Handsome Jack, and Other Stories

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ... GOLDBUG'S BARGAIN. I DON'T remember to have mentioned it, but it is nevertheless a fact, that one of the company accustomed to participate in the innocent relaxations indulged in on Saturday nights in the comfortable parlour of the Nine Nutmegs was old Mr. Crabtree, in whose name the license of the house had stood for more than forty years. He was too far advanced in life now for active business, and his son Hiram officiated in his place. There was as much difference between father and son as between chalk and cheese, as the saying is. Hiram was a smart young fellow, of slim build, and had been to America, and he was as disdainful as he dare show himself to be of his father's plodding old-fashioned ways. There would have been no parlour company if young Crabtree could have had his way. He was all for modernizing, for plateglass, and gay gas-reflectors, and electro-plated beer-engine pulls. Where was the use of parlours and tap-rooms, that only harboured slow beer drinkers and old fogies who played whist and who would be an hour over sixpenn'orth of grog? Clear the decks was Hiram's motto. A big bar and plenty of space before it, bare of chair, form, or table, with no encouragement for customers to do anything else than drink up what they ordered, and either call for more or move off and make way for those who were elbowing to get to the counter. That was the way to run the puncheons dry and fatten the tills! But old John Crabtree shook his head. When you have laid me beside your mother, who lived and died happily in the old-fashioned way, he would say to his son, then you may turn the Nutmegs inside out, if you please, but there shall be no alteration in my time. So Hiram had to wait, and meanwhile old John smoked his pipe of...