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Updated: June 29, 2025
"Well, not at present, or I shouldn't be going to the inn." "Down here on business, I reckon? I was a bagman myself once." "You're wrong again. I've been down to see my property, if you want to know." "Large estate, no doubt? Anywhere near my friend Ingleton's plot, now?" Mr Ratman stared at the stranger with something like consternation. "Ingleton!" he exclaimed. "What do you know of Ingleton?"
Fortunate in the maternal relationship of a Manchester warehouseman, domiciliated in the classic regions of cotton and Cheapside, he was taken as an "odd lad" into the establishment. In process of time he was advanced to the more honourable grade of traveller, in days of yore styled "bagman," to the concern.
"What about my blunderbuss?" expostulated the Bagman, faintly, as I seated myself beside him, "you'll give me my blunderbuss cost me five pound it did." "More fool you!" said the highwayman, and, picking up the unwieldy weapon, he hove it into the ditch. "As to our argyment regardin' gibbetin', sir," said he, nodding to me, "I'm rayther inclined to think you was in the right on it arter all."
Moreover, he walked with a swagger, and affected in common conversation a peculiar dialect which he opined to be the purest English, but which no one except a bagman could be reasonably expected to understand. His pockets were invariably crammed with sharelists; and he quoted, if he did not comprehend, the money article from the "Times."
The boys had become tired of waiting down at the boat, the "bagman" especially, since it was clearly past dinner-time; the bell had rung over at the dry-dock, and the town boys had already passed from school.
He used to add, that he believed he was the only living person who had ever been taken as a passenger on one of these excursions. And I think he was right, gentlemen at least I never heard of any other. 'I wonder what these ghosts of mail-coaches carry in their bags, said the landlord, who had listened to the whole story with profound attention. 'The dead letters, of course, said the bagman.
Don't believe that fox belonged to this side of the country at all. Don't understand his tactics. If it had been in my poor friend Denier's time, I might have suspected him of being a bagman." Lord Fallowfeild chuckled a little. "Ran too straight for a bagman," Shotover remarked. "Well, he gave us a rattling good spin whose-ever fox he was." "Didn't he, though?" said Lord Fallowfeild genially.
But these things, like good companions, stupid people early cease to observe: and the Abstract Bagman tittups past in his spring gig, and is positively not aware of the flowers along the lane, or the scenery of the weather overhead. Of the next two days' sail little remains in my mind, and nothing whatever in my note-book. The river streamed on steadily through pleasant river-side landscapes.
And his old fellow before him perpetrating frauds, old Methusalem Bloom, the robbing bagman, that poisoned himself with the prussic acid after he swamping the country with his baubles and his penny diamonds. Loans by post on easy terms. Any amount of money advanced on note of hand. Distance no object. No security. Gob, he's like Lanty MacHale's goat that'd go a piece of the road with every one.
"Wheesht, Lewie," said the man, grinning. "A herd's job is no for the likes o' you. But there's better wark waiting for ye than poalitics. It's a beggar's trade after a', and far better left to bagman bodies like yon Stocks. It's a puir thing for sac proper a man as you." "But what can I do?" cried Lewis in despair. "I have no profession. I am useless." "Useless!
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