The String of Pearls; or, The Barber of Fleet Street — page 102: what you’re looking at

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

a | of smell would make itself most painfully and most disagreeably apparent. And the Rev. Joseph Stillingport, who was the regular preacher, smelt it in the | and pungent essence, for the purpose of trying to overcome the horrible effluvia. || The organ-blower and the organ-player were both nearly stifled, for the horrible | looked at each other in their pews with contorted countenances, and were ‘| prevent them even from dozing through the afternoon sermon, it became a very || serious matter indeed.. But what was it, what could it be, and what was to be || done to gef rid of it? These were the anxious questions that were asked right || and left, as regarded the serious nuisance, without the fates graciously acceding | || any reply. But yet one thing seemed to be generally agreed, and that was, that | it did come, and must come, somehow or other, out of the vaults from beneath ‘| the church. But then, as the pious and hypocritical Mr. Butterwick, who lived Paper rng rnp ig, atte mtn a Rn a th én deaf to catch a third part of them, brought smelling bottles and wher means of stifling their noses; still that dreadful charnel-house sort pulpit: and had been seen to sneeze in the midst of a most pious discourse indeed, and to hold to his pious mouth a handkerchief, in which was some strong olovr seemed to ascend to the upper part of the church; although those who || sit ia what may be called the pif, by no means escaped it. The churchwardens almost afraid to breathe; and the only person who did not complain bitterly of the dreadful odour in St. Dunstan’s church, was an old woman who had been a pew-openex for many years; but then she had lost the faculties of her nose, which, perhaps, accounted satisfactorily for that circumstance. At length, however, the | nuisance became so intolerable, that the beadle, whose duty it was in the morning to open the church doors, used to come up to them with the massive key m one hand, and a eloth soaked in vinegar in the other, just as the people used to do in the time of the great plague of London; and when he had opened the doors, he used to run over to the other side of the way. | ¢ Ah, Mr. Blunt!” he used to say to the bookseller, who lived opposite‘ ah ! Mr. Blunt, I is obligated to cut over here, leastways till the atymouspherie air is mixed up all along with the stinkifications which come from the church.” By this it will be seen that the beadle was rather a learned man, and no doubt || went to some mechanics’ institution of those days, where he learned something of || everything byt what was calculated to be of some service to him. As might be sup- posed, from the fact that this sort of thing had gone on for a few months, it began to excite some attention with a view to a remedy ; for, in the great city of London, a |} nuisance of any sort or description requires to become venerable by age before any | '| one thinks of removing it; and after that, it is quite clear that that becomes a good | | argument against removing it at all. But at last, the churchwardens began to | | have a fear that some pestilential disease would be the result if they for any longer || ‘| period of time put up with the horrible stench, and that they might be among its | first victims, so they began to ask each other what could be done to obviate /it. | Probably, if this frightful stench, being suggestive, as it was, of all sorts of horrdrs, had been graciously pleased to confine itself to some poor locality, nothing would | have been heard of it; but when it became actually offensive to a gentleman in a eee metropolitan pulpit, and when it began to make itself perceptible to the sleepy faculties of the churchwardens of St. Dunstan’s church, Fleet-street, so as to opposite, said “How could that be, when it was satisfactorily proved by the present books that nobody had been buried in the vaults for some time, and therefore if was a very odd thing that dead people, after leaving off smelling and being disagreeable, | should all of a sudden burst out again in that line, and be twice as bad as ever | And on Wednesdays sometimes, too, when pious people were not satisfied with | the Sunday’s devotion, but began avain in the middle of the week, that stench was | positively terrific. Indeed, so bad was it, that some of the congregation were | forced to leave, and have been seen to slink into Bell-yard, where Lovett’s pie« shop was situated, and then and there solace themselves with a pork or a veal pie, in order that their mouths and noses should he full of a delightful and agreeable | they were at first.” a a a tds A el ml a a alta oS comicbooks.com — -_ — ~ i oa SAO