The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 307: what you’re looking at

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

234 THE STEAM PACKET. sulman, as he stroked his beard, which shone with the goose gravy. —‘Then you refuse to apologise ?’ said I.—‘ I do,’ said he.— Then here goes, said 1; and seizing the goose by the legs, I beat it about the old villain’s head, until his hair seemed nothing but sage and onions, and his beard reeked with the gravy. Having thus punished him: until I was tired, I very coolly wiped my hands upon the table-cloth, and strode out of the house. Fifty people witnessed that scene, sir—_ fifty people! Surely you must have heard of it before? ” acer ey “‘T think I read it in the Zimes when it occurred,” said Mr. ‘‘Of course you did!” ejaculated the sot-dzsant nobleman: “it made a devil of a sensation at the time. But I am off now to this Mr. Latitat’s ; and I only hope e’s got a goose for dinner to-day. Egad I’d pass it over his back until his coat hadn’t a wrinkle in it.” | With these words Mr. Buckram, putting on a very fierce air, walked out of the coffee-room, where the colloquy took place, and proceeded to the lodgings of the English lawyer in the Rue des Thermes. Mr. Latitat was sitting in front of the fire-place—for it being summer, there was of course no light in the grate—in his attic, which elevated..abode he occupied, as he used to declare, ‘‘ from choice,” although his enemies asserted that choice to have been of the Hobson’ kind. He was aspiring in his ideas, and preferred a garret to a cellar. He had his head bound up in a faded cotton handkerchief—for he had ‘caught a cold on the pier the night before; he had a short pipe in his mouth, and a beard of a week’s. growth upon his chin: Although it was now late in the day, the disordered state of his attire showed that he had but recently quitted his bed—in which, indeed, he had written the second love (or law) letter. At all events he had not made his morning’s toilet. He was in a moralising mood, too; for he sat in silence, looking at the loose strings of his shoes, and occasionally scratching his head with great violence through the handkerchief just mentioned. It was evident that he was at that moment labour- ing under great absence of mind, for although his pipe was unlighted, . he puffed at it assiduously, occasionally withdrawing it from his mouth, to permit an imaginary cloud of smoke to float slowly around him. a He was a man of corpulence and weight—well provided with ‘brass. upon his face, but indifferently stocked with tin in his pocket—and, having been eocupeiled to run away from London for a slight forgery. of a will, which, even under the new statute, would have conducted him to the Old Bailey noose, he thought he might as well build up his fortunes by flinging himself voluntarily into a matrimonial one. He was not, however, at the precise moment when we introduce * Gomichooks.c¢