity Fair, how it fuses the grave with the festive. Yet in there there is nothing so fine, so playfully, subtly suggestive, as that joke of mine. Did it hinge upon parting asunder? No, I don't part my hair with my brush. Was the point of it hair? Now I wonder. Stop a bit. I shall think of it. Hush. There's hair, a wild animal. Stuff. It was something a deal more recondite. Of that I am certain enough, and of nothing beyond it. Hair. Locks. There are probably many good things to be said about those. Give me time. That's the best guess of any. Lock has several meanings, one knows. Iron locks, iron-gray locks, a deadlock, that would set up an everyday wit.

Then, of course, there's the obvious wedlock. But that wasn't it. No. Mine was a joke for the ages, full of intricate meaning and pith, a feast for your scholars and sages. How it would have rejoiced, Sidney Smith! Tis such thoughts that ennoble a mortal. And, singing him out from the herd, fling wide immortality's portal. But what was the word? Ah, me! Tis a bootless endeavor. As the flight of a bird of the air is the flight of a joke, you will never see the same one again, you may swear. T'was my firstborn, and oh, how I prized it! My darling, my treasure, my own! This brain and none other devised it, and now it has flown.

30 30 - On the Beach 3:25

On the Beach, Lines by a Private Tutor When the young Augustus Edward has reluctantly gone bedward, he's the urchin I am privileged to teach. From my left-hand waistcoat pocket I extract a battered locket, and I commune with it, walking on the beach. I had often yearned for something that would love me, e'en a dumb thing. But such happiness seemed always out of reach. Little boys are off like arrows, with their little spades and barrows, when they see me bearing down upon the beach. And although I'm rather handsome, tiny babes, when I would dance them on my arm, set up so horrible a screech, that I pitched them to their nurses. With, I fear me, muttered curses, and resume my lucubrations on the beach.

And the rabbits won't come nigh me, and the gulls observe and fly me. And I doubt, upon my honour, if a leech would stick on me as on others, and I know if I had brothers, they would cut me when we met upon the beach. So at last I bought this trinket, for, although I love to think it, "'Twasn't given me with a pretty little speech. No, I bought it of a peddler, brown and wizened as a meddler, who was hawking odds and ends about the beach. But I've managed, very nearly, to believe that I was dearly loved by somebody who, blushing like a peach, flung it o'er me, saying, wear it for my sake. And I declare, it seldom strikes me, that I bought it on the beach." I can see myself revealing unsuspected depths of feeling, as, in tones that half upbraid and half beseech, I aver with what delight I would give anything, my right eye, for a souvenir of our stroll upon the beach.

Oh, that eye that never glistened, and that voice to which I have listened but in fancy, how I dote upon them each, how regardless what o'clock it is I pour upon that locket, which does not contain her portrait, on the beach. As if something were inside it, I laboriously hide it, and a rather pretty sermon you might preach upon fantasy, selecting, for your instance, the affecting tale of me and my proceedings on the beach. I depict her. Ah, how charming! I portray myself alarming her by swearing I would mount the deadly breach, or engage in any scrimmage for a glimpse of her sweet image or her shadow. Or her footprint on the beach. And I'm ever, ever seeing my imaginary being, and I'd rather that my marrow-bones should bleach in the winds, than that a cruel fate should snatch from me the jewel which I bought for one and sixpence on the beach.

31 31 - Lovers, and a Reflection 3:53

In moss-pranked dells which the sunbeams flatter, And heaven it knoweth what that may mean. Meaning, however, is no great matter, Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts a-tween. Through God's own heather we wand together. I and my willy, O love, my love, I need hardly remark it was glorious weather, And flitterbats wavered alow, above. Boats were curtsying, rising, bowing, Boats in that climate are so polite, And sands were a ribbon of green endowing, And, O, the sun dazzle on bark and bite. Through the rare red heather we danced together, O love, my willy, And smelt for flowers. I must mention again it was gorgeous weather. Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours. By rises that flushed with their purple favours, Through becks that brattled o'er grass's sheen, We walked and waded, we two young shavers, Thanking our stars we were both so green.

We journeyed in parallels, I and Willy. Infortunate parallels. Butterflies, hid in weltering shadows of daffodilie or marjoram, kept making peacock eyes. Songbirds darted about, some inky as coal, some snowy, I ween, as curds, or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinky. They wreck of no eerie to come those birds. But they skim over bents which the midstream washes, or hang in the lift neath a white cloud's hem. They need no parasols, no gaulishes, and good Mrs. Trimmer she feedeth them. Then we thread God's cowslips as erst his hither, that endowed the wan grass with their golden blooms, and snapped. It was perfectly charming weather. Our fingers at And Willie Gan sing. Oh, his notes were fluty. Wharfs fluttered them out to the white-winged sea.

Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty. Rhymes, better to put it, of ancient tree. Bowers of flowers encountered showers in William's carol. Oh, love, my Willie. Then he bade sorrow borrow from blithe to-morrow. I quite forget what, say a daffodilly. A nest in a hollow, with buds to follow, I think occurred next in his nimble strain. And clay that was needn't, of course, in Eden, a rhyme most novel I do maintain. Mists, bones, the singer himself, love-stories. And all least furlible things got furled, not with any design to conceal their glories, but simply and solely to rhyme with world.

Oh, if billows and pillows and hours and flowers and all the brave rhymes of an elder day could be furled together, this genial weather, and carted or carried on wafts away, nor ever again trotted out. Ah, me! How much fewer volumes of worse there'd be.

32 32 - The Cock and the Bull 8:51

It's a thing I bought out of a bit of a chit of a boy in the mid of the day. I like to dock the smaller parts of speech, as we curtail the already curtailed cur. You catch the parinamasia? Play, po' words? Did, rather, i' the pre-Lancerian days. Well, to my muttons. I purchased the concern, and clapped it i' me poke, having given for same, by way o' chop, swap, barter, or exchange. Chop was my snickering dandy-pret's own term. One shilling and fourpence. Current coin o' the realm.

O-N-E-1. And F.O.R. Four. Pence. One and fourpence. You are with me, sir? What hour it skills not? Ten or eleven o'clock. One day. And what a roaring day it was. Go shop or sight-see. Bar a spit o'rain. In February, 1869. Alexandrina Victoria Fide. H-m. H-m. How runs the jargon? Being on throne. Such, sir, are all the facts. Succinctly put, the basis or substratum, what you will, of the impending eighty thousand lines. Not much in them, either. Quoth perhaps simple Hodge. But there's a superstructure. Wait a bit. Mark first the rationale of the thing. Hear logic revel and levigate the deed. That's shilling. And, for matter of that, the pence, I had a course upon me. Whimmy, say. Make em's a letten.

Make a note of that. When I popped pen at his stand, scratched ear, wiped snout, but everybody white his own himself, sniffed.

It's snuff-box. Tumbled up. Heed. Ho, hoard. Not he hoard. That's another gasping. Then fumbled out and stumbled out of door. I shoved the timber up wi' me ommo plut, and in vestibulo, i' the lobby, to wit, Jacoby Fatsiolati's rendering, sir, donned galley gaskins, anti-gropelos, and so forth. And, complete with hat and gloves, one on and one a dangle in me hand, and ombre fuge, Lord love you, case o'rain, I flopped forth spuddykins on my own ten toes, I do assure you there be ten of them, and went clump clumping uphill and down dale to find meself o'er sudden e'front o'er boy. Put case, I hadn't them on me, could I ha'b bought this sort o'er kind o'er what you might call toy, this pebble thing, or the boy thing.

Q. E. D. That's proven without aid from mumping Pope, sleek pauperate, or bloated cardinal. Isn't it, old fat chaps? You're in Euclid now. So, having the shilling, having, in fact, the lot, and pence and halfpence, ever so many of them, I purchased, as I think I said before, the pebble, Luppis Luppides, Deed Em Dee. What nouns crease short your genitive? Fat chaps? Eh? Oh, the boy. A bare-legged beggarly son of a gun for one and fourpence. Here we are again. Now Law steps in, big-wigged, voluminous-jawed. Investigates and reinvestigates. Was the transaction illegal? Law shakes head. Perpence, sir. All the bearings of the case. At first, the coin was mine, the chattel, his. But now, by virtue of the said exchange, and bar, vici versa all the coin, per juris operationum, vests i the boy, and his assigns till ding a doom.

In seculo seclorum. I think I hear the abatey mouth out that. To have and hold the same to him and them confer some idiot on conveyancing. Whereas the pebble, and every part thereof, and all that appertaineth thereunto, quod cumque pertinent ad eum rem, I fancy, sir, my latins rather pat, or shall, will, may, might, can, could, would, or should, sub alde Clap we to the close, for what's the good of law in a case of the kind? Is mine to all intents and purposes. This settled, I resume the thread of the tale. Now for a touch of the vendor's quality. He says a gentleman bore a pebble of him. This pebble is sooth, sir, which I owe in me hand, and paid for it, like a gentleman, on the nail. Did I all charge him a ha'penny?

