Pickwick Abroad: or, The Tour in France — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

PICKWICK ABROAD; OR THE TOUR IN FRANCE: gone A SERIES OF PAPERS COMPILED FROM THE PRIVATE NOTES AND MEMORANDA OF SAMUEL PICKWICK, ESQ. Qu neaseD TO THE READER. Taz immortal ‘‘ Boz’’ has done so much to render the public familiar with the characters and adventures of some of the most remarkable men of the present day —viz., Mr. Pickwick and his followers—that it is only with extreme diffidence a new historian has ventured to continue the lives of those extraordinary individuals. But short and to the purpose be the introduction to these Memoirs. A few months ago I called upon Mr. Prcxwicx at bis house in Dulwich ; and from certain circumstances—euch as the appearance of a number of trunks and parcels in the hall, each bearing a label with the following words marked upon it, “ Monsiewr Monsaeur Picxwicx, Voyageur de Paris a Londres'’—1 immediately inferred that the object of my visit was just returned from a continental tour. Nor was I mistaken in my supposition. The founder of the ‘‘ Pickwick Club,’’ which now exists no longer, had violated the promise he had some time since made to himself, and had voluntarily deviated from that tranquil mode of life it was his intention to adopt when his firat biographer, ‘‘ Boz,’’ took leave of him. In fact he had, with that noble disregard for danger and difficulty, and that spirit of enterprise and perseverance, which formed such prominent traits in the character of this extraordinary man, undertaken a journey to Paris—had actually resided some time in the sovereign city of France—and, recklesa of fatigue, had retraced his steps at the termination of a certain period, by means of diligence, steam- packet, and coach, to his classic abode at Dulwich. Without fatiguing the reader with an elaborate description of the astonishment I naturally experienced at the boldness of the idea, the certainty that it had been followed up, and the uncompromising courage of him who had carried it into effect —aen idea that prompted him to leave his own fire-side, and risk the perils of the ocean, the chance of being overturned in a diligence, and the probability of finding himself amongst a nation of anthropophagi in the guise of human beings — without dwelling on this subject, fearful lest the eulogies I offer to my friend might be deemed the dictates of partiality and blind adoration—I shall merely state that the note-book and the memoranda of the illustrious Pickwick were placed at my dis- posal, and that it has become my happy fate to succeed the no less immortal B COL q) DGe SS (c@