Thomas Hood

“ Over his mouth, Truth, like the turnpike man, writeth up No Trust. Whenever he speaketh, his spoke hath more turns than the fore-wheel. He telleth lies, not white only, or black, but likewise gray, bay, chestnut-brown, cream, and roan—piebald and skewbald. He sweareth as many oaths out of court as any man, and more in; for he will swear two ways about a horse’s dam. If, by God’s grace, he be something honest, it is only a dapple, for he can be fair and unfair at once. He hath much imagination, for he selleth a complete set of capital harness, of which there be no traces. ”

“ Shade of Holbein, what a Dance of Death! Only think of Jack Ketch and the condemned dancing face to face on the drop, now poussetting, now setting to each other, now allemanding, now waltzing, and then, Father of Vestris, what a tableau! Tony figuring, opera-fashion, on one leg, with Cheshire poising on tip-toe on the calf of the other! As for his whim, it was jerked out of the box at the first frisk, and had enough to do, you may be sure, to scuttle out of the way of the skipping and hopping; as it was, the poor reptile got more kicks than ha’pence. ”

“ Things may take a turn, as the pig said on the spit. Never throw down your cards, but play out the game. The more certain to lose, the wiser to get all the play you can for your money. Come—give us a song! chirp away like that best of cricket-players, the cricket himself. Be bowled out or caught out, but never throw down the bat. As to Health, it’s the weather of the body—it hails, it rains, it blows, it snows, at present, but it may clear up by-and-by. You cannot eat, you say, and you must not drink; but laugh and make believe, like the Barber’s wise brother at the Barmecide’s feast. ”

“ At the slam of the door behind them Miss Rumbold comprehended the full calamity: first, she threw up her arms, then her eyes, then clenched her teeth and then her hands; going through all the pantomime for distress of mind—but she had no time for grieving, and indeed but little for rejoicing. Mr. Wix’s was beginning to glitter. Tearing up and down stairs like a lamplighter on his ladder, she furnished all the blank windows, and then returned to the drawing-room; and what was evidently her favourite fancy, she had completed and hung up two festoons of artificial flowers; but alas! ”

“ There was something astounding in the bare idea of a female voice, so commonly requiring a high pressure to induce it to sing in private circles, volunteering in public assembly to spout! A maiden speech even in a man is apt to excite a maidenly fever of nervousness; and many a rough and tough old sea-commander, who would have returned a broadside without flinching, has been converted physiognomically into an admiral of the blue, white, and red, and has found a bung in his speaking-trumpet, on having to reply to a volley of thanks. ”

“ I KNOW not what friend, or fiend, or both together, put such a folly into the head of my maternal parent; but, like Hamlet’s mother, she set her widow’s cap at the sex, and re-married. A second marriage is seldom a favourable alteration of state; it is like changing a sovereign twice over; first into silver, and then into copper. My mother’s step was of this description! My first father was a plump, short, and rather Dutch-built little person; but the most merry, good-humoured, and kind-hearted, yet withal the slowest goer of the human race. ”

“ SYL.—Nay, Civis—I pray you let the blinds alone. The rolls are getting cold. This ham is excellently well cured, and the eggs are new-laid. Come, take a seat.
CIV.—I beseech your patience for one moment. There the blind is up. What a brave flood of sunshine—and what a glorious blue sky!—What a rare dainty day to roam abroad in, dallying with the Dryads!—But what do I behold! Oh, my Sylvanus, the Dryads are stripped of their green kirtles—stark naked! The trees are all bare, God help me! as bare as the “otamies in Surgeons’ Hall!” ”

“ His first impulse was to cut a caper on the roof of the coach, and throw up his cap, with a loud Hurrah!—His second was to throw himself into the arms of his Kathleen, and the third, was to wring my hand off in acknowledgment.
“It’s a happy man I am, your Honour, for my word’s saved, and all by your Honour’s manes—Long life to your Honour for the same!—May ye live a long hundred—and lape-years every one of them!” ”

