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Compulsory-contented poverty is utterly, irredeemably despicable, and, by necessity, ignorantly blasphemous not because its style of glorifying God is to place His conceded image exactly at the plough-horse level, but because it teaches its babies, from the cradle upward, that a capricious Mumbo-Jumbo has made pollard-bread for them, and something with a French name for its white-headed boy; moleskins, tied below the knee, for them, and a belltopper for the favourite of the family; the three R's for them, and the classics, ancient and modern, for the vessel chosen to honour; illicit snakejuice for them, and golden top for the other fellow.
"Not for your principles, Theophile," I replied, with a courteous inclination of my belltopper. "Course, it's all in a man's lifetime," pursued Andrew resignedly. "Same time, it seems sort a' hard lines when a man's shoved in the logs for the best three months in the year for a thing he never done. 'Sides, I was on for a good long job with two as decent a fellers as you'd meet in a day's walk.
As spruce as could be, in a black coat and a belltopper. He's married again, he told me, and has one of the best-paying hotels in Smythesdale. Yes, and he was at the sale, too he came over specially for it to buy the piano." "He did, confound him!" cried Mahony hotly. "Oh, you can't look at it that way, Richard. As long as he has the money to pay for it.
I dropped across her one day I was in the road-paddock." 'She' was a drab belltopper, in perfect preservation, with a crown nothing less than a foot and a half high, and a narrow, wavy brim. She proved a perfect fit when I 'bent' her. I wore her afterward for many a week, till one night she rolled away from my camp, and I saw her no more, though I sought her diligently.
He met Miss Arnott and her pupils in his splendid impersonation of the studious naturalist and reverent authority on the wonders of creation. A long black coat, a somewhat dingy belltopper, and a pair of smoked spectacles went with the part.
At all events, impelled partly by a desire to have another look at the man, and partly, perhaps, by a morbid longing to flaunt myself before Tam, I grandly dipped my lofty belltopper under the doorway of the hut, and, without removing it, helped myself to a pannikin of tea from the bucket by the hearth, and sat down opposite the silent swagman.
The meal-signal is the real Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame; the Greek invocation which calls fools into a circle as surely as wise men; for neither folly nor wisdom is proof against its spell. Just then, two swagmen on foot came into the yard, and approached Moriarty and me. I fixed my belltopper, adjusted my specs, and assumed my stately pipe, whilst my soul went forth in psalms of thanksgiving.
Hitherto this aspiration had fallen short, partly owing to the clinging sediment of my congenital ignorance, but more especially because I lacked, and knew I lacked, what is known as a 'presence. Now, however, the high, drab belltopper and long alpaca coat, happily seconded by large, round glasses and a vast and scholarly pipe, seemed to get over the latter and greater difficulty; and, for perhaps the first time in my life, I enjoyed that experience so dear to some of my fellow-pilgrims the consciousness of being well-dressed.
"A very good day to you, madam," said Mr. Crips, lifting his belltopper with some grace, and bowing slightly. "I have taken the liberty of calling upon you to bring under your attention my celebrated medicine Dr. Crips's Healing Mixture, for coughs, colds, consumption indigestion, biliousness and all bronchial complaints."
"No, iv course not, but what price his nibs in the noble belltopper mentionin' it t' th' Johns, an' gettin' you seven days fer disgustin' behaviour?" Nickie smiled inscrutably, and continued his work. When the carriage returned, he made an adroit movement, and courteously opened the door. "'Low me, Jinny, my dear," he said, offering his grimy hand.
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