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As to clothes, when I reached Hampton I had practically nothing. Everything that I possessed was in a small hand satchel. My anxiety about clothing was increased because of the fact that General Armstrong made a personal inspection of the young men in ranks, to see that their clothes were clean. Shoes had to be polished, there must be no buttons off the clothing, and no grease-spots.
If you meet a man, lounging up Drury-Lane, or leaning with his back against a post in Long-acre, with his hands in the pockets of a pair of drab trousers plentifully besprinkled with grease-spots: the trousers made very full over the boots, and ornamented with two cords down the outside of each leg—wearing, also, what has been a brown coat with bright buttons, and a hat very much pinched up at the side, cocked over his right eye—don’t pity him.
Though his clothes were now so nice, his nails were not quite clean, and his fingertips seemed yellow to the bone. An anaemic waiter in a shirt some four days old, with grease-spots on his garments and a crumpled napkin on his arm, stood leaning an elbow amongst doubtful fruits, and reading an Italian journal.
He can quote them both or any other great old master and if it were not for the "inverted commas" we should not be aware of the insertion. Elia cannot say anything, not the simplest thing, without giving it a turn, a twist, a lift, a lightness, a grace, that would redeem the very grease-spots on a scullion's apron! There is no style in the world like it.
I could have fallen upon his bosom, which, though littered with dust and grease-spots, I was sure concealed a noble heart. But I contented myself with taking him into my confidence. I said we had a motor-boat, and wanted to go to a hotel as near it as possible.
We, looking back with softened hearts, are fain to think that we should have held our volumes doubly dear if they had lain for a time by Johnson's humble hearth, if he had pored over them at three o'clock in the morning, and had left sundry tokens grease-spots and spatterings of snuff upon many a spotless page. But it is hardly fair to censure Garrick for not dilating with these emotions.
He called loudly for his young mistress. "Miss Pol-lee Ah got sumthin fer you-all!" "Come up here, Jeb! We're resting on the Giant Guards!" shouted Polly. Soon Jeb appeared on the edge of the cliffs and held out a huge paper bag that had great grease-spots here and there on its sides and bottom. "Yer Maw hed me bring these dunnits t' you-all, ez Ah come by.
The third cook, crowned with a resplendent tin basin and wrapped royally in a table-cloth mottled with grease-spots and coffee stains, and bearing a sceptre that looked strangely like a belaying-pin, walked upon a dilapidated carpet and perched himself on the capstan, careless of the flying spray; his tarred and weather-beaten Chamberlains, Dukes and Lord High Admirals surrounded him, arrayed in all the pomp that spare tarpaulins and remnants of old sails could furnish.
Ride five miles in a jolting wagon in the hot sun, walk five more through tangled underbrush, arrive at the scene; pick up sticks one hour, try to make the fire burn and the kettle boil another hour; and finally sit down very uncomfortably on the ground, with burnt fingers and limp collar, to eat buttered pickles and vinegared bread, and drink muddy coffee; clear everything up, and ruin your clothes with grease-spots, wristbands hopelessly gone; sit down again under a tree, to hear the young lady you don't like read poetry, while the one you do like goes off before your very eyes with your rival; devoured by mosquitoes, gnats and spiders; ice melted and water tepid; another fire to make, more bad coffee, more grease spots, and a silver spoon lost; hunt for the spoon until dark, and then find it was a mistake; walk back five miles through the underbrush, get into the wagon, perfectly exhausted with heat and fatigue; force yourself to sing until you are as hoarse as a frog, and reach home worn out, wrinkled, haggard, parched with thirst, famished for food, and utterly ruined as to common clothes.
This Baron Kessler is quite a character very clever, very artistic, very musical, and, strange to say, very superstitious. For instance, he wears an old waistcoat which has certain magical grease-spots on Fridays; on Mondays his purse must be in the left pocket of his coat, on Thursdays in his right pocket.
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