The Seven Poor Travellers | Page 6

sounded by another, and drinks that I
make myself are those strings in mine.
The Travellers were all assembled, the cloth was laid, and Ben had brought a great billet
of wood, and had laid it artfully on the top of the fire, so that a touch or two of the poker
after supper should make a roaring blaze. Having deposited my brown beauty in a red
nook of the hearth, inside the fender, where she soon began to sing like an ethereal
cricket, diffusing at the same time odours as of ripe vineyards, spice forests, and orange
groves,--I say, having stationed my beauty in a place of security and improvement, I
introduced myself to my guests by shaking hands all round, and giving them a hearty
welcome.
I found the party to be thus composed. Firstly, myself. Secondly, a very decent man
indeed, with his right arm in a sling, who had a certain clean agreeable smell of wood
about him, from which I judged him to have something to do with shipbuilding. Thirdly,
a little sailor-boy, a mere child, with a profusion of rich dark brown hair, and deep
womanly-looking eyes. Fourthly, a shabby-genteel personage in a threadbare black suit,
and apparently in very bad circumstances, with a dry suspicious look; the absent buttons
on his waistcoat eked out with red tape; and a bundle of extraordinarily tattered papers
sticking out of an inner breast-pocket. Fifthly, a foreigner by birth, but an Englishman in
speech, who carried his pipe in the band of his hat, and lost no time in telling me, in an
easy, simple, engaging way, that he was a watchmaker from Geneva, and travelled all
about the Continent, mostly on foot, working as a journeyman, and seeing new

countries,--possibly (I thought) also smuggling a watch or so, now and then. Sixthly, a
little widow, who had been very pretty and was still very young, but whose beauty had
been wrecked in some great misfortune, and whose manner was remarkably timid, scared,
and solitary. Seventhly and lastly, a Traveller of a kind familiar to my boyhood, but now
almost obsolete,--a Book-Pedler, who had a quantity of Pamphlets and Numbers with him,
and who presently boasted that he could repeat more verses in an evening than he could
sell in a twelvemonth.
All these I have mentioned in the order in which they sat at table. I presided, and the
matronly presence faced me. We were not long in taking our places, for the supper had
arrived with me, in the following procession:
Myself with the pitcher. Ben with Beer. Inattentive Boy with hot plates. Inattentive Boy
with hot plates. THE TURKEY. Female carrying sauces to be heated on the spot. THE
BEEF. Man with Tray on his head, containing Vegetables and Sundries. Volunteer
Hostler from Hotel, grinning, And rendering no assistance.
As we passed along the High Street, comet-like, we left a long tail of fragrance behind us
which caused the public to stop, sniffing in wonder. We had previously left at the corner
of the inn-yard a wall-eyed young man connected with the Fly department, and well
accustomed to the sound of a railway whistle which Ben always carries in his pocket,
whose instructions were, so soon as he should hear the whistle blown, to dash into the
kitchen, seize the hot plum-pudding and mince-pies, and speed with them to Watts's
Charity, where they would be received (he was further instructed) by the sauce-female,
who would be provided with brandy in a blue state of combustion.
All these arrangements were executed in the most exact and punctual manner. I never
saw a finer turkey, finer beef, or greater prodigality of sauce and gravy;--and my
Travellers did wonderful justice to everything set before them. It made my heart rejoice
to observe how their wind and frost hardened faces softened in the clatter of plates and
knives and forks, and mellowed in the fire and supper heat. While their hats and caps and
wrappers, hanging up, a few small bundles on the ground in a corner, and in another
corner three or four old walking-sticks, worn down at the end to mere fringe, linked this
smug interior with the bleak outside in a golden chain.
When supper was done, and my brown beauty had been elevated on the table, there was a
general requisition to me to "take the corner;" which suggested to me comfortably
enough how much my friends here made of a fire,--for when had I ever thought so highly
of the corner, since the days when I connected it with Jack Horner? However, as I
declined, Ben, whose touch on all convivial instruments is perfect, drew the table apart,
and instructing my Travellers to open right and left on either side of me, and form