“ Seeing, therefore, how matters stood, Master Strangulator pushed in, with an elbowing manner, and began begging pardon of Tony for the part he was about to perform, who forgave him very readily, requesting him moreover to shake hands, and by Gog and Magog, such a shake was never shaked since the Shakers became a sect!
At the first grapple of their fingers, the Strangulator pulled away his hand with a jerk, as if a bear’s palm had been palmed upon him instead of a human paw. ”

“ Never was there such mobbing to see a hanging. Half the Londoners that morning went without their breakfasts to be in time for the Old Bailey. Trot, trot, trot, canter and full gallop; away through Piccadilly; push on there, in the Strand, hey down Holborn Hill, with a yoicks in Cheapside, and a hark forward in Newgate Street, and a tally ho! in West Smithfield. They all meant to be in at the death. Never was there such a race, to see a man whose race was run losing it by a neck. ”

“ Next to being a citizen of the world, it must be the best thing to be born a citizen of the world’s greatest city. To a lover of his kind, it should be a welcome dispensation that cast his nativity amidst the greatest congregation of the species; but a literary man should exult rather than otherwise that he first saw the light—or perhaps the fog—in the same metropolis as Milton, Gray, De Foe, Pope, Byron, Lamb, and other town-born authors, whose fame has nevertheless triumphed over the Bills of Mortality. ”

“ Blessed were they who were born to behold it, though but from the mother’s arms. It was worth going five miles to see, the first mile trundling a coach-wheel, the second picking up eggs, the third hopping on one leg, the fourth backwards, and the fifth jumped in a sack. If any man think otherwise, may he dance, that is to say, in a ten-acre meadow, with a mohawking bully of a bull for a partner.
A HIGHLAND FLING.
The whim next seized the Extraordinary, and he danced like a dancing Fakir. ”

“ Like unto Love, he is blind unto all blemishes, and seeth only a virtue, meanwhile he gazeth at a vice. He taketh the kick of a nag’s hoof like a love token, saying only, before standers-by, “Poor fellow,—he knoweth me!”—and is content rather to pass as a bad rider, than that the horse should he held restive or over-mettlesome which discharges him from its back. ”

“ Mine is not the luck,
To obtain thee, O Duck,
Or to doom thee, O Drake, like a Draco!
[Pg 461]
For a field-fare I’ve fared far a-field,
Large or small I am never to sack bird,
Not a thrush is so kind
As to fly, and I find
I may whistle myself for a black-bird!
I am angry, I’m hungry, I’m dry,
Disappointed, and sullen, and goaded,
And so weary an elf,
I am sick of myself,
And with Number one seem overloaded.
As well one might beat round St. Paul’s,
And look out for a cock or a hen there ”

“ It is scarcely possible for you, my dear Charles, to conceive the difficulties and anarchical manifestations of turbulence, which threaten and disturb your old birth-place, poor Stoke Pogis. To the reflecting mind, the circumstances which hourly transpire afford ample food for speculation and moral reasoning. To see the constituted authorities of a place, however mistaken or misguided by erring benevolence, plunging into a fearful struggle with an irritated, infuriated, and I may say, armed populace, is a sight which opens a field for terrified conjecture. ”

“ Sometimes my fancy builds up castles airy,
Sometimes it only paints a ferme orneé,
A horse—a cow—six fowls—a pig—and Mary
Over the way!
Sometimes I dream of her in bridal white,
Standing before the altar, like a fay ”

“ The man in black looked at his watch.
The coachman pulled out a handful of silver, and began to count out a portion, preparatory to offering to return the woman her fare if she would get down—when a cheering voice hailed him from above.
“It’s all right, Tom—jump up—the lady’s creeping into the boot.”
“She won’t like that, I guess,” muttered Tom to himself, but in a second the money jingled back into his pocket, and he was on his box in the twinkling of an eye. Away went the coach over the brow of the hill, and began to spin down the descent with an impetus increasing at every yard. ”

