In those days great people went about like great people, in
handsome hammer-clothed, arms-emblazoned coaches, with plethoric
three-corner-hatted coachmen, and gigantic, lace-bedizened,
quivering-calved Johnnies, instead of rumbling along like apothecaries in
pill-boxes, with a handle inside to let themselves out. Young men, too,
dressed as if they were dressed--as if they were got up with some care and
attention--instead of wearing the loose, careless, flowing, sack-like
garments they do now.
We remember the day as if it were but yesterday; Puffington overtook us in
Oxford Street, where we were taking our usual sauntering stare into the
shop windows, and instead of shirking or slipping behind our back, he
actually ran his arm up to the hilt in ours, and turned us into the middle
of the flags, with an 'Ah, Buzzer, old boy, what are you doing in this
debauched part of the town? Come along with me, and I'll show you Life!'
So saying he linked arms, and pursuing our course at a proper kill-time
sort of pace, we were at length brought up at the end of Vere Street, along
which there was a regular rush of carriages, cutting away as if they were
going to a fire instead of to a finery shop.
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