Pickwick Abroad: or, The Tour in France — page 195: what you’re looking at

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

150 Pickwick Abroad. length, to use his father’s own expressive language, “ he was blown,” and obliged to shift his quarters to the cool and tranquil retreat afforded by a garret in the Lanthorn and Cat itself. Mr. William Sugden’s talents were, however, of too brilliant a nature to be concealed in the unsentimental abode their proprietor had now chosen; and a farther supply of coin, to which he prudently helned himself from his parent’s till, enabled him to make a short tour in the West of England, accompanied by sundry packs of cards and pairs of dice which he had previously arranged to suit his own pecu- liar purposes. It is uncertain in what manner this extraordinary young man availed himself, during his tour, of those means which nature and a little art had placed at his disposal. There was, how- ever, a strange story afloat at the time, relative to a certain individual of a certain description having been detected in certain nefarious practices with the dice, at a certain mess-table in a certain town; and a few other little circumstances, that bore collateral reference to this rumour, at once established in Mr. Sugden senior’s mind, the con- viction of the identity of his son and heir with the individual alluded to. Be that as it may, it 1s a well-known and indisputable fact, that Mr. William Sugden returned to London with a few hundred pounds in his pocket, and became a regular visitor to the various gambling- houses with which the West End of the English Metropolis is so eminently adorned. Malicious people have ventured to assert that the young gentleman himself became “a bonnet” or decoy at one of the principal establishments he was thus pleased to honour with his pre- - sence; but as to the truth of so gross an assertion there exists no real evidence. Suffice it to say, that in a very short period Mr. Sugden amassed the sum of a thousand pounds, or thereabouts, and that he had created for himself a snug and quiet little circle of ac- quaintance, the chief members of which were the proprietors and fre- quenters of the pandemonia where money may be lost in so speedy and highly satisfactory a manner. Mr. William Sugden now set up in business as a ‘‘ young man about town,” and dropping his own hereditary patronymic, adopted the more aristocratic one of Adolphus Crashem. But in every instance was the extraordinary family failing with which he was afflicted, more and more developed. He not only forgot to pay the stipulated price for the various articles he profusely ordered from about sixteen different jewellers resident at the West End of London; but, in a state of uncer- tainty as to the real owner of the goods thus supplied, and with a view to their security which speaks volumes for his prudence and fore- thought, he conveyed them to the safe and assured custody of the nearest pawnbroker. Indeed, to do him full justice, he subsequently handed over the duplicates to the aforesaid jewellers, when interro- gated as to the mannerin which the property had been disposed of. Virtue seldom meets with its reward im this life. The sixteen jew- ellers, aided by Messieurs Stickemin and Nagsflesh—the two indivi- duals before alluded to, concocted a base and Catiline-like conspiracy against the peace and well-being of Mr. Adolphus Crashem. These misguided men, in a moment of opaqueness not easily conceived by the intelligent reader, ventured to accuse their victim of a variety of ne- Eomichbooks.co