The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices

Thursday morning.  After a tremendous night of crowding, shouting, drinking-house expectoration, Gong-donkey, and correct cards.  Symptoms of yesterday’s gains in the way of drink, and of yesterday’s losses in the way of money, abundant.  Money-losses very great.  As usual, nobody seems to have won; but, large losses and many losers are unquestionable facts.  Both Lunatics and Keepers, in general very low.  Several of both kinds look in at the chemist’s while Mr. Goodchild is making a purchase there, to be ‘picked up.’  One red-eyed Lunatic, flushed, faded, and disordered, enters hurriedly and cries savagely, ‘Hond us a gloss of sal volatile in wather, or soom dommed thing o’ thot sart!’  Faces at the Betting Rooms very long, and a tendency to bite nails observable.  Keepers likewise given this morning to standing about solitary, with their hands in their pockets, looking down at their boots as they fit them into cracks of the pavement, and then looking up whistling and walking away.  Grand Alliance Circus out, in procession; buxom lady-member of Grand Alliance, in crimson riding-habit, fresher to look at, even in her paint under the day sky, than the cheeks of Lunatics or Keepers.  Spanish Cavalier appears to have lost yesterday, and jingles his bossed bridle with disgust, as if he were paying.  Reaction also apparent at the Guildhall opposite, whence certain pickpockets come out handcuffed together, with that peculiar walk which is never seen under any other circumstances—a walk expressive of going to jail, game, but still of jails being in bad taste and arbitrary, and how would you like it if it was you instead of me, as it ought to be!  Mid-day.  Town filled as yesterday, but not so full; and emptied as yesterday, but not so empty.  In the evening, Angel ordinary where every Lunatic and Keeper has his modest daily meal of turtle, venison, and wine, not so crowded as yesterday, and not so noisy.  At night, the theatre.  More abstracted faces in it than one ever sees at public assemblies; such faces wearing an expression which strongly reminds Mr. Goodchild of the boys at school who were ‘going up next,’ with their arithmetic or mathematics.  These boys are, no doubt, going up to-morrow with their sums and figures.  Mr. Palmer and Mr. Thurtell in the boxes O. P.  Mr. Thurtell and Mr. Palmer in the boxes P. S.  The firm of Thurtell, Palmer, and Thurtell, in the boxes Centre.  A most odious tendency observable in these distinguished gentlemen to put vile constructions on sufficiently innocent phrases in the play, and then to applaud them in a Satyr-like manner.  Behind Mr. Goodchild, with a party of other Lunatics and one Keeper, the express incarnation of the thing called a ‘gent.’  A gentleman born; a gent manufactured.  A something with a scarf round its neck, and a slipshod speech issuing from behind the scarf; more depraved, more foolish, more ignorant, more unable to believe in any noble or good thing of any kind, than the stupidest Bosjesman.  The thing is but a boy in years, and is addled with drink.  To do its company justice, even its company is ashamed of it, as it drawls its slang criticisms on the representation, and inflames Mr. Goodchild with a burning ardour to fling it into the pit.  Its remarks are so horrible, that Mr. Goodchild, for the moment, even doubts whether that is a wholesome Art, which sets women apart on a high floor before such a thing as this, though as good as its own sisters, or its own mother—whom Heaven forgive for bringing it into the world!  But, the consideration that a low nature must make a low world of its own to live in, whatever the real materials, or it could no more exist than any of us could without the sense of touch, brings Mr. Goodchild to reason: the rather, because the thing soon drops its downy chin upon its scarf, and slobbers itself asleep.