 section 27 of the Engelsby Legends first series. It has been already hinted that Mr. Peters had been a traveler in his day. The only story which his lady would ever allow her pee to finish, he began as many as would furnish an additional volume to the Thousand and One Nights, is the last I shall offer. The subject, I fear me, is not overnew, but will remind my friends of something better they have seen before. Mr. Peters' story, The Bagman's Dog, Stunt Littori Puppies. Virgil. It was a litter, a litter of five, four are drowned, and one left alive. He was thought worthy alone to survive, and the Bagman resolved upon bringing him up to eat of his bread and drink of his cup. He was such a dear little cocktailed pup. The Bagman taught him many a trick. He would carry and fetch and run after a stick, would well understand the word of command, and appeared to doze with a crust on his nose, till the Bagman permissively waved his hand. Then to throw up and catch it he never would fail, as he sat up on end on his little cocktail. Never was Puppies so bien instrui, or possessed of such natural talent as he. And as he grew older, every beholder, agreed he grew handsomer, sleeker, and bolder. Time, however, his wheels we may clog, wends steadily still with onward jog, and the cocktailed Puppies a curly-tailed dog, when just at the time he was reaching his prime, and all thought he'd be turning out something sublime. One unlucky day, how no one could say, whether soft liaison induced him to stray, or some kidnapping vagabond coaxed him away, he was lost to the view, like the morning dew, he had been and was not, that's all that they knew. And the Bagman stormed, and the Bagman swore, as never a Bagman had sworn before, but storming or swearing, but little avails, to recover lost dogs with great curly tails. In a large paved court close by Billeter Square stands a mansion, old but in thorough repair. The only thing strange from the general air, of its size and appearance, is how it got there. In front is a short semi-circular stair, of stone steps some half-score, then you reach the ground floor, with a shell-patterned architrave over the door. It is spacious and seems to be built on the plan, of the gentleman's house in the reign of Queen Anne, which is odd for all though, as we very well know. Under tutors and stewards the city could show, many noblemans seats above bridge and below, yet that fashion soon after induced them to go, from St. Michael Cornhill and St. Mary LeBeau, to St. James and St. George and St. Anne in Soho. Be this as it may at the date I assign, to my tale, that's about 1769. This mansion now rather upon the decline, had less dignified owners belonging in fine, to Turner Dry Wiperside Rogers and Pine, a respectable house in the Manchester line. There were a score of Bagman and Moore, who had travelled full off for the firm before, but just at this period they wanted to send, some person on whom they could safely depend, a trustworthy body, half-agent, half-friend, on some mercantile matter as far as Ostend, and the person they pitched on was Anthony Blogg, a grave-steady man not addicted to grog, the Bagman in short, who had lost this great dog. The sea, the sea, the open sea, that is the place where we all wish to be, rolling about on it merrily, so all sing and say, by night and by day, in the boudoir, the street, at the concert and play, in a sort of cox-comical rondeau, you may roam through the city transversely or straight, from White Chapel turnpipe to Cumberland gate, and every young lady who thrums a guitar, every mustachioed shopman who smokes a cigar, with affected devotion, promulgates his notion of being a rover and child of the ocean, what ere their aged sex or condition may be, they all of them long for the wide, wide sea. But however they dote, only set them afloat, in any craft bigger at all than a boat, take them down to the nor, and you'll see that before, the vessel they voyage in has made half her way, between Chalnes Point and the pier at Hearn Bay, let the wind meet the tide in the slightest degree, they'll be all of them heartily sick of the sea. I've stood in margate on a bridge of size, inferior far to that described by Byron, where palaces and prisons on each hand rise, that twos a stone one, this is made of iron, and little donkey-boys your steps in Byron, each proffering for your choice his tiny hack, founting his excellence, and should you hire one, for six pence will he urge, with frequent black, the much-enduring beast to harness ours and back, and there on many a raw and gusty day, I've stood and turned my gaze upon the pier, and seen the crews that did embark so gay, that self-same morn, now disembark so queer, then to myself I've sighed