Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 346 pages of information about Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities.

Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 346 pages of information about Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities.
as here, having nothing particular to do in either place.  I came to stay a hundred pounds in London it’s true, but if I stay ten of it at Newmarket, it’ll be all the same, and I can go home from there just as well as from here”; so saying, he took another turn at the tea.  The race list was a tempting one, Riddlesworth, Craven Stakes, Column Stakes, Oatlands, Port, Claret, Sherry, Madeira, and all other sorts.  A good week’s racing in fact, for the saintly sinners who frequent the Heath had not then discovered any greater impropriety in travelling on a Sunday, then in cheating each other on the Monday.  The tea was good, as were the prawns and eggs, and George brought a second muffin, at the very moment that the Yorkshireman had finished the last piece of the first, so that by the time he had done his breakfast and drawn on his boots, which were dryer and pleasanter than the recent damp weather had allowed of their being, he felt completely at peace with himself and all the world, and putting on his hat, sallied forth with the self-satisfied air of a man who had eat a good breakfast, and yet not too much.

Newmarket was still uppermost in his mind, and as he sauntered along in the direction of the Strand, it occurred to him that perhaps Mr. Jorrocks might have no objection to accompany him.  On entering that great thoroughfare of humanity, he turned to the east, and having examined the contents of all the caricature shops in the line, and paid threepence for a look at the York Herald, in the Chapter Coffee-house, St. Paul’s Churchyard, about noon he reached the corner of St. Botolph Lane.  Before Jorrocks & Co.’s warehouse, great bustle and symptoms of brisk trade were visible.  With true city pride, the name on the door-post was in small dirty-white letters, sufficiently obscure to render it apparent that Mr. Jorrocks considered his house required no sign; while, as a sort of contradiction, the covered errand-cart before it, bore “JORROCKS & Co.’s WHOLESALE TEA WAREHOUSE,” in great gilt letters on each side of the cover, so large that “he who runs might read,” even though the errand-cart were running too.  Into this cart, which was drawn by the celebrated rat-tail hunter, they were pitching divers packages for town delivery, and a couple of light porters nearly upset the Yorkshireman, as they bustled out with their loads.  The warehouse itself gave evident proof of great antiquity.  It was not one of your fine, light, lofty, mahogany-countered, banker-like establishments of modern times, where the stock-in-trade often consists of books and empty canisters, but a large, roomy, gloomy, dirty, dingy sort of cellar above ground, full of hogsheads, casks, flasks, sugar-loaves, jars, bags, bottles, and boxes.

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Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.