Devil a bit. Fiddle-pins end. Go out, you blazing ass. Gabble o' the goose. Don't bugaboo baby me. Go double or quits? Yah. Tit-up. What's the odds? There's a transaction viewed i the vendor's light. Next, asked that dumpled hag, stood snuffling by, with her free frowsy-blowsy brats of babes, the scum of the kennel, cream of the filth-heap. Pffurr! Eee! Eee! Eee! Eee! Ot-ti-tot-ti-tot-ti-tot-tree! Stead which we blew out oity-toity now, and the baker and the candlestick-maker and Jack and Jill bleared goody this. And queasy gaffer that. Ask the schoolmaster. Take schoolmaster first. He saw a gentleman purchase of a lad a stone and pay for it, rigte, on the square, and carry it off, per sultum, jauntily, proprio coi maribus, gentleman's property now, agreeably to the law explained above, in proprium usum for his private ends.

The boy he chucked a brown in the air and bit in the face a shilling. Heaved a thumping stone and a lean hen that ran cluck clucking by, and hit her dead as nail he post a door. Then a be it? What's the Ciceroonian phrase? It cessit, evarsit, erupit. Off slogs boy. Off like bird. Avissimilis. You observed the dative? Pretty in the Mantuan. Unglicay. Off in three flea skips. Hactenus so far. So good. Tambene. Bene sais male. Where was I with my trope about one in a quog? I did once hitch the syntax into verse. Verbum personale. A verb personal. Concordat. Aye. Agrees. Old fat chaps, cum nominativo, with its nominative. Generay, a point agenda numero, a number, et persona, and person. Ut, instance, sol ruit, down flop sun, et, and, montes umbranto, out flounce mountains.

Bah! Excuse me, sir. I think I'm going mad. You see the trick, aunt, though? And can yourself continue the discourse ad libitum? It takes up about eighty thousand lines, a thing imagination boggles at. And might, odds bobs, sir, in judicious hands, extend from here to Mesopotamie.

33 33 - An Examination Paper 12:47

1857 One. Mention any occasion on which it is specified that the fat boy was not asleep, and that one Mr. Pickwick and for key see chapters 4, 30, twice, 39. To Mr. Weller, Sr. ran. Key, chapter 56. Deduce from expressions used on one occasion Mr. Pickwick's maximum of speed. Key, see chapters 4, 8, 18 and 54. Two. Translate into coherent English, adding a note wherever a word, a construction, or an allusion requires it. Go on, Jemmy, like black-eyed Susan, all in the downs. Smart chap that cabman, handled his fives well, but if I'd been your friend in the green Jemmy, punch his head. Pig's Whisper. Pie Man Two.

Elucidate the expression, the Spanish Traveller, and the Narcotic Bedstead. Key. Two of Jingle's speeches are here quoted, the first being in Chapter Three, and the second in Chapter Two. For Spanish Traveller, see Chapter Three, and for Narcotic Bedstead, see Chapter Forty-One. Go on, Jemmy. Is Mr. Jingle's adjuration to the actor whom he has previously designated Dismal Jemmy, urging the commencement of The Stroller's Tale? Like Black-Eyed Susan, All in the Downs has the double application to The Stroller's melancholy and the first line of Gay's Song of Black-Eyed Susan. All in the Downs the fleet was moored. Handled his fives well, of course, refers to the sparring of the cabman who wanted to fight Mr.

Pickwick. Friend in the green jemmy refers to Mr. Winkle, who we are told in Chapter One wore a new green shooting coat, etc. Pig's Whisper is slang for a very brief space of time. Bartlett says the Americans have pig's whistle the same signification. 3. Who were Mr. Staple, Goodwin, Mr. Brooks, Willem, Mrs. Bunkin, Old Knobs, Cast Iron Head, Young Bantam? 44. What operation was performed on Tom Smart's chair? Who little thinks that in which pocket, of what garment, in where, he has left what, entreating him to return to whom, with how many what, and all how big?

See two several parts of the Bagman story in Chapter 14. Give approximately the height of Mr. Dubbly, and accurately the Christian names of Mr. Grummer, Mrs. Rattle, and the Fat Boy, also the surname of the Zephyr. Key. See chapters 24, 25, 46, 8, and 41. 6. Mr.

