But I Was Not So Fortunate, For My Three Travelling Companions Were
All Farmers, Who Slept So Soundly That Even The Hearty Knocks Of The
Head With Which They Often Saluted Each Other, Did Not Awake Them.
Their faces, bloated and discoloured by their copious use of ale and
brandy, looked, as they lay before me, like so many lumps of dead
flesh.
When now and then they woke, sheep, in which they all dealt,
was the first and last topic of their conversation. One of the
three, however, differed not a little from the other two; his face
was sallow and thin, his eyes quite sunk and hollow, his long, lank
fingers hung quite loose, and as if detached from his hands. He
was, in short, the picture of avarice and misanthropy. The former
he certainly was; for at every stage he refused to give the coachman
the accustomed perquisite, which every body else paid; and every
farthing he was forced to part with, forced a "G-d d - n" from his
heart. As he sat in the coach, he seemed anxious to shun the light;
and so shut up every window that he could come at, except when now
and then I opened them to take a slight view of the charms of the
country through which we seemed to be flying, rather than driving.
Our road lay through Newport Pagnell, Dunstable, St. Albans, Barnet,
to Islington, or rather to London itself. But these names are all I
know of the different places.
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