The Project Gutenberg EBook of What Will He Do With It, Complete, by
Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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Title: What Will He Do With It, Complete

Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Release Date: March 16, 2009 [EBook #7671]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT, COMPLETE ***

Produced by David Widger

WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT

By "Pisistratus Caxton"

(Lord Lytton)

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I.

WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

In which the history opens with a description of the social manners,
habits, and amusements of the English People, as exhibited in an
immemorial National Festivity.--Characters to be commemorated in the
history, introduced and graphically portrayed, with a nasological
illustration.--Original suggestions as to the idiosyncrasies
engendered by trades and callings, with other matters worthy of
note, conveyed in artless dialogue after the manner of Herodotus,
Father of History (mother unknown).

It was a summer fair in one of the prettiest villages in Surrey. The
main street was lined with booths, abounding in toys, gleaming crockery,
gay ribbons, and gilded ginger bread. Farther on, where the street
widened into the ample village-green, rose the more pretending fabrics
which lodged the attractive forms of the Mermaid, the Norfolk Giant; the
Pig-faced Lady, the Spotted Boy, and the Calf with Two Heads; while
high over even these edifices, and occupying the most conspicuous
vantage-ground, a lofty stage promised to rural playgoers the "Grand
Melodramatic Performance of The Remorseless Baron and the Bandit's
Child." Music, lively if artless, resounded on every side,--drums,
fifes, penny-whistles, cat-calls, and a hand-organ played by a dark
foreigner, from the height of whose shoulder a cynical but observant
monkey eyed the hubbub and cracked his nuts.

It was now sunset,--the throng at the fullest,--an animated, joyous
scene. The, day had been sultry; no clouds were to be seen, except low
on the western horizon, where they stretched, in lengthened ridges of
gold and purple, like the border-land b