nothing of his jolly red face. However, there he lay, and I have heard

my uncle say, many a time, that the man said who picked him up that

he was smiling as merrily as if he had tumbled out for a treat, and

that after they had bled him, the first faint glimmerings of returning

animation, were his jumping up in bed, bursting out into a loud

laugh, kissing the young woman who held the basin, and demanding

a mutton chop and a pickled walnut. He was very fond of pickled

walnuts, gentlemen. He said he always found that, taken without

vinegar, they relished the beer.

'My uncle's great journey was in the fall of the leaf, at which time he

collected debts, and took orders, in the north; going from London to

Edinburgh, from Edinburgh to Glasgow, from Glasgow back to

Edinburgh, and thence to London by the smack. You are to

understand that his second visit to Edinburgh was for his own

pleasure. He used to go back for a week, just to look up his old

friends; and what with breakfasting with this one, lunching with that,

dining with the third, and supping with another, a pretty tight week

he used to make of it. I don't know whether any of you, gentlemen,

ever partook of a real substantial hospitable Scotch breakfast, and

then went out to a slight lunch of a bushel of oysters, a dozen or so of

bottled ale, and a noggin or two of whiskey to close up with. If you

ever did, you will agree with me that it requires a pretty strong head to

go out to dinner and supper afterwards.

But bless your hearts and eyebrows, all this sort of thing was nothing

to my uncle! He was so well seasoned, that it was mere child's play. I

have heard him say that he could see the Dundee people out, any day,

and walk home afterwards without staggering; and yet the Dundee

people have as strong heads and as strong punch, gentlemen, as you

are likely to meet with, between the poles. I have heard of a Glasgow

man and a Dundee man drinking against each other for fifteen hours

at a sitting. They were both suffocated, as nearly as could be

ascertained, at the same moment, but with this trifling exception,

gentlemen, they were not a bit the worse for it.

'One night, within four-and-twenty hours of the time when he had

settled to take shipping for London, my uncle supped at the house of

a very old friend of his, a Bailie Mac something and four syllables after

it, who lived in the old town of Edinburgh. There were the bailie's wife,

and the bailie's three daughters, and the bailie's grown-up son, and

three or four stout, bushy eye- browed, canny, old Scotch fellows, that

the bailie had got together to do honour to my uncle, and help to

make merry. It was a glorious supper. There was kippered salmon,

and Finnan haddocks, and a lamb's head, and a haggis - a celebrated

Scotch dish, gentlemen, which my uncle used to say always looked to

him, when it came to table, very much like a Cupid's stomach - and a

great many other things besides, that I forget the names of, but very

The Pickwick Papers