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But, coming like a fire-flaught, like a fire-flaught he and his red whisky had departed; and it was not until he had gone, and one tosspot met another tosspot, and gossip another gossip, and compared notes, and exchanged shrewd guesses, eloquent winks, and pregnant vibrations of wondering noddles, that the mysterious stranger was invested with all the attributes to which he was, by virtue of his super-human powers, so clearly entitled.
In his later comedies the names are admirably chosen: they are characteristic without eccentricity or punning. One feels that Eccles in Caste could not possibly have borne any other name. How much less living would he be had he been called Mr. Soaker or Mr. Tosspot! Characteristic without eccentricity that is what a name ought to be.
I love a jolly gossip for a tosspot; for she gives more speech, and takes more liquor, than your 'breeked' steers that drink down the words, and drown them in the throat. Nothing drowns a woman's speech. It strengthens and improves in ale or whisky as if it were its natural element. Come open thy word-mill, Kate, and pour in the red grist, lass."
These he placed upon the table with a loud clank; and, laying hold of a three-footed creepy, he sat down right opposite the trembling pair, and proceeded to empty out the red liquor into the flasks, which he did in the most flourishing and noble style of valiant topers. "Here, my good old tosspot, Will Pearson!" said he, as he handed to him one of the flasks.
"Bunny" Bumpkin looked sweet in grey' or that 'Miss "Toby" Tosspot was among the loveliest of the débutantes at Court. Sometimes a son of Israel came along, all in a mortal funk, and said he 'didn't want it mentioned' that Mrs. So-and-So had dined with him at a certain public restaurant last night. Generally, he was a shareholder, and his orders had to be obeyed.
Pitchforking statesmen and tosspot reformers will be unable to play at pitch-and-toss with reputations not submitted for the performance. In short, the congenial asperities of debate will be so mitigated that the honorable member from Hades will retire permanently from the hauls of legislation. "Public opinion," says Buckle, "being the voice of the average man, is the voice of mediocrity."
His long strides, and extreme eagerness to get again into the heart of his former extravagant jollity, brought him very soon to the threshold of his old tosspot, Will Pearson, who, with his wife Betty, was sitting at the fire, engaged in a low-toned conversation, on the very subject of him of the red cravat. The door was burst open the stranger entered with a loud laugh and boisterous salutation.
But a certain ne'er-do-well Mountain, a noted striker and tosspot of the district, had mysteriously disappeared about that date, and had never since come within scope of Castle Barfield knowledge. Ugly rumours had got afloat, vague and formless, and soon to die out of general memory.
Respice personam, pone pro duos, bus non est in usu. If I could get up as well as I can swallow down, I had been long ere now very high in the air. Thus became Tom Tosspot rich, thus went in the tailor's stitch. Thus did Bacchus conquer th' Inde thus Philosophy, Melinde. A little rain allays a great deal of wind: long tippling breaks the thunder.
"'This warld does ever flight and wary, Fortune sae fast her wheel does cary, Na time but turn can ever rest; For nae false charge suld ane be sary, And to be merry, I think it best. Pull up thy jaws, Will Pearson, and pull into them this flask, and thou shalt be again my merry tosspot." Will and his wife were still under the influence of their fear, and stared at him in amazement.
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