FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   >>  
h are in good set terms. The "Aboriginal," too, tells Popanilla "some long stories about a person who was chief manager, about five hundred years ago, to whom he said he was indebted for all his political principles." During Popanilla's sight-seeing career, he, of course, visits our theatres, and a tolerably broad caricature he gives of them. "To sit in a huge room hotter than a glass-house, in a posture emulating the most sanctified Faquir, with a throbbing head-ache, a breaking back, and twisted legs, with a heavy tube held over one eye, and the other covered with the unemployed hand, is, in Vraibleusia, called a public amusement." In one morning's lionizing, too, he acquires "a general knowledge of the chief arts and sciences, eats three hundred sandwiches, and tastes as many bottles of sherry." The frauds and fooleries of the joint stock company mania are, perhaps, among the least successful portion of the volume. The "literature" is somewhat better, as the establishment of a "Society for the Diffusion of Fashionable Knowledge"--its first treatise, Nonchalance--dissertations "on leaving cards," "cutting friends," "on bores," &c.--and a new novel called "Burlington"--the last a scratch at Popanilla's publisher. The "Clubs" are next recommended for those fond of solitude, and their satin luxuries humorously quizzed; but "the Colonial System," which follows, has more causticity. Popanilla, like all other great foreigners who visit England, falls ill; his disorder is "unquestionably nervous;" he is to count five between each word he utters, never ask questions, and avoid society, and only dine out once a day. This regimen brings on a slow fever; but his disorder is neither "liver," nor "nervous," but "mind." He next falls in with an Essay on Fruit, from which he learns that thousands of the Vraibleusians are dying with dyspepsia from eating pine-apples, which are denounced as "stupid, sour, and vulgar." Popanilla is ordered by his physician to Blunderland, where the women are "angelic," and the men "the most light-hearted, merry, obliging, entertaining fellows;" and where "instead of knives and forks being laid for the guests at dinner, the plates are flanked by daggers and pistols." A "row" springs up; "all the guests lay lifeless about the room;" "Popanilla rang the bell, and the waiters swept away the dead bodies, and brought him a roasted _potato_ for supper." He next enjoys the pleasures of the chase, and in r
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   >>  



Top keywords:
Popanilla
 

guests

 

disorder

 
nervous
 

hundred

 
called
 

society

 

regimen

 

brings

 

unquestionably


System

 
Colonial
 

quizzed

 

humorously

 

solitude

 

luxuries

 

causticity

 

utters

 

foreigners

 
England

questions

 

apples

 
springs
 

lifeless

 

plates

 

dinner

 

flanked

 
daggers
 

pistols

 
waiters

enjoys

 

supper

 

pleasures

 

potato

 
roasted
 

bodies

 

brought

 
denounced
 

stupid

 

ordered


vulgar

 
eating
 

thousands

 

Vraibleusians

 

dyspepsia

 

physician

 

Blunderland

 

fellows

 

entertaining

 

knives