hind."

There is a considerable amount of indelicacy in the episodes in "Tom
Jones," and also of hostility, which is exhibited in the rough form of
pugilistic encounters, so as almost to remind us of the old comic stage.
He seems especially fond of settling quarrels in this way, and wishes
that no other was ever used, and that "iron should dig no bowels but
those of the earth." The character of Deborah Wilkins, the old maid who
is shocked at the frivolity of Jenny Jones; of Thwackum, the
schoolmaster, whose "meditations were full of birch;" and of the barber,
whose jests, although they brought him so many slaps and kicks "would
come," are excellent. There is a vast fertility of humour in his pages,
which depending upon the general circumstances and peculiar characters
of the persons introduced, cannot be easily appreciated in extracts. The
following, however, can be understood easily:--

"'I thought there must be a devil,' the sergeant says to the
innkeeper, 'notwithstanding what the officers said, though one of
them was a captain, for methought, thinks I to myself, if there be
no devil how can wicked people be sent to him? and I have read all
that upon a book.' 'Some of your officers,' quoth the landlord,
'will find there is a devil to their shame, I believe. I don't
question but he'll pay off some old scores upon my account. Here
was one quartered upon me half-a-year, who had the conscience to
take up one of my best beds, though he hardly spent a shilling a
day in the house, and his man went to roast cabbages at the kitchen
fire, because I would not give them a dinner on Sunday. Every good
Christian must desire that there should be a devil for the
punishment of such wretches....'"

The Man of the Hill gives his travelling experiences:--

"'In Italy the landlords are very silent. In France they are more
talkative, but yet civil. In Germany and Holland they are generally
very impertinent. And as for their honesty I believe it is pretty
equal in all those countries.... As for my own part, I past through
all these nations, as you perhaps may have through a crowd at a
show, jostling to get by them, holding my nose with one hand, and
defending my pockets with the other, without speaking a word to any
of them while I was pressing on to see what I wanted to see.'

"'Did you not find some of the nations less troubl