and said, O dear, who would believe, beyond sickly-looking manza, London jack-tar, a cheapside buccaneer, but hold my muse, for this terrific stanza is all too stiffly grand for our extravaganza. So now we'll go up, up, up, and now we'll go down, down, down, and now we'll go backwards and forwards, and now we'll go round, round, round. I hope you've sufficient discernment to see, gentle reader, that here the discarding, the D, is a fault which you must not attribute to me. Thus my nurse cut it off, when with counterfeit glee, she sung as she danced me about on her knee. In the year of our Lord, eighteen hundred and three, all I mean to say is, that the muse is now free, from the self-imposed trammels put on by her betters, and no longer like filch, midst the felons and debtors, at true relain dances her hornpipe in fetters, resuming her track, at once she goes back, to our hero the bagman, a lass and a lac. Poor Anthony Blogg is as sick as a dog, spite of sundry unwanted potations of grog, by the time the Dutch packet is barely at sea, with the sands called the Goodwinds a league on her lee. And now, my good friends, I've a fine opportunity to obfuscate you all by sea terms with impunity, and talking of caulking, and quarter-deck walking, fore-and-aft and abaft, hooker's barkies and craft, at which Mr. Pool has so wickedly laughed, of binnacles, billbows, the boom called the spanker, the best bower-cable, the jib and sheet-anchor, of lower-deck guns, and of broadsides and chases, of taff rails and topsails and splicing main braces, and shiver-my-timbers and other odd phrases, employed by old pilots with hard-featured faces, of the expletives seafaring gentlemen use, the illusions they make to the eyes of their crews, how the sailors too swear, how they cherish their hair, and what very long pigtails a great many wear. But reader I scorn it, the fact is I fear. To be candid I can't make these matters so clear, as Mariat or Cooper or Captain Shamir, or Sir E. Littenbore, who brought up the rear of binnacles just at the end of the year, 1839, how time flies, O dear, with a well-written preface to make it appear, that his play the sea-captains, by no means small-beer, there brought up the rear, you see there's a mistake, which none of the authors I've mentioned would make. I ought to have said that he sailed in their wake, so I'll merely observe as the water grew rougher, the more my poor hero continued to suffer, till the sailors themselves cried in pity, poor buffer, still rougher it grew, and still harder it blew, and the thunder kicked up such a hallowed blue, that even the skipper began to look blue, while the crew, who were few, looked very queer too, and seemed not to know what exactly to do, and they who'd the charge of them wrote in the logs, Wind and E blows a hurricane, rains, cats, and dogs, in short it soon grew to a tempest as rude as, that Shakespeare describes near the still vexed Bermudas. Note, see appendix, when the winds in their sport drove aside from its port, the king's ship with the whole Neapolitan court, and swamped it to give the king's son Ferdinanda soft moment or two with the lady Miranda. While her pa met the rest and severely rebuked him, for unhandsomely doing him out of his duptum, you don't want me, however, to paint you a storm, as so many have done, and in colors so warm, Lord Byron for instance, in man or facetious, Mr. Ainsworth more gravely, see also Lucretius, a writer who gave me no trifling vexation, when a youngster at school on Dean Collett's foundation, suffice it to say, that the whole of that day, and the next, and the next, they were scutting away, quite out of their course, propelled by the force of those flatulent folks known in classical storias. Aquillo-Libs notice Ulster and Boreas, driven quite at their mercy, twist Guernsey and Jersey, till at length they came bump on the rocks and the shallows. In West Longitude 157 near St. Mallows, there you'd not be surprised that the vessel capsized, or that blog who had made, from intestine commotions, his specific gravity less than the oceans, should go floating away, midst the surges and spray, like a cork in a gutter, which swum by a shower, runs down Holborn Hill, about nine knots an hour. You've seen I've no doubt at Bartholomew Fair, gentle reader, that is, if you've ever been there, with their hands tied behind them, some two or three pair, of boys round a bucket set up on a chair, skipping and dipping, eyes, nose, chin and lip in, their faces and hair with the water all dripping, in an anxious attempt to catch hold of a pippin, that bobs up and down in the water whenever, they touch it as mocking the fruitless endeavor, exactly as poets say, how though they can't tell us, old Nyx non-Parees