Pickwick Abroad: or, The Tour in France — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

40) Pickwick Abroad. some nor ugly; but his countenance was stern, and his dark piercing eyes appeared as if they could read the most secret thoughts of those whose glances they encountered. He wore large black whiskers and long moustachies, that gave an additional air of fierceness to his general aspect, which was military and warlike. He was dressed in lain clothes, if we except a red stripe down his trowsers—and Mr. Pickwick immediately concluded that he was an officer of inferior rank; for in his manners he was neither vulgar nor genteel, neither calculated to adorn a ball-room, nor to associate with private soldiers or servants. He was scmething between a gentleman and a serjeant or corporal—of that dubious rank, in appearance, which sees its equals no-where, and often enables the individual, who bears it, to be the companion of the well-born, as well as occasionally compelling him to mix with the lower classes. Mr. Boozie was a short, fat Englishman, with a very apoplectic neck, a red face, and a sughing eye. He was clad in a cut-away green coat with brass buttons, drab trowsers, and top-boots. A white great-coat had also accompanied him into the diligence; but of this e preferred making a seat rather than a covering. “ No fear of being overturned at this pace, I think,” said Mr. Adol- phus Crashem, appealing to Mr. Winkle, whose countenance had managed to divest itself of the look of extreme misery it had lately worn. | ‘‘ No, indeed,” returned that gentleman with a smile of assent to the trath of his new friend’s remark. “And yet I was once upset on this road,” observed Mr. Boozie in a gruff tone of voice quite unassumed; the melodious sounds of his articulation being as natural as the nose at which his two eyes oc- casionally glanced, their visual rays forming with mathematical pre- cision @ neat acute angle at about one inch from the tip of the said proboscis. “It was coming from Boulogne, I think—no, it wasn’t, either—TI tell a fib when I say that, ‘twas going to Boulogne—in the winter time too—I mean the summer—yes, it was the summer, when I think of it—what a fib I was telling, to be sure!’’ ‘Indeed !” exclaimed Mr. Pickwick: “ and, pray, were you much hurt ?” “‘ Merely broke my collar-bone, Sir,” returned Mr. Boozie; then in a moment he added,—* No, it wasn’t my collar-bone either—I’m again in error—’twas one of my right ribs.” “Oh! that’s nothing,” cried Mr. Adolphus Crashem, fortified with the laudable resolution of yielding to no man in the art and beauty of composition, and the extent of an inventive genius. “ It was only a few weeks ago, that I and young Lord Wippemwell were overtumed in his stanhope—close by Hyde Park Corner. A nurse and two children were passing at the time—the nurse received me in her arms safe and sound—plump wench she was, too; but the little girl, who was only seven years old, poor thing, was smothered by Lord Wippemwell. You might have read of it in the Morning Herald, under the head of ‘Afflicting Occurrence—one life lost,’ and in the Post, ‘ Aristocratic Overthrow. ” . ‘‘How very shocking!” exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, softened almost NOOO KS (a) Gomi (c@