A DOMESTIC NOVEL.

BY

Martin Farquhar Tupper, A.M., F.R.S.

AUTHOR OF

Proverbial philosophy.

HARTFORD: 

PUBLISHED BY SILAS ANDRUS & SON

1851.

The twins.

CHAPTER I.

Place:  Time:  Circumstance.

Burleigh-Singleton is a pleasant little watering-place on the southern coast of England, entirely suitable for those who have small incomes and good consciences.  The latter, to residents especially, are at least as indispensable as the former:  seeing that, however just the reputation of their growing little town for superior cheapness in matters of meat and drink, its character in things regarding men and manners is quite as undeniable for preeminent dullness.

Not but that it has its varieties of scene, and more or less of circumstances too:  there are, on one flank, the breezy Heights, with flag-staff and panorama; on the other, broad and level water-meadows, skirted by the dark-flowing Mullet, running to the sea between its tortuous banks:  for neighbourhood, Pacton Park is one great attraction—­the pretty market-town of Eyemouth another—­the everlasting, never-tiring sea a third; and, at high-summer, when the Devonshire lanes are not knee-deep in mire, the nevertheless immeasurably filthy, though picturesque, mud-built village of Oxton.

Then again (and really as I enumerate these multitudinous advantages, I begin to relent for having called it dull), you may pick up curious agate pebbles on the beach, as well as corallines and scarce sea-weeds, good for gumming on front-parlour windows; you may fish for whitings in the bay, and occasionally catch them; you may wade in huge caoutchouc boots among the muddy shallows of the Mullet, and shoot at cormorants and curlews; you may walk to satiety between high-banked and rather dirty cross-roads; and, if you will scramble up the hedge-row, may get now and then peeps of undulated country landscape.

Moreover, you have free liberty to drop in any where to “tiffin”—­Burleigh being very Indianized, and a guest always welcome; indeed, so Indianized is it, so populous in jaundiced cheek and ailing livers, that you may openly assert, without fear of being misunderstood (if you wish to vary your common phrase of loyalty), that Victoria sits upon the “musnud” of Great Britain; you may order curry in the smallest pot-house, and still be sure to get the rice well-cooked; you may call your house-maid “ayah,” without risk of warning for impertinence; you may vent your wrath against indolent waiters in eloquence of “jaa, soostee;” and, finally, you may go to the library, and besides the advantage of the day-before-yesterday’s Times, you may behold in bilious presence an affable, but authoritative, old gentleman, who introduces himself, “Sir, you see in me the hero of Puttymuddyfudgepoor.”