play at Bob with Hortan tell us. Stay, I'm not clear, but I'm rather out here, it was the water itself that slipped from him I fear, faith I can't recollect, and I haven't lempereer. No matter, poor blog went on ducking and bobbing, sneezing out the salt water and gulping and sobbing, just as Clarence in Shakespeare describes all the qualms he, experienced while dreaming they'd drowned him in Malmsey. Oh Lord, he thought, what pain it was to drown, and saw great fishes with great goggling eyes, glaring as he was bobbing up and down, and looking as they thought him quite a prize, when as he sank, and all was growing dark, thus something seized him with its jaws, a shark? No such thing, reader, most opportunely for blog, it was a very large web-footed, curly-tailed dog. I'm not much of a traveller, and really can't boast, that I know a great deal of the Brittany coast, but I've often heard say, that in to this day, the people of Granville, St. Malo's and thereabout, are a class that society doesn't much care about, men who gain a subsistence by contraband dealing, and a mode of abstraction, strict people call stealing, notwithstanding all which, they are civil of speech, above all to a stranger who comes within reach, and they were soaked at log, when the curly-tailed dog, at last dragged him out high and dry on the beach, but we all have been told by the proverb of old, by no means to think all that glitters is gold, and in fact, some advance, that most people in France, join the manners and air of a matra to dance, to the morals, as Johnson of Chesterfield said, of an elderly lady in Babylon bread, much addicted to flirting and dressing in red, be this as it might, it embarrassed blog quite, to find bows about him so very polite, a suspicious observer perhaps might have traced, the petty swan tendered with so much good taste, to the sight of an old fashioned pocket-book placed, in a black leather belt well secured round his waist, and a ring set with diamonds his finger that graced, so brilliant no one could have guessed they were paced, the group on the shore consisted of four, you will wonder perhaps there were not a few more, but the fact is they've not, in that part of the nation, what Malthus would term a too dense population. Indeed the sole sign there of man's habitation, was merely a single rude hut, in a dingle, that led away inland, direct from the shingle, its sides clothed with underwood, gloomy and dark, some two hundred yards above high water mark, and wither the party, so cordial and hardy, viz an old man his wife and two lads made a starty, the bagman proceeding, with equal good breeding, to express in indifferent French all he feels, the great curly-tailed dog keeping close to his heels, they soon reached the hut which seemed partly in ruin, all the way-bowing chattering shrugging, mone-doing, grimacing and what sailors call parley-vooing. Is it Paris or Kitchener, reader, exorts, you, whenever your stomachs, at all out of sorts? To try if you find richer vians won't stop in it, a basin of good mutton broth with a chop in it, such a basin and chop as I once heard a witty one, call at the garak a cursed committee one, an expression I own I do not think a pretty one, however it's clear that with sound table-beer, such a mess as I speak of is very good cheer, especially, too, when a person's wet through and is hungry and tired and don't know what to do. Now just such a mess of delicious hot pot-age was smoking away when they entered the cottage and casting a truly delicious perfume through the whole of an ugly old ill-furnished room, hot smoking hot on the fire was a pot, well replenished, but really I can't say with what, for famed as the French always are for ragus, no creature can tell what they put in their stews, whether bullfrogs, old gloves, or old wigs, or old shoes, not withstanding when offered I rarely refuse, any more than poor blog did when seeing the reiki repast placed before him, scarce able to speak he, in ecstasy muttered, by Jove cocky leaky, in an instant as soon as they gave him a spoon, every feeling and faculty bent on the gruel he, no more blamed fortune for treating him cruelly, but fell tooth and nail on the soup and the bully, meanwhile that old man standing by, subducted his long coat-tails on high, with his back to the fire as if to dry, a part of his dress which the watery sky had visited rather inclemently, blandly he smiled, but still he looked sly, and a something sinister lurked in his eye. Indeed had you seen him his maritime dress in, you'd have owned his appearance was not prepossessing, he'd a dread-knot coat and heavy sabose, with thick wooden soles turned up at the toes, his netherman cased in a striped kelka-shows, and a