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- whole congregation seemed to know that I was a foreigner of
distinction.
It was sweet to hear the service read, the organ roll, the sermon
preached—just as the same things were going on three thousand five
hundred miles off, at home! But then, the prayer in behalf of her
majesty the Queen, somewhat threw me back. Nevertheless, I joined in
that prayer, and invoked for the lady the best wishes of a poor Yankee.
How I loved to sit in the holy hush of those brown old monastic aisles,
thinking of Harry the Eighth, and the Reformation! How I loved to go a
roving with my eye, all along the sculptured walls and buttresses;
winding in among the intricacies of the pendent ceiling, and wriggling
my fancied way like a wood-worm. I could have sat there all the morning
long, through noon, unto night. But at last the benediction would come;
and appropriating my share of it, I would slowly move away, thinking
how I should like to go home with some of the portly old gentlemen,
with high-polished boots and Malacca canes, and take a seat at their
cosy and comfortable dinner-tables. But, alas! there was no dinner for
me except at the sign of the Baltimore Clipper.
Yet the Sunday dinners that Handsome Mary served up were not to be
scorned. The roast beef of Old England abounded; and so did the
immortal plum-puddings, and the unspeakably capital gooseberry pies.
But to finish off with that abominable _“swipes”_ almost spoiled all
the rest: not that I myself patronized _“swipes”_ but my shipmates did;
and every cup I saw them drink, I could not choose but taste in
imagination, and even then the flavor was bad.
On Sundays, at dinner-time, as, indeed, on every other day, it was
curious to watch the proceedings at the sign of the Clipper. The
servant girls were running about, mustering the various crews, whose
dinners were spread, each in a separate apartment; and who were
collectively known by the names of their ships.
“Where are the _Arethusas?—_Here’s their beef been smoking this
half-hour.”—“Fly, Betty, my dear, here come the _Splendids.”—_ “Run,
Molly, my love; get the salt-cellars for the _Highlanders_ .”—“You
Peggy, where’s the _Siddons’ pickle-pat?”—“I_ say, Judy, are you never
coming with that pudding for the _Lord Nelsons?”_
On week days, we did not fare quite so well as on Sundays; and once we
came to dinner, and found two enormous bullock hearts smoking at each
end of the Highlanders’ table. Jackson was indignant at the outrage.
He always sat at the head of the table; and this time he squared
himself on his bench, and erecting his knife and fork like flag-staffs,
so as to include the two hearts between them, he called out for Danby,
the boarding-house keeper; for although his wife Mary was in fact at
the head of the establishment, yet Danby himself always came in for the
fault-findings.
Danby obsequiously appeared, and stood in the doorway, well knowing the
philippics that were coming. But he was not prepared for the peroration
of Jackson’s address to him; which consisted of the two bullock hearts,
snatched bodily off the dish, and flung at his head, by way of a
recapitulation of the preceding arguments. The company then broke up in
disgust, and dined elsewhere.
Though I almost invariably attended church on Sunday mornings, yet the
rest of the day I spent on my travels; and it was on one of these
afternoon strolls, that on passing through St. George’s-square, I found
myself among a large crowd, gathered near the base of George the
Fourth’s equestrian statue.
The people were mostly mechanics and artisans in their holiday clothes;
but mixed with them were a good many soldiers, in lean, lank, and
dinnerless undresses, and sporting attenuated rattans. These troops
belonged to the various regiments then in town. Police officers, also,
were conspicuous in their uniforms. At first perfect silence and
decorum prevailed.
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