oy the
fat things at their ease in their native town. Then, again, they were on
terms of familiar intercourse with two or three classes, completely
separate and distinct from each other--a sort of connecting link between
them. At their door the justice of the peace, the knight of the shire,
the great man of the neighborhood, dismounted from his horse, and had
his chat with mine host. There came the village lawyer when he had
gained a cause, or won a large fee, or had been paid a long bill, to
indulge in his pint of sherry, and gossipped, as he drank it, of all the
affairs of his clients. There sneaked in the Doctor to get his glass of
eau de vie, or plague water, or aqua mirabilis, or strong spirits, in
short of any other denomination, and tell little dirty anecdotes of his
cases, and his patients. There the alderman, the wealthy shop-keeper,
and the small proprietor, or the large farmer, came to take his cheerful
cup on Saturdays or on market-day. But, besides these, the inn was the
resort, though approached by another door, of a lower and a poorer
class, with whom the landlord was still upon as good terms as with the
others. The wagoner, the carter, the lawyer's and the banker's clerk,
the shopman, the porter even, all came there; and it mattered not to Mr.
Cherrydew or his confraternity, whether it was a bowl of punch, a
draught of ale, a glass of spirits, or a bottle of old wine that his
guests demanded; he was civil, and familiar, and chatty with them all.

Thus under the rosy and radiant face of Mr. Cherrydew, and in that good,
round, fat head, was probably accumulated a greater mass of information,
regarding the neighborhood in which he lived, and all that went on
therein, than in any other head in the whole town, and the only
difficulty was to extract that part of the store which was wanted.

Marlow knew that it would not do to approach the principal subject of
inquiry rashly; for Mr. Cherrydew, like most of his craft, was somewhat
cautious, and would have shut himself up in silent reserve, or enveloped
himself in intangible ambiguities, if he had known that his guest had
any distinct and important object in his questions--having a notion that
a landlord should be perfectly cosmopolitan in all his feelings and his
actions, and should never commit himself in such a manner as to offend
any one who was, had been, or might be his guest. He was fond of
gossipping, it is true, loved a jest, and was not at all blind to