Pickwick Abroad: or, The Tour in France — page 189: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PICKWICK ABRUAD, 149 turn for certain duties which the youth was requested to perform. Amongst those functions, the polishing of boots, waiting at table, and standing behind a cab were the most prominent, and consequently the most onerous. But Mr. William Sugden inherited from his father a remarkable shortness of memory; and this defect was one day deve- loped in the following singular manner. The young gentleman was despatched to a banker to procure cash for a cheque; it is, however, supposed that he must have lost his way and been robbed of the money, as he certainly forgot to return and report the real state of the case to his master. About this time, Mr. William Sugden fell in with Mr. Tims—an old school-fellow—and through the interest made in his behalf by the last- named gentleman, he obtained the lucrative and responsible situation of light porter, in the highly respectable firm of Messieurs Bodkin and Grogram. Theelder Mr. Sugden then interceded in behalf of his son; and the young aspirant was duly promoted to the post of traveller for the house in which his fortunes were now embarked. The prosperity of his masters had been established in the beginning on the solid basis of a floating capital of about eighteen-pence ; and Mr. William Sugden did not doubt but that his own glories might as easily be erected and maintained. But his shortness of memory was again an impediment to his pro- gress in the walks of commercial life; and the various sums of money which he received in the country and forgot to account for in town, were the origin of his disgrace in the opinions of Messieurs Bodkin and Grogram. To be brief, those gentlemen, with unfeeling abrupt- ness, dared to remind Mr. William Sugden of his trivial though numerous oversights, which, in their ignorance of the English language, they denominated “ peculations.” A police-officer was accordingly summoned to remove Mr. Sugden from the premises; but as that highly injured man was desirous of giving no trouble where his services had been so ill-requited, and not deigning to explain his conduct, he manfully threw up his situation and left 1s employers to shift for themselves without even notifying his intentions. Indeed, he determined, as he subsequently ex reseed himself to his mdignant father, never to show his face in the neighbourhood of Messieurs Bodkin and Grogram’s abode, so long as he had a nose protruding from his countenance. It is pleasing to be enabled to trace the progress of great and re- markable men. Being now thrown upon his own resources, and not choosing to walk about London with his hands and nothing else in his pockets, Mr. William Sugden borrowed a few guineas of his father, and opened a discount office under an assumed name, in a fashionable street at the West End of London. His mode of doing business was singular in the extreme, and bears ample testimony to the extent of his organ of inventiveness. Instead of discounting the bills that were left in his hands for that purpose, he usually made his clients pay a handsome remuneration to get them back again; and as those clients were chiefly young men about town, who had a certain appearance to keep up, it did not suit them to expose the bad state of their affairs by commencing legal proceedings against the firm of which Mr ilham Sugden was the sole support and representative. But at a S = a 6)(0)) .S (c©)