The little gentleman translated the “full tide” into a full glass to our good healths and better acquaintance, at the same time drawing his chair nearer, and presenting a handsomely embossed card, on which was inscribed, in delicate Italian calligraphy, “Mr. Benjamin Bosky, Dry-salter, Little Britain.”
_Drysalter_,--he looked like a thirsty soul!
“Pleasant prospect from this window; you may count every steeple in London. There's the 'tall bully,'--how gloriously his flaming top-knot glistens in the setting sun! Wouldn't give a fig for the best view in the world, if it didn't take in the dome of St. Paul's! Beshrew the Vandal architect that cut down those beautiful elms.--
'The rogue the gallows as his fate foresees,
and run up the wigwam pavilions, the Tom-foolery baby-houses, the run mad, shabby-genteel, I-would-if-I-could-but-I-can't cottages _ornée--ornée?_--horney!--the cows popping in their heads at the parlour windows, frightening the portly proprietors from their propriety and port!”
It was clear that Mr. Bosky was not to be so frightened; for he drew another draught on his pint decanter, though sitting beneath the umbrage of a huge pair of antlers that were fixed against the wall, under which innumerable Johnny New-comes had been sworn, according to ancient custom, at the Horns at Highgate. It was equally clear, too, that Mr. Bosky _himself_ might have sat for the portrait that he had so kindly appropriated to Uncle Timothy.
A fine manly voice without was heard to troll with joyous melody,--
With hey! with hey! the thrush and the jay,-- Are summer songs for me and my aunts,
“Uncle Tim! Uncle Tim!” shouted the mercurial little Drysalter, and up he started as if he had been galvanised, scampered out of the room, made but one leap from the top of the stairs to the bottom, descended _à plomb_, was up again before we had recovered from our surprise, and introduced a middle-aged, rosy-faced gentleman, “more fat than bard beseems,” with a perforating eye and a most satirical nose. “Uncle Timothy, gentlemen.--A friend or two, (if I may presume to call them so,) Uncle Timothy, that I have fallen in with most unexpectedly and agreeably.”
There is a certain “I no _not_ like thee, _Doctor Fell_,” feeling, and an “I do,” that have rarely deceived us. With the latter, the satirical-nosed gentleman inspired us at first sight. There was the humorist, with a dash of the antiquary, heightened with a legible expression that nature sometimes stamps on her higher order of intelligences. What a companion, we thought, for “_Round about our coal fire_” on a winter's evening, or, “_Under the green-wood tree_” on a summer's clay!