William Makepeace Thackeray

“ Do you believe that this “Sea Capting” can serve the drama? Did you never intend that it should serve anything, or anybody ELSE? Of cors you did! You wrote it for money,—money from the maniger, money from the bookseller,—for the same reason that I write this. Sir, Shakspeare wrote for the very same reasons, and I never heard that he bragged about serving the drama. Away with this canting about great motifs! Let us not be too prowd, my dear Barnet, and fansy ourselves marters of the truth, marters or apostels. We are but tradesmen, working for bread, and not for righteousness' sake. ”

“ Frederic Altamont's young man was somebody, I warrant: to be sure there is very few man-servants at Pentonwille, the poppylation being mostly gals of all work; and so, though only fourteen, I was as much a man down there, as if I had been as old as Jerusalem.
But the most singular thing was, that my master, who was such a gay chap, should live in such a hole. He had only a ground-floor in John Street—a parlor and a bedroom. I slep over the way, and only came in with his boots and brexfast of a morning. ”

“ She boar an exlent, irreprotchable character, against which the tongue of scandal never wagged. She was allowed to be the best wife posbill—and so she was; but she killed her old husband in two years, as dead as ever Mr. Thurtell killed Mr. William Weare. She never got into a passion, not she—she never said a rude word; but she'd a genius—a genius which many women have—of making A HELL of a house, and tort'ring the poor creatures of her family, until they were wellnigh drove mad.
Miss Matilda Griffin was a good deal uglier, and about as amiable as her mother-in-law. ”

“ It was when Master was in the city; and so, having nothink earthly to do, I happened to be listening on the stairs. The old scolding was a-going on, and the old tune of that hojus “Battle of Prag.” Old Shum made some remark; and Miss Buckmaster cried out, “Law, pa! what a fool you are!” All the gals began laffin, and so did Mrs. Shum; all, that is, excep Mary, who turned as red as flams, and going up to Miss Betsy Buckmaster, give her two such wax on her great red ears as made them tingle again. ”

“ Altamont, struck all of a heap, fainted clean away. A dreadful business it was—hystarrix; then hystarrix, in course, from Mrs. Shum; bells ringin, child squalin, suvvants tearin up and down stairs with hot water! If ever there is a noosance in the world, it's a house where faintain is always goin on. I wouldn't live in one,—no, not to be groom of the chambers, and git two hundred a year.
It was eight o'clock in the evenin when this row took place; and such a row it was, that nobody but me heard master's knock. ”

“ Very right, Miss Violet—the scentiment is natral, affeckshnit, pleasing, simple (it might have been in more grammaticle languidge, and no harm done) ; but never mind, the feeling is pritty; and I can fancy, my dear Barnet, a pritty, smiling, weeping lass, looking up in a man's face and saying it. But the capting!—oh, this capting!—this windy, spouting captain, with his prittinesses, and conseated apollogies for the hardness of his busm, and his old, stale, vapid simalies, and his wishes to be a bee! Pish! Men don't make love in this finniking way. ”

“ The man who says you are an As is an As himself. Don't believe him, Barnet! not that I suppose you wil,—for, if I've formed a correck apinion of you from your wucks, you think your small-beear as good as most men's: every man does,—and why not? We brew, and we love our own tap—amen; but the pint betwigst us, is this stewpid, absudd way of crying out, because the public don't like it too. Why shood they, my dear Barnet? ”

“ Princess Charlotte hates her father. Princess of Wales hates her husband.
The old quean, by their squobbles, is on the pint of death; and her two jewtiful daughters are delighted at the news. What a happy, fashnabble, Christian famly! O Mr. Yorke, Mr. Yorke, if this is the way in the drawin-rooms, I'm quite content to live below, in pease and charaty with all men; writin, as I am now, in my pantry, or els havin a quiet game at cards in the servants-all. With US there's no bitter, wicked, quarling of this sort. ”

“ It is at best, dear Algernon, but a nasty, idle pastime, unfitting a man as well for mental exertion as for respectable society; sacrificing, at once, the vigor of the intellect and the graces of the person. By-the-by, what infernal bad tobacco they have, too, in this hotel. Could not you send your servant to get me a few seagars at the Cafe de Paris? Give him a five-franc piece, and let him go at once, that's a good fellow.”
Here his lordship hiccupt, and drank off a fresh tumbler of shampang. Very sulkily, master drew out the coin, and sent me on the errint. ”

“ In the meantime, my dear Plush, if you ask me what the great obstacle is towards the dramatic fame and merit of our friend, I would say that it does not lie so much in hostile critics or feeble health, as in a careless habit of writing, and a peevish vanity which causes him to shut his eyes to his faults. The question of original capacity I will not moot; one may think very highly of the honorable baronet's talent, without rating it quite so high as he seems disposed to do. ”

“ He didn't anser a word. His exlent pa went on, warming as he continued to speak, and drinking a fresh glas at evry full stop.
“How you must improve, with such talents and such principles! Why, Algernon, all London talks of your industry and perseverance: you're not merely a philosopher, man; hang it! you've got the philosopher's stone. Fine rooms, fine horses, champagne, and all for 200 a year!”
“I presume, sir,” says my master, “that you mean the two hundred a year which YOU pay me?”
“The very sum, my boy; the very sum!” cries my lord, laffin as if he would die. “Why, that's the wonder! ”

