ssessing the inestimable charm of blending
amusement with instruction, did Mr. Weller beguile the tediousness of
the journey, during the greater part of the day. Topics of conversation
were never wanting, for even when any pause occurred in Mr. Weller's
loquacity, it was abundantly supplied by the desire evinced by Mr.
Magnus to make himself acquainted with the whole of the personal history
of his fellow-travellers, and his loudly-expressed anxiety at every
stage, respecting the safety and well-being of the two bags, the leather
hat-box, and the brown-paper parcel.

In the main street of Ipswich, on the left-hand side of the way, a short
distance after you have passed through the open space fronting the Town
Hall, stands an inn known far and wide by the appellation of the Great
White Horse, rendered the more conspicuous by a stone statue of some
rampacious animal with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an
insane cart-horse, which is elevated above the principal door. The Great
White Horse is famous in the neighbourhood, in the same degree as a
prize ox, or a county-paper-chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig--for its
enormous size. Never was such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such
clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small
dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any one roof, as are collected
together between the four walls of the Great White Horse at Ipswich.

It was at the door of this overgrown tavern that the London coach
stopped, at the same hour every evening; and it was from this same
London coach that Mr. Pickwick, Sam Weller, and Mr. Peter Magnus
dismounted, on the particular evening to which this chapter of our
history bears reference.

'Do you stop here, sir?' inquired Mr. Peter Magnus, when the striped
bag, and the red bag, and the brown-paper parcel, and the leather
hat-box, had all been deposited in the passage. 'Do you stop here, sir?'

'I do,' said Mr. Pickwick.

'Dear me,' said Mr. Magnus, 'I never knew anything like these
extraordinary coincidences. Why, I stop here too. I hope we dine
together?'

'With pleasure,' replied Mr. Pickwick. 'I am not quite certain whether I
have any friends here or not, though. Is there any gentleman of the name
of Tupman here, waiter?'

A corpulent man, with a fortnight's napkin under his arm, and coeval
stockings on his legs, slowly desisted from his occupation of staring
down the street, on this question being put to him by Mr. P