What Will He Do With It

What Will He Do With It, by
Lytton, Complete

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Title: What Will He Do With It, Complete
Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Release Date: March 2005 [EBook #7671] [Yes, we are more than one

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WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT
BY
"PISISTRATUS CAXTON"
(LORD LYTTON)
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
In which the history opens with a description of the social manners,
habits, and amusements of the English People, as exhibited in an
immemorial National Festivity.--Characters to be commemorated in the
history, introduced and graphically portrayed, with a nasological

illustration.--Original suggestions as to the idiosyncrasies engendered
by trades and callings, with other matters worthy of note, conveyed in
artless dialogue after the manner of Herodotus, Father of History
(mother unknown).
It was a summer fair in one of the prettiest villages in Surrey. The main
street was lined with booths, abounding in toys, gleaming crockery, gay
ribbons, and gilded ginger bread. Farther on, where the street widened
into the ample village-green, rose the more pretending fabrics which
lodged the attractive forms of the Mermaid, the Norfolk Giant; the
Pig-faced Lady, the Spotted Boy, and the Calf with Two Heads; while
high over even these edifices, and occupying the most conspicuous
vantage- ground, a lofty stage promised to rural playgoers the "Grand
Melodramatic Performance of The Remorseless Baron and the Bandit's
Child." Music, lively if artless, resounded on every side,--drums, fifes,
penny- whistles, cat-calls, and a hand-organ played by a dark foreigner,
from the height of whose shoulder a cynical but observant monkey
eyed the hubbub and cracked his nuts.
It was now sunset,--the throng at the fullest,--an animated, joyous scene.
The, day had been sultry; no clouds were to be seen, except low on the
western horizon, where they stretched, in lengthened ridges of gold and
purple, like the border-land between earth and sky. The tall elms on the
green were still, save, near the great stage, one or two, upon which had
climbed young urchins, whose laughing faces peered forth, here and
there, from the foliage trembling under their restless movements.
Amidst the crowd, as it streamed saunteringly along, were two
spectators; strangers to the place, as was notably proved by the
attention they excited, and the broad jokes their dress and appearance
provoked from the rustic wits,--jokes which they took with amused
good-humour, and sometimes retaliated with a zest which had already
made them very popular personages. Indeed, there was that about them
which propitiated liking. They were young; and the freshness of
enjoyment was so visible in their faces, that it begot a sympathy, and
wherever they went, other faces brightened round them.
One of the two whom we have thus individualized was of that enviable

age, ranging from five-and-twenty to seven-and-twenty, in which, if a
man cannot contrive to make life very pleasant,--pitiable indeed must
be the state of his digestive organs. But you might see by this
gentleman's countenance that if there were many like him, it would be a
worse world for the doctors. His cheek, though not highly coloured,
was yet ruddy and clear; his hazel eyes were lively and keen; his hair,
which escaped in loose clusters from a jean shooting-cap set jauntily on
a well-shaped head, was of that deep sunny auburn rarely seen but in
persons of vigorous and hardy temperament. He was good-looking on
the whole, and would have deserved the more flattering epithet of
handsome, but for his nose, which was what the French call "a nose in
the air,"--not a nose