The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 188: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE STEAM PACKET. 139 - ment with such interest that the commissioner sprawled back upon the floor. In a moment the other inmates of the tavern crowded to the spot; and the two belligerents commenced a desperate assault upon - each other’s persons, “* De jewel ts one far play !” ee the Frenchman, taking off his coat and tucking up his shirt-sleeves: ‘‘1 go fight in de true English fashion!””—and with these words he eommenced spares away like. clock-work. Tom Gibbins was soon ready for his opponent’ and the Frenchman speedily met with very severe chastisement. But he was not the man to back out of anything; and concentrating all his powers, he suddenly stooped his head and butted against Mr. Gibbins with the fury of a _ wild bull. The confidential domestic of Captain Pentonville, not being proof against this strange system of warfare, was completely overturned ; and for some moments he lay senseless upon the floor. Butan English mechanic (engaged in the lace-weaving trade at Gravelines) who hap- pened to be present, speedily applied vinegar to the nose and temples of Mr. Gibbins, whereby he was recovered ; and after a little parley he and the commissioner shook hands. They then sate down together, with their new acquaintance the mechanic, and, in the expressive language of the latter gentleman, “sluiced their ivories” with such good effect, that the public room speedily turned round, as if it moved upon a pivot. The last reverberation of the last sound from the last stroke of the old town-clock of Gravelines faintly and fearfully proclaimed that the first minute of the fourth had succeeded the third hour of the morn- ing. The tavern had long been locked up, and its keeper laid down. Here and there, upon the sanded floor, lay the deserted remnants of the half-consumed cigar; and the finger of incipient genius—some future Arrowsmith—had traced sundry liquid maps, with little ponds of wasted grog, upon the variegated surface of the table. _ How~frequently do we discover the magnificence of the future in the insignificance of the present! By some strange mistake, the chisel that would have rivalled Chantrey, has chipped stones in a work- house ;—an infant Lawrence has become .an adroit white-washer ;— some baby Byron is among the English bards that make a pilgrimage to New South Wales; and the little elegant exercises in the drawings of grog upon the table at the Gravelines public-house, proved that refinement of intellect, though immature, is not mcompatible with vulgarity, and may sometimes appertain to those who, in Lord Chesterfield’s select words, ‘‘ make swill-tubs of their stomachs.” We cannot say that such were precisely the ideas of Mr. Thomas Gomicbooks (E©)