A Highway Adventure
which was lately recorded in the public papers. It appears that when Van Amburgh travels, the large elephant goes on foot in the night, attended by four East Indians, men of negro complexions, in white dresses,—three of them riding on the elephant’s back, and one on his tusks. One night as they were passing over Worksop forest, the party arrived at a toll-bar that was closed. The call “Gate” was raised, and out came the toll-keeper in his nightcap. Now it is suspected that this unfortunate individual had been long anticipating the coming of a gentleman in black, whose name is never mentioned to ears polite; for observing the monstrous and unlooked-for spectacle that then presented itself to his drowsy eyes, he, instead of opening the gate, was so terrified, that he ran back into the house, exclaiming in frantic tones, “He’s come at last!”
“Frightened at an elephant,” cried Mr. Cavil, with a profusion of pishes! “At an elephant merely! I wonder if he ever saw a young lady—young ladies such as I have seen! I was never afraid of a woman while she wore her hair turned up, powdered, pomatumed, and frizzed like my mother’s and grandmother’s; but only imagine the terror of a sensitive mortal on encountering a specimen of the fashions of the present day; on meeting a sample of the feminine gender, who, not satisfied with milliner’s ‘whiskers,’ must exhibit to the affrighted gazer a face
Frightened at an elephant! Bless his five wits!—if he were only to come to London!”