Page:Fitzgerald - Pickwickian manners and customs (1897).djvu/17

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
PICKWICKIAN MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
11

through the day. There are no elopements now in chaises and four, like Miss Wardle's, with headlong pursuit in other chaises and four; nor are special licenses issued at a moment's notice to help clandestine marriages. There is now no frequenting of taverns and "free and easies" by gentlemen,' at the "Magpie and Stump" and such places, nor do persons of means take up their residence at houses like the "George and Vulture" in the City. No galleried inns (though one still lingers on in Holborn), are there, at which travellers put up: there were then nearly a dozen, in the Borough and elsewhere. There are no coaches on the great roads, no guards and bulky drivers; no gigs with hoods, called "cabs," with the driver's seat next his fare; no "hackney coaches," no "Hampstead stages," no "Stanhopes" or "guillotined cabriolets"—whatever they were—or "mail-carts," the "pwettiest thing" driven by gentlemen. And there are no "sedan chairs" to take Mrs. Dowler home.