[Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens]@TWC D-Link book
Sketches by Boz

CHAPTER IV--MISS EVANS AND THE EAGLE
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Having tasted it once, they were easily prevailed upon to taste it again; and they sat out in the garden tasting shrub, and looking at the Busses alternately, till it was just the proper time to go to the Eagle; and then they resumed their journey, and walked very fast, for fear they should lose the beginning of the concert in the Rotunda.
'How ev'nly!' said Miss J'mima Ivins, and Miss J'mima Ivins's friend, both at once, when they had passed the gate and were fairly inside the gardens.

There were the walks, beautifully gravelled and planted--and the refreshment-boxes, painted and ornamented like so many snuff-boxes--and the variegated lamps shedding their rich light upon the company's heads--and the place for dancing ready chalked for the company's feet--and a Moorish band playing at one end of the gardens--and an opposition military band playing away at the other.

Then, the waiters were rushing to and fro with glasses of negus, and glasses of brandy-and-water, and bottles of ale, and bottles of stout; and ginger-beer was going off in one place, and practical jokes were going on in another; and people were crowding to the door of the Rotunda; and in short the whole scene was, as Miss J'mima Ivins, inspired by the novelty, or the shrub, or both, observed--'one of dazzling excitement.' As to the concert-room, never was anything half so splendid.

There was an orchestra for the singers, all paint, gilding, and plate-glass; and such an organ! Miss J'mima Ivins's friend's young man whispered it had cost 'four hundred pound,' which Mr.Samuel Wilkins said was 'not dear neither;' an opinion in which the ladies perfectly coincided.

The audience were seated on elevated benches round the room, and crowded into every part of it; and everybody was eating and drinking as comfortably as possible.


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