The guards Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I would not recommend you to go to the common hells, the rookeries and pigeon-noles, cobweb warehouses and fly-traps, where the Greek committee sits nightly. At ... more »Crackpurse's, it you are had, it is by nobs, men who have names,— 'A local habitation and a name,'— nobles, Knights of the Golden Fleece, grandees, and such company as that. My Lords and Gentlemen is a common phrase at Crackpurse's to the club. We have the first-rate club-houses in our neighbourhood—White's and Boodle's—to which, doubtless, you will belong, and perhaps to the Union ; but then these, again, are quite different from, and superior to, Crackpurse's or the minor hells: these are houses frequented by the first of the land only—your first- rates, or top-sawyers, as Mr. Crackpurse would call them—statesmen and members of Parliament; and all there is regular, orderly, noble, and comme ilfaut (the waitei was quite aufait.) But 1 ask your pardon, Sir; pray what will you please to order for dinner ?" " Some turtle-soup, a chicken, turbot, or vol-au- vent, a roasted partridge, and some pine-apple fritters ; ice my wine, and let my coffee be as strong as brandy, and as hot as Mr. Crackpurse's hell." "Youshall be obeyed." " Will you dine in your apartments, or the coffee- room ?" obsequiously asked another waiter. " In my apartments; but I will just take a turn in the coffee-room, and may perhaps chance to pick up an acquaintance, for 1 hate to dine alone ; but, I say, dress some beefsteaks for my dogs, and I will send them by-and-by to my mother's stables in the square, to be properly attended by some of my grooms who will arrive to-morrow." The waiter was struck with that respect which a long purse always produces on low minds,—but here he had to do with an officer and a gentleman, one well born a...« less