hump on his back and a great hooked nose, so that nine out of ten would be led to suppose that the person before them was punch in plain clothes, yet still as I told you he smiled on all present, and did all that lay in his power to look pleasant, the old woman, too, made a mighty adieu, helping her guest to a deal of the stew. She fished up the meat and she helped him to that. She helped him to lean and she helped him to fat, and it looked like hair that it might have been cat. The little garçon, too strove to express their sympathy towards the child of distress, with a great deal of juvenile French polietesse, but the bagman bluff continued to stuff of the fat and the lean and the tender and tough, till they thought he would never cry hold enough, and the old woman's tones became far less agriable. Sounding like pest and sacré and diable, I've seen an old saw which is well worth repeating, that says good eating, deserveeth good drinking. You'll find it so printed by carton or winking, and a very good proverb it is to my thinking. Blogg thought so, too, as he finished his stew. His ear caught the sound of the word, more blue, pronounced by the old woman under her breath, now not knowing what she could mean by blue death. He conceived she referred to a delicate ruin, which is almost synonymous, namely, blue ruin. So he pursed up his lip to a smile and with glee, in his cocknified accent, responded O. V., which made her understand he was asking for brandy, so she turned to the cupboard, and having some handy, produced rightly deeming he would not object to it, an orbicular bulb with a very long neck to it. In fact you perceive her mistake was the same as his, each of them reasoning right from wrong premises, and here by the way, allow me to say, kind reader, you sometimes permit me to stray, to strange the French prove when they take to a spursing, so inferior to us in the science of cursing, kick a Frenchman downstairs how absurdly he swears, and how odd it is to hear him, when beat to a jelly, roar out in a passion, blue death, and blue belly, to return to our sheep from this little digression. Doug's features assumed a complacent expression, as he emptied his glass and she gave him a freshen. Too little he heeded, how fast they succeeded, perhaps your eye might have done, though as he did, for when once Madam Fortune deals out her hard raps, it's amazing to think how one cottons to drink, at such times of all things in nature perhaps. There's not one that is half so seducing as Schnapps. Mr. Blog, beside being uncommonly dry, was like most other bag men, remarkably shy, did not like to deny, felt obliged to comply, every time that she asked him to wet to the eye. Fort was worthy remark that she spared not the soup, though before she had seemed so to grudge him the soup. At length the fumes rose, to his brain and his nose, gave hints of a strong disposition to doze, and a yearning to seek horizontal repose. His queer-looking host, who firm at his post, during all the long meal had continued to toast, that garment were rude to, do more than allude to, perceived from his breathing and nodding the views, of his guest were directed to taking a snooze. So he caught up a lamp in his huge dirty paw, with, as Blog used to tell it, Moonsir Swibimaw, and marshaled him so, the way he should go, upstairs to an attic large gloomy and low, without table or chair, or a movable there, save an old-fashioned bedstead much out of repair, that stood at the end most removed from the stair. With a grin and a shrug, the host points to the rug, just as much as to say, There I think you'll be snug, puts the light on the floor, walks to the door, makes a formal salam, and is then seen no more, when just as the ear lost the sound of his tread, to the bagman's surprise, and at first to his dread, the great curly-tailed dog crept from under the bed. It's a very nice thing when a man's in a fright, and thinks matters all wrong, to find matters all right, as for instance when going home lateish at night, through a churchyard and seeing a thing all in white, which of course one is led to consider a sprite, to find that the ghost is merely a post, or a miller, or chalky-faced donkey at most, or when taking a walk, as the evenings begin, to close, or as some people call it, draw in, and some undefined form, looming large through the haze, presents itself right in your path to your gaze, inducing a dread of a knock on the head, or a severed carotid, to find that instead of one of those roughians who murder and fleecemen, it's your uncle, or one of the rural policemen, then the blood flows again, through artery and vein. You're delighted with what just before gave you pain. You laugh at your fears, and your friend in