“ Look at the neat grammaticle twist of Lady Arundel's spitch, too, who, in the corse of three lines, has made her son a prince, a lion, with a sword and coronal, and a star. Why jumble and sheak up metafors in this way? Barnet, one simily is quite enuff in the best of sentenses (and I preshume I kneedn't tell you that it's as well to have it LIKE, when you are about it) . Take my advise, honrabble sir—listen to a humble footmin: it's genrally best in poatry to understand puffickly what you mean yourself, and to ingspress your meaning clearly afterwoods—in the simpler words the better, praps. ”

“ Yorke, is the wust, the scandle or the scandle-mongers? See what it is to be a moral man of fashn. Fust, he scrapes togither all the bad stoaries about all the people of his acquentance—he goes to a ball, and laffs or snears at everybody there—he is asked to a dinner, and brings away, along with meat and wine to his heart's content, a sour stomick filled with nasty stories of all the people present there. He has such a squeamish appytite, that all the world seems to DISAGREE with him. ”

“ Deuceace has lost them or is unworthy of them?”
“I trust not, my dear madam, I trust not; but he is wild, thoughtless, extravagant, and embarrassed: and you know a man under these circumstances is not very particular as to his associates.”
“Embarrassed? Good heavens! He says he has two thousand a year left him by a god-mother; and he does not seem even to spend his income—a very handsome independence, too, for a bachelor.”
My lord nodded his head sadly, and said,—“Will your ladyship give me your word of honor to be secret? ”

“ Why was I at all flattered, at all more amused, at all more supple to this young princess, than to her who is only the same sort of person set in the shade of circumstances and of years? It is that youth, and the approach of power, and the latent views of self-interest, sway the heart and dazzle the understanding. ”

“ One of 'em, Miss Jemima Kicksey, the oldest, and by no means the least ugly of the sett, was staying with her ladyship, and gev me all the partecklars. Of the rest of the famly, being of a lo sort, I in course no nothink; MY acquaintance, thank my stars, don't lie among them, or the likes of them.
Well, this Miss Jemima lived with her younger and more fortnat sister, in the qualaty of companion, or toddy. Poar thing! I'd a soon be a gally slave, as lead the life she did! Every body in the house despised her; her ladyship insulted her; the very kitching gals scorned and flouted her. ”

“ In the fust place, he hadn seen old Crabs for seven years, as that nobleman remarked in his epistol; in the secknd he hated him, and they hated each other; and nex, if master had loved his father ever so much, he loved somebody else better—his father's son, namely: and sooner than deprive that exlent young man of a penny, he'd have sean all the fathers in the world hangin at Newgat, and all the “beloved ones,” as he called his sisters, the Lady Deuceacisses, so many convix at Bottomy Bay. ”

“ Hereupon my lord held out his hand to Mrs. Deuceace, and said, “My dear, will you join your mother and me? We shall always, as I said, have a home for you.”
“My lord,” said the poar thing, dropping a curtsy, “my home is with HIM!”
. . . . . .
About three months after, when the season was beginning at Paris, and the autumn leafs was on the ground, my lord, my lady, me and Mortimer, were taking a stroal in the Boddy Balong, the carridge driving on slowly ahead, and us as happy as possbill, admiring the pleasant woods and the goldn sunset. ”

“ We can all do it, Barnet; nothing in life is esier. I can compare my livry buttons to the stars, or the clouds of my backopipe to the dark vollums that ishew from Mount Hetna; or I can say that angels are looking down from them, and the tobacco silf, like a happy sole released, is circling round and upwards, and shaking sweetness down. All this is as esy as drink; but it's not poatry, Barnet, nor natural. People, when their mothers reckonize them, don't howl about the suckumambient air, and paws to think of the happy leaves a-rustling—at least, one mistrusts them if they do. ”

“ What a stupendous field for philosophy to expatiate in! What an endless material for thought! What humiliation to the pride of mere human greatness! How are the mighty fallen! Of all that was great in Napoleon, what remains? ”

“ Lady Griffin blusht, and droopt her head till her ringlets fell into her fish-plate: and she swallowed Lord Crabs's flumry just as she would so many musharuins. My lord (whose powers of slack-jaw was notoarious) nex addrast another spitch to Miss Griffin. He said he'd heard how Deuceace was SITUATED. Miss blusht—what a happy dog he was—Miss blusht crimson, and then he sighed deeply, and began eating his turbat and lobster sos. Master was a good un at flumry, but, law bless you! he was no moar equill to the old man than a mole-hill is to a mounting. ”

“ At least, this is what YOUNG roags do; it requires very cool blood and long practis to get over this pint, and not to show your pashn when you feel it and snarl when you are angry. Old Crabs wouldn't do it; being like another noblemin, of whom I heard the Duke of Wellington say, while waiting behind his graci's chair, that if you were kicking him from behind, no one standing before him would know it, from the bewtifle smiling igspreshn of his face. Young master hadn't got so far in the thief's grammer, and, when he was angry, show'd it. ”

“ Thanks to poar Dawkins's five thousand pound, we were as complete gentlemen as any in Paris.
Now my master, like a wise man as he was, seaing himself at the head of a smart sum of money, and in a country where his debts could not bother him, determined to give up for the present every think like gambling—at least, high play; as for losing or winning a ralow of Napoleums at whist or ecarty, it did not matter; it looks like money to do such things, and gives a kind of respectabilaty. ”