tell thee, old codger--who kears a vig vor thy voolish tantrums?"

While Crowe looked black in the face, and ran the risk of strangulation
under the gripe of this Amazon, Mr. Clarke having disengaged himself of
his hat, wig, coat, and waistcoat, advanced in an elegant attitude of
manual offence towards the misanthrope, who snatched up a gridiron from
the chimney corner, and Discord seemed to clap her sooty wings in
expectation of battle. But as the reader may have more than once already
cursed the unconscionable length of this chapter, we must postpone to the
next opportunity the incidents that succeeded this denunciation of war.

CHAPTER FOUR

IN WHICH IT APPEARS THAT THE KNIGHT, WHEN HEARTILY SET IN FOR SLEEPING,
WAS NOT EASILY DISTURBED.

In all probability the kitchen of the Black Lion, from a domestic temple
of society and good fellowship, would have been converted into a scene or
stage of sanguinary dispute, had not Pallas, or Discretion, interposed in
the person of Mr. Fillet, and, with the assistance of the ostler,
disarmed the combatants, not only of their arms, but also of their
resentment.

The impetuosity of Mr. Clarke was a little checked at sight of the
gridiron, which Ferret brandished with uncommon dexterity; a circumstance
from whence the company were, upon reflection, induced to believe,
that before he plunged into the sea of politics, he had occasionally
figured in the character of that facetious droll, who accompanies your
itinerant physicians, under the familiar appellation of Merry-Andrew, or
Jack-Pudding, and on a wooden stage entertains the populace with a solo
on the saltbox, or a sonata on the tongs and gridiron. Be that as it
may, the young lawyer seemed to be a little discomposed at the glancing
of this extraordinary weapon of offence, which the fair hands of Dolly
had scoured, until it had shone as bright as the shield of Achilles; or
as the emblem of good old English fare, which hangs by a red ribbon round
the neck of that thrice-honoured sage's head, in velvet bonnet cased, who
presides by rotation at the genial board, distinguished by the title of
the Beef-steak Club where the delicate rumps irresistibly attract the
stranger's eye, and, while they seem to cry, "Come cut me--come cut me,"
constrain, by wondrous sympathy, each mouth to overflow. Where the
obliging and humorous Jemmy B----t, the gentle Billy H----d, replete with
human kindness, and the generous Johnny B----d,