disposition, and a great
liking for the fair sex. Snodgrass, who had no parents, was a ward of
Mr. Pickwick's and imagined himself a poet. Winkle was a young man whose
father had sent him to London to learn life; he wore a green
shooting-coat and his great ambition was to be considered a sportsman,
though at heart he was afraid of either a horse or a gun. With these
three companions Mr. Pickwick prepared to set out in search of
adventures.

Next morning as he drove in a cab to the inn where all were to take the
coach, Mr. Pickwick began to chat with the driver. The cabman amused
himself by telling the most impossible things, all of which Mr. Pickwick
believed. When he said his horse was forty-two years old and that he
often kept him out three weeks at a time without resting, down it went
in Mr. Pickwick's note-book as a wonderful instance of the endurance of
horses. Unfortunately, however, the driver thought Mr. Pickwick was
putting down the number of the cab so as to complain of him, and as they
arrived just then at the inn, he jumped from his seat with the intention
of fighting his dismayed passenger. He knocked off Mr. Pickwick's
spectacles and, dancing back and forth as the other's three comrades
rushed to the rescue, planted a blow in Mr. Snodgrass's eye, another in
Tupman's waistcoat and ended by knocking all the breath out of Winkle's
body.

From this dilemma they were rescued by a tall, thin, long-haired, young
man in a faded green coat, worn black trousers and patched shoes, who
seized Mr. Pickwick and lugged him into the inn by main force, talking
with a jaunty independent manner and in rapid and broken sentences:

"This way, sir--where's your friends?--all a mistake--never mind--here,
waiter--brandy and water--raw beefsteak for the gentleman's
eye--eh,--ha-ha!"

The seedy-looking stranger, whose name was Alfred Jingle, was a
passenger on the same coach that day and entertained the Pickwickians
with marvelous stories of his life in Spain. None of these was true, to
be sure, but they were all entered in Mr. Pickwick's note-book. In
gratitude, that night the latter invited Jingle to dinner at the town
inn where they stopped.

The dinner was long, and almost before it was over not only Mr.
Pickwick, but Snodgrass and Winkle also were asleep. Tupman, however,
was more wakeful; a ball, the waiter had told him, was to be held that
night on the upper floor and he longed to attend it. Jingle readily
agreed, esp