The Yellowplush Papers | Page 4

my brexfast. But there was some amongst our
naybors (and let me tell you there's more kindness among them poor
disrepettable creaturs, than in half a dozen lords or barrynets) who took
pity upon poor Sal's orfin (for they bust out laffin when I called her
Miss Montmorency), and gev me bred and shelter. I'm afraid, in spite
of their kindness, that my MORRILS wouldn't have improved if I'd
stayed long among 'em. But a benny-violent genlmn saw me, and put

me to school. The academy which I went to was called the Free School
of Saint Bartholomew's the Less--the young genlmn wore green baize
coats, yellow leather whatsisnames, a tin plate on the left arm, and a
cap about the size of a muffing. I stayed there sicks years; from sicks,
that is to say, till my twelth year, during three years of witch I
distinguished myself not a little in the musicle way, for I bloo the bellus
of the church horgin, and very fine tunes we played too.
Well, it's not worth recounting my jewvenile follies (what trix we used
to play the applewoman! and how we put snuff in the old clark's
Prayer-book--my eye!); but one day, a genlmn entered the
school-room--it was on the very day when I went to subtraxion--and
asked the master for a young lad for a servant. They pitched upon me
glad enough; and nex day found me sleeping in the sculry, close under
the sink, at Mr. Bago's country-house at Pentonwille.
Bago kep a shop in Smithfield market, and drov a taring good trade in
the hoil and Italian way. I've heard him say, that he cleared no less than
fifty pounds every year by letting his front room at hanging time. His
winders looked right opsit Newgit, and many and many dozen chaps
has he seen hanging there. Laws was laws in the year ten, and they
screwed chaps' nex for nex to nothink. But my bisniss was at his
country-house, where I made my first ontray into fashnabl life. I was
knife, errint, and stable-boy then, and an't ashamed to own it; for my
merrits have raised me to what I am--two livries, forty pound a year,
malt-licker, washin, silk-stocking, and wax candles--not countin wails,
which is somethink pretty considerable at OUR house, I can tell you.
I didn't stay long here, for a suckmstance happened which got me a
very different situation. A handsome young genlmn, who kep a tilbry
and a ridin horse at livry, wanted a tiger. I bid at once for the place; and,
being a neat tidy-looking lad, he took me. Bago gave me a character,
and he my first livry; proud enough I was of it, as you may fancy.
My new master had some business in the city, for he went in every
morning at ten, got out of his tilbry at the Citty Road, and had it
waiting for him at six; when, if it was summer, he spanked round into
the Park, and drove one of the neatest turnouts there. Wery proud I was
in a gold-laced hat, a drab coat and a red weskit, to sit by his side, when
he drove. I already began to ogle the gals in the carridges, and to feel
that longing for fashionabl life which I've had ever since. When he was

at the oppera, or the play, down I went to skittles, or to White Condick
Gardens; and Mr. Frederic Altamont's young man was somebody, I
warrant: to be sure there is very few man-servants at Pentonwille, the
poppylation being mostly gals of all work; and so, though only fourteen,
I was as much a man down there, as if I had been as old as Jerusalem.
But the most singular thing was, that my master, who was such a gay
chap, should live in such a hole. He had only a ground-floor in John
Street--a parlor and a bedroom. I slep over the way, and only came in
with his boots and brexfast of a morning.
The house he lodged in belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Shum. They were a
poor but proliffic couple, who had rented the place for many years; and
they and their family were squeezed in it pretty tight, I can tell you.
Shum said he had been a hofficer, and so he had. He had been a
sub-deputy assistant vice-commissary, or some such think; and, as I
heerd afterwards, had been obliged to leave on account of his
NERVOUSNESS. He was such a coward, the fact is, that he was
considered dangerous to the harmy, and sent home.
He had married a widow Buckmaster, who had been a Miss Slamcoe.
She was a Bristol gal; and her father being a bankrup in the
tallow-chandlering way, left, in