Jarley's show, the delight
of the nobility and gentry of the day. "Gradually," said my friend to
me, "I discovered a process by which I might execute a deed of
separation. First, I rattled my stick against the area railings, and I
saw him wince; then I whistled an Ethiopian serenade, and 'o'er his face
a tablet of unutterable thoughts was traced'; but when I set my hat well
on the back of my head, and _gorped_ with open mouth at six legs of pork
in a butcher's shop, he fled, and I saw him no more."
Thus did my friend successfully assume the lineaments of a _gawk_, and
the deportment of a _gorby_, that he might evade the oppressive
attentions of a companion given to _gawster_. The enemy whom he so
adroitly dispersed bore a strong family likeness to a fraternal
nuisance, whom we recently inspected, being, in fact, a new edition, on
toned paper and elegantly bound, of the braggart, "Brawnging Bill," and
exhibiting the same feeble powers of resistance when his silly conceits
were thwarted. Honest men, hoping reformation, rejoice to see him slink
away, rejoice to see the _gawsterer_ subdued, as when Theodore Hook
rushed across Fleet Street to one, who was walking as proudly down it as
though the Bank of England was his counting-house and St. Paul's his
private Chapel, and, almost breathless with admiring awe, gasped his
anxious question--"O sir, O pray sir, may I ask, sir--are you anybody in
particular?" Certainly it is either a great amusement or a great
irritation (as the weather, or disposition, or digestion may influence),
to meet with persons in parks, promenades, esplanades, and spas who
ostensibly expect you to look at them in an ecstasy of wonder, as though
they were a sunset on Mont Blanc or the Balaklava Charge.
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