As Soon As He Was In Good Circumstances, He Everywhere
Made Inquiry For His Wife, And At Last Found Out Where She Was, And
Immediately Fetched Her From Ireland.
There surely is something
pleasing in this constancy of affection in a chimney-sweeper.
She
told us, with tears in her eyes, in what a style of grandeur he had
conducted her into Lichfield; and how, in honour to her, he made a
splendid feast on the occasion. At this same Lichfield, which is
only two miles from Sutton, and through which she said the road lay
which I was to travel to-morrow, she still lived with this same
excellent husband, where they were noted for their industry, where
everybody respected them, and where, though in the lowest sphere,
they are passing through life neither uselessly nor unhappily.
The landlady, during her absence, told me as in confidence, that
this chimney-sweeper's husband, as meanly as I might fancy she now
appeared, was worth a thousand pounds, and that without reckoning in
their plate and furniture, that he always wore his silver watch, and
that when he passed through Sutton, and lodged there, he paid like a
nobleman.
She further remarked that the wife was indeed rather low-lived; but
that the husband was one of the best-behaved, politest, and civilest
men in the world. I had myself taken notice that this same dingy
companion of mine had something singularly coarse and vulgar in her
pronunciation. The word old, for example, she sounded like auld.
In other respects, I had not yet remarked any striking variety or
difference from the pronunciation of Oxford or London.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 140 of 199
Words from 37917 to 38192
of 53881