the fog meets a welcome as cordial as Anthony Blog, now bestowed on his friend, the great curly-tailed dog, for the dog leaped up and his paws found a place on each side his neck in a canine embrace, and he licked Blog's hands and he licked his face, and he waggled his tail as much as to say, Mr. Blog, we foregathered before today, and the bagman saw as he now sprang up, what beyond all doubt he might have found out, before had he not been so eager to sup. To a sancho, the dog he had reared from a pup, the dog who, when sinking, has seized his hair, the dog who had saved and conducted him there, the dog he had lost out of Billet Square. It's passing sweet, an absolute treat, when friends long severed by distance meet, with what warmth and affection each other they greet, especially to, as we very well know, if there seems any chance of a little cadeau, a present from Brighton or Token, to show, in the shape of a work-box ring bracelet or so, that our friends don't forget us, although they may go, to Ramsgate or Rome or Fernando Poe. If some little advantage seems likely to start, from a fifty-pound note to a tuppany tart, it's surprising to see how it softens the heart, and you'll find those whose hopes from the other are strongest, use in common endearments the thickest and longest. But it was not so here, for although it is clear, when abroad and we have not a single friend near, he necour that will love us becomes very dear, and the balance of interest twitched him and the dog, of course was inclining to Anthony Blogg. Yet he first of all ceased to encourage the beast, perhaps thinking enough is as good as a feast, and besides, as we've said, being sleepy and mellow, he grew tired of patting and crying poor fellow, so his smile by degrees hardened into a frown, and his that's a good dog, into down sancho down, but nothing could stop his mute favourites caressing, who in fact seemed resolved to prevent his undressing, using paws, tail, and head, as if he had said, Beloved of Masters, pray don't go to bed. You had much better sit up and pat me instead. Nay at last, when determined to take some repose, Blogg threw himself down on the outside the clothes. Despite of all he could do, the dog jumped up too, and kept him awake with his very cold nose, scratching and whining and moaning and pining, till Blogg really believed he must have some design in, thus breaking his rest, above all when at length, the dog scratched him off from the bed by sheer strength, extremely annoyed by the tarnation opposite, scald in Kentucky on his head and its opposite. Blogg showed fight when he saw by the light of the flickering candle that had not yet quite, burnt down in the socket, though not over bright, certain dark-colored stains as a blood newly spilt, revealed by the dogs having scratched off the quilt, which hinted a story of horror and guilt. T'was no mistake, he was wide awake, in an instant, for when only decently drunk, nothing sobers a man so completely as funk. And Hark, what's that? They have got into chat, in the kitchen below. What the deuce are they at? There's the ugly old fisherman scolding his wife and she by the pope. She's wetting a knife at each twist of her wrist and her great mutton fist. The edge of the weapon sounds shriller and louder. The fierce kitchen fire had not made Blogg perspire, have so much or a dose of the best James powder. It ceases all silent and now I declare there's somebody crawls up that rickety stair. The horrid old ruffian comes cat-like creepin'. He opens the door just sufficient to peep in and sees as he fancies the bagman, sleepin' for Blogg when he'd once ascertained that there was some. Precious mischief on foot had resolved to play possum. Down he went, legs and head, flat on the bed, apparently sleeping as sound as the dead, while though none who looked at him would think such a thing. Every nerve in his frame was braced up for a spring, then just as the villain crept stealthily still in, and you'd not have ensured his guest's life for a shilling, as the knife gleamed on high, bright and sharp as a razor. Blogg's starting upright tipped the fellow a facer. Down went man and weapon, of all sorts of blows. From what Mr. Jackson reports, I suppose, there are few that surpass a flush hit on the nose. Now had I the pen of old Ossian or Homer, though each of these names some pronounce a misnomer, and say the first person was called James MacPherson, while as to the second they stoutly declare, he was no one knows who, and borne no one knows where, or had I the quill of Pierce Egan, a writer, acknowledged the best theoretical fighter for the last twenty years by the lively young Piers, who doffing their coronets, collars, and ermine treat, boxers to Max at