THE PICKWICK CLUB. 519
she died when my nncle was two years and seven months old, and I think it 's very likely that even without the gravel, his top-boots would have puzzled 'the good lady not a little, to say nothing of his jolly red face. However, there he lay, and I have heard my uncle say many a time that the man said who'picked him up that he was smiling as mer- rily as if he had tumbled out for a treat, and that after they had bled him, the tirst faint glimmerings of returning animation were, his jump- ing up in bed, bursting out into a loud laugh, kissing the young woman who held the basin, and demanding a mutton chop and a pickled walnut instantly. He was very fond of pickled walnuts, gentlemen. He said he always found that, taken without vinegar, they relished the beer.
- ' My uncle's great journey was in the fall of the leaf, at which time
he collected debts and took orders in the north : going from London to Edinburgh, from Edinburgh to Glasgow, from Glasgow back to Edinburgh, and thence to London by the smack. You are to under- stand that this second visit to Edinburgh was for his own pleasure. He used to go back for a week, just to look up his old friends ; and what with breakfasting with this one, and lunching with that, and dining with a third, and supping with another, a pretty tight week he used to make of it. I don't know whether any of you, gentlemen, ever partook of a real substantial hospitable Scotch breakfast, and then went out to a Blight lunch of a bushel of oysters, a dozen or so of bottled ale, and a noggin or two of whiskey to close up with. If you ever did, you will agree with me that it requires a pretty strong head to go out to dinner and supper afterwards.
" But, bless your hearts and eyebrows, all this sort of thing was nothing to my uncle. He was so well seasoned that it was mere child's play. I have heard him say that he could see the Dundee people out any day, and walk home afterwards without staggering ; and yet the Dundee people have as strong heads and as strong punch, gentle- men, as you are likely to meet with, between the poles. I have heard of a Glasgow man and a Dundee man drinking against each other for fifteen hours at a sitting. They were both suffocated as nearly as could be ascertained at the same moment, but with this trifling excep- tion, gentlemen, they were not a bit the worse for it.
" One night, within four-and-twenty hours of the time when he had settled to take shipping for London, my uncle supped at the house of a very old friend of his, a Baillie Mac something, and four syllables after it, who lived in the old town of Edinburgh. There were the baillie's wife, and the baillie's three daughters, and the baillie's grown-up son, and three or four stout, bushy-eye browed, canty old Scotch fellows that the baillie had got together to do honour to my uncle, and help to make merry. It was a glorious supper. There was kippered salmon, and Finnan haddocks, and a lamb's head, and a haggis ; a celebrated Scotch dish, gentleman, which my uncle used to say always looked to him, when it came to table, very much like a cupid's stomach ; and a great many other things besides, that I forget the names of, but very good things notwithstanding. The lassies were pretty and agreeable ; the baillie's wife one of the best creatures that
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