antly skipping across the Line,
from the Up to the Down, or Wicer Warsaw, and begin to pitch the stale
pastry into the plates, and chuck the sawdust sangwiches under the glass
covers, and get out the--ha ha ha!--the Sherry--O my eye, my eye!--for
your Refreshment.
It's only in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which of
course I mean to say Britannia) that Refreshmenting is so effective, so
'olesome, so constitutional, a check upon the public. There was a
foreigner, which having politely, with his hat off, beseeched our young
ladies and Our Missis for "a leetel gloss hoff prarndee," and having had
the Line surveyed through him by all and no other acknowledgment, was a
proceeding at last to help himself, as seems to be the custom in his own
country, when Our Missis with her hair almost a coming un-Bandolined with
rage, and her eyes omitting sparks, flew at him, cotched the decanter out
of his hand, and said: "Put it down! I won't allow that!" The foreigner
turned pale, stepped back with his arms stretched out in front of him,
his hands clasped, and his shoulders riz, and exclaimed: "Ah! Is it
possible this! That these disdaineous females and this ferocious old
woman are placed here by the administration, not only to empoison the
voyagers, but to affront them! Great Heaven! How arrives it? The
English people. Or is he then a slave? Or idiot?" Another time, a
merry wideawake American gent had tried the sawdust and spit it out, and
had tried the Sherry and spit that out, and had tried in vain to sustain
exhausted natur upon Butter-Scotch, and had been rather extra Bandolined
and Line-surveyed through, when, as the bell was ringing and he paid Our
Missis, he says, very loud and good-tempered: "I tell Yew what 'tis,
ma'arm. I la'af. Theer! I la'af. I Dew. I oughter ha' seen most
things, for I hail from the Onlimited side of the Atlantic Ocean, and I
haive travelled right slick over the Limited, head on through
Jee-rusalemm and the East, and likeways France and Italy, Europe Old
World, and am now upon the track to the Chief Europian Village; but such
an Institution as Yew, and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin's solid
and liquid, afore the glorious Tarnal I never did see yet! And if I
hain't found the eighth wonder of monarchical Creation, in finding Yew,
and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin's solid and liquid, all as
aforesaid, established in a country where the people air not absolute
Loo-n
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