Page:Fitzgerald - Pickwickian manners and customs (1897).djvu/19

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
PICKWICKIAN MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
13

déjeuners; or "public breakfasts," such as the authoress of the "Expiring Frog" gave. The "delegates" have been suppressed, and Doctors' Commons itself is levelled to the ground. The "Fox under the Hill" has given place to a great hotel. The old familiar "White Horse Cellars" has been rebuilt, made into shops and a restaurant. There are no "street keepers" now, but the London Police. The Eatanswill Gazette and its scurrilities are not tolerated. Special constables are rarely heard of, and appear only to be laughed at: their staves, tipped with a brass crown, are sold as curios. Turnpikes, which are found largely in "Pickwick," have been suppressed. The abuses of protracted litigation in Chancery and other Courts have been reformed. No papers are "filed at the Temple"—whatever that meant. The Pound, as an incident of village correction has, all but a few, disappeared.

Then for the professional classes, which