“ Botolph, the fire-ladders hang undisturbed in their chains, and the turn-cock smokes placidly in the tap-room of the Rose-and-Crown. For this remarkable apathy, my own more domestic habits enable me to account.
It is the fortune, or misfortune, of the house where I lodge to confront that of Mr. Wix, “Wax and Tallow Chandler to his Majesty;” and certainly no individual ever burned so much to evince his loyalty. He and his windows are always framing an excuse for an illumination. ”

“ Let your “lungs crow like Chanticleer,” and as like a GAME cock as possible. It expands the chest, enlarges the heart, quickens the circulation, and “like a trumpet makes the spirit dance.”
A fico then for the Chesterfieldian canon, that laughter is an ungenteel emotion. Smiles are tolerated by the very pinks of politeness; and a laugh is but the full-blown flower of which a smile is the bud. It is a sort of vocal music—a glee in which everybody can take a part:—and “he who bath not laughter in his soul, let no such man be trusted.” ”

“ We looked up; there stood one Harlequin over us alive; there lay another under us, without a chance of ever more peeping through the blanket of the dark. That the speaker was no ghost we were soon convinced, as his magic bat battered us. The truth was, he had thrown at us the stuffed Harlequin used in flying ascents, to try our vigilance, before he risked his own neck. I felt, however, that I might have been of a party who had killed a man. ”

“ The Farmer, resting his elbows upon the board, with his face between his hands, gazed wistfully on his wife,—scooping her eyes, as it were, out of their sockets, stripping the flesh off her cheeks, and in fancy converting her whole head into a mere Caput Mortuum. The Dame, leaning back in her high arm-chair, regarded the Yeoman quite as ruefully,—by the same process of imagination picking his sturdy bones, and bleaching his ruddy visage to the complexion of a plaster cast. ”

“ Poor devil, thought I, thou art going into a bitter bad line of business; and the hundredth share which I had taken in the boyish persecutions of my own French master—an emigré of the old noblesse—smote violently on my conscience. At Edmonton the coach stopped. The coachman alighted, pulled the bell of a mansion inscribed in large letters, Vespasian House; and deposited the foreigner’s trunks and boxes on the footpath. The English classical usher stepped briskly out, and deposited a shilling in the coachman’s anticipatory hand. ”

“ I am very sorry to trouble your mind with anything unpleasant, but a great change has taken place since the articles were signed and the premium paid down. All the being on liking has come to a sudden end. Mr. and Mrs. G. have thrown off their masks, and he is a cruel tyrant; and instead of being another mother to me, she is quite the reverse. I little thought the moment I became an apprentice I should be a complete slave, and work like a horse. Nothing but drawing, drawing, drawing, as long as it’s light—and next week we begin lamps. ”

“ Providence having been pleased to remove my domestic duties from Barbican to Lincolnshire, I trust I shall have strength of constitution to fulfil them as becomes my new allotted line of life. As we are not sent into this world to be idle, and Anastasia has declined housewifery, I have undertaken the Dairy, and the Brewery, and the Baking, and the Poultry, the Pigs and the Pastry,—and though I feel fatigued at first, use reconciles to labours and trials, more severe than I at present enjoy. ”

“ Such sports are as wholesome for the mind as the other frolics for the body. For on our own treatment of that excellent Friend or terrible Enemy the Imagination, it depends whether we are to be scared and haunted by a Scratching Fanny, or tended by an affectionate Invisible Girl—like an unknown love, blessing us with “favours secret, sweet, and precious,” and fondly stealing us from this worky-day world to a sunny sphere of her own. ”

“ In fact Miss Rumbold had a Fantoccini over head she little dreamt of. Awakened by the unusual light, the younger Rumbolds had rushed from bed to the window, where, exhilarated by childish spirits and the appearance of a gala, they had got up an extempore Juvenile Ball, and were dancing with all their might in their little nightcaps and nightgowns. In vain the unconscious Matilda pointed to her candles, and added her own private pair from the table to the centre window; in vain she wrung her hands, or squeezed them on her bosom: the more she protested in dumb show, the more the mob shouted ”