Weller's knowledge of London was extensive and peculiar. Illustrate this by a reference to the facts. Key. See Chapter 20. Seven. Describe the rebellion which had irritated Mr. Nupkins on the day of Mr. Pickwick's arrest. Key. See Chapter 24. Eight. Give in full Samuel Willer's first compliment to Mary, and his father's critique upon the same young lady. What church was on the valentine that first attracted Mr. Samuel's eye in the shop? Key. See chapter 25, 56 and 33. 9. Describe the common profile machine. Key. See chapter 33. 10. State the component parts of dog's nose, and simplify the expression Taking a grinder. Key. See chapters 33 and 31. 11. On finding his principle in the pound, Mr. Weller and the town beadle varied directly.

Show that the latter was ultimately eliminated, and state the number of rounds in the square which is not described. Key. See the end of chapter 19. Twelve. Anything for air and exercise. As the weary old donkey observed, when they yoke him up from his deathbed to carry ten gentlemen to Greenwich in the tax cart. Illustrate this by stating any remark recorded in the Pickwick papers to have been made by a previously dumb animal, with the circumstances under which he made it. Key. Illustrations will be found severally in Chapters 33, 35 and 47. 13. What kind of cigars did Mr. Ben Allen chiefly smoke, and where did he knock and take naps alternately under the impression that it was his home? Key.

See Chapters 30 and 32. 14. What was the ordinary occupation of Mr. Sawyer's boy? Whence did Mr. Allen derive the idea that there was a special destiny between Mr. S. and Arabella? Key. See two separate passages in Chapter 38. 15. Describe Weller's method of gently indicating his presence to the young lady in the garden. And the form of salutation usual among the coachmen of the period. Key. See Chapters 39 and 43. 16. State any incidents you know in the career of Tom Martin, Butcher, previous to his incarceration. Key. See Chapter 42. 17. Give Weller's theories for the extraction of Mr. Pickwick from the fleet. Where was his wife's will found? Key. See chapter 43, 45, and 55. 18. How did the old lady make a memorandum, and of what at Whist?

Show that there were at least three times as many fiddles as harps in Muggleton at the time of the ball at Manor Farm. Key. See chapters six and twenty-eight. Nineteen. What is a red-faced Nixon? Key. See chapter forty-three. You've been a prophesying away very fine like a red-faced Nixon, as the sixpenny books give pictures on. The allusion is to Robert Nixon, the Cheshire prophet. See Notes and Queries, first series, volume eight, Pages 257 and 326. And Fourth Series, Volume 11, pages 171 and 265. Nixon's prophecies have been frequently published in the form of chapbooks, and were probably current at the time with a highly-coloured portrait. 20. Write down the chorus to each verse of Mr. S.

Weller's song. And a sketch of the mottle-faced man's excursus on it. Is there any ground for conjecturing that he had more brothers than one? Key. The first requisition may be complied with by reference to chapter 43. The following is answered in chapter 10. 21. How many lumps of sugar went into the shepherd's liquor as a rule? And is any exception recorded. See chapters 45 and 52. 22. What seal was on Mr. Winkle's letter to his father? What penitential attitude did he assume before Mr. Pickwick? See chapters 50 and 47. 23. She's a-swelling visibly. When did the same phenomenon occur again, and what fluid caused the pressure on the body in the latter case? Key. See chapters 33 and 45. 24. How did Mr.

Weller, Sr. define the funds, and what view did he take of reduced consoles? In what terms is his elastic force described when he assaulted Mr. Stiggins at the meeting? Write down the name of the meeting. Key. The first two questions are answered in chapter 52 and 55. The next is answered at the end of chapter 33, where also is the information lastly required. 25. Sobatognaumon. A good judge of cattle, hence a good judge of character. Note on eish ag. Illustrate the theory involved by a remark of the parent Weller. Key. The illustration required is in Chapter 55. 26. Give some account of the word FANTIGUE, and hazard any conjecture explanatory of the expression MY PRUCIAN BLUE, applied by Mr.

Samuel to Mr. Tony Weller. Key. See Chapters 38 and 33. Fantighe, a worry or bustle, also ill humour. Various dialects. Hallowell. Prussian blue probably refers to the colour of dress coats. Which gentleman of your party wears a bright blue dress coat, inquires the Boots in Pickwick, Chapter Two. Thus Sam Weller's Prussian Blue is a finely dressed fellow of the Pickwick Weller period.

Twenty-seven. In developing to P.M. his views of a proposition, what assumption did Mr. Pickwick feel justified in making? Key. See Chapter 24. Twenty-eight. Deduce from a remark of Mr. Weller, Jr., the price per mile of cabs at the period. Key. See the opening of Chapter 22. 29. What do you know of the hotel next The Bull at Rochester? Key. See Chapter 2. 30. Who, besides Mr. Pickwick, is recorded to have worn gaiters? Key. See chapter 20.

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