s a sight for the common
people of Mudfog! A live man in brass armour! Why, they would go wild
with wonder!

The day--_the_ Monday--arrived.

If the morning had been made to order, it couldn't have been better
adapted to the purpose. They never showed a better fog in London on Lord
Mayor's day, than enwrapped the town of Mudfog on that eventful occasion.
It had risen slowly and surely from the green and stagnant water with the
first light of morning, until it reached a little above the lamp-post
tops; and there it had stopped, with a sleepy, sluggish obstinacy, which
bade defiance to the sun, who had got up very blood-shot about the eyes,
as if he had been at a drinking-party over-night, and was doing his day's
work with the worst possible grace. The thick damp mist hung over the
town like a huge gauze curtain. All was dim and dismal. The church
steeples had bidden a temporary adieu to the world below; and every
object of lesser importance--houses, barns, hedges, trees, and
barges--had all taken the veil.

The church-clock struck one. A cracked trumpet from the front garden of
Mudfog Hall produced a feeble flourish, as if some asthmatic person had
coughed into it accidentally; the gate flew open, and out came a
gentleman, on a moist-sugar coloured charger, intended to represent a
herald, but bearing a much stronger resemblance to a court-card on
horseback. This was one of the Circus people, who always came down to
Mudfog at that time of the year, and who had been engaged by Nicholas
Tulrumble expressly for the occasion. There was the horse, whisking his
tail about, balancing himself on his hind-legs, and flourishing away with
his fore-feet, in a manner which would have gone to the hearts and souls
of any reasonable crowd. But a Mudfog crowd never was a reasonable one,
and in all probability never will be. Instead of scattering the very fog
with their shouts, as they ought most indubitably to have done, and were
fully intended to do, by Nicholas Tulrumble, they no sooner recognized
the herald, than they began to growl forth the most unqualified
disapprobation at the bare notion of his riding like any other man. If
he had come out on his head indeed, or jumping through a hoop, or flying
through a red-hot drum, or even standing on one leg with his other foot
in his mouth, they might have had something to say to him; but for a
professional gentleman to sit astride in the saddle, with his feet in the
stirrups,