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The gang thus raked together was led on by regular leaders; Black Jack, alias the Devil's Knitting Needle, was commander in chief; Bob Reynolds, a scamping currier of Devizes, who was a sort of lickspittle to Old Salmon, the attorney, was bully major; and a jolter-headed farmer, of the name of Chandler, who lived on the Green, was captain of a gang of little dirty toad-eaters of the corporation; in fact, every scamp who lived upon the taxes every scrub who had an eye to a place and every lickspittle of the corrupt knaves of the corrupt and vile rotten-borough of Devizes, took a part in these un-Englishman-like, partial, cowardly, and disgraceful proceedings.
Women whose political influence changes the map of Europe, irresistible Catholic priests are mingled with impudent adventurers and professional toad-eaters. And over every thing is cast, by d'Israeli's Eastern imagination, a glamour of unlimited wealth, of numberless coronets, and of soaring ambitions.
Just at this ill-chosen juncture the officious burgomasters, who had heard of the arrival of mysterious despatches, came marching in a body into the room, with a legion of schepens and toad-eaters at their heels, and abruptly demanded a perusal of the letter. This was too much for the spleen of Peter Stuyvesant.
She had no doubt their company was improving, that the English gentlemen were very different from the horse-racing, cock-fighting Virginian squires, with whom Master Harry would associate, and the lawyers, and pettifoggers, and toad-eaters at the lieutenant-governor's table. Madam Esmond had a very keen eye for detecting flatterers in other folks' houses.
The jovial rogues had the run of my lord's kitchen, stables, cellars, and cigar-boxes. A new marchioness might hate hunting, smoking, jolly parties, and toad-eaters in general, or might bring into the house favourites of her own.
I shook the hand he offered me, to convince him that I bore him no ill will; and then making my way through the gaping crowd of toad-eaters, bade adieu to my uncle's domains forever. This is the last I have seen or heard of my cousin, or of the domestic concerns of Doubting Castle.
They have some useful pimp, some favourite toad-eater, that is always at their elbow. Ever remember, so long as you live, that toad-eaters are treacherous friends. Beside, it would be a little suspicious, to see your lordship's carriage making a regular tour from door to door among the lords of the bed-chamber. And I would by no means have Pinchbeck's dark-lanthorn brought into common use.
That was but satire just now, when we said there were no toad-eaters left in the world. There are many men of Sampson's profession now, doubtless; nay, little boys at our public schools are sent thither at the earliest age, instructed by their parents, and put out apprentices to toad-eating. But the flattery is not so manifest as it used to be a hundred years since.
Change hats for head-clothes, the rounds for visits, and led-captains for toad-eaters, and the life is the very same. In short, these are the people I live in the midst of, though not with; and it is for want of more important histories that I have wrote to you seldom; not, I give you my word, from the least negligence.
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