So much for domestic miseries;—­I went out—­I was shoved about in Cheapside in the most remorseless manner; my right eye had a narrow escape of being poked out by the tray of a brawny butcher’s boy, who, when I civilly remonstrated, turned round, and said, “Vy, I say, who are you, I vonder, as is so partiklar about your hysight.”  I felt an involuntary shudder—­to-day, thought I, I am John Ebenezer Scropps—­two days ago I was Lord Mayor; and so the rencontre ended, evidently to the advantage of the bristly brute.  It was however too much for me—­the effect of contrast was too powerful, the change was too sudden—­and I determined to go to Brighton for a few weeks to refresh myself, and be weaned from my dignity.

We went—­we drove to the Royal Hotel; in the hall stood one of his Majesty’s ministers, one of my former guests, speaking to his lady and daughter:  my girls passed close to him—­he had handed one of them to dinner the year before, but he appeared entirely to have forgotten her.  By and by, when we were going out in a fly to take the air, one of the waiters desired the fly man to pull off, because Sir Something Somebody’s carriage could not come up—­it was clear that the name of Scropps had lost its influence.

We secluded ourselves in a private house, where we did nothing but sigh and look at the sea.  We had been totally spoiled for our proper sphere, and could not get into a better; the indifference of our inferiors mortified us, and the familiarity of our equals disgusted us—­our potentiality was gone, and we were so much degraded that a puppy of a fellow had the impertinence to ask Jenny if she was going to one of the Old Ship balls.  “Of course,” said the coxcomb, “I don’t mean the ‘Almacks,’ for they are uncommonly select.”

In short, do what we would, go where we might, we were outraged and annoyed, or at least thought ourselves so; and beyond all bitterness was the reflection, that the days of our dignity and delight never might return.  There were at Brighton no less than three men who called me Jack, and that, out of flies or in libraries, and one of these, chose occasionally, by way of making himself particularly agreeable, to address me by the familiar appellation of Jacky.  At length, and that only three weeks after my fall, an overgrown tallow-chandler met us on the Steyne, and stopped our party to observe, “as how he thought he owed me for two barrels of coal tar, for doing over his pigsties.”  This settled it—­we departed from Brighton, and made a tour of the coast; but we never rallied; and business, which must be minded, drove us before Christmas to Budge Row, where we are again settled down.