well, bushell, the fine houses you stood gaping at are burnt down, gutted, as the vulgar call it, and nothing is left but the bare walls. you saw farmer gubbins’ house, or, at least, the shell of it, after the fire there: well, the parliament houses are exactly in the same state. there is news for you! and now, bushell, how do you feel? why, if the well-dressed vagabond told you the truth, you feel as if you had had a stroke—for all the british constitution is affected, and you are a fraction of it, that is to say, a british subject. your bacon grows rusty in your mouth, and your table-beer turns to vinegar on your palate. you cannot sleep at night, or work by day. you have no heart for anything. you can hardly drag one clouted shoe after another. and how do you look? why, as pale as a parsnip, and as thin as a hurdle, and your carroty locks stand bolt upright as if you had just met old lawson’s ghost with his head under his arm. i say thus you must feel and look, bushell, if what the well-dressed vagabond told you is the truth. but is that the case? no. you drink your small-beer with a sigh and smack of delight; and you bolt your bacon with a relish, as if, as the virtuous americans say, you could “go the whole hog.” your clouted shoes clatter about as if you were counting hobnails with the lord mayor, and you work like a young horse, or an old ass, and at night you snore like an oratorio of jews’ harps. your face is as bold and ruddy as the red lion’s. your carroty locks lie sleek upon your poll, and as for poor old lawson’s ghost, you could lend him flesh and blood enough to set him up again in life. but what, say you, does all this tend to? i will tell you, bushell. there are a great many well-dressed vagabonds, besides the one you met in palace yard, who would persuade a poor man that a house of lords or commons is as good to him as his bread, beer, beef, bacon, bed, and breeches; and therefore i
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address this to you, bushell, to set such notions to rights by an appeal to your own back and belly. and now i will tell you what you shall do. you shall go three nights a week to the red lion (when your work is done), and you may score up a pint of beer, at my cost, each time. and when the parson, or the exciseman, or the tax-gatherer, or any such gentry, begin to talk of that deplorable great burning, and the national calamity, and such-like trash, you shall pull out my letter and read to them—i say, bushell, you shall read this letter to them, twice over, loudly and distinctly, and tell them from me, that the burning of twenty parliament houses wouldn’t be such a national calamity as a fire at no. 1, bolt court.
private correspondence.
to mary price, fenny hall, lincolnshire.
o mary,—i am writing in such a quiver, with my art in my mouth, and my tung sticking to it. for too hole hours ive bean doin nothink but taking on and going off, i mean into fits, or crying and blessing goodness for my miraclus escape. this day week i wear inwallopped in flams, and thinkin of roth to cum, and fire evverlasting. but thenks to diving providings, hear i am, althowgh with loss of wan high brew scotched off, a noo cap and my rite shew. but i hav bean terrifid to deth. wen i was ate, or it mite be nine, i fell on the stow, and hav had a grate dred of fire evver since. gudge then how low i felt at the idear of burning along with the lords and communer’s. it as bean a warnin, and never, no, never never never agin will i go to clandestiny parties behind mississis backs. i now see my errer, but temtashun prevaled, tho the clovin fut of the wicked wan had a hand in it all: oh mary, down on yure marrybones, and bless yure stars for sitiating you in a loanly stooped poky place, wear you cant be lead into liteness and gayty, if you was evver so inclind. fore wipping willies and a
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windmill is a dullish luck out, shure enuff, but its better then moor ambishus prospex, and stairing at a grate fire, like a suckin pig, till yure eyes is reddy to drop out of yure hed!
