Chapter 49 - Page 2

wouldn't. for she died when my uncle 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 merrily as if he had
tumbled out for a treat, and that after they had bled him, the
first faint glimmerings of returning animation, were his jumping
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. 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 understand that his 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,
lunching with that, dining with the 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 slight 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, gentlemen, 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 exception, 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 Bailie Mac something and
four syllables after it, who lived in the old town of Edinburgh.
There were the bailie's wife, and the bailie's three daughters, and
the bailie's grown-up son, and three or four stout,