the one-ton in German Street. I say could I borrow these gentlemen's muses, more skilled than my meek one in fibbing's and bruises. I'd describe now to you, as prime a set two, and regular turn-up, as ever you knew, not inferior in bottom to ought you have read off, since crib years ago, half not Malino's head off, but my dainty Urania says such things are shocking, lace mitten she loves, detesting, the gloves, and turning with air most disdainfully mocking, from Melpomani's buskin adopts the silk stocking. So as far as I can see, I must leave you to fancy, the thumps and the bumps and the ups and the downs, and the taps and the slaps and the wraps on the crowns, that past twix the husband, wife, bagman, and dog. As Blogg rolled over them, and they rolled over Blogg, while what's called the claret, flew over the garret, merely stating the fact, as each other they whacked, the dog his old master most gallantly backed, making both the garçon who came running in sheer off, with Ipollit's thumb and Alphonse's left ear off, next making a stupon, the buffeting groupon, the floor rent in tatters the old woman's jupon, then the old man turned up, and a fresh bite of Sancho's tore out the whole seat of his striped calamankos. Really which way this desperate fray might have ended at last, I'm not able to say, the dog keeping thus the assassins at bay, but a few fresh arrivals decided the day, for bounce went the door. Then came half a score of the passengers, sailors, and one or two more, who had aided the party in gaining the shore. It's a great many years ago, mine then were few, since I spent a short time in old Courageux. I think that they say she had been in her day, a first rate, but was then what they termed a rase, and they took me on board in the Downs where she lay. Captain Wilkinson held the command by the way. In her I picked up on that single occasion, the little I know that concerns navigation, and obtained into Alia some vague information of a practice which often in cases of robbing is adopted on shipboard, I think it's called cobbing, how it's managed exactly I really can't say, but I think that a bootjack is brought into play. That is, if I'm right, it exceeds my ability, to tell how tis done, but the system is one, of which Sancho's exploit would increase the facility. And from all I can learn, I'd much rather be robbed, of the little I have in my purse than be cobbed. That's mere matter of taste, but the Frenchman was placed. I mean the old scoundrel whose actions we've traced. In such a position, that on this unmasking, his consent was the last thing the men thought of asking, the old woman too, was obliged to go through, with her boys, the rough discipline used by the crew, who before they let one of the set see the back of them, cobbed the whole party, I, every man, jack of them. Moral. And now, gentle reader, before that I say, farewell for the present, and wish you good day. Attend to the moral I draw from my lay. If ever you travel, like Anthony Blog, be wary of strangers. Don't take too much grog. And don't fall asleep, if you should, like a hog. Above all, carry with you a curly-tailed dog. Lastly don't act like Blog, who I say it with blushing. Sold Sancho next month for two guineas at flushing. But still on these words of the bard keep a fixed eye. In Gratum see Dixarys omnia dixty. L'envoi. I felt so disgusted with Blog, from sheer shame of him. I never once thought to inquire what became of him. If you want to know reader the way I opine, to achieve your design, mind its no wish of mine, is a penny will doot, by addressing a line, to turner, dry wiper side, rogers, and pine. End of Section 27 Section 28 of the Inglesby Legends, first series, this leper-box recording is in the public domain. The Inglesby Legends, first series by Richard Harris Barum. Appendix. Since penning the stanza, a learned antiquary, has put my poor muse in no trifling quandary, by writing an essay to prove that he knows a spot which in truth is the real Bermuthus, in the Mediterranean, now called Lampedosa, for proofs having made as he farther alleges stir, an entry was found in the old parish register. The witch at his instance, the excellent Vicar X, tracted Vizcaliban, base son of Sycorax. He had rather by half have found Prospero's staff, but was useless to dig for the wand of a Pycorax. Colonel Paisley, however, tis everywhere said, now he's blown up the old royal George at Spithead, and the great cliff at Dover, of which we've all read, takes his whole apparatus and goes out to look, and see if he can't try and blow up the book. Gentle reader, farewell. If I add one more line, he'll be, in all likelihood, blowing up mine. End of Section 28. End of the Inglesby Legends, first series.